Florida cracks down on charter schools for nepotism and lax financial controls.

[madfloridian]

The Florida Senate passed a plan Friday to make the 360 charter schools in the state more accountable in their classrooms and in their finances.

Charter-school crackdown advances in Tallahassee

Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, would no longer be able to hire and do business with relatives, and they would be forced to communicate students' academic performance even when the state does not give the schools a letter grade. The bill (SB 278) would also authorize school districts and other charter sponsors to terminate a school's contract if its administrators do not correct financial deficiencies.

The measure now heads to the House, where similar legislation failed last year after unanimously passing the Senate. Proponents say this year's version stands a better chance of passing, with support from the charter-school industry and a coalition of House members.

..."The series of articles found a disproportionate number of charter operations were among the worst-performing schools in the state. More than half of all charters reported operating at a loss, and nearly half had financial arrangements with insiders that would not be allowed in regular schools. Some of the schools performed dismally year after year without raising any alarm or any push for change. The state's controls were so few that a Pensacola-area charter rented out its teens for road work for five years.

This kind of school.."which are publicly funded but privately operated"...are the goal of our new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. Money is taken from the traditional public school system and given to experimental schools. Then they demand and shout and yell for the public schools to produce even more.

It's amazing how they have done it since the Reagan years. They have steadily defunded the public schools and demanded more as they took money away. It took a lot of us who were teachers a long time to catch on to their sleight of hand. It did not take long for the people who wanted the corporate world to have a big piece of the pie in the public school system to hold sway. They did a good job in making teachers and public school systems sound bad.

Under Arne Duncan we will probably see the end of public schools as we know them. I am glad Florida is addressing these issues of nepotism and lax financial record keeping.

I have always said that charter schools were a tip of the hat to supporters of deregulation.

Looks like that is not working so well in Florida.

Competition

Two main ideas inform the charter school movement. The first is that competition is an essential ingredient in school improvement. Charters are said to provide that.

The trouble with this argument is that competition doesn't select the best, only the most popular. McDonald's doesn't produce the best-tasting or most-nutritious food, for instance, but its heart attack specials certainly are popular. A second-rate school might prove similarly competitive if it provides a tawdry but reassuring education to the children of the low-information crowd. Fearful your kids will discover you are an ignoramus? Send them to Alpha Charter where they will never learn to doubt.

Deregulation

The second main idea behind charters is that state directives are strangling public school innovations. That's why charters are exempted from many regulations restricting the operations of traditional public schools. The trouble is that deregulation creates opportunities for mountebanks to pilfer the public purse, abuse children, and the like. As a matter of fact, to the extent that charter operators have freedom of action, the confidence tricksters and bunko artists among them find opportunities for fraud and misuse of public funds. What is more, the politicians (and/or their relatives) who push charters often end up feeding at the charter school trough themselves.

Just look at our economy right now to see what deregulation has wrought.

And then take a look at this video to see nepotism has wrought.

And then say thank you to the Florida Senate for considering policing the charter schools.