About 30 public schools in Broward County may close due to loss of students to charter schools.
The original purpose of charter schools was to collaborate with public schools, not to destroy them. Unfortunately, the charter industry is so well represented in the legislature that they have a distinctive edge over real public schools. The wife of the State Commissiomer of Educatuon Richard Corcoran runs a charter school.
About 30 Broward schools could close, combine with other schools or convert into a new type of facility as the school district looks for ways to deal with nearly half-empty campuses.
Many of these schools are in the southern part of the county, from Hollywood to Pembroke Pines, where thousands of students have left for charter schools. Others are in the Fort Lauderdale area and have struggled with factors such as low student performance, outdated facilities and aging neighborhoods…
Enrollment has dropped about 30,000 in the past 15 years, due mostly to charter schools and to a smaller degree private school vouchers. The demographics also have changed in Broward, where most growth is among adults without school-aged kids….
Broward considers a school to have insufficient enrollment if it has 70% percent or fewer students than it was built to serve. Many of these schools aren’t able to afford an art, music or physical education teacher or a media specialist to run the library. Several didn’t get musical instruments through the $800 million bond because they can’t afford to teach music.
Nearby charter schools are eagerly eying the buildings that might become available.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
State policies of the past twenty years have contributed to this outcome. Broward is a diverse, densely populated area between Miami and West Palm Beach. I am sure that after some social engineering by politicians and developers, they will drive up the price of the real estate. Private charter schools are often a vehicle to do just that when selective charters choose mostly white students, and the cheap charters are for the children of color. We have seen this pattern in other cities as well. The cherry on top is when the valuable public assets are transferred into private pockets. I wonder how many in Tallahassee besides Corcoran are involved.
Don’t live in Florida, but have family that do. Just wondering why families are choosing the charters over the public schools for educating their children in Florida…or anywhere?
There are many reasons. Here are a few:
–Some charters are entirely segregated or nearly entirely segregated in fact if not officially, and racist parents choose them because of this.
–People tend, today, to think that their kids are perfect and can do no wrong, so the first time the kid fails a class or acts out in school and is disciplined, the parents blame the school, pull the kid out, and put him or her in a charter. Some parents end up sending their high-school kid to three or four different schools. So, charter schools provide an opportunity not to confront the fact that the child has issues that need to be dealt with.
–Some charters, though officially public schools and subject to the same laws as other public schools are, are nonetheless, in fact, de facto religious schools because they were started and are run by religious zealots, and religious parents see them as a cheap way to educate their kids in a religious school without having to pay for private school
–Some charters have exceptions from high-stakes standardized testing. This is not typical, but some do.
–In states like Florida, there is a lot of anti-public-school propaganda fueled by politicians who themselves have stakes in the charter industry
–In some districts, the quality of the public schools actually has plummeted because the district administrators care only about test scores and the supposed “data” that these generate, and the teachers are running around stressed out and crazy all the time trying to fulfill district mandates to bring those scores up through insane amounts of test prep, computerized test preppy curricula, data chats, and so on.
Maybe because legislature is stripping funding from public schools, which means larger classes, fewer electives.
Good points Bob! I’ll elaborate on some of them.
“:People tend, today, to think that their kids are perfect and can do no wrong, so the first time the kid fails a class or acts out in school and is disciplined, the parents blame the school, pull the kid out, and put him or her in a charter. Some parents end up sending their high-school kid to three or four different schools. So, charter schools provide an opportunity not to confront the fact that the child has issues that need to be dealt with.”
TRUE. I remember either seeing a profile of a certain ed reformer either on 20/20, Dateline, or “Waiting for Superman” years ago where she visited a school and saw some students near campus who were obviously skipping. The students said something to the tune of they go to 1st period but skip 2nd period. Instead of telling the interviewer that she did her job as an administrator and turned the kids in, she told the interviewer that if the teacher was a good one, the kids wouldn’t be skipping. I left out the name in case what I am recalling isn’t completely accurate.
“Some charters, though officially public schools and subject to the same laws as other public schools are, are nonetheless, in fact, de facto religious schools because they were started and are run by religious zealots, and religious parents see them as a cheap way to educate their kids in a religious school without having to pay for private school”
They are subject to some of the laws. I would say one difference is that while public and charter schools are expected to document results through state testing, charters have the liberty to decide how best to achieve those goals while public schools have a virtually scripted process they must follow.
“In states like Florida, there is a lot of anti-public-school propaganda fueled by politicians who themselves have stakes in the charter industry”
If I’m a higher up in a district’s facilities department and the HVAC company that happens to be owned by my brother gets the contract for the district, I’ll be all over the news for a conflict of interest. But it’s okay if state legislators who push charters own or are married to owners of charter schools. They can even be the state head of education!
“In some districts, the quality of the public schools actually has plummeted because the district administrators care only about test scores and the supposed “data” that these generate, and the teachers are running around stressed out and crazy all the time trying to fulfill district mandates to bring those scores up through insane amounts of test prep, computerized test preppy curricula, data chats, and so on.”
That’s the end game. The state makes things so unbearable for districts that parents turn against district schools and look to charters and vouchers for private schools as a means of escape. It amazes me how many people who were all about “education reform” 15-20 years ago are complaining because of all of the testing going on today.
Another thing that is frustrating is that private schools and charters are praised for the lack of red tape, but the only red tape the government is willing to remove for public schools is in regard to how teachers are treated (i.e. fired).
As Florida goes, in education, so goes the rest of the country, alas. Nationwide, about 6 percent of students attend charter schools, but in Florida, as of 2017, that number was 10 percent, and in Sarasota County, it was 16 percent and in Broward, 17 percent. So, the Deformer strategy is working. Charter schools siphon funds from public schools. The public schools become worse. And then the charters start to look like a better alternative. THIS IS BY DESIGN. Capitalists want to end the provision of public goods because they want to provide those goods for a profit.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgb.asp
“alas.” It’s like we simply cannot escape.
It is all destruction by design to cheat our young people out of authentic public education.
It’s fun at OEN https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Florida-Charter-Drain-Cau-in-General_News-Charter-School-Failure_Charter-Schools_Closures_Diane-Ravitch-200219-202.html
“Chartered: Florida is No. 2 in the country for charter school closures”
“Many think charter schools offer a better learning experience for children. 10investigates discovered that is not necessarily the case.”
February 18, 2020
https://www.wtsp.com/mobile/article/news/investigations/10-investigates/florida-charter-schools/67-758325c2-5144-4abb-bf32-f24c7f6495d8
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