" ...Mixed academic results: Charters, on the whole, do not result in significant improvement in student performance. It's mixed at best. In some evaluations, charter schools overall actually underperform regular public schools.
Funding and unequal opportunity: Charter funding is also negatively affecting regular public schools. Charter advocates rely on the premise that as money flows from a regular school to a charter school, the costs of the regular school go down proportionately. Sounds good; it's just not true. Costs in schools sending students to charters cannot shift as fast as students and revenue leave. The costs for the principal, heating, lights, building debt and many other things remain; thus, the remaining children face the prospect of larger class sizes and cuts to core academic programming, music, art and other inequities...."
The Washington Post just published an article titled "Florida's big charter school problem ( which Jeb Bush manages not to talk about) which begins by quoting a 2011 Miami Herald article
" In many instances, the educational mission of the school clashes with the profit-making mission of the management company, a Miami Herald examination of South Florida’s charter school industry has found. Consider:
• Some schools have ceded almost total control of their staff and finances to for-profit management companies that decide how the schools’ money is spent …
• Many management companies also control the land and buildings used by the schools — sometimes collecting more than 25 percent of a school’s revenue in lease payments, in addition to management fees …
• Charter schools often rely on loans from management companies or other insiders to stay afloat, making charter school governing boards beholden to the managers they oversee …
The story made the point of noting that Florida’s charter school laws “are aimed more at promoting the schools than policing them, leaving school districts with few ways to enforce the rules.” *** And boy doesn't this sound like an "F" school that we are all familiar with (clears throat...Windsor Prep...just sayin) that's paying over $7million to the management company to "lease" the school property and facility, in addition to the other "management fees" they pay?
It continues, and cites another SunSentnal article I've shared before, which investigated Charter school failures in South Florida, and the accompanying shady dealings:
"Jeb Bush was not the only one touting charter schools. The same year he made his pitch to the RNC, an investment consultant enthused on CNBC that charter schools were "a great opportunity… a half billion dollar opportunity.” In short order, news outlets from Forbes to the Huffington Post reported the growing interest among investors in charter schools and the lucrative opportunities resulting from this new model. And the cultivation of that interest continues: in March of this year, Business Insider reported that the "Walton Family Foundation — the philanthropic group run by the Walmart family — sponsored a symposium at the Harvard Club for investors interested in the charter school sector."
Aided by influencers like the Waltons and others, Jeb Bush put South Florida squarely at the forefront of the charter school bonanza. And the rise of the charters as big business in Florida brought with it new and special forms of financial corruption." from http://www.alternet.org/education
"Reform” is really a misnomer, because the advocates for this cause seek not to reform public education but to transform it into an entrepreneurial sector of the economy."
"The leading funders of the reform movement are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which supports charter schools and test- based teacher evaluation; the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which supports charter schools and trains urban superintendents in its managerial philosophy; and the Walton Family Foundation, which funds vouchers and charters."
" Now consider these points… The notoriously liberal Gates Foundation has heavily influenced Obama’s education policies, funded Common Core, and provided over$5 million in funding to Jeb’s foundation (Foundation for Excellence in Education). Meanwhile, Jeb’s company (Academic Partnerships) paid Hillary a quarter of a million dollars to provide a sales pitch at one of his corporate education events. Finally, Hillary has long been connected to and received support from both theWalton Foundation (conservative) and the Broad Foundation (liberal). Does this web of intersecting money trails make your head hurt? We could go on for hours. This bi-partisan web is huge, and the corruption and bad policies have nothing to do with being democrat or republican because all of these people are in each others pockets. The REAL problem has everything to do with money and who has the money to purchase enough power to shut the rest of us out.
See, wealthy people, corporations, and foundations don’t pay as much in taxes as we do because they have enormous tax exemptions. This means that you, me, and our neighbors are actually paying to fund the public schools. Aside from that, most of these people would never dare send their kids to a public school. This means that WE are paying to fund OUR schools. So, we have to ask why these people are so darn ‘vested’ (or invested) in the schooling experience of our children. Well, there is a really cruel trick at play here. While you and I fund our public schools, they use their funds, corporate clout, tax-exempt donations, and lobbying efforts to create laws that govern ONLY our children and our schools (Seriously, when was the last time you saw a mandate for private schools?). However, they simultaneously own the for-profit companies that sell the same programs (curricula, text books, tests, virtual schools, etc.) that their laws require our schools to buy with our tax dollars. So, essentially, this means:
- they get tax breaks for writing laws that effect only us
- their laws require us to purchase from them the programs they would never give to their own kids
- and, in turn, they use the profits they make off our tax dollars to write more legislation that amasses into more power for themselves."
The "F"school Windsor Prep, East Windsor Middle, and other charter schools like them are funded by us..making huge profits off of us...siphoning monies from public schools that are already struggling. They ARE NOT proving themselves to be any better, and as in the case of "F" school Windsor Prep, they have proven to be among the worst in the state.
Is it worth it?
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