Channel 10 in Florida conducted an investigation of the charter industry in Florida. It looked at the history of charters and examined the high rate of charter failures, usually because of financial issues. Florida is the State with the second highest rate of charter closures (California has the most charter closures). One part of the problem is that you don’t have to be an educator to open a charter. In one case, a charter school was run by a convicted felon.
The series is informative, but what’s especially interesting is the fact that investigative reporters chose to look behind the sales pitch to discover a sector that operates with minimal accountability and has a high rate of failure.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Charter industry is like going to a restaurant and getting Salmonella.
Where did they find reporters like that? Does somebody pay these people? Imagine that! Investigative journalism. What could come next? Democracy? Frightening.
🙂
I really question Florida’s reported education numbers. The fact is if the state is this unreliable monitoring/reporting charter stats there is no reason on earth to believe any of the rest of the stats Florida report are reliable.
The assumption should be (and is, outside of ed reform) that if one category of monitoring and reporting is garbage the rest probably are too.
Florida needs someone outside the ed reform echo chamber to audit their reporting. How many freaking state employees do they have? Why is it the job of this newspaper to find ordinary public education numbers?
I suppose it’s political suicide that this point in Florida to push back against the echo chamber at all, given that both Jeb Bush and Betsy DeVos point to Florida as a model for the country.
This isn’t the first indication that Florida’s stats are hinky. This is what happens when you create a lock-step echo chamber and banish dissenters, as ed reform has done. Everyone is reciting the official party line.
Florida recategorized drop outs as “homeschoolers”. LOL. Easy way to lower your drop out rate, huh?
No one in ed reform said a word. Dissent is forbidden.
Florida’s school plan continues to favor sending copious amounts of public money out of public schools and into private pockets. The policy has also supported little to no accountability or transparency. In addition to a reckless charter school sector, someone should do an independent, longitudinal study on what happens to the recipients of the so-called freedom scholarships, aka, vouchers. Taxpayers should have a right to know what happens to public money. Florida continues to embrace extremist libertarian policies with no end in sight.
The Revolving Charter Door
The charter’s a revolving door
That opens and then closes
A going out of business store
That sells us leaky hoses
Very sad that education has become a business instead of a tool used to shape the next generation so that we can securely preserve our humanity and existence in this world.
Why am I not surprised at this “news”?
How much tax payer money was wasted on
private colleges who charged outrageous prices
and handed out worthless “diplomas”?