Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: View from Florida: Chicago charter scandals look familiar

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: View from Florida: Chicago charter scandals look familiar:

View from Florida: Chicago charter scandals look familiar

Tea Party Gov. Rick Scott visits Florida charter school

Chicago's scandal-ridden charter schools look eerily familiar to educators down here in Florida where public schools have long been free give-aways to Govs. Bush and Scott's corporate and political cronies. It seems that almost anyone with blood or alcohol running through their veins can get a charter here in the Sunshine State --- students and teachers be damned.

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