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The Orlando Sentinel is being praised for a months long investigation on Florida’s school voucher program, inspecting fifty percent more schools than state education officials inspected in all of last year.
The newspapers three-part, Schools Without Rules expose on the state’s nearly $1 billion tax credit scholarship program.
“That is what real journalism looks like — a team of journalists doing shoe-leather reporting, conducting the kind of inspections, investigations and interviews that even the state’s education officials don’t,” Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell explained. “This little-regulated system needs an overhaul. And the world needs more real journalists.”
Reporters Beth Kassab, Leslie Postal and Annie Martin reported that “private schools in Florida will collect nearly $1 billion in state-backed scholarships this year through a system so weakly regulated that some schools hire teachers without college degrees, hold classes in aging strip malls and falsify fire-safety and health records.”
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos refused to visit any public schools during an August trip to Florida. In March, DeVos joined President Donald Trump in touring a voucher school.
“The scholarships are good. The problem is the school,” said Edda Melendez, an Osceola County mother. “They need to start regulating the private schools.”
originally posted by: projectvxn
a reply to: ketsuko
Agreed. But exposing 1 billion in waste and abuse is always a good thing.
School choice here in Nevada is kind of a misnomer. Especially in Northern Nevada where we are in the middle of a housing shortage, school shortage, teacher shortage, and medical shortage in both the VA and Private/Public hospitals.
originally posted by: jrod
a reply to: Irishhaf
My point is now the voucher program will be expanded across the nation, thanks to Trump and Devos. This will be more tax payer money wasted.
If the was better oversight on schools that receive voucher money, it would not be a bad program.
More from the Orlando Sentinel:
www.orlandosentinel.com...