Journalists Doing Good- At Last!

[JackLuis]

When the Fourth Estate Cares!

‘What real journalism looks like’: Orlando Sentinel exposes Florida’s $1 billion school voucher scam

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.

This is why the press must be free.

 

[phrodeau]

I can't see what DeVos and Trump have to do with it, for good or ill.

 

[adrina]

I can't see what DeVos and Trump have to do with it, for good or ill.

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 Sentinal discovered an alarming lack of oversight.

“After Palm Bay Police began investigating principal Samuel Vidal Jr., who was accused last year of lifting the shirt of a 15-year-old student and putting his mouth on her breast, Vidal shut down his private Christian school,” the Sentinel found. “But the police investigation didn’t stop Vidal, 41, from winning approval from the Florida Department of Education to open a new private school in Palm Bay and collect nearly $200,000 in state-backed scholarships. And even after Vidal was charged with felony lewd or lascivious molestation, prompting the state to pull scholarships from the second school, it approved yet another school this year with ties to Vidal.”

After touring a voucher school with Secretary DeVos, President Trump said he wanted to expand the “great success” of Florida’s program nationwide.

So basically DeVos and Trump want to expand a system with no oversight and that allows charlatans to rob the taxpayers and the public school system.

 

[Hypoxia]

So basically DeVos and Trump want to expand a system with no oversight and that allows charlatans to rob the taxpayers and the public school system.

Wasn't that in the party platform?

 

[sr71plt]

Journalists have been doing good all along.

 

[JackLuis]

Journalists have been doing good all along.

A good deal of them are just click bait pushers. A good muckraker is hard to find these days. The LSM buries a lot of good journalism, I guess because it hurts the Establishment Fee Fees.

 

[sr71plt]

A good deal of them are just click bait pushers. A good muckraker is hard to find these days. The LSM buries a lot of good journalism, I guess because it hurts the Establishment Fee Fees.

It's not that hard to filter them, and if the journalist hadn't been very active in recent years, a lot more will have been shoved under the carpet than has been done. We are in the era of the Big Lie.

 

[Hypoxia]

A good deal of them are just click bait pushers.

"I saw the best minds of my generation... designing clickbait for Amazon and Google."