Valerie Strauss summarizes here the mess created in Florida by former Governor Jeb Bush’s harsh accountability policies and the legislation passed recently to enrich the charter industry at the expense of public schools across the state.
She begins:
“The K-12 education system in Florida — the one that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos likes to praise as a model for the nation — is in chaos.
“Traditional public school districts are trying to absorb the loss of millions of dollars for the new school year that starts within weeks. That money, which comes from local property taxes, is used for capital funding but now must be shared with charter schools as a result of a widely criticized $419 million K-12 public education bill crafted by Republican legislative leaders in secret and recently signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott — at a Catholic school.
“Critics, including some Republicans, say the law will harm traditional public schools, threaten services for students who live in poverty and curb local control of education while promoting charter schools and a state-funded voucher program.
“The law creates a “Schools of Hope” system that will turn failing traditional public schools into charter schools that are privately run but publicly funded. The law also sets out the requirement for districts to share capital funding.
“The man behind the Schools of Hope initiative was Republican House Speaker of Florida Richard Corcoran, whose wife founded a charter school in Pasco County. But as this recent Miami Herald opinion piece notes, a number of Republican lawmakers in the state legislature have financial stakes in the charter industry. “Florida’s broad ethics laws are a joke,” wrote Herald columnist Fabiola Santiago.”
School districts are planning to sue to stop the implantation of the charter industry’s raid on public school budgets.
When you read about this mess, bear in mind that this is what DeVos wants to inflict on the nation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
These are dangerous times. We now have a president, using his surrogate ( DeVos) to raid the most important pillar of our democracy. Their main purpose is to re-engineer education to indoctrinate a society of followers.
Case in point, indoctrinating children so they can not discuss what they experience in their classrooms with their own parents.
What’s next, brown shirts?
Please read what is happening in Connecticut. It is similar to the situation in Florida.
I would be honored if you would post this piece. I am trying to bring what is being conducted in the dark by politicians and the charter school industry to the light in Connecticut.
Ann Cron
Thanks to all of Jeb Bush’s (and others’) “reforms,” Florida kids’ test scores have been, and still are the lowest in the nation, and continuing to fall.
Their solution:
from the article:
“Underscoring this notion is a proposal by Florida education officials to ask DeVos’s Education Department for a waiver from key parts of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the massive K-12 law that replaced No Child Left Behind and lays out principles for ensuring that public schools address the needs of the most disadvantaged students.
“Florida, as first reported by Education Week, no longer wants to judge schools on whether they are closing achievement gaps between different groups of students, or on how well English language learners do on English proficiency tests.”
SOLUTION:
Stop testing Florida kids. No more bad news. Problem solved!
That’s similar to parents who get called into the principal’s office because kids are getting all F’s on all their report cards.
The parents then reply, “Hey, I know how to fix this. Who needs to hear this bad news? Just have all my kids’ teachers stop issuing them report cards. Problem solved!”
Devos would argue that her alternative form ccountability would be that parents who are unhappy with a privately-managed charter school or a voucher-funded private school will remove their children, and when enough do so, the school will close.
Conversely, parents happy with a privately-managed charter school or a voucher-funded private school will keep their kids in, and news of this will attract more parents, and when this happens, school will expand.
Forget any of the the usual accountability. “Let the free market decide!”
Or a doctor tells a woman, “Your last two mammograms show cancer. You must seek treatment.”
“No, I don’t. Just stop subjecting me to those bad news mammograms. Problem solved!”
Speaking of report cards on the quality of a state’s schools, ALEC just issued its “ALEC Report Card on American Education.”
It’s posted here, and easy to peruse, with the states (plus D.C.) listed alphabetically:
Click to access 2016-ALEC-Education-Report-Card_Final_Web.pdf
In ALEC’s state-by-state “report card,” all 50 states (plus Washington, D.C.) are ranked 1-51.
However, when it comes the metrics that any sane person would think should be the criteria for judging whether or not a state’s schools are of high or of low quality …
— academic outcomes and test scores,
— rates of high school graduation, and numbers of high school graduates,
— college preparedness and acceptance; and
— rates of college graduation, and numbers of high school graduates…
… all of those things ARE NOT CONSIDERED IN ALEC’s RANKING. They’re completely ignored, in favor of other factors.
Huh?
Yeah, that’s right.
“ALEC Report Card on American Education” is almost all about whether the state allows charters and vouchers, and how little accountability is imposed upon those school. The states which hold privately-managed charters and voucher-funded private schools to the least accountability are at the top, such as Florida, which is ranked No. 2, right after Arizona, which is at No. 1:
(Florida is on p. 17 of the above link, while Arizona is on p. 10 )
Oh, I almost forgot. The other key factor in a state’s ranking is how much a state spends on education — the less the better.
The more your state cheaps out on funding schools … the higher your ALEC score (with a state’s low NAEP test scores being totally ignored).
The more your state taxes/spends on funding schools … the lower your ALEC score.(with extremely high NAPE test scores being totally ignored.)
ALEC loves the former because this starves the traditional public schools —- starves them into low achievement that ALEC and its bought-and-paid-for politicians can then use to justify privatization, charters, vouchers, etc.
ALEC hates the latter because THEY KNOW this will lead to higher academic achievement, that will slow their efforts to privatize schools, and expand vouchers, charters, etc.
ALEC: Damn those states with academically successful schools! They’re making it harder for us to privatize their schools!!!
ALEC can kiss my rear-end one hour after I eat onions.
Thanks, Jack.
from the article”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Charter schools are just one of the alternatives to traditional public schools that DeVos, a Michigan billionaire who spends many weekends at her home in central Florida, has praised the state for offering to parents. The school “choice” advocate has frequently called Florida a national model for its range of school choices — including voucher-like programs that use public money for religious and private school tuition — though she doesn’t talk about the consequences of expanding these choices on the schools that educate the vast majority of schoolchildren.
You don’t hear DeVos talking about the fact that Florida has for years had one of the highest annual charter closure rates in the country, schools that were closed after financial and other scandal.
Or that there is no substantive evidence that voucher-like programs that have channeled billions of taxpayer dollars into scholarships for poor children to attend private and religious schools has boosted the students’ academic trajectories — even while there are no mandated consequences on these schools for poor results.
You won’t hear her talk about those things because she has said that her idea of education “accountability” is in itself the expansion of school choice. By this way of thinking, the state that gives parents more options — whatever the quality of those options — is the state that is doing very well.
And Florida, as DeVos says, is great at it.
Oregon’s SB 437, from the 2017 legislative session, would have set up “student savings accounts” which are essentially a voucher-choice product that would have drained millions out of the dollars available for public schools if passed. Fortunately, it did not get out of committee BUT, and this is extremely important to Oregonians, the bill did receive a complementary hearing in June. This hearing can be seen as foreshadowing the anticipated short legislative session’s push by the Cascade Polity Institute for passage of a similar ALEC-like bill. Rural Oregonians, in particular, should fight against this effort as it will impact their public schools more drastically than schools in the cities and suburbs. People are watching–what are they learning? What are they willing to do to advocate for funding the Quality School Model that is gathering dust on the shelves of state legislators in Salem?
Yes, Florida is the state where, thanks to ALEC’s “Don’t-regulate-charters-one-iota!” legislation, it’s perfectly legal for convicted arsonists to run charter schools.
I just found a really great education story out of Florida — the state that Trump, Secretary Devos, Michelle Rhee, Jeb Bush, and countless others claim has the nation’s most successfully “reformed” educational system.
(As I recall, Meg Whitman, current California Governor Brown’s right-wing Republican opponent in 2010, was asked about her plans for education, should she win. Back during the 2010 campaign, she said, “We’re going to do everything that they’re doing now in Florida. That state’s system will be our role model.” Uh huh. I bet you would have.)
Here’s that new Florida story:
http://www.bradenton.com/news/local/education/article160181454.html
Apparently, having an lengthy criminal record that includes multiple convictions / prison sentences for arson(!!!), grand theft, and check fraud couldn’t stop Lori Bergeron from ascending to the presidency of a prominent charter school board in Bradenton, Florida .
Alas, Bergeron’s life on the straight-and-narrow in Florida’s school choice Utopia didn’t last long, as she was recently caught — and convicted of — robbing and embezzling the charter school blind. She did so through her writing of checks to herself out of the school’s bank account.
She plead guilty after the police executed a court-approved taping of her phone conversations, where she gloated and blabbed away about all that she had gotten away with (or rather, THOUGHT that she had).
Back to the joint for YOU, Sweetheart!
Gee, with an extensive rap sheet such as hers, who would have EVER predicted that — after being placed in the presidency of a charter school board, with full authority to write checks from the school’s bank account as she pleased — she would EVER do such a larcenous thing? You know… stealing from children’s education and all that.
People down there are shocked … JUST SHOCKED at what has happened.
Remember, though, that … thanks to ALEC and to Jeb Bush & others … this is all “technically legal”, including putting convicted arsonists in charge of privately-managed charter schools that are funded by the taxpayers.
Maybe it’s time for Florida’s leaders to enact legislation to better regulate its charters, one that includes some minimum standards or mandatory qualifications for Florida’s charter school operators and board members.
Hmmm… let’s see. How would that look?
Let’s give it a whack, now, shall we?
—————————————————
STATE OF FLORIDA — Department of Public Instruction
Mandatory Criteria For All Prospective Charter School
Executives / Board Members:
Regulation 1) Must NEVER have served time for Arson.
Regulation 2) …
I’m getting more up-to-speed about the unmitigated disaster that is Florida’s educational system, thanks to some reports from the ORLANDO SENTINEL such as this one:
(which includes an accompanying video from a local news station)
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-florida-teachers-leaving-tests-scott-maxwell-20170324-story.html
ALEC’s model legislation originated enacted in Florida imposes all these extreme, idiotic top-down mandates for public schools, where failure to do follow those mandates and/or raise test sores results in closing and then converting those schools into privately-managed, publicly-funded charter schools.
However — and there’s the kicker — according the Florida’s “reform” legislation, those same mandates and those raise-your-scores-or-get-closed requirements DON’T APPLY TO PRIVATELY-MANAGED-PUBLICLY-FUNDED CHARTER SCHOOLS or to VOUCHER-FUNDED PRIVATE SCHOOLS.
You can suck all you want, run your charter/voucher schools any-which-way you choose, and we’ll never close you — again, unlike the public schools.
For example, the governor gave a tour Trump and Devos of just one Florida school — a Catholic school that is partially funded through public funds via vouchers.
The SENTINEL points out this inconsistency:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
ORLANDO SENTINEL”
“A few weeks ago, Florida politicians lavished praise on an Orlando school that President Trump visited — a private, Catholic school that accepts state vouchers.
“This was an example of education done right , school reformers said. This is how education should be done.
“Well, would you like to guess how many of Florida’s top-down, test-obsessed, bureaucracy-laden rules applied to this school?
“Virtually none.
“So Florida politicians champion non-stop testing and mandates for public schools — and then tout private schools that are exempt from those rules (and where they often send their own kids) as examples of success.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
This article then goes into the insanity of a law awarding teachers bonuses based on their … wait for it … SAT scores that they received when they were 17 years old.
The backlash was so bad that legislators tweaked the law by saying, “Well, you can use your LSAT scores, too, to qualify for a bonus” — a test most people take when they are 22 years old.
Big improvement.
The article also goes into the extreme teacher shortage that all of Florida’s reforms have created, where teachers are leaving the profession at the highest rate of any state in the union.
However, ALEC just luuuuuves all of this no end.
Its “ALEC Report Card on American Education” rates Florida “No. 2” out of 51 (all 50 states plus D.C.) in its state-by-state ranking of U.S. schools: (p. 17 in the link below)
Click to access 2016-ALEC-Education-Report-Card_Final_Web.pdf
DeVoodoo is a train wreck.
Horrible. Feel sorry for the public schools and students in Flori-DUH.
What is WRONG with this country? Answer: GREED, RACIST, CLASSIST, and SELF-SERVING. I am embarrassed to be an American. We have bred “HAD” by the big money deformers.
BEEN had. Sorry.