As readers of this blog know, Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan is determined to break up public education and encourage privatization as rapidly as possible.
He has been relying on a group called the “Oxford Foundation” to devise his plans. As we now know is customary among corporate reformers, the group is named deceptively. it has nothing to do with Oxford and it is not a foundation. while the website has a section about “transparency,” the website contains no names.
Transparency is for the little people.
This article in the Detroit Free Press identifies the leader of the “Oxford Foundation.” He is Richard McLellan, a lawyer who was a founder of the free-market think tank Mackinac Center. Like the Center, he is a strong advocate of vouchers.
McLellan’s time has come. He has the ear of a governor who hates public education as much as he does.
And guess who is funding the privatization activities? Eli Broad.
They will say it is for the benefit of poor minority children. Don’t believe it.
Poor and minority people never benefit by destruction of the public sector.
When the public sector is privatized, follow the money.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Muskegon Heights School District in Michigan has been taken over by a for-profit company. They are paid $1.5 million while the teachers’ pay is a flat $35,000, no matter how much experience or education they have, unless a teacher can bargain for more. From what I can tell, approximately 15 teachers have quit since the beginning of the year. There is a classroom for Emotionally Impaired students which has already gone through six teachers since the beginning of the year, not to mention sub in between. You can’t tell me this is good for the students who need the MOST stability, not the least. I hope this legislation in Michigan dies quickly.
Who cares about the neediest students the market will take care of those who know how to exploit the neediest while we pay for it.
These kids will simply be institutionalized as in the good old days before parents decided to get a clue and sue. And where ARE those parents, anyway, and why aren’t they screaming bloody murder?
The papers will just talk about the greedy teachers who left these students behind instead of the profit grabbers. They are the modern day carpetbaggers.
Why do you get on here and lie? Do you have something to gain by doing so?
That is an article in “MLive”, citing an earlier article in the Detroit Free Press.
How can we help stop Michigan from going to hell in a handbasket?
Again, I ask: Where are the lawsuits against the institution of these unconstitutional schools?
Honest question, not snark: do you know who would have standing to file such a lawsuit? Any citizen of Michigan? Any Michigan parent? Or would they have to be able to show actual damages?
I’m not familiar with lawsuits on educational issues, but I have been following a number of lawsuits on civil liberties issues and from what I see, such cases are almost always dismissed because of lack of standing and/or because the plaintiff can’t prove actual harm. I’m guessing the same strategies would be used to defend any educational lawsuits.
Good point Dienne. It will probably require some kind of a class action suit, but I’m not sure what that would entail.
Gov Snyder and the Rep Legislative majority seem to be in such a hurry to codify bad law. They just had the voters vote their Emergency Manager law down and you would think that they might want to work with rather than against the tide of public opinion. But they don’t!
Governor Snyder and his friends are in a hurry. They can’t wait. They saw the election results. The voters are not on their side.
This is a school district in poverty that has had a great deal of trouble through the years, due to the economy and schools of choice. The local newspaper has covered it as though this is the best solution and that everything is perfect. The for-profit company running the school district is very good at P.R. This is a community without hope. They want this to work so badly they don’t really want to see that things are not going well. For those in Michigan, I have a petition on my facebook page, Mary Valentine, to send to our governor and legislators. Please sign and repost and send out to everyone you know. Thank you everyone for your concern. We may have to use the Freedom of Information Act to get all the information we need.
Finally the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News are reporting on Governor Rick “Nerd” (a disgrace to Dr. Seuss) Snyder and the Republican-led legislature’s plan to destroy public education in Michigan and in record time and virtually no transparency. Most frightening is that Michiganders still don’t understand the immediate crisis MI children face with HB 5323 and HB 6004 moving through our House and Senate in the dangerously waning hours of the lameduck session. Should these bills pass the Michigan Public Finance Education Act “draft” will be legislation waiting for this Governor’s desk in late January/early February. I am urging our Democratic leadership in our MI House and Senate to draft an op-ed and send it to the USA Today (Gannett owns the USA Today, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel and other newspapers) to shine a national spotlight on the destruction of public education in Michigan and what could be waiting for K-12 students in other states if there is not a state and national outcry. As an educational advocate across MI I have been posting about the Oxford Foundation and Governor Synder”s (nothing more than Englerites) plans to privatize education and turn our state into the haves and have nots. i have felt like Chicken LIttle on mute and wondering what it would take to wake up our sleeping dead-populace. I can only hope it is not to late to stop these bills and this gutting of public education and special education in Michigan.
Michigan State Board of Education Says Education Achievement Authority Bills Go Too Far
Riddle A Body — Snyder’s NERD Fund …
WXYZ • Governor Rick Snyder’s Million-Dollar Fund — Why Are Donors A Secret?
I agree that destruction of public sector is not a good thing. But I also see in my own area that the public sector is crippling low performing students by dishonest feedback and grading policies. Cheating scandals in our high school and on our college campus athletic program have been reported. I can’t help but want to support a charter school initiative by a local group and National Heritage Academies who want to help those kids by supporting rigor and behavior standards for ALL students, not just the high performing ones. Please tell me what other alternatives there might be for our area, and whether you know anything about National Heritage charters. School Board Members –one or two–terms are not up for another year in our district. I have tried letters to the paper, and the paper has been reluctant to cooperate. What other actions would you recommend?
Charters are coming and there is nothing we can do about it. Why not take a proactive stance and welcome the competition. Demand complete transparency in the funding. Let parents and taxpayers see where the money is going. Push States to relax some of the restrictions that are on public schools so they can play in the same arena as the charters. Unions and district work together to plan and implement new programs, pay structures, times, and PR. the charters will fold. The charters that in it for the profit will fold due to pressure.
I think the falicy here is that for-profit companies care about the students. From what I can see, they are in it for the money pure and simple. I have not seen public schools in my area falsify anything. That is a very tiny minority. Where that is happening, throw the book at the perpetrators, don’t throw the whole system out.
The problem with schools in areas of high poverty and high segregation is that we have yet to find out what the problem is and how to remedy it. Instead, we put in for-profit companies, which, as far as I can see, make it worse. They need to make their profit instead of paying the teachers. As a result, teachers leave and there is no stability, Staff turn-over lowers test scores for all students.
Can’t we use all the research that has been done to make good plans instead of turning our most vulnerable students over to for-profit operators?
It is not a tiny minority in my district–and I am pretty sure that is true for some other districts in NC. It is the whole district and you can’t throw a whole district out, unfortunately. I think proponents of these misleading and inflationary practices believe they are helping students or I can’t imagine why they would be insisting on them. But it is serious discrimination from my point of view and I just can’t support it. I am working on other alternatives, but haven’t seen any yet…
Detroit Free Press Editorial • Rush to School Reform Likely to Get It Wrong
Michigan has needed a thoughtful consolidation of school districts and actuarial study to consider the continuing need for 57 ISDs or lack there of. Personally speaking, the ISDs have become nothing short of economic albatrosses paying high salaries to numerous administrators, their staff and the real estate to house them and their Yertle the Turtle attitudes. If we were the wealthiest state in the U.S. we have too many school districts. Through thoughtful consolidation we could reduce our class sizes and deliver a quality education in “right size” districts. We would reduce overhead at every level and have the funds to equip classrooms with the explosion of instructional materials that create a Universal Design for Learning and teach to diverse learning styles. In addition, we should overhaul the teacher preparation standards in our colleges and universities. Michigan teacher preparation programs are not preparing teachers to mediate learning in their classrooms and teach children how to learn. Governor Snyder, Richard McLellan and the Republican-led legislature care nothing about rebuilding public education in Michigan. They have one agenda, and that is to turn education in our state into big business, and the children and teachers be damned.
The current system of district-based funding and governance is a hard-won compromise between what used to be the standard “conservative” and “liberal” positions, and it was worked out over many decades, just since I started paying attention.
It’s not the best of all possible worlds, and certainly not ideal from the standpoint of educational principles, much less liberal or progressive values. I did not understand the demand for local control and funding at first, but I came to see that people came honestly by it, from their natural sense of community engagement and personal involvement in their children’s futures.
But now the original conservative stance, that negotiated for local control, has been turned on its head. No, not quite. What has really happened is more like this — a schism has occurred between the people who hold conservative values and the leaders who pretend to represent them.
The ads blared “Small Government” — but what they meant was One Man Government, a Government of One.
I am principally a Democrat, albeit pragmatic and with a current belief that the teacher unions are in need of a reset and reminder that they exist to protect worker rights and not for the purpose of supporting bad practices. All that said, the notion of local control has never made sense for public education. Children cannot be the property of their local school district, community or state for the purpose of educating them to be equally prepared to complete for jobs across the U.S. and the global marketplace. I believe in the Common Core Standards but they will not be the great curricular equalizer until we have Common Core Standards in teacher preparation programs across the U.S. I agree with you that Republicans have a new and warped brand of non-elected small government. Further I agree that we must have traditional school districts with a funding stream that follows the district and not the child. Still, I believe that Michigan has too many school districts and that was before Governor Snyder removed the cap off of charters. I have never believed in the concept of charters and public academies. It may be the idealist in me but I believe that innovation can and should be taking place in our traditional public schools.
Sadly and at the same time infuriating to me is the reality that the destruction of public education at a Federal level is a Democrat and Republican effort. It leaves me wondering what has happened to Democrats that they believe children and their civil right to a globally-enviable public education should become big business. The Democrats are allowing the Republicans to push their insidious movement to destroy public education and at the age of 53 I have come to believe this is a runaway educational train that will not find its way back onto structurally secure tracks in our lifetime.
I will fight against this destruction and unapologetically for all of our nation’s children…although I believe We the People in the 21st Century do not have the fortitude or courage of conviction to rebuild pubic education because it is easier to go off onto tangents of privatization that perpetuate a myth that we are creating choice in public education through the creation of publicly funded charters and academies. Several years ago I wrote a blog for http://www.friendsofquinn.com titled, “Thanksgiving vs. Thanksnothing for Students with Disabilities.” On this Thanksgiving Day I could edit this blog only slightly and say that all MI children and countless children across the U.S. have nothing to be thankful for today, and where is the groundswell of outrage on their behalf.
This is the best analysis I have seen with respect to what’s wrong and how to rectify Michigan education!!!
I hope Marcie Lipsitt is totally involved and makes her voice heard….she speaks the truth!
Re: Marcie Lipsitt
Yes, that was the way I used to feel — say, when I was 18 and first got off the bus in East Lansing — local control looked like a cynical proxy for segregation and “separate but equal” fallacies. Maybe there’s still some truth in that, but it seems to vary from region to region and time to time. And so there remains a valid role for federal government to maintain genuine equality under the law. Like I said, it was a compromise position negotiated over several decades among many competing factors and factions, and most folks had come to accept it.
But, like I said again, look at what’s been happening in recent years — the modus vivendi has been turned on its head. And not in a good way.
Now why is that?
Professor David Arsen, economist and school finance expert in MSU’s College of Education K-12 Educational Administration, writes an open letter to Governor Snyder of Michigan about his concerns about the Oxford Foundation’s school finance rewrite recommendations and “Equity, Adequacy and Perverse Incentives.” A brilliant piece! Read it here at: http://edwp.educ.msu.edu/new-educator/2013/faculty-viewpoint/.
If you like it, please tweet it, and include @onetoughnerd (Governor Snyder) and @briancalley (Lt. Governor Calley) in your tweet to gain their attention!
Knowing what I know about special education and they way public schools treat such children with disabilities, I would say, bring it on as quick as you can. But then, I do have reservations as to how any new programs would be the disadvantaged children with disabilities. They are, and should be, the focus of any administrator, to provide all that is required under the special education and civil rights laws of the land.
All for the destruction of public schools in Michigan, due to the way Public Education is handled in Michigan.
Not very well, thank you!
Marcie Lipsitt, I do believe you have a head on your shoulders. Hit it right on the head of the nail when you say what you say about Michigan ISDs and their attitudes, that what they say goes. Wrong!