How School Choice Works: The School Has the Choice to Close Mid-Year and Transfer Its Students
How school choice works:
- Florida parents and students think they have chosen a charter school.
- School decides to close mid-year.
- Parents and students are informed less than three weeks prior to closure that they will be transferred to another charter school.
- Original, “chosen” school has apparently made arrangements to merge with a charter chain in the name of choosing a “different direction”– the details of which have yet to be disclosed.
More key details from WLRN, dated November 08, 2019:
Several students leaving LBA (Latin Builders Association) Academy on Thursday afternoon said they had been informed this week the school was shutting down and they were being transferred to the nearby charter school Mater Academy in Hialeah Gardens. …
A spokeswoman for Mater Academy confirmed there’s a “partnership” in the works between the South Florida charter school network and the LBA. …
Mater Academy is one of four prominent charter school networks affiliated with the South Miami for-profit educational service provider Academica. The Mater, Somerset, Pinecrest and Doral academy networks pay millions in taxpayer dollars annually to Academica for administrative services. Academica has close financial ties to several current and former state lawmakers who have crafted lucrative laws and budgets benefiting charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run.
School choice empowers parents and students– right up to the inconvenient, unexpected moment it doesn’t.
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School Choice: The End of Public Education?
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Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of two other books: A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education and Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?. You should buy these books. They’re great. No, really.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Good analysis. Charters are all for choice unless it includes the right for a student to choose a selective admission school if they don’t meet the “standards.” Admission standards neutralize consumer choice. This is exposes the charters’ cynical use of free market terminology; hospitals don’t ask for your SATs as a condition of admission.