Thursday, April 18, 2013

Tony Bennett and the Florida legislature’s stunning hypocrisy (rough draft)

Tony Bennett says he wants local school boards to have control over the parent trigger decision, that way they won’t be passing the buck to the state. They will have to explain to locals their decisions. To make sure that happens he asked the Florida legislature to gut the parent trigger bill, to make it totally toothless. Great that’s the way it should be anyways, but then why has he and the state usurped the right of school districts to allow or disallow charter schools? Why doesn’t he think local school boards are capable of deciding what public schools should operate in their jurisdictions? Wouldn’t the same logic to both charter schools and the parent trigger apply? Of course it would and Bennett either knows it and he is a stunning hypocrite or there is something else going on.

The truth is the state doesn’t want locals in charge of charter schools because locals care about their children, something those in Tallahassee being paid off don’t. Locals also know that as a group charter schools are doing pretty poorly and we don’t want them educating our children. If locals alone were in charge of charter schools they would be both rare and good. We couldn’t have that however because who would contribute to all those republican legislators in Tallahassee.

So that leaves something else going on, something like he knows it is a stunningly bad bill but he has to have it pass so the school choice, err privatization movement doesn’t slow down. He has to have it pass so he and Jeb Bush have a shred of credibility left.

You should be asking yourself some questions, is Tallahassee for local control of schools or not, are you for local control of schools or not and who says one thing and does another. If you are being honest I believe you will easily find the elephant in the room. If you are for local control don’t be a hypocrite and tell Tallahassee to get out of our schools, that not charter schools or the parent trigger will lead to improvement.

To read a little more about the subject, click the link: http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/fl-gop-want-to-end-local-control-of-schools-except-when-they-dont-to-get-parent-trigger-passed/