According to an editorial by Orlando Sentinel’s Mike Thomas:
A typical public school is operated by a large, inflexible, bureaucratic institution called a school district. Jeb Bush, like many conservatives, considered these districts inefficient and unresponsive because they were held to no standard of performance. And so he introduced accountability, using the FCAT to monitor student progress and grade schools (and) competition, based on the principle that if a business risks losing customers to another business, it will perform better. He
did this in several ways, using vouchers … charter schools and school transfers.
Charter schools are… set up by nonprofit corporations, which operate using public money.
Bush encouraged charter schools by loosening restrictions on their formation and oversight. It isn't surprising that the lax oversight and rapid growth led to the kind of abuses we reported last week. The goal here seemed to be less about the quality of individual schools and more about fast-tracking competition. That is why charter-school students, on average, do no better on the FCAT than students from regular public schools. The same …for students who transfer out of failing schools into higher-performing ones. Their test scores don't improve. It is not unusual now for once-failing public schools (to) win the competition battle. Parents who once fled them return.
Public schools can compete.The next phase of school choice should emphasize
quality over quantity. And that means applying the same accountability standards to both charter and public schools.
What sounds like a logical conclusion is now being protested in Wisconsin. The state Department of Public Instruction has tightened the requirements for those who can teach at charter schools. Charter proponents say: "This is going to have damaging impact on schools," said John Gee, executive director of the Wisconsin Charter Schools Association. "What DPI is doing is taking away the innovation and flexibility of charter schools."
Let me get this right: Public schools need extraordinary amounts of accountability and super qualified instructors to better educate children, screw innovation, while charter schools can use less qualified teachers in certain subjects and innovate by not having the same standards as public schools.
It’s that twisted logic that convinced me early on that diverting taxpayer dollars to private interests, profit or non-profit, was a scheme to slide slowly into privatization. Again, in Europe private and public schools compete for “voucher” money using the same set of standards, curriculum and testing, forcing innovation and true competition. How simple can it get?
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