"Neighborhood schools could soon be a thing of the past," the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported this weekend.
As our annual "changing landscape" analyses reveal, choice is becoming the norm in Florida's public education system. More than four in 10 students choose some option other than their assigned public school; in Miami-Dade County, these choosers now constitute a majority of all public-school students.
The Sun-Sentinel reveals districts are playing a crucial role in driving this trend, and that they're creating magnet programs and other new options in part to compete with charter schools proliferating in their backyards. (more…)
Florida school districts are home to some of the fastest-growing charter school sectors in the country, according to a recent report from a national charter school group.
Still, despite their growth in recent years, none of the state's districts approaches the charter school enrollment share of cities like New Orleans, Cleveland or Detroit, according to the latest annual data released by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
The report says charter schools are the "fastest-growing school choice option in the U.S. public education system," growing by 70 percent over the past five years and now enrolling 2.7 million students.
During the 2013-14 school year, on which the report is based, Florida was home to more than one in 12 of those students.
Palm Beach County's charter school enrollment grew by 34 percent last school year, the second-fastest in the country. It was joined by Orange and Duval Counties among the top 10 districts for charter growth. All three were among the 10 fastest-growing for the second year in a row.
Parents turn to charter schools for all kinds of reasons, and it’s not always because they want something different. Witness what’s happening right now in Broward County, Fla.
As highlighted by this fascinating story from the Miami Herald, a group of parents in Broward, the nation’s sixth-biggest school district, are pushing for a charter school conversion as a way to save their district-run school, which they fear will be closed in the coming years.
In Broward, the district last year announced the closure of Wingate Oaks and another special-needs school — in the name of efficiency. The district had six specialized learning centers and argued that consolidating them into four would allow students to get expanded services and, in the end, a better education.
One center, Sunset school, was indeed shut down. But the district postponed closing Wingate Oaks after parents made impassioned arguments against the relocations, which in some cases would force medically fragile children to endure bus rides of more than an hour to get to school. Some students are in wheelchairs; others need help going to the bathroom. Parent David Martinez’s daughter gets her nourishment through a feeding tube.
“When you’re a parent of a child with a disability, it takes a while to earn trust,” Martinez said. The staff at Wingate had done that, he said, and then all of the sudden the district pulled the rug out.
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Postponing the closure did not placate the Wingate parents because Broward set the condition that no additional students would be allowed to enroll there. That set the stage for what parents call the school’s “slow death,” with a steady decline in resources and enrollment.
So the parents brainstormed and came up with the charter school proposal.
The article notes that charter school conversions are still rare. They've actually become increasingly rare as charter schools have proliferated around the state. (more…)
This clip from today’s South Florida Sun Sentinel provides more evidence that Florida school districts are adapting to a more market-driven public education system:
With budget constraints and fierce competition from charter schools, the Broward School Board is taking a hard look at which magnet schools may not be drawing enough students.
Programs that aren't popular could be changed or canned. Successful magnets, such as the district's two Montessori schools, could be replicated or expanded.
'Whatever's not working, in my opinion, you don't continue it,' said board member Robin Bartleman.
The parental choice movement’s efforts to make public education more democratic are clearly gaining momentum.
