New Rule in Florida Gives Charter School Movement a Huge Boost

ORLANDO, FLORIDA — The movement to reform the public school system through charter schools took a big step forward this week in the state of Florida. 

The State Board of Education (BoE) approved a new rule on Wednesday that will enhance the approval process for prospective charter schools in the state. 

Charter schools are non-profit 501(c)(3) organizations that have a contract, or “charter,” to provide the same educational services to students as district public schools. They are nonsectarian public schools that operate with freedom from many of the regulations that apply to traditional public schools. 

During the 2022 Legislative Session, lawmakers approved the creation of a seven-member Charter School Review Commission to review charter-school applications. That legislation was sponsored by Florida Department of Education (FDOE) Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., who was serving as a state senator at the time. 

During Wednesday’s BoE meeting in Orlando, Diaz explained why the existing approval process needed reform.

“If you have a successful operator that Florida is trying to bring into the state to operate schools in areas of need, under the old system, that operator would literally have to go possibly to 67 different sponsors to apply and go through that process,” the commissioner said. “[The new rule] will allow this commission to take applications in multiple counties from an operator … and reduce the burden, the bureaucracy.”

GOING STRAIGHT TO THE STATE

In addition to streamlining the process for operators looking to establish charter schools in multiple counties, the new rule opens up a direct route to approval via the state – a charter school ally under the DeSantis administration. In March, Florida became the largest state in America to allow universal school choice.

Up to this point, prospective operators had to earn approval from local governments and school boards, which often oppose charter schools out of a loyalty to teachers’ unions. Going forward, operators can go straight to the commission.

“This is a [Charter School Review] Commission that is going to have the same powers and duties that a charter school sponsor would have when it comes to the review, the approval, or denial of an application,” Adam Emerson, FDOE’s School Choice Director, told the board on Wednesday.

“If they approve an application, it then gets turned over to whichever school district the school is going to be located in for sponsorship and for the initial negotiation of the charter contract.” 

The governor appoints new members to the Board of Education, and the board appoints members of the Charter School Review Commission.

READ MORE: New Bill Would Allow Cities, Towns to Turn Public Schools into Charter Schools

NEW STUDY SHOWS CHARTER SCHOOL SUPERIORITY

A Stanford University study published in June compared outcomes from students at charter schools with those of their peers in traditional public schools. The researchers reviewed the test results of 4 million students in 29 states between 2015 and 2019. 

They found that charter-school students’ performance reflected the equivalent of 16 days more of learning on average a year in reading than their local traditional public school (TPS) students and six days more of learning in math.

Additionally, when compared to their TPS peers, urban charter-school students had 29 additional days of growth per year in reading and 28 additional days of growth in math.

Thomas Sowell, economist and author of Charter Schools and Their Enemies, asserts that charter schools often perform higher than traditional public schools because they have greater incentive to do so.

“[Charter schools] have to please the parents in order to have the parents send their kids there, because no kids are required by compulsory attendance laws to go to a charter school,” Sowell told Uncommon Knowledge in 2020. 

“They're an all volunteer institution. And if you have poor education, you have a bedroom in the schools, dangerous students who are allowed to run amok, those parents are not going to send their kids to a charter school. So the incentives are entirely different.”