Sue Legg was assessment and evaluation contractor for the Fl. DOE for twenty years while on the faculty at the University of Florida. She recently stepped down as Education Director of the Florida League of Women Voters.
This is the first of a series on the effects of school choice, which she wrote at my request.
Florida Twenty Years Later: Undermining Public Schools
Florida has a long track record in school privatization.
Consequently, I recently had the sobering charge to help Louisville citizens understand what lies ahead if their new charter school enabling law is funded. Florida has 655 charters enrolling nearly 300,000 students, the third largest number in the U.S., and it also spends over a billion dollars per year in tax credit scholarships to 2800 private schools. What does Florida have to show for it?
Privatizing schools was sold to the public as a money saving policy. Education, after all, is the second largest Florida state budget item.
Competition from the private sector, it was argued, would increase quality and save money. State assessment scores would grade students, schools and teachers to assure the public that the ever-increasing education standards were met. This competition myth imploded. Education became a battleground over funding, support for teachers, and the impact of parental choice on neighborhoods.
Twenty years later, Florida schools are nearing a fiscal and social crisis. Not only did the legislature cut funding in 2008, it reallocated money to charter and private schools and put a cap on local property tax revenue for public schools.
Student enrollment grew, and the Hispanic population doubled.
A forest of temporary buildings sprouted on playgrounds to add classrooms.
In my district alone, $168 million has been lost in facility funding. Some of our schools have buckets in classrooms to catch the rainfall and use sandbags to block water from entering hallways. Others are so crowded that lunch begins at 9:30 a.m. Many districts are asking for increases in local sales and property taxes to support schools; others already have. Opponents, however, want to prevent communities from increasing taxes.
Building maintenance is only part of the problem facing Florida’s schools. Its per student funding to support instruction is among the lowest in the nation. Its teacher attrition rate is high. The PTA reports that there were 1482 teaching positions still vacant in January 2018. Two thirds of teachers who leave are for reasons other than retirement. One clue is that the NEA ranks Florida 46th in average teacher salary. As a result, Florida now ranks first in the nation (25%) in inexperienced teachers.
Teaching and learning also have changed in many ways. ‘Test Prep’ begins in February for April state assessments. The districts’ versions of choice include magnet schools and student placement based on test scores within and across schools. The increasing lament is that there are ‘schools within schools’ where some students have access to high quality programs and teachers and others do not.
Choice fragments neighborhoods.
Think, for example, of the charter school in south Florida that opened across the street from an excellent public school, thus reducing its enrollment and funding but not its overhead expenses. An ‘A’ school became a ‘C’ school. Schools in south Pinellas County declined and were labeled ‘Failure Factories’ drawing national attention.
What changed? The choice movement adopted a ‘separate but equal’ philosophy undermining the integration reform from the 1970s through the 90s. Charter and private schools siphoned off the higher achieving students. Other parents who could, moved away leaving under enrolled schools with insufficient funds to support needed equity programs for children in poverty.
Florida educators and parents are fighting back. Lawsuits reflect the issues: vouchers, school funding, tax credit scholarships, invalid teacher evaluation system, local district control over school funding and charter authorization, ‘union busting’, merit pay, third grade retention, students with disabilities, state take-over of local schools, teacher certification, and a proposed separate educational system for charters.
“Think, for example, of the charter school in south Florida that opened across the street from an excellent public school, thus reducing its enrollment and funding but not its overhead expenses. An ‘A’ school became a ‘C’ school. Schools in south Pinellas County declined and were labeled ‘Failure Factories’ drawing national attention.”
Oh, well. Too bad for those public school students, huh?
All the damage will be worth it when ed reformers finally reach their ideological nirvana. The families they screw along the way? Collateral damage. Sacrificed to The Cause.
Meanwhile the ed reformers in the federal government are focusing on their work, which consists of delivering scolding lectures to parents, teachers and students:
“We cannot accept great. We need to be on the search for perfect every day. These young people should expect nothing less; this may translate to the difference between dreaming about the great American Dream and living the American Dream.” – @usedgov Asst Secretary Frank Brogan
We’re paying thousands of people to act as (quasi) professional critics of schools. They contribute absolutely nothing of practical value, but they’re very vocal critics.
Cue up another round of meaningless slogans cribbed from 1990’s management seminars and call it a day’s work.
What a ridiculous statement! If Brogan believed that “great” is not good enough, only “perfect” will do, he would close down every school in America and fire himself.
Not to mention the countless “thought leaders” out there with huge platforms who take swipes at education every chance they get.
A sobering expose on the downward spiral of quality in public education due to the misguided and deceptive “promises” of School Choice as envisioned by ALEC and carried out in Florida and Michigan to such disastrous results. A warning for all other states.
Six devastatingly powerful words: School Choice As Envisioned By ALEC
This sounds much like the story of Betsy DeVos’s destruction of Michigan’s public school systems. She has been worki g hard to get a chunk of the money allotted for public education into her own deep pockets.
I haven’t listened to this, but I bet Jeb thinks things are great (nay, perfect!) in Florida education: https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/reality-check-with-jeanne-allen/episode-42-governor-jeb-bush/
I doubt the situation in Florida will improve under Ron DeSantis, a former Tea Party member and Trump sycophant. The only constitutional amendment that was rejected on Tuesday was an amendment to increase the homestead exemption. The voters understood that this would further erode tax dollars for schools, and they voted it down. People in the state care about public education, but large numbers of voters continue to be swayed by the negative conservative ads backed by dark money that label any progressive ideas “socialism.”
Perhaps the only way to fight back is for people that care about the future of the schools collect enough signatures to put any privatization proposals to a public vote as Arizona did. The public will do what is right for the future of the young people in the state. The brainwashed representatives will continue to undermine public schools and try to shift public money into private pockets. In today’s paper there’s a political cartoon showing a revised “Welcome to Florida” sign, a Trump owned property.
Disney, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and other interested parties did that with Amendment 3, which prohibits new gambling operations (or maybe gambling operations of a certain size) without statewide voter approval.
I recommend reading this account of just one of the really deceptive legislative tactics that the charter industry used in Florida. The tactic simply avoided using the word “charter” so the public could be deceived about the agenda.
I think the same tactic will be used many times, perhaps again in Florida, but in other states as well. These moves are rarely limited to one state.
And thanks to Sue Legg for this account, and Diane’s wisdom for inviting it,
I started teaching in Dade County, Florida a very long time ago.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article218007690.html
Ahhh the rich get richer and the poor get poorer….same here in Indiana.
My “LIKE” is for the parents and educators fighting the greedy, power hungry privatization frauds and crooks.
And we must remember the BILLION dollars that the Tax Credit and Hope scholarship schemes direct to private/religious schools despite the No Aid Clause of the Florida Constitution. We have to find a way to achieve “standing” to end these vouchers.
Well here’s something…
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/school-zone/os-ne-florida-supreme-court-adequacy-case-20181107-story.html