This is how the Miami Herald describes Charter Schools: Florida’s charter school movement has grown into $400-million-a-year powerhouse backed by real-estate developers and promoted by politicians, but with little oversight. The situation becomes worse when you factor in how many prominent Florida legislatures, who are voting on charter school legislation, and their family members are profiting off them.
You know why charter schools have taken off in Florida? It’s not because they provide an excellent alternative it’s because their owners pump money into our legislator’s coffers, it’s because hedge fund operators, politicians and land developers see an opportunity for easy money at the tax payers expense. Your children’s best interests are being trumped by politician’s and other’s desire for easy money.
Charter schools as factories for innovation have their place, however in Florida that’s not what we have. We have government subsidized private schools that are more concerned with the bottom line and profit margins than the best interests of our children.
In Florida if your child went to a charter school they were 740% more likely to have attended a failing school than if they went to a public school and that includes the much ballyhooed KIPP School here in Jacksonville; kids that went there as a group regressed.
Albert Shanker the man who coined the concept of charter schools has said when looking at what they have become (as a group) he wishes he never would have come up with them.
We should all be outraged and concerned with the direction the Florida Legislature, Jeb Bush and his cronies have us heading in. The answer is to support education with good policies, proper resources and effective leadership not to slowly kill it with a thousand cuts.
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