More evidence that Charter Schools aren't working

From the Orlando Sentinel

by Scott Maxwell

During Rick Scott's first week in office, he and school-reform guru Michelle Rhee visited a charter school in South Florida, touting the for-profit academy as a model of how the private sector could better educate children.

"We have to make sure our system does exactly what you are doing here at Florida International Academy," Scott said at the time.

Fortunately for the governor, Florida International wasn't the only charter school he highlighted in his quest to transform Florida's schools. When Scott signed a teacher-merit-pay bill back in March, he did so at KIPP middle school inJacksonville, another charter school that reformers touted as a model.

Unfortunately for the governor, KIPP just earned an F, too.

Oops again.

And those two schools are not alone.

As you may have read in Dave Weber's front-page story today, charter schools in Florida failed at a rate seven times higher than that of traditional schools.

They also netted fewer A's and B's.

The results fall far short of the sky-high promises by politicians and for-profit executives who claimed that charter schools would do better.

And people are taking notice.

"Most of these schools do no better — and many do worse," said Kathleen Oropeza, anOrlando leader of Fund Education Now, a statewide group critical of legislators who underfund and want to disassemble traditional public education. "So we need to be very aware of people making wildly unsubstantiated claims … especially people who profit off them."

But Florida politicians have also made it a priority to steer more money away from traditional schools and toward charters.

To help make their case, Florida's controlling Republican Party has embarked upon an intense campaign against public-school teachers — portraying them as lazy, complacent and ineffective.

Gone are the days when schoolteachers were respected and praised. In Florida, they've become a political punching bag.

By doing this, GOP leaders accomplished several goals. They weakened the teachers unions, which traditionally supported Democratic candidates. They helped the charter-school groups, which often back Republicans. And they furthered their missions of providing more school choice and letting the private sector take over more public-sector duties.

The most recent school grades, however, take some of the shine off the charter-school movement.

Orange County schools Superintendent Ron Blocker said champions of so-called reform should be honest and ethical enough to acknowledge the evidence that simply doesn't support their claims.

"Listen," Blocker said, "if somebody has a better mousetrap, by all means, parents should have a right to choose that. And if so, I should be stealing their ideas."

But there's growing evidence, Blocker said, that charter schools simply aren't better mousetraps.

Of Orange County's three F-rated elementary schools, two are charters.

That's obviously not to say that all charter schools lack merit.

Blocker said he thinks there's a place for them. So do I.

Some charter schools yield impressive results. Locally, Hope, Oakland Avenue and Lake Eola elementaries consistently log top-notch grades. And schools run by groups such as United Cerebral Palsy of Central Florida fill a valuable need.

There are even low-scoring schools, filled with at-risk kids and tough challenges, that please the parents they serve.

But as Florida rushes to create more charter schools, the latest scores prove that simply sending a child to a privately run charter school doesn't guarantee a better education.

There are ways we can improve public education … with new technology, more parental involvement, well-rounded curricula, high standards and state funding that ranks better than our bottom-of-the-barrel levels.

Public education has been great in this country, producing generations of graduates that cured diseases and took us to the moon.

It can be great again.

But not by relying on catchphrases and quick fixes … especially when there's growing evidence that some of the changes aren't fixes at all.

smaxwell@tribune.com or 407-420-6141

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-scott-maxwell-charter-schools-071720110716,0,5833591,full.column