teach1st
04-01-2007, 08:06 AM
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/04/01/Opinion/Charter_schools_run_w.shtml
(Opinion)
A decade after creating its first publicly funded charter school, Florida has turned a worthy educational experiment into a blank check for eager entrepreneurs. As a new report by the Orlando Sentinel suggests, the push for quantity has supplanted the pursuit of quality. And the students are the ones who suffer.
Just ask Don Gaetz, a Republican freshman senator and former Okaloosa school superintendent, about the transformation. "Charter schools were a movement," he told the Sentinel, "but now charter schools are an industry. They have lobbyists - they walk around in thousand-dollar suits, some of them."
Those lobbyists, and an embarrassingly compliant state Department of Education, have turned charter education into a $560-million-a-year enterprise that is so immune to oversight that an Escambia school convicted of fraudulently using its students to work on road crews is still receiving tax money. A Pensacola school where not a single student has passed the state's standardized reading and math tests in four years is still receiving tax money. A Vero Beach school investigated twice for suspicion of cheating on standardized tests is still receiving tax money.
Jim Warford, former K-12 chancellor at DOE, told the Sentinel his bosses actually discouraged oversight. "The only good answer I got was, 'There is accountability because the parents are free to choose,' " he said. "It was intellectually indefensible that you could take a student out of a high-accountability district school and turn them loose into the Wild West of the free market that had no accountability."
Warford is right. The state's hands-off approach is indefensible, and it is getting worse. In recent years, lawmakers have removed the cap on charter schools, eliminated many of the original education goals and undermined the supervisory role of local school boards. Last year, incredibly, lawmakers created an appointed commission that can approve charter schools in any county for virtually any reason.
More (http://www.sptimes.com/2007/04/01/Opinion/Charter_schools_run_w.shtml)
(Opinion)
A decade after creating its first publicly funded charter school, Florida has turned a worthy educational experiment into a blank check for eager entrepreneurs. As a new report by the Orlando Sentinel suggests, the push for quantity has supplanted the pursuit of quality. And the students are the ones who suffer.
Just ask Don Gaetz, a Republican freshman senator and former Okaloosa school superintendent, about the transformation. "Charter schools were a movement," he told the Sentinel, "but now charter schools are an industry. They have lobbyists - they walk around in thousand-dollar suits, some of them."
Those lobbyists, and an embarrassingly compliant state Department of Education, have turned charter education into a $560-million-a-year enterprise that is so immune to oversight that an Escambia school convicted of fraudulently using its students to work on road crews is still receiving tax money. A Pensacola school where not a single student has passed the state's standardized reading and math tests in four years is still receiving tax money. A Vero Beach school investigated twice for suspicion of cheating on standardized tests is still receiving tax money.
Jim Warford, former K-12 chancellor at DOE, told the Sentinel his bosses actually discouraged oversight. "The only good answer I got was, 'There is accountability because the parents are free to choose,' " he said. "It was intellectually indefensible that you could take a student out of a high-accountability district school and turn them loose into the Wild West of the free market that had no accountability."
Warford is right. The state's hands-off approach is indefensible, and it is getting worse. In recent years, lawmakers have removed the cap on charter schools, eliminated many of the original education goals and undermined the supervisory role of local school boards. Last year, incredibly, lawmakers created an appointed commission that can approve charter schools in any county for virtually any reason.
More (http://www.sptimes.com/2007/04/01/Opinion/Charter_schools_run_w.shtml)