LWVeducation
The Florida LWV legislative priorities are coming due. Please make your voices heard within your local leagues. In order to be able to advocate for our Education Team issues, we have to make it into the top priorities statewide.
Make education tops for your local league. Here is a list of topics we expect to come up in the legislative session. Remember that committee meetings start in September.
On the radio this morning, I heard a story about the latest pitch for facilities funding from the charter school advocates. This one was to the State Board of Education.
It signals the latest attempt by the charter industry to tap into facilities funding for traditional public schools. Public schools need to renovate old buildings and upgrade technology infrastructure. Charters do not have to meet traditional public school state facility standards. Charters are supposed to be cheaper. Their real estate companies are making millions of dollars. Why give them more?
I have compiled a list of posts on this issue. Take a look and build arguments to make charter school policies more rational. Charters should make our educational system better, not destroy it. You can write letters, make presentations and make a difference.
Lots of money easily available can lead to abuse, and it did–over and over again in Miami. It is so much money that it may be time to follow New York’s lead and ban for-profit education management companies. In this post we look at Academica, Florida’s largest for-profit education management firm.
Its schools are consolidated into at least four non-profit entities that allow Academica to operate legally as a contractor to its own schools. Their 100 schools are organized into the Mater, Somerset, Pinecrest and Doral networks. They also manage several Ben Gamla schools as well as others. Academica operates in five states plus D.C. including Florida, Utah, Texas, Nevada, California.
The Doral and Mater charter governing boards keep appearing in the Miami Dade Inspector General reports. There is a lot of money involved and continued poor governance citations. You can follow the money. Do these schools do more with less?
Education Now reports that the Foundation for Florida’s Future has released its grades for legislators. They are based on their support for the Bush/ALEC school privatization agenda.
As you know, Jeb Bush made his mark in Florida with his advocacy for charter schools and vouchers. When the State Supreme Court declared vouchers unconstitutional, they were turned into corporate tax rebate scholarships. The Southern Legal Counsel’s lawsuit against school choice Citizens for Strong Schools comes to trial next spring.
Privatizing schools has turned into big business in Florida. To protect the business interests, legislators are pressured and cajoled. In this report you can see the grades your individual representatives and senators have received from the foundation Jeb Bush created. High grades mean that those legislators are failing our public schools and promoting privatization. Here’s the link to the report.
Submitted by Jane Koszoru
Broward County Public Schools improved from a ‘C’ to a ‘B’ grade for 2013-14.student achievement. Based on district wide gains in reading and math FCAT scores, students, teachers and schools should be proud. Oddly enough, there is widespread astonishment that student scores went up, and teacher evaluations went down–way down.
One half of a teacher’s evaluation was based on student achievement gains and the rest was based on instructional practice. Districts design the instructional practice component. In Broward, it appears that formal and informal classroom observations are used. There is a web site that has links to each district’s process. They are not the same. Yet, the legislature wants merit pay for the highest performing teachers.
Jane Koszoruc from the Broward County LWV relates the results. It has me scratching my head!
Many educational problems come down to money issues–how much is there, how much is needed, who has it? Which states are fair; which are not?
What does ‘fairness’ mean? School Funding Fairness shows how policies differ in a state by state report.
Florida gets it ‘half right’. How does your state rank?
By Margery Marcus
The Broward County School District is upset. Broward County has nearly two million people who live in relatively small cities. Ft. Lauderdale, its largest city has fewer than 200, 000 people. It is one of those pretty, but large beach towns. One third (100) of their schools are charters, but they enroll only 15% of the school population. Thus, there must be a lot of small charter schools.
Some charters with a high percentage of children from lower income families do well. Some charters have very nice facilities. There is once again, more to the story. Margery’s report will give you some clues about what is happening.
Are you aware of the Spencer Foundation’s Charter in Perspective Project? Issues are presented from different perspectives e.g. parental choice, preservation of public schools, and test beds for innovation.
Just for fun, here are some quick questions drawn from information on the site.
If you prefer a Common Core critical thinking question, you might ask:
The answers and much more follow.
It is always nice to put a positive spin on reports that there is more money for education. There is, in fact, more money for education this year than last year.
Education funding, however, has been on a roller coaster for the last several years. Where are we now? Take a ride and see.
In the League of Women Voters, we study data, laws, rules and regulations. We base our positions on facts. Sometimes, the facts just do not make events seem real.
We decided to tell a story–it even has a sequel. The facts are there, but the story is about high expectations and false hopes. It is about how dreams go wrong. It is a true story.