Archives for the year of: 2015
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FairTest: What Comes Next in Assessment After ESSA Passes?

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2015 //
14

FairTest has posted a list of recommendations for next steps in the fight against the misuse and overuse of standardized tests.

 

The long-awaited demise of the despised and failed No Child Left Behind is gladdening, but it doesn’t end the fight against the misuse of high-stakes tests. Some states may decide to continue NCLB-ing their students and teachers because bad habits are hard to break.

 

FairTest recommends:

 

Congress will likely soon pass and President Obama sign the “Every Student Achieves Act” (ESSA). This bill is the latest version of the long-standing Elementary and Secondary Education Act and replaces the universally despised “No Child Left Behind.” The new law presents both opportunities and dangers for the testing resistance and reform movement.

 

How can the movement use the opportunities, counter the risks, and win greater assessment reform victories? The first task is to continue to build resistance to high-stakes standardized exams in every state in the nation, especially by expanding the already large numbers of test refusals. Next is to transform this movement strength into concrete victories by winning state legislation and local regulations to cut back testing, end high stakes, and implement high-quality assessments.

 

ESSA pushes decision-making power about most aspects of accountability from federal education officials to the states and localities. It will take strong and savvy organizing to win needed changes. Here are some ways activists can bring positive change and avoid the law’s dangers.

 

Push for far fewer state and local tests:

 

Movement activists should organize to win these goals:

 

– No state standardized tests beyond those mandated by ESSA.

 

– No standardized local interim, benchmark, predictive, formative, or other such tests, including those embedded in commercial on-line curricula.

 

– A ban on standardized testing in pre-K through grade 3.

 

– Transparency in the number, and uses of tests, and time spent on test preparation

 

While ESSA mandates 17 tests (grades 3-8 in reading and math, plus three grades for science), states and districts require many more. A recent study shows the average public school student takes 112. With fewer federal accountability mandates, states and districts will be under less pressure to test incessantly. ESSA also contains funding for states and districts to evaluate and reduce their testing programs.

 

Organize to end your state or district’s high-stakes testing mandates:

 

– End state requirements that students pass standardized exams to graduate or be promoted to the next grade, as many states already are. These are not required by federal law or regulations.

 

– End requirements to judge educators by student standardized exam scores. ESSA eliminated any federal mandate for test-based teacher evaluation. Now activists must incorporate this change locally by preventing states from deciding to perpetuate these dangerous policies.

 

– Fight for tests to be no more than 51% of the weight in your state’s formula for ranking schools (the minimum percentage allowed under ESSA). Ensure that other indicators are educationally sound, and that states provide assistance (including additional funding), not punishment, to schools identified as “low performers.” ESSA does require states to rank all schools and act to improve the lowest performing, but the types of interventions are no longer specified in federal law.

 

Win better assessment:

 

Push to have your state become one of the seven that will be allowed to completely overhaul their testing systems under ESSA pilot programs. Ensure that the overhaul includes primarily locally-based, teacher-controlled assessments, such as projects and portfolios. The New York Performance Standards Consortium is currently the best U.S. example of educator-controlled performance assessments.

 

Get your state to pass an opt-out law:

 

In 2015, a few more states, including Oregon [link to statute] passed laws recognizing the right of parents to hold their children out of standardized testing, while similar opt-out bills advanced in one or both houses of several other legislatures. ESSA recognizes that families can refuse testing if a state has an opt-out law. The new law does mandate 95% test participation, but leaves it up to the states to decide what to do if a school or district does not reach that threshold. At a minimum, activists should organize to block moves to punish students who opt out or schools and districts with low participation rates.

 

Use elections to raise issues:

 

Use the 2016 election cycle to hold incumbents and challengers accountable for implementing assessment reform. Groups with appropriate tax status should consider endorsing/opposing candidates based on their positions on testing. Activists, including tax-exempt groups, can use questionnaires, candidate forums, bird-dogging, and letters to the editor to force candidates to take clear positions.

 

Recognize and Block ESSA’s Dangers:

 

ESSA allows states to use federal assessment funding to revise their testing programs modestly, such as by adding tasks, portfolios and formative assessments. However, these tools are generally intended to be incorporated into standardized tests, as with the PARCC and SBAC Common Core exams. Performance assessments cannot fulfill their promise if they become mere adjuncts to current state exams. Similarly, a provision allowing districts to use a college admission test such as the ACT or SAT as the required high school exam must be treated with caution; those tests are no better educationally than existing state tests, and they have not been validated to assess high school academic performance.

 

Corporations such as Pearson and the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are promoting a dangerous version of “performance assessments.” They have perverted ideas developed by progressive educators, and the language used to describe them, such as “performance tasks” and “embedded” and “formative” assessments, to promote centrally controlled, largely on-line testing and instruction. The movement must strenuously resist these maneuvers, not by abandoning the fight for high-quality assessments or the labels we use for them, but by distinguishing educationally helpful from harmful practices.

 

The Next Reauthorization: ESSA is due to be reviewed by Congress in 2020. It is not too early to think about what kind of federal law can be won as the movement builds more clout and wins more victories at the state and local level.

 

 

Categories Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Resistance, Standardized Testing

Cody and Dufresne: No Art Left Behind

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2015 //
17

Anthony Cody has been running a series of articles about the importance of art in school on his blog “Living in Dialogue.”

 

I will post each of the series.

 

This is number one. 

 

It contains a beautiful statement by Susan Dufresne, kindergarten teacher and artist:

 

Art is healing and meditative for children and teachers. It is inspiring and allows a different kind of space for free and creative expression. Art builds self-confidence in a way that children need. It develops listening skills and an ability to work from part-to-whole. It develops trust in one’s teacher.

 

Art develops executive functioning skills, impulse control, delayed gratification skills, planning and organizing skills, fine motor skills, and visual spatial skills. Art develops meta-cognition skills, problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Art increases experiences of joy in all children and during the process of a shared joyful Art experience, our immune systems get the same kind of boost as a hug provides. Shared Art experience creates a strong sense of community. Art creates a sense of peace and satisfaction. Art creates children who think outside the box and can help students stand up for themselves and others. Art develops empathy. Art helps us learn about our world sometimes in a way nothing else could replace. Art can be full-on play! Art can create wonder and Art can answer wonderings. Art can be fiction or non-fiction. Art can come from within or from a power outside of oneself. #Art can incite emotion. Art can be visual music with rhythm and a melody of pattern. Art can engage all of our senses. Art can be science. Art is math. Art is visual poetry. Art can be social studies. Art can incite social justice! Art can be dangerous to the elite! Art can disrupt and disturb oppression. Art can heal depression and trauma. Art is worth doing for the sake of Art alone, but Art does all these things!

 

Can you VAM an art teacher? No! Can a multiple-choice test grade children’s imagination and creativity? No! Why do we measure and care about the wrong things?

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Arts Education, Education Reform, Joy

Daily Life in a No-Excuses Charter School: Is This Good Education?

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2015 //
52

Peter Greene posted a commentary by Emily Kaplan, a teacher who worked in a no-excuses charter school in Boston, considered one of the best in the city because of its high test scores. Disturbed by the pressure that teachers must exert to get those high scores, Emily left the charter school and now teaches in a public school. She describes the shame and other tactics used to motivate students to try harder to ace the tests.

 

Yes, the students get high scores on the state tests, which is very satisfying to the charter advocates and helps them in their appeal to get more charters and  more funding from private and public sources.

 

But here is the problem:

 

The problem is that standardized test scores mean very little. On the only tests that do mean a tremendous amount for these students— the SSATs— students at the school I taught at perform abysmally. Subsequently, these same middle schoolers who often dramatically outperform their wealthy white peers on these tests are not accepted in large numbers to the most selective high schools (and most of those who do struggle socially and emotionally when thrust into student bodies that aren’t upwards of 98% students of color); struggle to succeed academically in high school (81% earn high school grade-point averages below 3.0 in the first semester); and certainly do not thrive after high school, graduating from college at very low rates and, among those who don’t go to college, failing in large numbers to secure full-time employment.

 
Correlation is not causation, after all; the fact that those wealthy white students who do well on state standardized tests go on to enjoy tremendous opportunities, in education and in life, does not mean that these scores cause these outcomes. This fallacy, however, constitutes the fuel of the no-excuses runaway train, and leads to the dehumanization of children of color at schools like the one at which I taught. At this school, children are deprived of a comprehensive, developmentally appropriate, and humane education; instead, they are subjected to militaristic discipline, excessive amounts of testing (well beyond that which is already mandated by the state), a criminally deficient amount of playtime (in a nine-hour school day, kindergartners have twenty minutes of recess), and lack of access to social-emotional curricula— all so that the people who run their schools can make a political point.

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization, Testing

Mercedes Schneider on David Hursh’s New Book on Corporate Reform

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2015 //
2

Mercedes Schneider really liked reading David Hursh’s new book, The End of Public Schools: The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatize Education.

He identifies the major players in the corporate reform movement: Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Pearson, and many more. He sees the clear linkage between high-stakes testing and privatization.

We can’t let this happen.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

District Adopts Federally-Endorsed Tech Product, and It Bores the Kids to Tears [LINK FIXED]

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2015 //
50

In an earlier post, one of our readers asked whether it was appropriate for the United States Department of Education to endorse commercial products. The product that won plaudits from federal officials, paid for with our tax dollars, is called Edgenuity. As you might expect, it is a computer program that replaces teacher-student interaction. The U.S. ED wants to solve the high cost of teachers by funding Teach for America and technology that replaces teachers.

 

Is Edgenuity a great product? Evidently not.

 

A blogger described what happened when his school district adopted Edgenuity.

 

He writes:

 

Students have expressed quiet and loud frustration; parents have also complained. To find compromise and rest the restless, a Digital Learning Committee was formed consisting of teachers, students, and concerned parents. Complaints center around concerns surrounding the implementation, the quality of education, student/computer over-use, and lack of teacher/student interaction. Some students are not only unhappy with the system but they are feeling as though their education is being hindered and many parents are feeling uncomfortable with the system, as well.

 

Students are not happy with the loss of a real teacher:

 

Some students have been concerned about the quality of education they are achieving through the Edgenuity system. Hazel voices this concern when she says, “I’m not a strong supporter of online learning in general, but I realize that it is useful for elective and language classes. However, it is only useful if the classes are of high quality, which Edgenuity has more than proved itself not to be. The lectures are not lectures at all; rather, bland Powerpoint style screens read by a talking head who clearly knows very little, if anything, on the subject…Do I think that Edgenuity is improving my education at Kenny Lake? Overall, no. It is a constant, daily source of frustration for me and my peers. I am not graded fairly. How can anyone’s intelligence be judged by multiple choice questions and virtual teachers?… Some courses, like government/economics, are completely unnecessary to have online since we have great, real teachers already willing to teach them. Many are wrought with factual errors, so what is the point of having them at all?”

 

With the addition of Edgenuity and other online learning courses is the sudden end to most student-teacher interaction. As Hazel said, the days were once filled with “…banters with teachers…” and “…thought provoking group discussion…” which are now replaced by long silences with nothing but the clacking of fingers on keyboards, while the teacher stands and paces in the classroom without much input or excitement. In fact, there is no excitement in the learning and no passion in the teaching. “The program wasn’t designed to be used in conjunction with an actual teacher,” Patty says. “Where I would see a compromise, like I said, is where it would be used for classes that aren’t available and where there isn’t a real live teacher.”

 

Most devastating is the blogger’s conclusion:

 

In general, Edgenuity has not been well-accepted within the Kenny Lake community. Many appear to be against it or at least in support of a modified version of it. The program itself adopts an industrious attitude that leaves much more to be desired (“Education is not an industry,” Hazel notes). There is no passion and no heart in the teaching – a listless and boring system that repeats a monotonous cycle. If this is the future, the future is a place of tedium: a place where learning is no longer embraced by schools enthusiastically: a place where we are fed information, instead of inspired by knowledge. Hopefully, next semester will be one with less strife and all the kinks will be worked out.

 

No passion. No heart. A listless and boring system.

 

Who could ask for anything less?

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Technology, Computers

Peter Greene: ESSA Doesn’t Solve Any Problems, It Just Shifts Them to the States

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2015 //
27

Peter Greene wonders why the excitement over the Every Student Succeeds Act (replacing No Child Left Behind, which says the same thing). How do you spell NCLB backwards? ESSA.

 

If the Tea Party and right-wing extremists control your state, you still have to fight for the survival of public schools and professional educators.

 

The ESSA doesn’t settle anything. It doesn’t solve anything. Every argument and battle that supporters of public schools (and the teachers and students whowork and learn in public schools) will still be fought– the difference is that now those arguments will be held in state capitols instead of Washington DC.

 

Depending on your state, that may be good news. Or it may be that the best we can say is that your state government isn’t any worse, and they live closer to you.

 

There are definite advantages. State government officials are easier to find, to get to, to contact, to talk to. When a single state decides to implement terrible policy, they won’t be implementing it for the entire country. And there are now plenty of groups that have become very accomplished and effective at making themselves heard in their home state (looking at you, New York opt outers).

 

Both those who love it and those who hate it, I think, missing the most important feature. ESSA replaces a great deal of the old “you must do” this language with “you may do this” language and even “you could get money for this but you have several choices here” language.

 

ESSA makes it possible to take many important steps forward. It also makes it possible for states to step backward. The steps that are taken will be decided state by state, and the same players who have worked hard to break down public education are still right there, still well-funded, still fully committed to the goals they have pursued for over a decade. It is absolutely critical that advocates for public education keep the pressure up on state governments. Congress has taken an unprecedented step in returning some power and control to the states; now we have to make sure that power is well used and that all students, schools and teachers receive the support and the tools needed to do the job we signed up to do.

 

The struggle is not over. It has just shifted venue. Get ready for the next rounds of debate– all fifty of them. The one big change is the, unlike its predecessors, ESSA mandates relatively few things. But it opens the doors of opportunity wide to many many things, both good and bad. It’s up to all of us to be vigilant about what walks through those doors.

 

 

Categories Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

Arthur Camins: Why Democrats Should Oppose Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2015 //
18

Arthur Camins posted this thoughtful critique of the rush to replace democratically controlled public schools with privately managed charters and vouchers for private schools. He expects Republicans to embrace charters and vouchers, given their love of the marketplace. Camins is the director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J.

 

But he criticizes Democrats for failing to defend the public nature of a public institution.

 

He writes:

 

 

 

As policy framing rhetoric, the word choice is meant evoke the imagery of democracy and equity. Words are powerful, especially in framing and influencing political debates. Words can conjure positive or negative emotional responses. However, sometimes words clarify and sometimes they obscure underlying values. So it is with choice.

 

In our culture the “the right to choose” suggests an almost inalienable individual right, making for powerfully resonant political rhetoric. However, behind the easy-to-swallow positive connotation of choice, there is underlying message in its use in the context of education. If stated explicitly, the message might cause a little indigestion: Be out for yourself and don’t worry so much about your neighbors or community.

 

I do not say this to castigate parents who choose to send their children to charter schools or the teachers who work in them. However, what is moral or sensible for an individual does not make for sound or just education policy for a society. The moral burden falls not on parents, but on those who knowingly advance the wellbeing of the at the expense of the many.

 

Many centuries ago Rabbi Hillel sagely wrote,

 

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?” Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14.
It is time to reframe the policy dialog from choosing just for me to choosing to ensure better schools for us.

 

There is reason for hope. While choice is a deeply held American value, so is community responsibility. In fact, reference to individualism and community responsibility in politics has ebbed and flowed in recent American history. The New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960’s- catalyzed by the labor and civil rights movements- represented high points for collective solutions, such as Social Security or Medicare, to complex problems. Alternatively, the election of Ronald Reagan initiated a sustained period of individualism. In periods of relative or growing equity and shared prosperity individualism may foster personal interests and creativity. However, in periods of scarcity a selfish brand of individualism diminishes equity by diverting attention from more systemic solutions that can only be achieved by collective action. Such is the case with charter schools. Only some are superior, and there is no evidence that a market-based, all-charter system will lead to overall improvement. On the contrary, charter school expansion is more likely to lead to market volatility and disruption in children’s lives.

 

With individualism in ascendancy, few current politicians challenge structural inequality or run for office on an explicit program of equity. Sadly, faith in the prospect of voting as a route to greater equity is at a low point while cynicism about the viability political process grows. As a result, the self-interested perspective of those with relatively more privilege leads to holding fast what they have. In the context of scarce federal and state education resources, that means protecting their community’s property tax resource advantage. It means maintaining various in-school segregative tracking mechanisms that privilege some children over others. Similarly, from the perspective of the disempowered and disadvantaged in urban areas, charter schools and vouchers may represent an individual choice in the apparent absence of viable community alternatives.

 

Supporters of equity and democracy must depend upon and develop agency and hope for community solutions because when there is only despair, the only rational course of action is individual survival. Ideological supporters of privatization understand this and actively undermine democratic participation and the promise of collective solutions. That is why since the 1980’s they have followed an explicit starve-the-beast strategy to defund public institutions in order to undermine quality, public trust, and confidence. That is why they favor private charter boards over elected school boards.

 

I have come to believe that the struggle for equity must include a tandem strategy of opposition and advocacy.

 

Friends of equity need to oppose funding charter schools, not because choice is inherently a bad idea but because the spread of charter schools is morally corrosive and drains money from other local schools. Since funds are always limited, the opportunities for the few come with the sacrifice of others. “They are stealing your child’s future,” might be an appropriate opposition slogan.

 

Developments outside of education, such as adoption of a $15 per hour minimum wage in several cities, may represent the beginning of a climb out of the valley of individualism. In education, the fledgling opt-out movement in response to the misuse of testing may represent a resurgence of hope in the power of agency through collective action.

 

Progress requires an opt-in campaign for local public schools based on community rather than individualist values. Advocacy should highlight the fundamental characteristics of effective public schools both in the U.S. and abroad and contrast these with prevalent market-based solutions.

 

These are the factors that make for the oft-mentioned great schools and teachers in which children flourish. Many already exist. The public needs to hear their stories. Friends of equity and democracy need to relentlessly offer these factors as a viable alternative for better schools.

 

Change will only happen when a movement demands these factors from the people we elect- from school boards to presidents. What we need is better choices in who we elect to guide education policy. Candidates need to hear from the public: There are better choices than school choice to improve education.

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Reform, Equity, Privatization, Vouchers

Florida: Parents Organize to Fight for Recess in Elementary Schools

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2015 //
17

In Florida, there are laws governing how many minutes must be devoted to reading but there is no law requiring recess.

 

Some elementary schools have eliminated recess altogether. Some make it available only once a week.

 

The state does require 150 minutes of physical education each week. But that is not the same as recess, where children can play without adult direction.

 

Folks, we are talking about little children. They need time to stretch and run and play. They need time to exercise their bodies. Why are state officials allowing schools (or, compelling schools) to eliminate activity that is necessary for good health?

 

Fortunately, parents have begun to organize to demand that their children have recess every day.

 

Time for recess has been squeezed out in recent years, but now social media is helping parents, such as Lakeland mother Amanda Lipham, organize recess supporters.
Lipham says she organized the push for recess in Polk when she saw changes in her five year old son.

 

“He was losing his enthusiasm for school,” Lipham says. “His attitude was changing. I could see his spirit being broken.”

 

First, Lipham handed out flyers in the car line at her son’s elementary school, and she spoke out at a school board meeting. Then, she formed an online petition that garnered thousands of signatures.

 

Now parents are creating similar online petitions around the state. More than 2200 people have signed a petition to make recess mandatory in Pinellas County, This fall, Parents in Osceola County also started a petition demanding recess. And a similar effort in Orange County last year led to a school board resolution recommending that schools provide the breaks.

 

And that’s the way change might happen, says Judy Stockman, who teaches at Sykes Elementary school in Lakeland — when parents get involved.

 

You may be sick of hearing about Finland, but consider this: Elementary school students get a 15-minute recess after every class. They go outside and run around and play. Then they return to their classes refreshed and ready to learn. Sounds good to me.

 

 

 

 

Categories Childhood, Florida

Dallas ISD Trustee Proposes Mandating Daily Recess for Elementary Schools

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2015 //
11

Dallas school board trustee Dan Micciche proposed mandatory recess at least once daily for at least 20 minutes for all pre-K through fifth grade students. The Dallas Morning News enthusiastically endorsed his proposal. 

 

It’s not just Micciche’s arguments — or our own fond memories of a break from the classroom — that persuade us. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the national Centers for Disease Control are two of many research groups eager to share their documentation supporting how recess improves children’s overall well being and — when the kids return to their seats — enhances learning and focus.
Yet Dallas, not unlike districts nationwide, has allowed academic pressures to trump free time on some campuses. Not only do some schools fail to allot 20 minutes or more of daily recess, which the national pediatrics group recommends, some also withhold it as a punishment for individuals or entire classes.
Micciche isn’t dug in on the 20-minute standard; he recognizes the need for flexibility for different grade levels. But he is right to question whether canceling recess is an appropriate form of discipline for relatively minor infractions.
The administration now will look at the logistics of making daily recess work and come back to trustees in January with a plan. Restructuring schedules and assuring student safety are not small considerations. But it’s important that Superintendent Michael Hinojosa’s team finds ways to make this work — not reasons why it won’t.
The evidence is clear and consistent: Unstructured playtime pays off. It’s worth DISD having a policy in place to assure students get that break.

 

This is terrific, though not really enough time. If a 20-minute break is good, there should be more than one a day; that’s even better. In Finland, there is a recess after every class. But progress is being made in recognizing that children are not little test-taking machines.

 

Here is an interview with Dan Micciche about his breakthrough proposal to have a 20-minute recess once a day for elementary aged children. The fact that this sensible proposal is treated as amazing and unprecedented shows how far removed our education system has gone from caring about children and their well-being, and how powerful is our obsession with standardized testing. I am reminded of the slogan of early nineteenth century Lancastrians, whose schools for urban children were tightly disciplined: “Save, save the minutes.” The implication was that not a single minute should be wasted in the classroom. We save the minutes and devote them to test prep, and neglect the health and well-being of little children. Time to save, save the children.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K

Florida Legislature Considering Charter Bill for More Charters, More Accountability

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2015 //
11

The Florida legislature is debating a Republican proposal that would increase accountability for charters while making it easier to open new ones. The proposal, pushed by conservative Republicans, cleared a subcommittee on choice and innovation in the House. The state has more than 600 charters. It is a haven for flim-flam operators because of low accountability, lack of transparency or oversight. Florida charters are rife with conflicts of interest.

 

 

“The proposal…aims to weed out “bad actors” by requiring charter schools to disclose their finances on a monthly basis and to provide quality learning for their students. Any charter school that receives two consecutive “F” grades would be “automatically terminated.”

 

“The measure also would create the Florida Institute for Charter School Innovation to help charter school operators submit good applications to school districts and to better navigate the approval process.

 

“New this go-around: The proposal would establish a “High Impact Charter Network” to encourage charter schools to set up in “critical needs areas,” or those where traditional public schools have received school grades of “D” or “F” in four of the past five years. The bill includes a financial incentive to do so by automatically waiving a 5 percent administrative fee — roughly $87,000 for 250 students — that charter schools typically pay school districts.

 

“Another new provision would allow “high-performing” charter schools an easier way to replicate their model anywhere else in Florida. Instead of submitting their applications to local school districts, school operators could get them vetted by the new state-level institute instead.

 

“It would create opportunities to allow high-performing charter schools in other parts of the state. We want to make sure we encourage that as much as we can,” said Rep. Bob Cortes, R-Altamonte Springs, who is again heading up the proposal for the 2016 session.

 

“Charter contracts would still have to be negotiated by local school boards, but Democrats worry diverting applications to the institute might take away districts’ local control.

 

“Republicans countered that approving a charter school application isn’t a subjective decision — either the applicant’s proposal complies with state standards, or it doesn’t — and they want to start penalizing school districts that reject new charter schools for “arbitrary” reasons, such as simply not wanting more in their districts.

 

“You can’t just willy-nilly this approval because you think you don’t need anymore schools,” said Rep. Manny Diaz Jr., R-Hialeah, the committee chairman.

 

“Under the committee bill, the administrative fee owed to school districts would be waived for any operator whose charter school application is denied by the district but approved on appeal.

 

“The bill is troubling to me,” Rep. Cynthia Stafford, D-Miami, said. “I believe it takes money away from traditional public schools. … We’re trying to solve a cash-flow problem for charter schools while ignoring traditional schools.”

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Florida
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