Florida Twenty Years Later: Undermining Public Schools

Diane Ravitch asked me to do a series on my reflections about the impact of school choice in Florida. I did four articles that will appear daily in her blog.

The first post “Florida Twenty Years Later: Undermining Public Schools” appeared in her blog today. It covers the false assumptions behind the choice movement i.e. choice saves money and spurs innovation. What really has happened the last twenty years to school facilities, teachers, and the learning process that demonstrate Florida schools are nearing a crisis? You can read it here.

The second piece: “Twenty Years Later: Impact of Charter and Private Sector Schools” summarizes where the lack of common rules governing schools leads. The simple answer is profiteering, corruption and charter school closures.

The third piece: “Twenty years later: Who Benefits, Not Schools!” covers the impact of choice policies on civil rights, funding, local vs. state control, and accountability. One might ask: Who benefits in a system that generates so much conflict? Politicians and profiteers, but not the public may well be the answer.

The fourth piece “Twenty Years Later: The SociaI Impact of Privatizaton” covers resegregation and the result of the ‘separate but equal’ philosophy governing school choice. Separate is not equal.

Want to hear Diane Ravitch and Me on Louisville Radio?

Prior to the Louisville, Kentucky Save Our Schools forum on Thursday, Diane and I were interviewed by the local radio. Diane is on the first seven minutes. I follow her. We cover privatization of schools and testing. We also covered social issues such as racial and economic segregation, charter vs. public school achievement, tax credit scholarships, teacher turnover Then, we cover for-profit charter profiteering. We close with the funding drain from public schools and describe the consequences for public school facilities and programs. We even mentioned the PACT campaign against for-profit charters. We closed with some signs of hope.

If you would like to listen, click here. The link is for October 11th and appears at the bottom of the screen.

The Time is Ripe for Charter Reform

What should the Florida legislative education agenda be for the upcoming session? How about charter school reform? New Jersey’s governor has just declared a moratorium on charter school expansion. They need to step back and review the management oversight and expansion policies.

California’s governor has just signed into law a ban on for-profit charters.

The U.S. Office of Inspector General has issued a new report stating that federal dollars disappear on charters that fail. They conducted an audit in Arizona, California, and Louisiana. It is no better in Florida.

Even Erika and Byron Donalds, co-founders and board members of Mason Classical Academy discovered first hand that they could not correct questionable management practices at their school. They pulled their children out. This is the only option charter parents have.

Their is at least one caveat about charter reform. There are those, like Donalds, who want to create a separate state school system for charters. Somehow this is supposed to improve oversight.

Dividing public dollars into two education systems opens a Pandora’s box. Which system gets how much money? What happens to the building when charter schools, that are privately owned, close. What happens now is that the charter management firms’ real estate companies can repurpose the buildings and reap the profits.

Yes, we need reform. We need, however, to vet the reformers. Be sure to question legislative candidates. Help them understand the consequences of charter mismanagement.

Classical Academy in Trouble Again

Collier County’s Classical Academy is facing financial mismanagement charges by its former treasurer. He claims that the principal has created an environment “where fraud can occur without detection”. This is just one more crisis at this charter school founded by Kelly Lichter and Erika Donalds. Donalds was the sponsor for Amendment 8 to create a separate charter system.

The treasurer and Erika Donalds have pulled their children from the school. Donalds has filed paper work to open her own Classical Academy. Her husband, Representative Byron Donalds is reportedly ‘mulling’ legislation to increase charter school accountability. According to the Naples Daily News, Donalds is considering requirements that charters post student and teacher turnover rates as well as a minimum of five board members. Erika and Byron Donalds were former board members of this charter school.

Parents are finding out the hard way that they have no voice in charter school management. The charter boards are hand picked. Elected public school boards can do nothing until the charter can no longer pay its bills or students are in danger. Representative Donalds says that reform of the charter system depends upon the November election. Be sure you know where your representatives stand on charter school management reform.

Here are stories of other complaints about this charter school. It is quite a history. Yet, the school remains open.

Story 1. Inflated loans
Story 2. Underware searches
Story 3. Sexual Assault

Bridging the Gap in Pinellas

In 2016, Pinellas County schools were in a crisis they made themselves. Five schools were labeled “Failure Factories”. They were the result of a 2007 school board decision to end busing and allow the resegregation of schools. Prior to 2007, Pinellas was under a federal school integration plan. When busing ended, south Pinellas schools became very segregated. In theory, these mostly minority schools were promised district support; in practice little support was given. As a result, they could not keep teachers or students and achievement levels plummeted. Of the 187 Florida schools whose students were from families as poor or poorer, only seven had lower achievement scores than the ‘Failure Factories’. The pattern of the increase in the achievement gap as schools became more segregated is a national problem.

In 2016, Pinellas school district launched a massive effort to turn around these five schools and to eliminate the achievement gap in all schools, by infusing data driven instruction, faculty training to change expectations for their students, teacher bonuses, and a host of other support programs for students and families. The report is out for the first year. Schools improved slightly on five measures: graduation rate, advanced coursework enrollment, ESE identification, minority hiring, and student discipline. On the sixth measure, closing the achievement gap between white and black students, there was no change. Approximately one-third of the black students earned a level 3 score, indicating proficiency or near proficiency levels in math and English language skills.

Pinellas set a ten-year goal to end the achievement gap. It is too early to predict how well students will fare. Some schools made more progress than others. Gains may be uneven from year-to-year. Why this is so matters. Is it a difference in attitude of students and the school community, a meaningful difference in the implementation of the plan in particular schools, or changes in socio-economic differences in student backgrounds within schools? Student enrollment within a school can change dramatically from year-to-year as families move around or enroll and then withdraw children in charters and tax credit supported private schools. These are the questions the district must address to give meaning to the data. Numbers do not tell the real story; they just shine a light on a problem.

It is short sighted to put fingers of blame on the districts alone. Elected school boards reflect community values. The entire community must be committed to providing equal access to a high quality education for all students. Finding ways to create equal access within and across schools is a challenge thwarted by the more segregated housing patterns that have evolved in the last twenty years.

Civics vs. Politics: Amendment 8 won’t go away

Amendment 8 is off the ballot. Using civics education to promote teaching creationism or to justify any other aspect of the ultra conservative ideology is still in play. The Tampa Tribune highlights civics education as a political issue in the Florida campaign for governor. It is not a surprise. Civics education was part of Amendment 8. It was not just a cover for the proposal to create a separate educational system for charter schools. It was part of a larger strategy to build support for privatizing our public schools.

Below find earlier posts on the civics issue in Florida. You can also get a preview of what to expect in the next legislative session by watching the video of the views of the two candidates for Florida’s governor.

https://lwveducation.com/politics-in-science-and-civics-curriculum/ What would be taught in a ‘new’ civics curriculum?

https://lwveducation.com/governor-graham-on-crc-education-amendment/ Civics education is a political ploy.

https://lwveducation.com/whats-going-on-with-civics-education/ College level civics test stalemate over how to define what will be covered in a new test.

Would you like to see and hear how the two Florida candidates for governor differ on education policy? Watch the video here.

Step by Step Guide to Uncovering Dark Money School Board Races

How do you really know who is funding a school board race? It matters. Even though the amount of money contributed does not guarantee victory, it does disclose who is behind a candidate. Are the supporters local? Or, are they organizations backed by billionaires or a particular ideology? Some candidates are stealth candidates. Their backers may not be obvious.

If you want to know more about your local candidates, here is a step by step process. It just takes a ‘will to know’. Once you do know, tell others.

Accountabaloney sends this guide to tracking donors:

Tomorrow I will post the process for tracking committee contributions, or you can go to the Accountabaloney website: Question the Source.

Florida 5th Worst State for Teachers

Florida has a teacher shortage; here are reasons why. According to an article in the Herald Tribune, only Louisiana, North Carolina, Arizona and Hawaii are worse than Florida on a group of measures such as:

  1. salaries, pensions, income growth potential
  2. student-teacher ratios
  3. teacher turnover, union strength, teacher safety

Florida ranks 41st in per pupil spending. It takes an average of eleven years before Florida teachers can expect to earn $48,000. Unfortunately, a fifth of all teachers resign before the end of their first year. About one-half resign within five years. Which states, according to the financial analysis by WalletHub, are the best states in which to teach? New York, Connecticut, and Minnesota.

The news is not all bad. Across all 25 indicators used to rank states on overall school quality, not only on teaching conditions, Florida ranks 26th.

I was particularly interested in how WalletHub defined ‘school quality’. The measures that used included: performance, funding, safety, class size, and instructor credentials. It would seem from this study that Florida is a ‘middle of the road’ state educational system with a big problem attracting and keeping teachers.

Could it happen here, No Doubt About It? Consider Arizona

Arizona Superintendent of Schools Diane Douglas announced she will recommend the curriculum standards for Classical Academy charter schools. They are sponsored by Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian college in Michigan that has gone into the charter business. It had to do something a few years ago because it was scandal ridden due to the sexual exploits of its president resulting in his son’s wife’s suicide. It is also the charter chain that Erika Donalds, a Collier County Florida school board member, personally supports. She has filed a proposal to open another one in Martin County. It’s the same chain that won its appeal to Florida’s State Board of Education to open a Classical Academy in Tallahassee this past week.

Florida’s State Board of Education Chair is no supporter of public schools. Marva Johnson advocated that Florida’s constitution be changed to allow public funds to support private, religious schools. Johnson was voted by SBE members to succeed Gary Chartrand. He is one of the financial supporters of KIPP charters in Jacksonville. He is also one of the major contributors to school board races. His candidates support charter schools.

There is a lot of money to be made from Florida’s charter schools. Almost half of the 650 charters are run by for-profit management companies that are subcontractors with the charter boards they help to create. Want to know about the inside dealings of Academica, Florida’s richest charter firm? Read the Miami Herald report. This story ran before Erik Fresen, Zulueta’s brother-in-law and former Florida legislator was arrested for forgetting for eight years to file his income tax returns. He already had been cited for conflict of interest in his role at Academica.

Large non-profit charter management chains have their own way of making money. Eva Moskowitz, head of the NY based Success Academies, made over $782,000 in 2016 to run 46 schools. The Superintendent of Orange County, Florida public schools runs 191 schools, but her salary is less than half of what Moskowitz earns.

Until Florida citizens demand change, too many charters will syphon off public tax dollars for private gain. When the money goes to charters, it comes from your children’s schools.

Public Schools Matter Because…..

We have been asking our local leaders why public schools matter to them. We post them on the League’s and the Alachua County PTA Council websites. Here are a few of them. You can see more on the League of Women Voters Alachua/Gainesville website.

Jodi Siegel will be leading the case for Citizens for Strong Schools on November 8th at the Florida Supreme Court hearing.

href=”http://lwveducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/jodi.png”>

Chris Doering is one of our ‘famous Gators’ who likes living in Gainesville.

Reverend Karl Andersen is president of the Alachua County Christian Pastors Association.