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Serve children, not charter schools
A Times Editorial
Published July 4, 2006
In creating a new state bureaucracy to approve and oversee new charter schools, Florida intends to wave the green flag. But the "Schools of Excellence Commission" signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush will succeed only if the goal is not merely to create more. The point of charter schools, first authorized a decade ago, is to foster new educational approaches, remove burdensome regulations and allow earnest organizers the chance to reach out to students who are being poorly served in other public schools. Toward that end, quality matters more than quantity. A report last year found one in four charter schools to be in financial trouble and one in eight to be failing academically. More than 40 have been shut down. The danger with this new commission is that it was motivated primarily by a belief that county school boards have not been supportive enough. Those boards do have a built-in conflict, approving and overseeing charter schools billed as filling a need the public schools don't. But the Constitution also says plainly that school boards "shall operate, control and supervise all free public schools within the school district." More importantly, the evidence for such a conspiracy against charter schools doesn't exist. Florida now has 92,000 students in 333 charter schools, ranking it third in the nation. Fifty new ones were opened this past year. The commission will be usurping the authority of elected school boards and transferring to Tallahassee a job that is better left at home. The appointed commission could allow districts to continue making decisions on charter schools locally, but only if it deems the district to have "provided fair and equitable treatment" in the past. Whether a Department of Education office in Tallahassee is capable of overseeing a charter school enrollment that would rank as the eighth largest district is far from certain. But this new Schools of Excellence Commission can only work if its appointees view their job as serving children and not charters.
[Last modified July 4, 2006, 01:21:53]
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