Challenges in Duval Demand Real Conversations, Not Another Corporate Charter Experiment

At last week’s state Board of Education meeting, Duval Public Schools new superintendent, Dr. Diana Greene, was put in the hot seat defending her plans to turnaround some of Duval’s chronically struggling public schools. Commissioner of Education, Richard Corcoran, was especially irritated that Dr. Greene, and her duly elected school board, had not chosen to hand these public schools over to an out-of-state charter chain from Texas, IDEA Academy. The state board, along with the commissioner, suggested state takeover might be necessary and vowed to seek legislation next session to allow them to adequately “punish” districts refusing to privatize.

And this, my friends, is a great demonstration of how the flawed A-F accountability system, which ranks and sorts children and schools on flawed standardized test scores, will lead to the corporate takeover of public education. This is not about the kids. Florida’s A-F school grades system labels students and schools by family income as much as any measurable education outcome and, when combined with Florida’s systematic defunding of public schools, results in the labeling of schools in struggling neighborhoods as “failing,” encouraging families to seek private, less accountable, options.

Privatization of Jacksonville’s public schools has had support from some of the most powerful members of their business community. Business leaders, like former FLBOE member Gary Chartrand, have been leaders in the privatization movement, bringing in Teach for America and the KIPP charter school chain to Florida. According to last week’s FLBOE meeting, Jacksonville’s business/philanthropic community is ready to bring in the IDEA chain, as well. The IDEA corporation has already met with these struggling communities yet, according to Dr. Greene, no applications have been submitted. Dr. Greene assured Commissioner Corcoran that charter schools that go “through the process” and who’s applications “met all the criterion” have not been turned down in Duval County. In his closing comments, Commissioner Corcoran challenged that assertion:

“I asked her would she approve a charter, and she said if they comply and they have that record, I’ll approve them, she just denied a double A charter school to go in exactly those neighborhoods, a double A to go into those neighborhoods, Seaside Academy, she denied them and her reasoning was beyond specious, she started quoting separate but equal from Brown v Board of Education. The only thing that’s going on in Jacksonville that is separate and unequal is the opportunity to those kids (in the struggling schools). They have complete and utterly unequal opportunity at life, facilitated by the leadership, and she led the charge to the board to deny that charter.”

Hmmm… reasoning beyond specious… We looked up the demographics and performance at the “double A charter” Seaside Academies Mr. Corcoran mentioned. It looks like separate and unequal might have been a valid concern:

Duval Public Schools report a student population that is 34% White, 43% African American, 13% Hispanic and 5% multiracial.

Seaside Community Charter:

• 15.7% minority
• 4.4% Free and Reduced Lunch (poverty indicator)

Seaside Charter

• K-8 22% minority
• 15.2% Free and Reduced Lunch

Compare those with Jacksonville’s most struggling schools:

Northwest Middle School

• 94.8% minority
• 100% Free and Reduced Lunch

Lake Forest Elementary

• 96.9% minority
• 100% Free and Reduced Lunch

A recent commentary in the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, by Nate Monroe, explains some if the background to the Duval School Board’s decision to deny the Seaside application based on the determination that its diversity plan would have segregated students. The entire commentary is worth reading. It begins like this:

“Jacksonville never really desegregated its public school system — the culmination of a deep, collective shrug by the courts, city leaders and the public when it came to the city’s black children. In many respects, they still shrug today.

The charitable interpretation is that school leaders took so long to desegregate the system — spending more than 40 years in a court battle overseen by five different federal judges — that by the turn of the 21st century white flight from the core city had created de facto segregation within Jacksonville anyway, and at that point there was nothing the school system could do to diversify those neighborhood schools.

The more damning story — the more, it turns out, convincing one — is that Jacksonville simply failed its children in this effort either intentionally or by serious miscalculation.”

Please read Mr. Monroe’s entire piece. He sums up Commissioner Corcoran’s comments like this: “he knows next to nothing about Duval, so it’s likely some local power broker who is against the Duval School Board’s proposed tax hike put Corcoran up to his little diatribe.” (Gary Chartrand, perhaps?)

Bringing a corporate charter chain from Texas is unlikely to be the silver bullet needed to turnaround Duval’s most struggling communities:

“The solution Corcoran and many in the Jacksonville civic class support to fix the problem of public education is to expand charter schools. In a perfect world, charters would elevate public schools through competition and innovation. We don’t live in a perfect world, however, and in the real one, charter schools are a totally unproven replacement for traditional public schools that nonetheless cannibalize the shrinking pool of money available for public systems. They are also big business, which Corcoran and his buddies surely know because their cash has propped up many political careers.”

Duval County Public Schools board member Elizabeth Andersen disagreed with Commissioner Corcoran’s assessment, supporting Dr. Greene and insisting the school board is prepared to make the changes necessary to support the children in these communities.

“These struggling schools are in struggling neighborhoods, and their needs go beyond our school walls,” Andersen said. “I would welcome anyone that wants to learn more about these schools and communities to visit and to work with us toward solutions and change that support public education.”

The challenges resulting from a failure to de-segregate Duval’s public schools and communities will not be fixed by an out-of-state corporate charter chain. As Nate Monroe pointed out:

“There are clearly race-based disparities in the public school system, vestiges of forces that have never ceased to exist in Jacksonville, and the system doesn’t have enough money because it has been denied some of the revenue streams available to literally every other county in Florida. This seems like a decent starting point for a conversation.”

https://www.jacksonville.com/news/20190523/nate-monroe-jacksonville-cant-afford-to-repeat-history-on-public-schools

That is a good starting point for a conversation. That conversation, however, will need local voices, not those of Tallahassee’s political appointees who are calling for another petri dish experiment on Duval’s most at-risk children.

Retaining the local control of public education is important. Local school board members understand the needs of their community better than anyone judging from afar. The current Duval School Board appears prepared to have the difficult discussions and make the necessary changes to support their communities and their children. The role of the FLBOE was NEVER to takeover the responsibilities of local school boards. The FLBOE can never fully understand the intricate issues that cause a school and a community to struggle. If school choice, alone, could reverse the effects of segregation and economic disparity, it would have done so by now. 

Support local control of public education in Duval.