View from Florida: Chicago charter scandals look familiar
Tea Party Gov. Rick Scott visits Florida charter school |
A December 14th NPR report found that Florida charters openly and illegally violate the rights of disabled students. In fact, arecent Miami Herald investigation found that few charter schools in Florida even try to serve students with severe disabilities. Statewide, 86% of charter schools do not have any students classified as severely disabled. That's despite state and federal laws that require charter schools to give equal access to these students.
Kids from low-income families and children of color are also systematically excluded from the state's wildly-expanding, privately-run charters.
The difference between Florida and Illinois is that in Illinois, the Democrats -- not Rick Scott's Tea Party Republicans -- run the schools. The latest Concept charter school give-away was done by one Dem machine warlord faction overruling the other to do the bidding of Turkish billionnaire Fethullah Gulen in exchange for some free junkets to Turkey.
Another difference is that, while Florida charters openly and willfully violate the law in their