I have posted several articles about Governor Rick Snyder’s all-out assault on public education, most recently, this one earlier today. Some 80% of charters operate for profit, fiscally troubled districts have been handed over to for-profit charter corporations (with poor track records) that extract as much in profit as the district’s deficit (this happens only in majority African-American districts), schools and districts are incentivized to poach students from each other to get the money they need to function (and waste millions of taxpayer dollars advertising for students from other districts). In addition, the governor created the ill-named Education Achievement Authority, a super district made up of the state’s lowest-performing schools and overseen by John Covington. Covington, trained in the unaccredited Broad Academy, previously was superintendent of Kansas City, which lost its accreditation under his leadership. Tomorrow, I will post an article containing interviews with teachers who work in the EAA and describe it as a dangerous environment, unsafe for teachers and students alike.
Governor Snyder is achieving his goal: dissolving public education as a civic obligation and turning it into a free-for-all marketplace.
In response to a post about Governor Snyder’s actions, the blog received this comment from the president of the elected Michigan State Board of Education. The state board is dominated by Democrats (like Austin) but seems unable to slow the governor’s wrecking ball. The most outspoken critic of the Snyder assault on public schools is State Representative Ellen Cogen Lipton. In a few minutes, I will post an interview with Representative Lipton about the EAA.
John Austin writes:
John Austin, President of Michigan State Board of Education here. We do have an unfortunate proliferation in Michigan of new charter and cyber schools, both good, mediocre and truly bad at educating children. The legislature’s, and to date the Governor’s unwillingness to insist on quality control in new school creation, to ensure they educate kids, and the fueling of a wild-west free market of largely for-profit new school creation is doing damage both financially, and educationally to all our schools and children.
The EAA was an effort, well-intentioned, to create a functional and effective state turnaround district to improve performance in our worst schools. Unfortunately, it too was tied up in knots, when legislation to codify it was loaded up with ornaments of the unlimited new school creation policy being pushed last year. It also has had real growing pains, problems and transparency issues.
However, different from the account my friend Ellen Cogen Lipton seemed to suggest in the Electabog article, the State Board of Education twice asked Dr. Covington to come and discuss progress or lack thereof with us, and he certainly did so, and we had as recently as last September a useful and robust public discussion of all the issues– hopefully towards helping the EAA work better, and do better with the legitimate concerns raised by Rep Lipton and many others.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The fact that there is a government office called the Education Achievement Authority has never felt right to me. I even know a principal who works for that office.
“Achievement” being such a relative term. . .it just seems strange that a definitive office would be charged with a duty of overseeing something that cannot be set in stone. I have always found it to be a scratch my head type reality. Even if it was well-intentioned (which I have no doubt that it was), did anybody stop and say, “hey wait. This is sort of like having a Beauty Acquisition Authority that makes sure all those in the tax payer vicinity are beautiful; or the Body Weight Maintenance Authority that does the same but with weight goals.”
Somewhere education, while being the civic responsibility of a city or state or county, became too revered as a science, and not as an art. To bestow a title like that “Education Achievement Authority” seems presumptuous and self-eluding.
Who is the authority on achievement, really?
It sounds like something out of a novel.
John Austin is not an educator. He does not have an education background. He is not an ally of public education! He appears as someone who if they get theirs, who cares for the rest. (His children attended great schools) And the EAA was never a good idea! Sit down and quietly go away Mr. Austin. Ms. Lipton is an outstanding citizen of Michigan, who paid her own money to FOIA information on the EAA. Check out her efforts at insidetheeaa. Thank you Ms. Ravitch for standing up gor Michigan!
I wonder if Mr. Austin could address the issues relating to existing public schools raised in the original post.
Does he believe state government in Michigan, which is now dominated by “reformers” promoting charter schools and vouchers, is working on behalf of the Michigan children who attended the public schools that existed when Governor Snyder took office?
How are the kids in Michigan public schools doing under ed reform leadership? Is there any benefit to them from this reform-dominated approach? How have Governor Snyder and his appointees improved existing Michigan public schools, specifically? Can he point us to a city or district where public schools have been made stronger under ed reform leadership?
“is doing damage both financially, and educationally to all our schools and children.”
It sounds like you’re telling us that ed reform leaders in Michigan are very good at closing public schools and very good at opening charter schools, but not good at all at anything else.
Obviously, this would be a concern to a public school parent who intends to keep their local public school? We’re not about skill at closing and then opening and then closing again. We would need people who can do the much more difficult job of improving our existing public schools.
From a parent advocate: John Austin’s response — in context — is stunning. The EAA has had problems since its inception. Its original statewide codification was stymied in December 2012 lame duck legislation. It was part of — in not the centerpiece of — an ALEC type package designed to “unbundle” all public education in Michigan. The EAA was approved by the House in modified form in early spring 2013 and then sat when Rep Lipton and Senator Hopgood and many,many others started asking questions but were blocked. The statewide codification legislation popped up again in December 2013, catching many offguard. It ran in to problems, too, not the least of which was that Senate Republicans did not want this public education districts subject to the Open Meetings Act and Freedom of Information Act. This shocked even a few tea-party types. For Mr. Austin write in a blog of this prominence that the EAA is somehow working with the educational community and the state is an other distortion. Mr. Austin is in no doubt in a difficulty position, but this is truly disturbing.
“an ALEC type package designed to “unbundle” all public education in Michigan.”
I read the “unbundling” proposal and I thought it was such a deeply dishonest sales pitch because the point of the thing, the goal, was to drastically reduce public funding of education.
The recklessness, the cavalier way they treat a public education system they did not create and that people have invested in over decades just makes me furious. There’s no sense of competent stewardship over what are public assets and long-term investments.
Our existing schools have no value to these folks. Close one, open another, hell, just throw them all out!
They wouldn’t treat public schools like this if they valued them.
Mr. Austin how can you say the EAA was a well intentioned project to improve schools? Honestly? Use of TFA, firing of seasoned teachers and principals, and the stripping of local control. Everyone knew Covington was a shyster from his previous Broad stint. He is nothing more than a paid puppet of Broad and company. Note to people in Lansing: You can’t keep people in the roughest jobs in education without good pay, benefits, and treatment. Do you even care? I don’t think so. If you gave one d@#n about the kids in Detroit you’d shut down this disaster right now.
Some of the schools destroyed by this “turnaround” model and handed over to the EAA were schools with chess clubs, Academic Games, Drama Clubs, award-winning dance teams, choirs, and bands, AP and honor classes, robotics programs, and disciplined sports programs, to name some of the programs. Students had access to vocational tech programs. The schools were safe from violence. Millions of dollars of college scholarships were earned by the students. The students just could not meet the “pass” score set by the state, so the school was labeled persistently low-achieving, and given an F grade, ridiculed in the media, and destroyed. The schools are now ridiculously worse. They are not near what they were. Neighborhoods around these schools that were alive now stand empty. It is criminal!
This is against the children of Michigan. Have these people no shame?
Many folks here see these reforms as inevitable. The damage they are causing may be the only thing that will get enough opposition going.
I am deeply disturbed by John Austin’s comments on the proliferation of unaccountable charters in Michigan and the education-travesty known as the EAA. I am more disturbed by his comments on MI Rep. Ellen Cogen Lipton’s interview on Eclectablog. Clearly, Mr. Austin is unwilling to openly recognize the unvarnished truth about the EAA, the proliferation of for-profit charters (more than anywhere in the U.S.), the complete dismantling of Public Education, and destruction of Special Education in Michigan.
Mr. Austin has been a curious President of the Mi State Board of Ed. He has demonstrated an uncanny ability to sit on the fence, and defines “Republicrat.” He espouses to be a Democrat but does not value the elected authority of the MI State Board of Ed. He has yet to take a firm stand against the EAA while knowing it has been a cesspool of special education violations and protected by MI Dept. of Ed State Superintendent Mike Flanagan and Director of Special Education Eleanor White. And he has the audacity to challenge Mi Rep. Ellen Cogen Lipton’s accounting of the EAA, and then call her a friend.
Former MI Governor John Engler built the Public Education-coffin in Michigan when he stripped our State Board of Ed’s elected authority through Executive Orders 1996-11 & 12, and gave sole dictatorial authority to our non-elected State Superintendent. Since 1996 and with every election, our State Board of Ed has become the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion. They have lost their brain, heart, and courage of conviction and allowed our State Superintendents (Arthur Ellis, Tom Watkins and Mike Flanagan) to run roughshod over Public Education and our teachers.
The only authority our State BOE has is the hiring and firing of our State Superintendent. They have not used this elected authority wisely or Mike Flanagan would have been long gone and the Public Education of EVERY child would matter. John Austin’s comments are pure propaganda and have nothing to do with supporting our public schools or the needs of our school-age children.
Michigan is done! You are pretty close to Canada. You could try to cross the border and claim asylum. You wouldn’t starve. They are very humane up there. At least your kids would get a good education. You could drive a cab in Nova Scotia or sell candy, work at gas station. It’s very beautiful there with friendly, open people. Halifax feels almost like England, and has a “wholesome” feeling. There weren’t big box stores everywhere selling cheap, plastic junk. They actually had coherent towns and town centers. (like we did 50 years ago) Canada has a European sense to it. It’s like a breath of fresh air. There sure are nice places to live in the world.
We’ve got to get Michigan and all the other states back.We can do it–never, never, never give up!
It’s surprising Mr. Austin would take the trouble to address the readers of this blog, just to declare himself a useless chump:
“… the State Board of Education twice asked Dr. Covington to come and discuss progress or lack thereof with us, and he certainly did so, and we had as recently as last September a useful and robust public discussion of all the issues … ”
I guess that will show him, huh?
I wish I had the link, but I heard a radio interview on U of M with Ms. Lipton (I think) talking to students in one EAA school. Students were working with their laptops on Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. She responds that is a great book, what did you think. The students said the whole book isn’t available; they were just reading parts of it and answering questions. She says, so you can go to the library, check it out and read it. Their response was that the library was gone – no books. Just a vivid example of where Snyder/Austin/EAA are taking us. Just answer questions – don’t bother to read the book. I almost cried – so sad.