One Florida Community Complains About TOO MANY Charter Schools Opening

I wish all communities would complain about TOO many charter schools opening!!!!

Scathing Purple Musings

From Sun Sentinelreporter Arun Sivasankaran:

Tamarac city officials have shot down a proposal to open a charter high school within the city.

At a recent City Commission meeting, officials went against staff’s recommendation and voted unanimously against granting a special exception to open an alternative high school named International High School. The denial is in the backdrop of complaints by city residents that too many charter schools are opening in the city.

The city’s planning board initially referred the matter to the City Commission without any recommendation. After city officials voted to send the item back to the planning board, the board voted 3-2 in favor of approving the request by the property owner, American Charter Development, and the school operator, Newport Education Partners.

Voting against the application, Mayor Harry Dressler referred to “existing deficiencies” in the city’s code in addressing the issue of special exception for charter schools…

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Don’t Trust Charters More than a Sweaty Used Car Salesman (A Citizen Research Template)

Comparing charters to sweaty salesmen! Classic! I think more and more people are starting to wake up to the failed promise of charter schools. It won’t happen overnight, but damn, they’ve gotten a lot of bad press this year.

Cloaking Inequity

Recently I have noticed a new snare from charter cheerleaders. Their approach is for them to ask you to tell them which charters school you love/like. This is a clever trap. My response is, “Why don’t you tell me the worst offenders on the issues of equity and access and tell me which ones we should close?” Then wait for the pregnant silence.

How do you evaluate a charter school? Should the only consideration be test scores?… or a school’s marketing brochures?… self-reported college application and acceptance rate? Or maybe we should be okay with a particular corporate charter they are just the “it” school in the media and for foundations this year. In most states there is data readily available to assess charter schools. In fact, this blog was created two years ago to respond to KIPP press release about a peer reviewed study that took issue with African…

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