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Florida: School Vouchers Gone Wild: Brilliant Investigative Reporting

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2017 //
11

When the Orlando Sentinel published an in-depth expose of Florida’s unregulated, unaccountable, wasteful voucher programs, defenders of vouchers rushed to attack the series.

Remember, Betsy DeVos considers Florida the model that she wants for America.

Scott Maxwell of the Sentinel responds to the critics here.

The nation needs more journalistic scrutiny of the unscrupulous, fraudulent, and incompetent hucksters who are siphoning billions of dollars away from public schools with certified teachers. In Florida, it is $1 Billion a year, and that is only for vouchers, not charters, which has its own share of scams and frauds. In Michigan, the charter industry drains $1 Billion a year away from public schools, and the charters don’t get better outcomes than the public schools; many are far worse, and 80% are for-profit.

Congratulations to the Orlando Sentinel for scrutinizing Florida’s voucher schools.

For the first time ever, I add a newspaper to the honor roll of this Blog.

Here is an excerpt.

“The “Schools without Rules” series exposed scores of problems at these publicly funded schools — everything from forged safety reports to a school run by a pastor accused of lewd or lascivious molestation.

“Just as importantly, it exposed a wicked hypocrisy among politicians who scream for “accountability” for public schools but let anything go when your tax dollars are whisked away to private ones.

“This little-regulated system needs an overhaul. And the world needs more real journalists.

“Among the findings from reporters Beth Kassab, Leslie Postal and Annie Martin:

“Teachers without certification or even college degrees.

“Forged documents: Schools faked up clean bills of health from fire departments, which had found safety problems. Even after the schools were caught, state officials let them remain open.

“Shady hirings: Two teachers worked at voucher schools (the state calls them “scholarship” schools) after being fired from public schools for having porn on their school computers.

“Alleged crime: At one school for special-needs kids, suspicions of impropriety — among parents and even a teacher — continued until authorities arrested the school owner, accusing her of stealing more than $4 million in Medicaid funds.

“Troubling finances and learning environments: Two school were evicted from their locations for nonpayment of rent while the school year was still going on. Another shared office-suite space with a bail bondsman.”

If there were newspapers in every state willing to investigate the privatization of their public schools, the public would understand the scandal that is going on in the dark. In Ohio, local newspapers started paying attention to charter scandals, and it affected public opinion. In the past two years, charter enrollments have fallen in Ohio as the public understands the risks they are taking by enrolling their children in schools without roots and the damage they are doing to their public schools.

More coverage, please!

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Florida, Fraud, Privatization, Vouchers

Florida Squanders $1 Billion on “Schools Without Rules”

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2017 //
12

This is a story about vouchers in Florida, where the state constitution forbids the use of public funds “directly or indirectly” for religious schools. Message to school-children: Ignore the state Constitution. It is meaningless.

The Florida state Constitution forbids the use of public funds in religious schools.

Article 1, Section 3 of the state Constitution says:

“Religious Freedom

“There shall be no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting or penalizing the free exercise thereof. Religious freedom shall not justify practices inconsistent with public morals, peace or safety. No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.”

Jeb Bush wanted to amend that language so Florida could provide vouchers for religious schools. So, he got an amendment on the ballot in 2012 called the Religious Freedom Amendment, or Amendment 8. What clever wording! How many people would vote against “religious freedom”?

Enough to defeat Amendment 8. Fifty-five point five percent (55.5%) of voters said NO to vouchers.

But that didn’t stop Jeb and his friends from cooking up ways to bypass the State Constitution and the clear will of the people.

They proceeded to develop voucher programs masquerading as something else: tax credits, scholarships, whatever.

The Orlando Sentinel just concluded an investigation of Florida’s voucher programs and concluded it is an unregulated sector that enrolls 140,000 students and costs taxpayers $1 Billion per year. All in a state whose Constitution prohibits vouchers and whose voters opposed changing the Constitution.

The series begins like this:

“Private schools in Florida will collect nearly $1 billion in state-backed scholarships this year through a system so weakly regulated that some schools hire teachers without college degrees, hold classes in aging strip malls and falsify fire-safety and health records.

“The limited oversight of Florida’s scholarship programs allowed a principal under investigation for molesting a student at his Brevard County school to open another school under a new name and still receive the money, an Orlando Sentinel investigation found.

“Another Central Florida school received millions of dollars in scholarships, sometimes called school vouchers, for nearly a decade even though it repeatedly violated program rules, including hiring staff with criminal convictions.

“Despite the problems, the number of children using Florida’s scholarship programs has more than tripled in the past decade to 140,000 students this year at nearly 2,000 private schools. If students using Florida Tax Credit, McKay and Gardiner scholarships made up their own school district, they would be Florida’s sixth-largest in student population, just ahead of the Jacksonville area.

“The scholarships are good. The problem is the school,” said Edda Melendez, an Osceola County mother. “They need to start regulating the private schools.”

“Melendez complained to the state last year about a private school in Kissimmee. The school promised specialized help for her 5-year-old twin sons, who have autism, but one of their teachers was 21 years old and didn’t have a bachelor’s degree or experience with autistic children.

“I feel bad for all the parents who didn’t know what’s going on there,” she told the state.

“Last year, nearly a quarter of all state scholarship students — 30,000 — attended 390 private schools in Central Florida. The schools received $175.6 million worth of the scholarships, which are for children from low-income families and those with disabilities.

“During its investigation, the Sentinel visited more than 30 private schools in Orange, Seminole, Lake, Osceola and Brevard counties, reviewed thousands of pages of public records and interviewed dozens of parents, private school operators, state officials and policy experts.

“Unlike public schools, private schools, including those that accept the state scholarships, operate free from most state rules. Private school teachers and principals, for example, are not required to have state certification or even college degrees.

“One Orlando school, which received $500,000 from the public programs last year, has a 24-year-old principal still studying at a community college.

“Nor do private schools need to follow the state’s academic standards. One curriculum, called Accelerated Christian Education or ACE, is popular in some private schools and requires students to sit at partitioned desks and fill out worksheets on their own for most of the day, with little instruction from teachers or interaction with classmates.

“And nearly anything goes in terms of where private school classes meet. The Sentinel found scholarship students in the same office building as Whozz Next Bail Bonds on South Orange Blossom Trail, in a Colonial Drive day-care center that reeked of dirty diapers and in a school near Winter Park that was facing eviction and had wires dangling from a gap in the office ceiling and a library with no books, computers or furniture.

“However, scholarships can be appealing because some private schools offer rigorous academics on modern campuses, unique programs or small classes that allow students more one-on-one attention, among other benefits. Bad experiences at public schools also fuel interest in scholarships.

“Parents opting out of public schools often cite worries about large campuses, bullying, what they call inadequate services for special-needs children and state-required testing. Escaping high-stakes testing is such a scholarship selling point that one private school administrator refers to students as “testing refugees.”

“But the Sentinel found problems with Florida’s programs, which make up the largest school voucher and scholarship initiative in the nation:

► At least 19 schools submitted documents since 2012 that misled state officials about fire or health inspections, including some with forged inspectors’ names or altered dates. Eight of the schools still received scholarship money with the state’s blessing.

► Upset parents sometimes complain to the state, assuming it has some say over academic quality at these private schools. It does not. “They can conduct their schools in the manner they believe to be appropriate,” reads a typical response from the Florida Department of Education to a parent.

► The education department has stopped some schools from taking scholarships when they violated state rules, from the one in Fort Lauderdale led by a man convicted of stealing $20,000 to a school in Gainesville caught depositing scholarship checks for students no longer enrolled. But the department often gives schools second chances and sometimes doesn’t take action even when alerted to a problem.

► Florida’s approach is so hands-off that a state directory lists private schools that can accommodate students with special needs — such as autism — without evidence the schools’ staff is trained to handle disabilities.”

Since Betsy DeVos considers Florida to be a national model, you should read this series and learn what’s heading your way and stop it before it gets into your state.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-schools-without-rules-story-gallery-storygallery.html

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Education Reform, Ethics, Florida, Lies

Nancy Bailey: Why Do We Inflict FORCE AND FLUNK on Young Children?

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2017 //
24

Nancy Bailey describes one of the worst ideas that is current in the world of corporate-style reform: Forcing little children to read at a very young age, as early as kindergarten or first grade, which turns reading into a chore, not a joy.

Then, if they have not met arbitrary standards in third grade, shaming them by holding them back.

This is a child-hostile idea that got started in Florida, where so many bad ideas have begun. It did wonders for fourth grade reading scores, because the kids with the lowest scores flunked.

But it is a truly dumb idea because it forces reading on children before they are ready and it does not make children better readers. Whether children begin to read at age 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 doesn’t matter. What matters is that they learn that reading is a wonderful skill to master and that it opens worlds of enchantment and knowledge. By the time they are 10 or 11, no one remembers when they first began to read. Little children are not global competitors. They are children.

Categories Childhood, Failure, Florida

ProPublica: For-Profit Schools Offer Students Prizes to Recruit Other Students

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2017 //
9

Heather Vogell, an investigative reporter writing for ProPublica and USA Today, reports that for-profit schools are handing out rewards to students who recruit other students or post positive reviews on Facebook. This practice shows the difference between a business—where the bottom line is profit—and a school, which is dedicated to education and human development.

Vogell writes:

“Lyla Elkins transferred to North Nicholas High School in Cape Coral, Florida, in 2016 with hopes of sailing through its computer-based courses and graduating early. She didn’t realize the for-profit charter school would also be a source of income: a $25 gift card each time she persuaded a new student to enroll.

“I referred almost all of my friends,” said Elkins, 17, who earned three gift cards. She also won a Valentine’s Day teddy bear in a raffle for sharing one of the school’s Facebook posts.

“Such incentives are rampant among for-profit operators of public alternative high schools like North Nicholas, which serves students at risk of dropping out. These schools market aggressively to attract new students, especially during weeks when the state is tallying enrollment for funding purposes. They often turn their students into promoters, dangling rewards for plugs on social media, student referrals or online reviews, a ProPublica-USA Today investigation found. Some also offer valuable perks simply for enrolling.

“The schools’ reality is often less inspiring than their promotions. While they face a daunting mission of salvaging students who struggled elsewhere, they’re characterized by high absenteeism, low graduation rates, little instruction from teachers and few extracurricular activities or elective classes. Their intensive recruitment, when coupled with poor outcomes, “is wrong on so many levels,” said Samuel E. Abrams, a professor at Columbia Teachers College and author of a 2016 book on for-profit education. “It’s not addressing the pedagogical needs of these kids.”

“It’s legal for schools to provide gift cards to students for referrals, and free electronic devices, such as tablets or computers, to newcomers. And students are free to express their opinions on their schools. But advertisements have less protection under the First Amendment, and some for-profit school promotions involving online posts or reviews may violate federal consumer safeguards.

“According to the Federal Trade Commission, companies that use students and other groups as social media marketers should instruct them to disclose publicly that they expect to be paid. In settlements with the FTC, companies that failed to encourage such disclosures have agreed to follow the law — or face a potential penalty of up to $40,000 per transgression. Those instances didn’t involve students.”

For-profit companies have no shame in exploiting their students to lure more students.

“Refer-a-friend programs like the one at North Nicholas are common in the sector. “Bring a friend into Mavericks!” said one 2015 Facebook post for a Palm Springs school in the for-profit Florida charter chain. “They will get help getting their diploma and you will get a gift card.” The post promised a $5 gift card for each referral as part of the “Friends & Family Club,” as long as the recipient had acceptable attendance and no disciplinary problems.

“Mavericks’ new parent company, EdisonLearning, hands out Walmart gift cards for student referrals at its “Bridgescape” schools in Illinois and Ohio. It posted pictures on Facebook this past spring of students displaying their prizes. EdisonLearning officials said the gift cards enable low-income students to buy essentials.”

Shameless.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Shame

Good News! Florida Parents Drive Away For-Profit Charter Chain-For Now

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2017 //
4

When parents in Alachua County, Florida, heard that the for-profit chain Charter Schools USA was planning to move into their district, they organized to stop them. Led by Sue Legg, the education director of the state League of Women Voters, they created Parents Against Corporate Takeovers.

Good News! Charter Schools USA backed away and did not file its request. It may be back.

“Florida Charter Educational Foundation, backed by the for-profit Charter Schools USA, did not meet the Oct. 2 deadline to file an official application to open a charter school next academic year.

“A nonprofit organization did not file an official application to open a charter school in Alachua County by its Oct. 2 deadline after its draft proposal caused pushback among county residents.

“Florida Charter Educational Foundation, backed by the for-profit Charter Schools USA, submitted a draft application May 1 to open a 1,145-student charter school in southwest Alachua County in the 2018-2019 school year.

“Of Alachua County’s 14 charter schools, Micanopy Area Cooperative School has the most students this year, with 238 students.

“The draft led to a group of Alachua County residents forming a political action committee, Parents Against Corporate Takeovers, in July. It campaigned against Charter Schools USA, arguing that the charter school would deprive resources from the district’s traditional public schools without being held to the same standards as those schools.”

Parents, don’t let down your guard. Keep the corporate predators away.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Bob Shepherd: What It Took to Become a Teacher in Florida

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2017 //
106

Bob Shepherd has a long and distinguished career as a teacher, curriculum developer, assessment developer, textbook writer, and more. He returned to teaching. He describes here what the state of Florida required him to do:

Years ago, I attended Indiana University, where I took a double major in English and Psychology and completed all the work required to receive what was called, then, a “lifetime certification” to teach high-school English, which I did for three years before taking a job in educational publishing so that I could actually support my family. For twenty-five years, I wrote and edited textbooks for use in K-college English classrooms. The list of my textbook publications (and online educational materials programs) runs to twenty-five pages, single spaced. At one time, it was difficult to find a K-12 English classroom in the United States where one or more of my textbooks was not being used—books on writing, literature, grammar, African-American studies, and much else.

The Hindus say that in the latter part of a life, one must quit the things of this world and devote one’s self to things of the spirit. I decided to do that. At the end of my career, I returned to my first love, teaching, which would give me an opportunity to apply in classrooms what I had learned from several decades of applying myself assiduously to learning how to teach English language arts. Teaching and nursing are the two holiest of professions.

In order to get a teaching job in Florida, I had to

–Pay for and take SEVEN tests prepared and administered by the Ed Deform simpletons at Pearson
–Complete a 20-page online application form
–Submit letters of recommendation, and
–Provide body fluids for drug testing

On the job as a teacher of English, Film, and Debate, I had to

–Prepare, in the first year, an 800-page binder documenting every aspect of my teaching
–Submit to three formal evaluations and countless informal ones every year
–Complete a yearly Individual Professional Development Plan
–Complete 300 hours of utterly useless online ESL training that seemed, from the factual inaccuracies and grammatical errors throughout the materials, to have been prepared for five-year-olds by people with severe cognitive deficits
–Fill out several thousand 504, IEP, ESL, and PMP (progress monitoring plan) updates
–Prepare Data Walls and materials for Data Chats—exercises in pseudoscientific numerology
–Attend a summer AP English institute
–Proctor absurdly designed, punitive, soul-destroying standardized pretests, benchmark tests, and test tests
–Serve as a crossing guard every morning and afternoon
–Attend parent-teacher conferences weekly, sometimes daily
–Deal with parents who wanted to sue me because I insisted that their 11th-graders put end marks at the ends of their sentences
–Attend ”trainings” (“roll over, sit up, good boy”) for people with IQs of 65 on gang violence, bullying, drugs in school, blood-borne illness, test data, test data, test data, test data, test data, and more test data
–Prepare, for each class, a two-page lesson plan form and have these in binders for review whenever an administrator entered my class
–Keep a log of every parent contact—emails, telephone calls, meetings
–Post my grades and attendance both in a paper book and online
–Coach extracurriculars (speech and debate, theatre)
–Chaperone dances and numerous other evening events
–Prepare materials for and be present at parent nights
–Prepare to teach 22 or 23 classes a week (one year, for FIVE separate preps)
–Print and post reports of my ongoing data stream, in particular formats, with charts and graphs
–Grade, grade, grade, and grade some more. If I assigned my 150 or so students a single paragraph to write, I would have a novella to read and respond to. All day and evening, every Saturday, spend doing this, and often on Sunday as well.

–And somehow find time actually to interact, one-on-one, with my unique students, each with their enormous, unique needs, proclivities, interests, and potentials

And that’s only a partial list. I worked FAR, FAR harder as a teacher of high-school English than I did as an Executive Vice President at a billion-dollar-a-year publishing company.

And all for a salary less than what a checkout person at the local grocery makes.

Who wouldn’t want to do this?

Do you think that Florida doesn’t want teachers?

Categories Florida, Teachers and Teaching

Betsy DeVos’ Favorite Study of Florida Vouchers is Full of Holes

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2017 //
6

Early in her tenure as Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos admitted that she is not a “numbers person.” She is also not a research person. The research shows that none of her favorite reforms improve education. Bu that never deters her. When the U.S. Department of Education study of the D.C. voucher program showed that the students actually lost ground as compared to their public school peers, she didn’t care. Nonetheless, she did recently cite a study from the Urban Institute claiming that the Florida tax credit program (vouchers) produced higher enrollments in college.

William Mathis, research director of the National Education Policy Center and Vice-Chair of the Vermont Board of Education, took a closer look at the study and found that the study did not prove what she thinks it does and offers no support for vouchers because of the confounding variable of selection effects. Someone at the Department should explain to her what a “variable” is and what “selection effects” are.

Do Private Schools increase College Enrollments for Poor Children?

A Closer Look at the Urban Institute’s Florida Claims

William J. Mathis

A review of:

Chingos, Matthew M. and Kuehn, Daniel (September 2017). The Effects of Statewide Private School Choice on College Enrollment and Graduation; Evidence from the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, Urban Institute. 52 pp.

The Urban Institute reports that low income students who attended a private school on a Florida tax credit scholarship (“neovouchers”), in pre-collegiate grades had higher percentage enrollments in community colleges than traditional public school students. Using language such as the “impact of” and “had substantial positive impacts,” the findings are presented as causal. This purported effect was not found by the study’s authors in four year institutions or in the awarding of degrees – just in matriculation to community colleges.

Nevertheless, for school choice advocates, this report was hailed as good news on the heels of recent negative statewide school voucher reports coming out of Louisiana, Indiana, DC and Ohio. While community colleges are non-selective, most would agree that increased community college attendance is a good thing.

That said, a closer look indicates there is less to this latest report than first meets the eye. The primary problem—selection effects—is obliquely acknowledged by the report’s authors but is far too critical to push to the background.

There are at least three important differences that likely exist between the voucher group and the non-voucher group.

• Motivation, Effort, and Seeking Out Education Options – The very act of opting to enroll in a private school signals a very significant difference between the groups. Such an action requires considerable effort on the part of parents and students in selecting, applying, and transporting the child to the private school. These private school parents demonstrate, almost by definition, a higher involvement in their child’s education. Logically, these families would also be more likely to seek out community college options.

• Finances – While the program is available only to less affluent families, private schools can charge an amount higher than the $6,000 maximum available through the neovoucher. (Currently, eligibility rules require that the student’s household income not exceed 260 percent of the federal poverty level). Parents who can arrange or pay these supplemental tuition and fees to attend a private school represent the upper economic end of this means-tested group.

• Admissions – Private schools can continue their usual admissions policies, which may exclude children with special needs or deny admission on the basis of other characteristics. We cannot know the specific differences this introduces between the treatment and comparison groups, but we can be reasonably certain that these differences exist.

The study is based on “matching” private school students with traditional public school students and then comparing the two groups. While a common technique in voucher research, troubles arise when trying to pair up each student with her doppelganger from the other camp. As the authors acknowledge, “the quality of any matching can vary” (p. 12). While the researchers did an admirable job of matching, the entire process runs the risk of leaving out very important and determinative missing variables, as described above.

The study’s regression analysis also attempts to control for differences among students. In theory, an absolutely inclusive model can “confirm” a theory, and thus the researcher can claim a causal effect. But that’s a slippery slope. Regression is simply multiple correlation – and despite many inferences in the report, that is not causation. This is particularly true in this case, where selection effects are so strong.

In summary, it is the selection effects that primarily limit the study. A reasonable interpretation of the data is simply that the difference between the groups in their enrollment rates at community college is primarily due to different characteristics of families and students. In any case, the claim of private schools causing higher community-college attendance rates—let alone high college attendance in general—is a reach too far.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Florida, National Education Policy Center, Research, Vouchers

Florida: New Study Finds That Schools are Rapidly Resegregating

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2017 //
9

A new study released by the Leroy Collins Institute and conducted by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA finds that Florida’s schools are resegregation at an alarming rate. Here is the study that is cited in the article.

Bear in mind that Florida is the utopia of school choice. Its policies for the past twenty years have been shaped by Jeb Bush, and Betsy DeVos thinks that Florida should be a model for the nation.

“Student enrollment trends in Florida over the past decades show growing racial isolation for Hispanic and black students on some measures, with signs of continuous segregation on others,” the study said.

Some 32 percent of Hispanic students and 35 percent of black students in Florida attend “intensely segregated” schools, defined as have a nonwhite student body of 90 percent or greater, according to the study.

One out of every five schools was intensely segregated in the 2014-2015 academic year, about double the 10.6 percent of the schools that fell into that category in 1994-1995.

The more heavily segregated schools had more poor students. In schools with at least a 50 percent nonwhite school body, low-income students represented 68 percent of the population. Low-income students represented 82.5 percent of the population in the schools with a 90 percent or greater nonwhite student body.

“Florida is the third-largest state in the country and has the most diverse student body in our state’s history, yet one-fifth of our public schools are intensely segregated,” said Carol Weissert, a Florida State University political scientist who leads the Collins Institute. “Similar segregation is evident for low-income students. All Floridians deserve equal access to a quality education, regardless of race or economic standing.”

As the students have become more diverse, the schools have become more segregated:

Since 1980, Hispanic students have increased from 8 percent of Florida students to about 31 percent in 2014, the report showed. White students declined from 68 percent to just under 41 percent, while black students remained about 22 percent during that period.

The study also showed that the number of students defined as low-income has been rising over the last two decades, increasing from 36 percent in 1994-1995 to nearly 59 percent in 2014-2015.

Calling the trend “double segregation,” the report showed typical black students were likely attending schools with 68 percent low-income students, and Hispanic students were in schools with a 65 percent low-income population, “while the typical white student and Asian student are in schools where less than half of the students are poor.”

Florida’s answer to education issues: School choice. Charter schools, tax credits, virtual charter schools.

This is an avoidance of the problem, not a solution.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Florida, School Choice, Segregation

Florida: Charter School Closes, Leaving Behind Academic Failure and Mountains of Debt

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2017 //
5

Another day, another charter scandal. This one is in Lauderhill, Florida, in Broward County.

“LAUDERHILL, Fla. – The Paramount Charter School was, by all accounts, a disaster for its young students, but now that the publicly financed, F-graded K-8 school is closed, there is a big question that remains: Where did the money go?

In all, taxpayers coughed up more than $3 million for the charter school in Lauderhill, which promised a first-rate education for its predominantly financially disadvantaged students.

“Now American Charter Development, the Utah-based charter school company that was Paramount’s landlord and primary investor, alleges it lost well over $1 million during the two years the school was in operation and suspects public funds were misappropriated.

“In our view, there’s been fraud,” Rob Giordano, senior vice president of business development at American Charter Development, told Local 10 News.

“Giordano said the company conducted its own examination of the school’s finances and found that, in addition to a nonprofit company that had been set up to run the school, called the Advancement of Education in Scholars Corp., there was a second for-profit company formed with an almost identical name.

“Giordano said his firm obtained Paramount bank documents showing large sums of money going to the for-profit company.

“It was tens of thousands of dollars in excess of $30,000 a month going to this shell organization,” Giordano said.”

Not to worry. This failed “public charter school” will be replaced by another. The taxpayers’ money? It’s gone, along with the time that children lost in this school.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization

Florida: Agape Christian Academy May Lose Eligibility for Vouchers

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2017 //
9

Agape Christian Academy in Pine Hills, Florida, may be cut out of three different voucher programs because of its failure to meet state requirements.

Most of the students in the school receive vouchers, and the school may be forced to close. The state Department of Education has revoked its eligibility for voucher funding.

For its failure to comply with the state’s demands, the school has been ruled ineligible to receive vouchers for ten years.

Classes resume in public schools and many private schools in Orange County on Monday. DOE called and sent letters to the families of the 40 children who planned to use the McKay scholarship at Agape this year, saying they could transfer their children to a public school or another private school, or they could keep their children at Agape without the scholarship.

“If you choose for your student to remain enrolled at Agape Christian Academy, it is imperative that you understand you will not be receiving scholarship payments,” Laura Mazcyk, the director of scholarship programs and home education, wrote in the letter to families.

Patrick Gibbons, a spokesman for Step up for Students, which administers the Florida Tax Credit and Gardiner scholarships, said the organization had spoken with or left voicemails for the families of all 84 students who planned to use the scholarship at Agape this year.

“It is unfortunate that this happened so close to the start of the school year,” Gibbons wrote in an email.

The school has a history of run-ins with the Department of Education. During the past three years, Agape has failed fire inspections, taken money for a student who was not attending class and submitted required test scores late, records show.

In March 2016, the state suspended scholarship payments after DOE saidAgape falsified fire inspection reports on at least two occasions. A deal was reached a few months later to restore them.

In 2015 and 2016, the school submitted letters they purported were compliant fire inspections from Orange County Fire Rescue. But officials from the fire department said they did not generate the letters. The school had failed at least four fire inspections for various reasons, including having a fire alarm system that didn’t work and exits that were obstructed, according to records.

It is surprising to see that Florida is actually maintaining some standards for voucher schools. But the state’s action should be a warning to religious schools that the state may pull the plug if they don’t comply with what the state wants.

Categories Florida, Vouchers
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