This story was originally posted in May 2014. In light of the Trump-Pence privatization agenda, it bears reading again.
The Florida League of Women Voters released a bombshell study of charters across the state. The study shows that charter schools do not perform better than public schools; that charters are more segregated than public schools; that many charters funnel money to religious organizations; that a significant number of charters operate for profit; and that the charter industry has captured control of key seats in the legislature.
Here is the press release. Open the links and read the study. At the end of the press release is a list of state legislators identified by the LWV with “Conflict of Interest Concerns.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 27, 2014
Contact:
Deirdre Macnab
LWVF President
Email: floridaleague@earthlink.net
Phone: (407) 415-4559
League of Women Voters Releases
State-Wide Study on School Choice
Tallahassee, Fla — Twenty percent of the state’s charter schools close because of financial mismanagement or poor academic standards, according to the League of Women Voters of Florida after a year-long study of charter schools in 28 Florida counties.
“Charter schools could fill a niche in Florida’s educational spectrum, but for many, their biggest contribution may be to corporate bottom lines,” said Deirdre Macnab, President of the League of Women Voters of Florida.
With over 576 charter schools in the state, the League of Women Voters of Florida conducted a study in order to better understand the oversight, management, accountability and transparency of charter and private schools in Florida.
The study found that:
Approximately one-third of charters are run by for-profit management companies. Many screen students, then drop those who are not successful, which public schools are prohibited from doing. Charters also serve particular socio-economic groups, increasing segregation in schools.
Although charters tend to be smaller than traditional schools, there is no consistent difference in achievement for charter school and public school students.
Many charters blur the distinction between religious and non-secular schools. Some churches receive as much as a million dollars in lease payments annually for their facilities from charter schools.
In areas with declining enrollments, neither the charters nor regular public schools are large enough to adequately provide support for staff like nurses or counselors. Retaining teachers is also a problem; most charters offer lower salaries and benefits than public schools.
The League’s study produced several recommendations:
Charters should be limited to those that fill unmet needs in identified local school districts.
Stronger local management oversight and disclosure policies are needed.
Financial mismanagement issues must be addressed, as too often the privatization of schools leads to financial abuse.
For more information, including further findings and recommendations, please see the state-wide study, along with the individual studies conducted by eighteen local Leagues across Florida.
###
The League of Women Voters of Florida, a nonpartisan political organization, encourages informed and active participation in government, works to increase understanding of major public policy issues, and influences public policy through education and advocacy. For more information, please visit the League’s website at: http://www.TheFloridaVoter.org.
FLORIDA LEGISLATORS WITH A DIRECT INTEREST IN CHARTER SCHOOLS:
Conflict of Interest Concerns
Senator John Legg Chair of Senate Education Committee is co-founder and business administrator of Daysprings Academy in Port Richey.
Senator Kelli Stargel from Orange County is on board of McKeel Academies. She is on the Education Committee and sponsored the Parent Trigger Bill.
http://www.theledger.com/article/20130429/EDIT02/130429282
House Budget Chairman Seth McKeel is on the board of McKeel Academy Schools in Polk
County.
Anne Corcoran, wife of future House Speaker Richard Corcoran has a charter school in
Pasco County. http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/pascos-classical-prep- charter-school-delays-opening-for-a-year/1276912. Richard Corcoran is Chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
Senator Anitere Flores of Miami is president of an Academica managed charter school in Doral.
Florida Representative Erik Fresen is Chair of the House Education subcommittee on appropriations. Representative Fresen’s sister is the Vice President of Academica and is married to the president. http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida- politics/content/ethics-commission-clears-miami-rep-erik-fresen-alleged-voting-conflict.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/14/2545708_p2/company-cultivates-links-to-
lawmakers.html
George Levesque, Florida House lawyer cleared Erik Fresen of conflict of interest
concerns over charter schools. He is the husband of Patricia Levesque, former Jeb Bush Deputy Chief of Staff and currently Executive Director of the Foundation for Excellence in Education which promotes school choice. http://www.truthabouteducation.org/1/archives/01-2010/1.html.
Representative Manny Diaz is Dean of Doral Academy, an Academica managed school. He is the leader for the new statewide contract bill in the Florida House. Doral College was cited by the Florida Auditor General for a $400,000 loan from Doral Charter High School. Conflict of Interest and procurement for Charters with federal grants: http://floridacharterschools.org/schools/taps/conflictinterest_att.pdf
What does it take to end this corruption?!!!!
As a rule, criminal prosecution …
But the corruption has to end before there can be any prosecutions. The corruption is so deeply entrenched that the powers that be are not going to prosecute themselves….
political will… and I suppose political will comes from what matters to voters.
Responsible and knowledgeable voters actually voting in local and off year elections!
I know it’s not like this in all states, but for the record- ALL of these legislators are republicans and all are incumbents who continue to get re-elected to various state offices. DEMOCRATS in Florida still generally work hard for public ed.
But not democrats everywhere…just look at Chicago. It’s hit or miss. True it is heavily republican… but where there’s enough money there’s going to be corruption. I’m just glad to see some groups other than teachers start to investigate this! We need all the help we can get!
The problem in Ohio is, first, gerrymandering. Districts are drawn to protect incumbents. One would think veteran groups would be outraged and demand that returning soldiers have the right to have their votes counted.
JaxJags: Sadly, in CT, that isn’t the case. DEMOCRATS are as perpetrating the charter game, just as much as Republicans. Our entire state delegation (all Dems) just voted for the charter bill in Congress. It’s why I left the Democratic party and became unaffiliated. Because, to paraphrase Orwell, I looked from one party to the other on this issue and couldn’t tell which was which.
Politicians are like a game of curling. Whoever has control pushes the puck (the people) down the rat hole while the other party sweeps to keep the path smooth, all the while distracting us every step of the way. Both parties going in the same direction, just doing different parts to move that puck!
Sucks to take so long to figure it out.
Dannel is done: tenure denied. Pelto for the people.
At the national level, the Democratic President did not bring the nation to the brink of economic Armageddon and he didn’t repeatedly threaten to take the nation back there. Secondly, he didn’t appoint a jurist like Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.
And, unlike the recent Republican presidential candidate, he didn’t put his dog in a crate, on the top of his car, and drive for hundreds of miles.
Linda, I would point out that under President Obama the national debt has swelled to 17 billion, and that’s not even counting state, county, and local unfunded obligations. The US under the president is Detroit waiting to happen. He could have borrowed less. The stimulus didn’t ever work, but mildly retarded the recovery.
What is your objection to Clarence Thomas???? Are you racist? Against blacks??? Object that he’s married to a white woman???? Clarence is a fine jurist, an intelligent man, and a good man. Of course, he IS a Black Conservative, which I gather is worse in your mind that mass murderers.
Oh, are Republicans generally unkind to animals???? Do they hate kittens, and puppies, as well as poor people?
There’s lots that Republicans need to answer for, but the Democrats who continue to support Obama need to answer for ten times as much disaster.
I am Linda from CT, blue design. You are referring to the other Linda, I believe.
I object to Clarence Thomas sitting on the bench and saying next to nothing during court hearings, a problem I would have with a justice no matter her/his color. I think the comment re mass murderers is over the top and entirely unwarranted.
Re Obama, I am as upset as anyone with his education policies, but re the stimulus package, I think there is a strong case to be made that it helped to stave off a worse economic crisis. I also give him credit for trying to get people to take global warming more seriously. And nothing he has done comes close to the disaster resulting from the war in Iraq; would that more people were aware of the continuing disaster there that is the legacy of going in without a plan after getting rid of Hussain.
The national debt was on its trajectory due to a Bush/GOP led, “don’t regulate me” recession (remember TARP?), two unfunded wars, another unfunded perscription drug plan. Other than that, that ole Republican trickle on, supply side economics is just dandy.
The Bush/Obama stimulus was cut back by mindless GOP austerians and should have been greater. Instead of building the middle class, the fiscal conservatives have destroyed it. Few people see an economic system that is working when 95% of the gains go to the top 1%. The ominous signs in Europe point to an austerity backlash that is brewing here. We’d better fix our broken system.
All excellent points.
“Clarence Thomas and His Wife’s $680,000 of Unreported Income from the Heritage Foundation”, as described at Common Cause, is worth the read.
The bipartisan favoring of charters in NY is a stranglehold on our public schools. Cuomo, Emanuel in Chicago, Malloy in CT are just as bad as the GOP on the support for privatization. I say this with sadness and shame for my party as a lifelong Democrat.
I so share your disappointment. I am also a democrat and am deeply disturbed about this administration’s role in privatization. I have been trying to work within the party to try to influence candidates. I really do not know what more to do.
Until educators become an active political force on a national level and across each state, our voice will continue to diminish. We cannot count on teacher unions and associations to represent our interests. They are simply inept. We have to do it for ourselves, en masse.
But until we educators care enough as a profession to control our narrative politically, others will set the narrative – as they have. We have been left on the defensive. We are simply late coming to the party. I worry that we are awakening much too late to retake the narrative. Unfortunately, most educators in my state are simply uninterested in what is happening the their profession.
From my limited point of view, public education seems now to be included in the antipathy to big government that we see developing in the wake of the IRS scandal, the VA scandal, the NSA scandal, the ACA scandal, the school lunch scandal, the NCLB & CCSS & VAM scandals, the phony climate change scandal, the nutty environmentalists who want to double electric prices with cap and trade scandal, and in general the effort of Washington bureaucrats to tell people how to live down to the smallest detail. There is even a plan from the administration quietly unveiled on the Friday before the memorial day weekend to limit use of cars and to force people out of the suburbs and into cities.
In education, the push back from parents seems to be in the direction of uncapped charters, vouchers, and virtual schools. In a sense, educators are the victims of the success of their own progressive, let government do it, teachings, because when government fails so badly as it recently has at so many things, and sets out to take away freedom in so many ways, it calls into question the very idea of government responsibility for service that could be done better by the private sector in a market environment. Add to that the inconsistent opposition in public schools to the CCSS and its egregious testing regimen, and we see public education weighted down with too much baggage like a slowing spinning top. It hasn’t toppled yet, but it’s wavering under the load.
I know Diane is trying to get it back up to stable speed by pointing out the disasters and injustices hiding behind “school choice” and the like, but ‘freedom of choice’ is such a deep meme in American thought, that nothing else can trump it, even desegregation. Every time anyone tries to decide anything for an American, s/he reacts negatively.
Whether the libertarian tail in politics can wag the big dog remains to be seen, but it’s there and always will be. And to mix metaphors, now that choice, charters, and vouchers have gotten a foothold in law, there is bound to be continuing devolution and fragmentation of the education enterprise in the direction of privatization. Greed and investment opportunities are surely part of it, but are not the whole story. The general public is just fed up with public school teachers who repudiate capitalism without recognizing that the only alternative is socialist tyranny. Who wants to trust their children to teachers who bite the hand that feeds them. Capitalism and capitalism alone has brought forth the prosperity in the land, and despite the canards about the income gap, the bottom has risen thought just not as fast as the top, and restoration of more middle class incomes depends upon growth, not redistribution.
Public education was responsive enough to people when it was locally run, bearable enough when the states become more involved in funding, but it became intolerable once the great bat of Washington had sunk its national curriculum fangs into it. Smaller, charter schools, vouchers, homeschooling, and virtual schools just seem the easier way out from having to fight the bureaucracy of a publicly run education system committed to testing, testing, testing all day long, and a bureaucracy fundamentally unsympathetic to religious feeling, to patriotic feeling, and to traditional individualism. “Government schools,” will become synonymous with “where the worst kids go” and funding will fall.
It’s a clash of culture between freedom and regimentation, and by accident almost (well not quite—public schools always had the intrinsic iron claw of tyranny under its glove of benevolence) got caught on the wrong side in the larger culture war between individualism and freedom vs. government regulation and restriction.
It’s a sad day, but since teachers usually take the side of big government, I can’t have a lot of sympathy no matter how brilliant or how professionally adept they are in serving the neediest children. The world is intrinsically an unfair place, and in setting out to bring about comic justice ten or twenty years ago by ever greater and greater regimentation, they invited a response and opposing force. Recovery is possible, in my view, but only by giving up theoretical socialism and embracing capitalism as a working hypothesis. Wouldn’t that change the faculty room atmosphere from one of whining victimhood, to entrepreneurial optimism?
Saturday at 8:32pm ·
Well Florida League of Women Voters I don’t think you you really know what goes on in MOSTpublic schools in Fl neither does Gov. Rick Scott! I have seen things go on in my son’s junior high in Rotanda Fl that I had to get him out of the state! Students and teachers are racist! Students are bullies, 6th graders do drugs in bathroom. Kids cut themseleves, girls carry around a variety of rolls of decorative duct tape and wear them on their lips. 1 boy from the Ukaraine and his friend would walk around all day everyday saying the gov is going to get them and their family! Teacher’s did not report! I told the guidance counselor what my son hears. She says my son needs to fit in with the “NEW NORM” I told her I didn’t raise my son to be a bully, racist and disrespectful! The only reason the kids pass the college classes is because the parents have to do. there kids homework all night because it is up to the parent to make sure your child understands the work not the teacher. Why waste paying the teachers and the cost of keeping unsafe overcrowed classrooms. Not to mention school shootings are not a shock anymore. Students are continuously being put down by the teachers that have been teaching for
decades. First of all smaller classrooms help a student to get that 1 on 1 attention with a teacher. Definitely not FL too many students
I’ll read the study, but in my humble opinion we should be counting for-profit SEATS rather than schools.
“One third of charter schools are for-profit” doesn’t give an accurate picture. That could include one for-profit school with 3000 students and 2 non-profit schools with 500 students each. That’s not “one third” in any way that means anything. Ed reformers do the same thing in MI and OH. They count schools instead of seats.
I also think public schools should advertise that they’re 100% non-profit. Put it right on the website. Why not? It’s true.
I also can’t believe the business geniuses in the ed reform movement didn’t anticipate exactly this result:
“In areas with declining enrollments, neither the charters nor regular public schools are large enough to adequately provide support for staff like nurses or counselors. Retaining teachers is also a problem; most charters offer lower salaries and benefits than public schools.”
Well, yeah. I guess no one could have predicted that two school systems would be less efficient than one system.
Arne Duncan keeps telling us to adopt these charter methods. Is there some reason anyone would want to? Why would I take one weak school system and divide it into two weak systems? Is there some magical alchemy that’s supposed to occur?
Charter school counts by the seats. That’s a good idea, maybe somebody like crazycrawfish or Mercedes could wonk it our for us.
Duncan is on my mind tonight, while we’re trying to thread our ways through the political conundra in Connecticut and New York, let alone nationally. I was thinking about his Katrina remark. Then I thought about what he really meant by that, and how the Bush response to Katrina was an attack on the humanity of the people of New Orleans, like the Obama attack on education there … no, wait, what?
So, I Googled for Brian Williams’ reports on the actual Katrina, and got this 27 minute video:
Under Obama, we have the corporate/government axis in place, and it is demanding control of our education system. In New Orleans under Bush, we actually saw the “openly terrorist” face of Fascism turned on the desperate, dispossessed poor people herded into the “shelter” without food, water, or exit.
No, it isn’t six of one and half a dozen of the other. Let us move carefully, and be grateful for the League of Women Voters. It will be better if the Center can hold.
The Center – the forgotten Center – is important – we get yanked from right to left…lots of spin – Diane says where are the reporters of old? She has high respect for Bill Moyers because of his careful and measured reporting. Please remember when Cronkite changed his heart and mind on the war…
New Orleans ed reformer says he plans to export all-privatized model to other states and cities:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/in-new-orleans-traditional-public-schools-close-for-good/2014/05/28/ae4f5724-e5de-11e3-8f90-73e071f3d637_story.html
I think it’s good they don’t pretend to be about “improving public schools” anymore, or, indeed, to be about “local schools” at all. Close all the public schools, open charter schools, nationally.
Voters should know the plan is to privatize.
There is no magic; it is all about the end game. When they are done, there will be private schools for the haves, and online k-12 for the remainder. The online schools will be the cheapest option, and then the politicians will find a new venue to complain about that is a drain on the budget.
I agree with therlo. It’s already a done deal. It doesn’t matter what anyone says at this point. I remember in the beginning when all the professors signed protest letters against VAM, etc. These letters were ignored, the public remained busy watching TV or updating their Facebook accounts. The future is as therlo said, good private schools for the elite, and online schools or militarized charters with huge classes for the masses. The next target will be social security or public parks. Maybe they can sell off our national parks and build subdivisions or gated communities. No one will notice as they send another text message or tweet. This is the end phase now.
It is neither an inevitable “done deal”, nor a house of rigged data that will collapse under the weight of its own lies. It matters what we do, Mike and Therlo. Listen to Detroiter, a few posts down.
Blogging, commenting, tweeting, and just stubbornly teaching are all important. but also, when we actually actually organize in our communities, we can come together in the same room or plaza or conference hall with other concerned people. We can take questions like this to our own community organizations, including the League of Women Voters.
By actually going out and talking to each other face to face, we’ve taken control of our own union in Massachusetts, for instance. We can all do that.
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2014/05/massachusetts_teachers_push_ba.html
I so agree with you. We need to explain to those around us why we believe ed reform is bad news for public education, and to take it further, democracy. When I have explained it, people do understand.
I am afraid you might be right.
How many breaking releases with accompanying real “hard data” will it take for “ed reformers” to die metaphorically by their OWN OBSESSION with DATA??? Time after time, charter schools are exposed for what they truly are “for profit” privatization ventures with little interest in education… and this article is yet another confirmation. So what will it take to stop the attack on public education?????? Teachers are dying metaphorically by false “ed reform data” yet “ed reformers” do as they please despite the REAL DATA.
The reformers aren’t busy surfing the net for reports, or busy reading reports. For every report about the truth, there are 20 funded by foundations of the Kochs, Gates, Rhee, Kopp, etc.
Its bait and switch. Its smoke and mirrors.
It is all about the end game.
Every improvement we have gained was won through a fight. No polititian “gave” us the 8 hour day, civil rights, or even public education. We won these things through struggle. Now that we are quiet, they are taking them back. Things are better when we fight. Look at the ’30s or the ’60s. We need to do nitty gritty organizing, and never stop believing in our potential.
Politician
Well said. Don’t even worry about the typo.
What other blog has as many correcting their spelling and grammar as this one ? …teachers…all of you…and scoundrels too
This is absolutely wonderful that they did this study. I’m so pleased to read this. Nothing I wasn’t expecting.
Still, here is my concern. In my city the very wealthiest wealthy have a pet charter school project that they are putting together. Right now this city is working on making the roads to this charter school better among other things (all on the public dollar of course).
There is no end to the greed of these particular people. Exploitation is the whole way they made their fortune in the first place and here is another opportunity for a business venture for them. I’m certain they can rationalize it in their minds as being some sort of an improvement for education. Funny how wealth makes folks feel so infallible. They would certainly claim that somehow “their charter school” will be different and better.
What we are living with here in the U.S. is a domination system. Everything in favor of the 1% and their agendas with the laws passed so that everything is legal and aboveboard.
I’m so pleased about a study like this but who is actually going to hold lawmakers and the people pulling their puppet strings accountable?
I’ve heard this before, that the wealthy got that way by exploitation of the poor, and that their motivation was greed. I wonder if that’s actually true.
Diane? Are you really considering running for NY Governor???
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/working-families-party-eyeing-diane-ravitch-challenger-gov-cuomo-blog-entry-1.1808233
Mary
It’s hard for me to see how President Obama or Rahm Emmanual will profit from privatization. What drives them? Jeb Bush I can see. Maybe it isn’t greed. Maybe it’s just massive misguidedness and they really think they are adopting policies that will improve the public schools.
Of course, it doesn’t REALLY matter to Obama or Emmanual because they have their own children in elite private schools. Doesn’t that make them hypocrites?
I expect that Obama, Duncan, Emmanuel, et al and others will get exorbitant speaking fees as they go around the country touting their “fabulous” reforms. In my mind, they are bought and paid-for mouthpieces. Their Cyranos, if you will, are the Wall Street types who pretend to be Democrats. Just my opinion, mind you.
It is like this one guy in our neighborhood. He rants against Obama, big gubbermint, terrible teachers, welfare moochers, and anything else Foxnews fills in the gap between his ears. But he collects disability while running his business, sends his kids to public schools, and is profitable being in a protected industry limiting competition through gubbermint regulations. Libertarian conservatism is a fake ideology.
HU, their campaign contributors benefit.
Ok, Diane. Gotcha. Hadn’t thought of that.
This is the worst excuse for a “study” that has ever been seen. It’s mostly a pastiche of blog posts, newspaper articles, answers to surveys, etc. It has zero analysis or scholarship that could say anything whatsoever about how charter schools are performing. Moreover, there’s nothing in the main study that proves anything about segregation or religious organizations, and it’s not clear why anyone would even claim such a thing.
Any specifics re the evidence of resegregation? When the study mentions, among other details, that some charter schools as policy were recruiting only black students, I think there is a bit more than “zero analysis.”
David, google Iris Rotberg’s study of charters and segregation. Gary Orfield’s recent report from UCLA Civil Rights Project reached same conclusion. Charters intensify segregation.
Hi Diane,
I was of course referring to WT’s dismissal of the new study, and in fact in an earlier blog dialogue referred him/her to the Orfield study. I agree with you that the evidence is profound that charters intensify segregation.
Thanks again for providing such an enlightened forum for discussion of so many critical education issues, and please continue to take care of yourself!
HBCU’s intensify segregation in the same way, yet are eligible to receive higher education vouchers paid for by the federal government. Should the federal government stop making these schools eligible for Pell grants?
David, the evidence is not “profound.” As before, you have no idea what you are talking about. Anyone who cares about evidence would want to see a study that tracked individual students and compared their charter school demographics to the same public school that they otherwise would have attended. As before, you are unable to point to any such evidence.
And as before, WT, you have not offered any specific picking apart of this latest study, not even of the evidence from that study that I specifically cited (recruiting black students only). By the way, my experience has been that telling somebody they don’t know what they are talking about isn’t especially persuasive. Once again, check please, waiter!
The worse form of excuse is… critiquing ‘the study’ without even bother to take a look at what it is.
Who saw that coming?
Cross posted
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Breaking-News-Florida-Lea-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Breaking-News_Charter-Schools_Control_Corporate-140528-43.html#comment491663
Susan .
I’m proud of you as well my Daughter she is the top 1 on Hialeah Gardens . My doughter was hurt , to the point she refused to stay at the Charter school because his brother was abused and my son is not at home . The Chater destroyed the future of my Teen .
The Principal of the Charter was told that my dauther became the top 1 and the evil guy is mad because , the justice always won .
Susan .
The evil Principal regretted but to late for him as well his body the City mayor is the Chairman of the Charter , they kick my kids out ; God is the almaighty and my Daughter; now is asisting at the best public school may be nation wide and as I told you she is on 8 grade since she was transfer from the Charter , she told her goal sty silence but numbers and stats never lie but Chaters Rulers do .
The mayor is in trouble because he used the law enforcement to arasment my family but the hock , hocked him self .
Politicians may sell the snake oil charter schools, but parents are the ones who enroll their children. What responsibility do parents have? Should we hold parents accountable to any degree?
I don’t think we reach public school parents when we talk only in terms of charter schools. If your child doesn’t attend a charter school all you hear is “charter schools” and you think “that doesn’t apply to my school”. It does, of course. Schools in a given area are a system and all public schools are affected by charter schools. Just because it’s deregulated chaos in Ohio, for example, doesn’t mean they haven’t “created a system”, by default. They have.
I think we have to ask politicians, specifically, “what do you intend to do to support existing public schools”? If you have a kid in a public school or you support publicly-owned and run schools that’s the question you want answered, not “what do you think of charter schools, as a theory?” That’s why we get these non-answers: “I’m an agnostic!” or “I support great schools!” or “zip codes!”
Nice dodge, Mr. Politician! Now answer the question 🙂
Push them all into a corner and up against the wall and really make them answer what they intend to do about public schools, what their philosophy is on APPR, tenure, . . . just get it all out in the open and slant the questions.
It’s our will against theirs, plain and simple.
Fights of this nature are a good thing because confrontation leaves NO room for a high gloss, blurry answer from a candidate.
Le’t use the democratic machinery we still have . . . .
My issue is with the parents who choose a charter school. For example, there are some dicey for-profit charters opening in my area. Parents say they know they are for-profits, read some negative reviews from other states, but they still enroll their children. If this ends up with a negative outcome for their child, who is responsible?
Those Crocks ; stolen taxpayer money and parents have no more choice than work hard ; thoses evils who are ruling Chaters spread more spread but lie to the point parents ? The best idea is spread and spread you should be involved and Chaters scholls are nothing but corruption and behain are criminals who are ruling city’s .
Do you agreed ? Spread but the true you have time , parents not even slep ….
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Florida has the world’s biggest lobbyist- Jeb bush who forced us all with testing and this charter mess as the earliest state to feel the pain. Florida may have a history of the land of the scams but we know em when we see em. I’m so proud to know the Orlando LWV and the best group of dedicated people- mostly women that I have ever met.
Excellent, non-partisan statewide study that is valuable ammunition to those who believe in public education as the bedrock of democracy. It is thorough and pulls no punches, explaining the wide gulf between the stated ideals of charter schools and the reality. The study reveals the blatent self-interest of Legislators who are bleeding tax dollars from public education for their own profit and/or their donors, not their constituents It’s a must-read for the voting public and any journalists who could benefit from the unbiased research by a small army of volunteers. This is another jewel in the public service treasure provided by the League of Women Voters of Florida, “Making Democracy Work!”
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
More evidence that the fake education reform movement is full of corruption and fraud. First, Ohio lost $1.5 billion and has closed more than 150 corporate run/private sector Charters; then the study that found in 15 states, $135 million in fraud in the fake reform education sector, and now Florida joins the list. Then there’s the fact that the fake education reform movement re-segregates schools and ejects at-risk children—mostly minorities who live in poverty. There’s more but this is what I remember as I Reblog this post from #DianeRavitch.
Interesting study. This is why I’m surprised not to read a post in support of Nan Rich? (unless I missed it) If you feel she is not qualified, can you explain why? You stood up for the new mayor of Newark, but when will you stand with the public schools of Florida??
Floridians — can I interest you in this person’s candidacy? (Miami-Dade) I’m not positive she is 100% sympathetic with the prevailing politics around here, but I do believe so. She is the mother of my niece’s boyfriend (if you follow) and I think, from what I can tell, she’s terrific. I don’t know how much help she’d be in “our” circles (Ed Unrheeformers?), but please check it out… Thanks! 🙂
http://daniellalevinecava.com/
The sheer amount of flaws in this so called study is nothing short of staggering. The data is not available, simply portions are referenced from time to time. The methodology is anything but sound. Anyone that thinks this is even remotely valid or could ever pass a peer review has quite frankly, never done an ounce of research in any field whatsoever. Honestly, it scares me people who read this, buy into it, and believe its good work can vote.
LWV is well respected as a non-partisan organization that closely studies issues to arrive at nation-wide positions. They have national credibility that teachers’ unions cannot attain no matter how powerful are arguments and accomplishments might be.
When I heard that LWV was involved in getting the Washington State Supreme Court to declare charter schools to be unconstitutional, I re-joined immediately. They are currently finishing their national study of charter schools and collecting “consensus question” answers from every town in which they have a chapter. My chapter strongly leans against charters and I hope most others do as well. With LWV spreading the truth, more people will listen and believe.
I encourage all active supporters of public schools to join the LWV and other respected organizations to broaden our collective voices and spread our stories. I’m actively infiltrating any groups with whom I share interests – book clubs, congregations, all kinds of community activist groups, etc. Person to person, person to group, group to group, groups to public is the path I recommend.