Privatization and Other Hidden Costs of Charter School Choice: Integrity Florida Reports

After 2 decades of so-called education “reforms” in Florida (rapidly expanding privatized education options, like vouchers and charter schools, while utilizing a test and punish accountability system to blame teachers and drive students from traditional public schools) is the tide of public opinion starting to turn towards supporting our traditional public schools? Will Florida’s legislature take notice?

Last week, right-leaning Sunshine State News published an op-ed by Karen Effrem, executive director of The Florida Stop Common Core Coalition, outlining conservative concerns regarding the rapid expansion of charter schools in Florida. Dr. Effrem’s “Six Reasons Conservatives Should Believe the Defeat of Amendment 8 Was Correct,” cited loss of local control, lack of transparency and lack of financial stability as a few of the reasons that conservatives should question unabated charter school expansion and the current school choice movement. The response to Dr. Effrem’s piece was almost entirely positive. Perhaps the resistance to ed reform is less partisan than we have been led to believe…

Today, Integrity Florida released a report “The Hidden Cost of Charter School Choice, Privatizing Public Education in Florida,” which looks at the impact of unabated charter school growth on traditional public schools and the public school system.  Integrity Florida is “a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute and government watchdog whose mission is to promote integrity in government and expose public corruption.” Their research is “focused on increasing government transparency and accountability through open budgets, open contracts, open data, ethics reform, campaign finance reform and reducing cronyism.” Past reports have investigated Ethics Reform, Enterprise Florida and Budget Transparency.

We encourage you to read their charter school report here.

The report is an extensive literature review and highlights of the report’s findings include:

• While Charter school enrollment grows in Florida, the number of charter schools managed by for-profit companies in Florida continues to grow at a rapid pace and now makes up nearly half of all charter schools in the state.
• Charter schools have largely failed to deliver the education innovation that was originally promised and envisioned and research has found no significant difference in academic performance between charter schools and traditional public schools.
• Local school boards have seen repeated restrictions of their constitutional authority to manage the charter schools within their districts, resulting in a loss of local control of public education.
• Charter schools strain traditional schools and school districts financially.
• Lax regulation of charter schools has created opportunities for financial mismanagement and criminal corruption. Since 1998, at least 373 charter schools have closed their doors in Florida.
• The charter school industry has spent large amounts of money to influence education policy, spending – more than $13 million since 1998 to influence policy through political campaign contributions and more than $8 million since 2007 for legislative lobbying.
• Public officials who decide education policy and their families are profiting personally from ownership and employment with the charter school industry, creating the appearance of a conflict of interest.

The Integrity Florida report offers several policy options for the Florida Legislature to consider to improve financial transparency, re-establish local control and provide adequate funding for public education in Florida, including:

Improved Financial Transparency

• Require for-profit companies associated with charter schools to report their expenditures and profits for each school they operate.
• Require charter schools to post on their website their original application and charter contract along with their annual report, audit and school grade.
• Charter school websites should include lease agreements, including terms and conditions and who profits from the lease payments.
• Require companies managing charter schools in more than one school district to have annual audits ensuring local tax revenue is being spent locally.

Increased Local Control

• Give local school boards more tools to manage the charter schools in their districts, including greater contractual oversight and the ability to negotiate charter contracts.
• Add additional criteria for school boards to consider when reviewing and deciding on a charter school application

Provide Adequate Education Funding

• Increase education funding to sufficiently fund all public schools to eliminate competition between traditional schools and charter schools for inadequate public education dollars.

We hope legislators will study the report and commit to addressing it’s concerns. We hope journalists will take a deeper dive into the report’s findings.

To many who have been following education policy in Florida, these findings may come as no surprise. We hope the Integrity Florida report will encourage closer scrutiny of Florida’s education reform policies by those outside of the education advocacy sphere.

The most important piece of this report may be it’s title. The report’s formal recognition of the connection between the current school choice movement and the inevitable goal of privatization of public education is worth noting. Concerns regarding the privatization of public education are now mainstream and can no longer be dismissed as conspiracy theory. Complicit legislators, foundations and lobbyists should be held accountable for their continued attempts to privatize our public schools.