A reader writes, referring to Muskegon Heights, Michigan:
The for-profit company that is operating the entire school system near me fired all the teachers and hired new ones back at half price. I can’t wait to see how this is going to work. I have heard that teachers are walking off the job at the end of the day. Cheaper is just not always better.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
where is this happening? In what state?
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Muskegon Heights, Michigan
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My question as well–what district is totally charter?
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Muskegon Heights, Michigan.
The entire district was given to a for-profit charter corporation.
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The shareholder-taxpayers are happy… and the shareholders of the for profit company are happy… and I’ll bet the kids who aren’t suspended from school on the day State tests are given will be coached by newbie teachers to pass… so what’s the problem ;-(
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When is cheaper ever better…unless it means you getting something for nothing? Unfortunately cheaper is what these companies want. There is a reason why we made schools public. We’ve just forgotten why.
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This is the Muskegon Heights school system in Michigan. I believe they are the first all-charter district in the country. The district was first taken over by an Emergency Manager, who in Michigan has the power of a dictator. The Emergency Manager turned the district over to a for-profit company. We are trying to find out what is happening over there. So far, it seems like a disaster.
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How many TFA’s have been hired in Muskegon Heights? The Emergency Manager… is now the manager of his own disaster, I suspect.
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How come I can’t find any articles about this? Do you have a link or any other information? It seems kind of weird to post this comment without giving us any avenue to verify or contextualize it. I was able to find an article about the Muskegon Heights school district being taken over by a Charter School company, but nothing about sacking all the teachers.
http://michiganradio.org/post/muskegon-heights-schools-handed-over-charter-school-company
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How come I can’t find any articles about this? Do you have a link or any other information? It seems kind of weird to post this comment without giving us any avenue to verify or contextualize it. I was able to find an article about the Muskegon Heights school district being taken over by a Charter School company, but nothing about sacking all the teachers.
http://michiganradio.org/post/muskegon-heights-schools-handed-over-charter-school-company
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A news item from Sept. 18 on the start of the year: http://www.michiganradio.org/post/charter-company-faces-challenges-running-public-school-district-first-weeks-class
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Thank you for that link, although it doesn’t mention anything about the teachers being fired. All it says is that a top administrator responded she guessed there were a “a few” teachers who had left.
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If you google Muskegon Heights and “fired teachers,” there are many articles.
All the teachers in the district were fired.
Here is one article: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/musk-j02.shtml
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When I google Muskegon Heights and “fired teachers,” I don’t come up with anything about teachers being fired in the Muskegon Heights school district. If I narrow my results to news, all I come up with is a couple of articles from the World Socialist Website, which I’m not discrediting as a source in itself, but it seems strange that a district could fire all it’s teachers and not seem to have any other press about it. I read the article you linked to and they do mention in passing that all the teachers were fired, but there isn’t anything said about it beyond that.
I’m not trying to nitpick, and I think that the idea of a private company completely running a district with no union controls is scary, but it just seems fishy that something as dramatic as all the teachers in a district being fired could happen and nobody would be reporting it aside from a sidenote in an article on the World Socialist Website.
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It is odd that you were unable to find a story about the firing of every teacher in the district. There are many news reports, and they do not come from the World Socialist website. Try the local Fox News outlet: http://www.fox17online.com/news/fox17-emergency-manager-muskegon-heights-will-be-charter-school-20120525,0,6973922.story
The emergency manager says he will be the only employee in the district. Every teacher and public employee in the district got a pink slip.
The for-profit charter corporation will extract in profit about the same amount as the district’s deficit.
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I’m sorry. Thank you for the link.
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The McDonaldization of education.
Perhaps someone should bring this to the attention of Michael Moore. I usually find him a bit obnoxious, but this is the sort of thing he could sink his teeth into.
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