Florida stacks the deck for Charter Schools

From the Orlando Sentinel's editoral board

Joseph Heller famously wrote in Catch-22 that "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you."

It's a wonder Florida's traditional public school officials haven't had that stamped on T-shirts. They've been looking over their shoulders recently for charter schools' feverish advance. Last year, lawmakers tightened traditional public schools' accountability, but loosened the shackles on charter school growth.

This year's legislative session only reinforced fears charters have staged a coup.

Joseph Heller We've long backed charter schools, declaring in 1996, they "could be a laboratory for the sort of innovation that would move Florida's education system to the front of the class, where it belongs."

Only the mad scientists in Tallahassee seem intent on shoving traditional public schools to the rear.

Take the so-called "parent trigger" bill, which mercifully died Friday in the Senate. Touted as a way to give parents at failing schools a stronger voice in picking turnaround plans, this bad bill would have cued the stampede of for-profit charter school companies looking to sweet talk frustrated parents and turn a fast buck.

Never mind that studies show traditional public schools often outperform charters schools.

Another bill proposed giving charters $55 million for construction out of a program for public education projects. Traditional public schools would've gotten zip.

Perhaps the biggest poke in the eye was an attempt by accountability-preaching lawmakers to exempt charters from the tough teacher evaluation measures they imposed on traditional public schools last year with a sweeping teacher merit-pay law. Yeah, no double-standards there.

Back in 1996, we said "Charter schools must be held strictly accountable academically and fiscally."

That hasn't changed. What must change is the uneven playing field that increasingly favors charter schools and puts traditional schools at a disadvantage. And sets them up for failure with increasing rigor (which we support) that opens the door for charter schools — which play by different rules — to play savior.

Charters aren't without fault, evidenced locally by the disastrous, now shuttered Imani Elementary Charter Academy, and more recently by Life Force Arts and Technology Academy in Pinellas County. That school not only faces bankruptcy, but also allegedly served as a recruiting ground for the Church of Scientology. A church-state nightmare.

Tallahassee needs to see charters as an innovative part of Florida's scholastic mix. Not the teacher's pet.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/os-ed-charter-schools-031012-20120309,0,1257685.story