Excellent points, all. So disheartening that TN may soon be a part of the "school choice/ed freedom" group of states where vouchers hand public money to unaccountable private actors.
Follow the money. Ohio has been the Wild West of sub-par for-profit charter schools. The website "Know Your Charter" informs Ohioans exactly how much of their school tax dollars are being diverted from their local public school district, where the majority of residents send their children. How that information hasn't led to a huge outcry baffles me. There used to be a group in SW Ohio called COAST that purported to be a "watchdog" organization overseeing wasteful spending by school districts. Their hidden agenda was to bankrupt public schools and replace them with private Christian schools. The lawyer who worked for COAST to bring frivolous lawsuits and request information that costs time and money for schools to provide sent his children to a particular public school that strangely enough was never the target of COAST. When a member of this group ran for school board, they always ran as a conservative Christian, and when they won election, would do all they could to disrupt school business. My district was unfortunate enough to have a BOE member elected and her antics at BOE meetings made headlines because she had no idea what she was doing.
Excellent points, all. So disheartening that TN may soon be a part of the "school choice/ed freedom" group of states where vouchers hand public money to unaccountable private actors.
Follow the money. Ohio has been the Wild West of sub-par for-profit charter schools. The website "Know Your Charter" informs Ohioans exactly how much of their school tax dollars are being diverted from their local public school district, where the majority of residents send their children. How that information hasn't led to a huge outcry baffles me. There used to be a group in SW Ohio called COAST that purported to be a "watchdog" organization overseeing wasteful spending by school districts. Their hidden agenda was to bankrupt public schools and replace them with private Christian schools. The lawyer who worked for COAST to bring frivolous lawsuits and request information that costs time and money for schools to provide sent his children to a particular public school that strangely enough was never the target of COAST. When a member of this group ran for school board, they always ran as a conservative Christian, and when they won election, would do all they could to disrupt school business. My district was unfortunate enough to have a BOE member elected and her antics at BOE meetings made headlines because she had no idea what she was doing.
The remarkable thing about such groups is how easy it was to get the public to vote down school levies, which harmed their own children's education. Here's a 2018 article from the local newspaper that has the issue bass-ackwards. It's infuriating how hard it is to get people to stop voting against their own best interests. https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics-extra/2018/01/24/px-why-has-anti-tax-group-coast-been-singled-out-school-board-application/1063186001/