The Predatory Charter Fail Parade Wants to Franchise Itself

by Billy Townsend on Dec 2, 2011 in commentary | 1 comment

3rd Grade Raw Score Distribution

Yesterday’s Ledger carried a story headlined: “McKeel Gets High Performing Status”

This status depends on the stupid and opaque and chronically-inflated school grade measure. It’s even more stupid and opaque than the FCAT. In a practical sense–by which I mean how Harold Maready will get paid out of it–high performing status allows McKeel to cut the administrative fees it pays to the Polk district and set up other little predatory McKeel empires from the Atlantic to the gulf.

The bill’s sponsor was none other than our own stateswoman Kelli Stargel. You remember her. She’s married to John Stargel, the Republican lawyer and operative who previously occupied Polk’s district 64 House seat. The Republican machine in Polk County installed Kelli Stargel in district 64 after it installed John Stargel as a circuit judge. And after it installed Dennis Ross in that district there for a little while as he waited to run for Congress. When you caress the hands that feed you, they tend to reward you. Isn’t one-party democracy grand?

Kelli Stargel, you remember, wants to grade parents. However, she believes in grading her own school–and other predatory schools–on a curve. I say “her own school” because John Stargel sits on the McKeel Empire board. I wonder which schools her kids attend. (Usual disclosure: my child attends Lakeland Montessori.)

(Note to Merissa: Every story you write about McKeel should include some version of the two paragraphs I just wrote. It’s important public information. You’re better than this.)

You will also notice in The Ledger story that Berkley Accelerate Middle and Ridgeview charter schools were designated “high performing”. This will amuse you if you were reading closely yesterday’s assessment of what Polk schools do with the student bodies dealt them–or that they deal themselves.

Who were Polk’s three worst performing elementary schools in my calculations? South McKeel, Berkley, and Ridgeview Global. Now, in fairness, Berkley Middle is just a “feeder” program for the poor little underserved munchkins at Berkley Elementary. But still.

The predatory charters have become so good at wringing mediocrity from their top draft picks, out of kids with every conceivable advantage, that the state wants them to export that everywhere. Yay. It should be studying and exporting what Alturas and Eastside and Jesse Keen do, not rewarding the Miami Heat of education.

Another lesson here is that people who claim to hate government thoroughly love it when its prime function is to keep out riff-raff, enrich top executives, and plunder resources from everyone else. That is the essence of conservative government. The bigger the better. What observation of public life in Polk County would allow you to disagree with that? I’d really like to hear it, conservatives. But I expect the same silence I get from McKeel.

In the meantime, here are the McKeel Empire board members.

Mark Thompson
Dr. Lawrence (AKA Larry) Ross
John Stargel
Michael Peeples
Carolyn Jackson
Seth McKeel
Stephanie Campbell
Taylor Caffey

You’ll notice some locally famous names, including one whose entire professional purpose, as I understand it, is to instill leadership. Do you think McKeel Empire demonstrates leadership?

I would encourage you to politely engage these men and women–at Publix or church or wherever–about their school’s policies. (I already do that with one of them.) After all, they’re coming for your tax money. That’s what this is all about. If it wasn’t, money and expansion wouldn’t be at the heart of “high performing” status. And then they’re going to grade you as parents. Because you suck.

Ask them why their little china doll rich kids don’t compare in performance to Lakeland Montessori’s? If you’re gonna have a two-tiered system of rich and poor schools, the rich schools should excel and compare themselves to each other. 400 ought to be the benchmark. Rich schools should be embarrassed to compare themselves to the poor, especially when the poor schools are getting more out of what they got than the rich schools are. Punch in your own weight class and stop getting knocked out. Ask them why they’re not embarrassed by that.

Most of all, ask them why they’ve given up on their community and now just want to exploit it for money. Ask them why they want to start exploiting other communities. Ask them whom are they serving other than themselves and their friends. Ask them all of that. Make them answer. And then remind them there’s an entire cadre of education professionals–some great, some awful, most pretty good–who haven’t given up on their communities. They’re out there fighting for them every day as best they can under the unearned sneer of the “leadership” class. I know whose side I’m on.

Who’s side are you on?