Peter Greene knows there are many states where public schools are under attack: Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Michigan, and more.
But one state stands out as the absolute worst: Florida.
If you hate public schools, Florida is for you.
If you hate teachers, go to Florida.
To get the full flavor of why Florida is an abomination, open the link and read the post.
It begins:
There are plenty of states in the country that are not very friendly to public education, but Florida under its new governor has established itself as the very worst state for public education. The worst. Its hatred of public school teachers and its absolute determination to dismantle public education so that it can sell off the pieces to privatizers and profiteers puts the sunshine state in the front of the pack.
The Newest Baloney
The latest nail in the coffin is Senate Bill 7070, a bill that adds yet another school choice program to the Florida portfolio of choiceness. That bill was passed today and now needs only Governor DeSantis’s signature, which it will get quickly. The bill offers up vouchers that can be used for private schools, including the religion-based ones, like the ones that teach dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth together and the ones that maintain their right to discriminate against, well, whoever. The vouchers will be one more drain on the public tax dollars intended to fund public education, but then, a key feature of the Florida approach has been to keep underfunding public schools so that charter and private schools can look better by comparison.
Prior efforts to use public funds for religious schools were struck down by the state courts. Governor DeSantis took care of that problem by adding three new justices to the state’s high court.
Read the post to learn about Florida’s trouble finding teachers, about giveaways to charter profiteers (many of whom have relatives in the Legislature), about the legislature’s hatred for elected school board, about the dunces in chargeof state policy, about the state’s inadequate spending…well, you get theidea.
Greene writes:
There’s so much more, but these lowlights give you the idea. Talk to some charteristas on line and get a feel for just how deeply some of these folks hate teachers and teacher unions and public education. But nothing captures the cynicism driving the privatization of Florida education like the moment DeSantis explained “If the taxpayer is paying for education, it’s public education.”
Sure. The best way to steal something is to gaslight your audience and tell them, “What? I didn’t steal it. It’s still right there.” Don’t tell the public you’re ending public education; just redefine public education as a private business with no meaningful transparency, oversight, or democratic local control, and which the public does not own or operate.
There are lots of places in this country where public education is under assault, hampered by privatizers and profiteers, and in the past, I wouldn’t have tried to pick a Worst, but I’m ready now. I have no doubt that there are many good teachers, many good schools still hanging on and doing their best in spite of it all. But I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to raise children in Florida, and I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to get a teaching job there. Openly hostile to public education and systematically trying to break it down and replace it with privatized businesses while degrading and attacking the people who do the actual work, who actually care about education. Florida really is the worst.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Notice how private schools were the first priority. They’ll never get around to doing anything on behalf of the public school families in the state.
Odd how such “agnostics” always completely ignore public school students. Could this possibly be because our kids attend the “government schools” ed reformers oppose? How else to explain ed reform’s complete absence of advocacy, and, well, WORK, on behalf of students and families in public schools?
They held a big party after the voucher funding. Public schools were of course not invited. They’re not welcome and ed reform efforts are completely irrelevant to them anyway, so it makes sense that they’re deliberately excluded.
Is anyone in ed reform concerned that by NOT working on behalf of public school students they are therefore NOT working on behalf of 85% to 90% of all students? That seems like a problem to me. The public might start wondering why we’re paying them.
The disconnect between “reality” and ed reform is breathtaking. While the US Department of Education and national ed reformers held a party to celebrate lavish public funding of private schools, two more states had teachers petitioning state government for someone, anyone, to work on behalf of their students.
That brings the total to what, ten states? Red states, blue states, northern, western and southern states. All desperately petitioning politicians to exert SOME minimal effort on behalf of public school students. Yet the echo chamber rolls cluelessly along, continuing to pretend public schools no longer exist, and if they do exist there are no students inside what they refer to as “buildings”. It’s pure ideological fantasy. They’ve disappeared our students. They no longer exist in ed reform world.
People who have their primary residences in another state other than Florida, don’t care about the kids in Florida. As far as they are concerned, these snowbirds want cheap labor to do their manual jobs, like clean up messes they create.
Jim Crow is well and alive.
a crucial point about a state like FL: those with money love FL, but have zero loyalty to the state as a whole
I have been sharing this post with disgruntled parents, and I hope they do more than complain. I live in a military community that generally votes red but appreciates quality public education. DeSantis’ voucher plan will send students to unaccredited, religious schools where they teach creationism. He knows it will be challenged in court, but he has stocked the court with right wing judges. The goal is to move as much money as possible out of public schools. When are middle class families going to learn that most of today’s Republicans are not true conservatives? They are radical right wing libertarians.
Peter Greene is right…so sad. Have we become a nation of the HAVES and the HAVE NOTS? Sure seems to be true.
In the meanwhile, the Chinese from China are building MEGA homes with 20+ bedrooms in Hawai’i to rent out.
I have seen my island home trashed by the rich while the people of the islands “service” them. So sick.
May 01, 2019 from Southern Poverty Law Center
Something ugly is happening in America’s schools. And, it’s not going away.
Three years ago—during and immediately after the presidential campaign—we documented a surge of incidents involving racial slurs and symbols, bigotry and the harassment of minority children in the nation’s schools. We called this phenomenon the “Trump Effect,” because it appeared that children were emulating the racist, xenophobic and coarse language Donald Trump was using on the campaign trail.
Indeed, teachers told us in two informal surveys that in many cases Trump’s name was invoked, or his words parroted, by children who were harassing others based on their race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. They noted a disturbing uptick in incidents involving swastikas, derogatory language, Nazi salutes and Confederate flags. Teachers reported that children of color were worried for the safety of themselves and their families.
Now, reports of hate and bias in school emerge regularly in the news media. Captured by cell phone cameras or described on social media, disturbing incidents—slurs, graffiti swastikas or chants of “Build the wall!” aimed at Latinx athletes—travel swiftly from schools to the front page.
In recent months, several such stories have caught the attention of audiences nationwide. In Baraboo, Wisconsin, dozens of male high school students, almost all white, were seen giving a Nazi salute in a prom photo. In Idaho, elementary school staff dressed up as Mexicans and Trump’s wall on Halloween. At an elite private school in New York City, a video went viral showing two sixth-grade girls wearing blackface and swinging their arms around like apes. There have been numerous stories about African-American or Latinx athletes being taunted by white students.
The reality is that while these media reports pop up with alarming regularity, they represent just a tiny fraction of the hate and bias incidents that educators are encountering in the classroom.
For this report, we identified 821 school-based incidents that were reported in the media in 2018. By comparison, the K-12 educators who responded to a new questionnaire reported 3,265 such incidents in the fall of 2018 alone.
We found that:
More than two-thirds of the 2,776 educators who responded to the questionnaire witnessed a hate or bias incident in their school during the fall of 2018.
Fewer than 5 percent of the incidents witnessed by educators were reported in the news media.
Racism appears to be the motivation behind most hate and bias incidents in school, accounting for 63 percent of incidents reported in the news and 33 percent of incidents reported by teachers.
Of the incidents reported by educators, those involving racism and antisemitism were the most likely to be reported in the news media; anti-Latinx and anti-LGBTQ incidents were the least likely.
Most of the hate and bias incidents witnessed by educators were not addressed by school leaders. No one was disciplined in 57 percent of them. Nine times out of 10, administrators failed to denounce the bias or reaffirm school values.
The picture that emerges is the exact opposite of what schools should be: places where students feel welcome, safe and supported by the adults who are responsible for their well-being.
But schools are not hermetically sealed institutions. They are not immune from the political and socioeconomic forces gripping our nation.
In fact, this outbreak of aggression aimed primarily at students of color and LGBTQ children reflects what is happening outside school walls. Hate crimes are rising. The president himself engages in childish taunting on social media and is shattering the norms of behavior observed by generations of American leaders. And the racism, bigotry and misogyny of a virulent white nationalist movement are being parroted by mainstream political and media figures.
Schools cannot simply ignore these problems.
To ensure students are safe from harm, educators must take vigorous, proactive measures to counter prejudice and to promote equity and inclusiveness. And they must act swiftly and decisively to address all incidents of hate and bias when they happen, with a model that emphasizes communication, empathy, reconciliation and support to those who are harmed.
I saw this first-hand, Carol, in my school in Florida, during the run-up to the 2016 election–a bunch of high-school seniors chanting, “Build the wall. Build the wall. Hitler had the right idea!”
Nothing hypothetical about this.
Here’s the giant federal agency your tax dollars support:
“U.S. Department of Education
Denisha was on the road to becoming just another statistic, but then a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship changed everything.”
Get it? All public school students are low achievers who inevitably drop out, so we should all “flee” them.
Led by the US Department of Education, who has already abandoned them in favor of the schools and students they prefer.
Go try to find a single mention of a successful or even functioning public school or public school student in the ed reform media echo chamber, which includes the USDOE. They don’t exist.
This is ideologically-driven propaganda and it harms students in public schools. And we’re all paying these public employees to promote it.
Parents! Come spend your voucher at Bob’s Real Good School. We offer a full kuriculum, including science (The world was created six thousand years ago; Cain and Abel rode on dinosaurs), English (the only acceptable and official language of the United States of America), and history (Jesus chose Donald Trump to be president because he wanted to restart history and Make America Great Again), and all our teachers are armed. Now, thanks to our Governor, you have real choices!
Yes, Bob, exactly right! As I understand it, dinosaurs were used as draft animals in Mesopotamian agriculture.
Your kommand of HIStory is exceptional, Mark. Yore hired!!!
HIS-story and scyence
posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/CURMUDGUCATION-Florida-Re-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Education-Funding_Education-Laws_For-profit-Education_Mis-education-190502-981.html#comment732700
Behold the final goal of Ed Reform. If you’re rich, the government will give you money to send your child to a private school. It’s the taxes you paid after all, dammit. If you’re poor or disabled, well, thank your betters if they share anything at all of their hard earned inherited wealth with you. Even a pair of bootstraps to pull yourself with is simply too much to expect them to provide.
Indiana has wasted $383,000 on vouchers money for 59 students in 2018-19 in Faith Academy. How about NO vouchers and put that money into underfunded public schools? I wonder what this school is teaching. Notice that Merrillville public schools received a B rating. Merrillville is about 10 minutes down the road from me. I have NO idea where this voucher eating school is.
Why was this school getting $383,000 in voucher money in 2017-18 for 107 students?
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Merrillville’s Faith Academy request for new school vouchers rejected
Meredith Colias-PeteContact Reporter
Post-Tribune
Merrillville’s Faith Academy will not be allowed to accept new voucher students for the second straight year due to poor grades.
The State Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday to reject the private school’s request for a suspension waiver in 2019-20 — after three straight years of failing state grades.
A 2016 state law allows private schools to seek waivers from the consequences of consecutive years of D or F grades, if they can show they’ve made academic improvement.
However, Faith Academy’s grades have gotten worse in 2018-19, according to the state.
Records show it received its second straight F in 2018-19: dropping to 46% from 52% in 2017-18. It got a D in 2016-17. Nearby Merrillville Community School Corp. got a B this year.
The school was founded by Merrillville’s Faith Temple of Christ Church. Attempts to reach Pastor Dennis Walton on Wednesday were not immediately successful.
Faith Academy was suspended from Indiana’s Choice Scholarship program in 2018-19, meaning it could no longer accept new voucher students, but could take existing ones.
In 2018-19, its enrollment dropped to 59 students, from 107 in 2017-18. Its income from the voucher program dropped to $383,000 in 2018-19 from $667,000 the prior year.
Without the voucher program, school officials said it would “inevitably make it impossible” to raise its grade or operate long-term, according to state documents.
Faith Academy had made efforts to improve — adding curriculum, a new technology center, hiring new teachers and administrators, it said. Without a grade hike, the board approved their staff’s recommendation to reject the appeal.
In April 2018, the school earned the board’s ire after Walton — then listed as the school’s president — said it would cut middle and high school grades – saying their test performances were sinking the school’s overall grade.
“After careful observation, we determined that it is best for Faith Academy to return” to an elementary-only school, he wrote.
SBOE members bristled then at the suggestion.
“You accepted them. You have a responsibility for them,” Board Member Vince Bertram said in 2018.
Opps. Faith Academy got $667,000 2017-18 in voucher money for 107 students. How is this possible and where is that money going?