More than a half dozen years after Jeb Bush left Tallahassee, Florida’s “education governor” has left an evolving legacy that is more than FCAT “accountability.”
Quantitatively, Florida has two of the top10 school districts in the country when it comes to charter-school students. Miami-Dade County, at number 6, has 35,000 charter students. Broward, at number 10, has more than 23,000.
Qualitatively, Florida has an ongoing love-hate relationship with charters. They’ve been lavishly praised by some for being a welcome public-school alternative, but publicly criticized by many more on several fronts–ranging from problematic for-profit management-taxpayer scenarios to underperformance to questions of operational oversight.
As for locals, Hillsborough County, with 6,100 charter students, grew 52 percent from the previous school year. This is second in the country in rate of growth.