Scathing Purple Musings
Color me purple in Florida ALL Week
About Those Numbers, Jeb
Jeb Bush’s new website is all over the place and telling anyone who will listen about Florida’s education miracle, the magnificence of Common Core and so on. Looks like the editors of the Tampa Bay Times aren’t having any of it: 1 Florida’s graduation rates reached an all-time high of 75 percent in 2012-2013. BUT the graduation rate was 58.9 percent for African-American males and 80.5 percent for
The Thin Line Between Charter Schools USA and Florida Law
This week’s hilarious story that Charter Schools USA CEO Jonathan Hage owns a yacht called Fishin’ 4 Schools overshadows what may be some major wrongdoing on the part of Hage. In a column that appeared in the Tampa Bay Times, Hillsborough League of Women Voters president, Shirley Arcuri revealed this little tidbit: Another area where the distinction between public and private is blurred for the b
Gainesville Sun: Lawmakers Need to Be Honest About Voucher Program
From the editors of the Gainesville Sun: Lawmakers still haven’t addressed the fact that voucher recipients aren’t required to take the same standardized tests as public-school students. Private schools that receive vouchers are also exempt from state standards such as requiring that teachers have bachelor’s degrees. About 80 percent of vouchers go to religious schools that, as Politico.com recen
APR 02
Step Up For Student’s Desperate Spin to Save Florida Voucher Expansion
One would think that an entity which assumed to be the primary steward of almost $1 billion dollars in money belonging to Florida taxpayers would have their numbers straight. Whatever number families on a voucher waiting list that Step Up for Students finally settles upon will have as much credibility as does the Obama administrations claim to have 7.1 million enrollees in those new Affordable Car
APR 01
Florida Voucher Bill “Like a Zombie That Won’t Die”
From Palm Beach Post writer Frank Cerabino: And by the time the program seeps into the middle class, it will be too late to stop. Florida’s expansion of public funding of private schools will have a significant “domino effect,” said Andrew Coulson, the director of the Cato Institute’s Center of Educational Freedom. “If you have 300,000 kids in a single state in private schools, thanks to a school
MAR 31
Don Gaetz Caves on Same Accountability Standards for Florida Voucher Schools
Once thought to have drawn a line in the sand on holding voucher schools to the same accountability standards and are public schools, Sen. Don Gaetz (R-Niceville) has apparently changed his mind. From Marcia Lane in the St. Augustine Record: But the latest House version does not include a testing requirement for students receiving vouchers, or “tax credit scholarships” as they are also called. Gae
MAR 30
Step Up For Students Finds That Waiting List After All
Two hours after Scathing Purple Musings pointed out that the administrative agent for Florida’s voucher system, Step Up for Students, did not really have a waiting list that Rep. Erik Fresen has been telling everybody about, SUFS CEO Doug Tuthill produced one: For new families who apply and get shut out, or who try to apply in the summer after we’ve already stopped accepting applications, we invit
MAR 29
Erik Fresen’s Claim of a “Pent-Up Demand” for Florida Vouchers Cannot Be Verified
Step Up for Students, the organization which administrates Florida’s voucher program watched Friday’s hearing in the House Appropriations Education Subcommittee and realized that Democrats wanted numbers that Rep. Erik Freseen (R-Miami) couldn’t provide. They must have cringed when Fresen said that there was “pent-up demand” for vouchers. SUFS immediately went to work to get out in front of this.