This story was co-published with Slate.
This past June, Florida’s top education agency delivered a
failing grade to the Orange Park Performing Arts Academy in suburban
Jacksonville for the second year in a row. It designated the charter
school for kindergarten through fifth grade as the worst public school
in Clay County, and one of the lowest performing in the state.
Two-thirds of the academy’s students failed the state exams last
year, and only a third of them were making any academic progress at all.
The school had had four principals in three years, and teacher turnover
was high, too.
“My fourth grader was learning stuff that my second grader was
learning — it shouldn't be that way,” said Tanya Bullard, who moved her
three daughters from the arts academy this past summer to a traditional
public school. “The school has completely failed me and my children.”
The district terminated the academy’s charter contract. Surprisingly,
Orange Park didn’t shut down — and even found a way to stay on the
public dime. It reopened last month as a private school charging $5,000 a
year, below the $5,886 maximum
that low-income students receive to attend the school of their choice
under a state voucher program. Academy officials expect all of its
students to pay tuition with the publicly backed coupons.
Reverend Alesia Ford-Burse, an African Methodist Episcopal pastor who
founded the academy, told ProPublica that the school deserves a second
chance, because families love its dance and art lessons, which they
otherwise couldn’t afford. “Kids are saying, ‘F or not, we’re staying,’”
she said.
Click here for the full article.
Source: ProPublica
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