This is a fascinating bit of history.
This short article tells the story of one day in 1993 when Michigan eliminated all funding for public schools and started the system that exists today. The new system was the work of Governor John Engler, a staunch advocate of school choice.
Looking back 21 years, it is hard to conclude that Michigan’s choice system has improved education. Districts continue to go bankrupt. Charters have proliferated, mostly unsupervised. About 80% of the state’s charters operate for-profit. Only 11% are not operated by an EMO. Entire districts have been turned over to for-profit management corporations; in Muskegon Heights, the charter corporation didn’t make a profit, ran a deficit, and its contract was canceled.
The original promise of charters was that they would get freedom from regulations in return for heightened accountability. Where’s the accountability?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The upside here is we have evidence that it doesn’t work.
Time to use that on a charge against, rather than being backed up against the wall defending public schools.
Also, I think there should be more deference to the very people we are trying to help.
Why don’t we ask poor people whose children are on the bottom of the test score array what they want? It doesn’t mean leadership uses it as a prescription, but did parents have any say in what happened in Michigan?
I applaud June Atkinson, NC’s state superintendent, who is making a very obvious effort to include parents and involve them. More of that.
A principal I worked under in KCMO went to work for Michigan’s Achievement Authority (I have trouble typing that name it seems so crazy like out of Harry Potter or something); anyway—I try to reflect on what his apparent values were. He worked in the poorest school in KCMO, I think because he was not someone who was going to be pushed around. All I conclude is that there must have been a significant pay raise in going to Michigan and so he did it simply for his family. Otherwise I find it mind boggling.
The problem Joanna (in response to your first paragraph), is how do you frame that question to poor parents without it being leading.
One of the arguments used, is that public schools lock kids into neighborhood failing schools. So if you ask someone now whether they’d prefer the choice of a charter, or a public school that they now believe is failing, the choice is a non-choice.
We can build strong community public schools – but at this point after 13+ years of NCLB, and 30 years of public schools being declared failing, the public school brand is practically tainted. It’s going to take more than stakeholders marching on steps to reverse public perceptions which are now extremely polarized (as most of the country is now – there are studies showing that).
M, why do you accept as fact the claim that a school is “failing”? Schools that have high proportions of English learners, kids with special needs, and high poverty have low test scores. Are all such schools failing?
M–
But what about innovative ways to actually have them in on the planning?
I read about an effort to help poor, single mothers earn credentials in early childhood by actually having them work with their own children to do so. Maybe we can empower certain disenfranchised areas with involving uneducated parents into getting educated THROUGH working with their own children in a public school. Sort of like homeschooling, but in a collective setting.
You are right about the brand being tainted, at least in certain places (I don’t think that is true everywhere—it is not true in NC and we can still turn it round if we are clever about it). But to extend to these parents the option of an investment in themselves (maybe a tax credit or something by being involved as their work). We could have trial teacher training hosted by a university with parents at the teachers. ???
Something to give a voice to those currently being used as excuses for political decisions that possibly affect them negatively.
I am enjoying Jose Vilson’s book. He says choice is chance. We need to change that.
Diane,
I don’t contend that they ARE failing. Joanna proposed we ask the poor whether we should inflict these policies on schools.
What matters in that case is not what we know and have evidence is the reality, it’s the perception of the person being asked. After decades of hard marketing that schools are failing, many people I respect accept that as common knowledge.
PR does have a role in this – even evidence isn’t enough. We have enough proof that the evidence is ignored when it’s inconvenient to the ideology. In the war of “hearts and minds” the reformers have been winning for a long time with lifting the hopes of the disenfranchised, regardless of whether they’ve had success or not. It’s when it gets to the people who already really like their schools which the reformers are targeting in semi-affluent to affluent suburbs (as we’ve talked about) that they are starting to get push back.
It will take a long time to change this perception of the public brand.
As a “what-if” – how many schools for what percentage of kids for how long would need to be successful before we could brand public schools as success stories? The charters certainly have no problems with claiming to be an overwhelming solution to global public school failures (which is the picture being painted).
M–
We could also just start hailing the public schools a success! We should flaunt what we have—certainly more than test scores. Shake what your mama gave you type stuff. We have been cowering to this accountability movement because the promise of it is exactly what has carried the funding and so forth from the last few decades. It’s all we hear about. So time to change that.
I know a very rich man in my town (very successful used car salesman). Very religious and conservative. His children went to private, Christian school until 9th grade and then he wanted them to have a public school experience for things like team sports, prom, committees, etc. There are conservative religious folks who value public school for more than test scores. Tradition, if nothing else. The trick in NC is right now to make sure these thinking folks (working class) understand that some of the conservative candidates in our state (read: ALEC) don’t care about prom and tradition.
If we are going to say that public schools are a cornerstone of democracy, then we need to demonstrate why.
In all honesty, I get the gist of why. . .but I don’t know that I could write a paragraph about why.
I wish someone would. We need to. I read it all the time. . .”cornerstone of democracy,” and yet I don’t ever hear or read anyone expounding on that. Why is that?
Where is that powerful essay or political cartoon or song or something that in plain English says: here is why public schools are better and to hell with your myopic, tunnel vision accountability talk that is SO 2005. We have moved on, reformers. keep up!
“I know a very rich man in my town (very successful used car salesman). Very religious and conservative. ”
Now if a man who is a used car salesman can command respect, I hope he is doing more than making money. Used car salesmen, religious or not, do not have a good image. If he can manage to brand himself in a positive light, then public schools ought to be able to do the same.
” he wanted them to have a public school experience for things like team sports, prom, committees, etc.”
I guess the public schools his children will attend still have the budget for those things as do the schools where my children attended. Sadly, the schools that most need those extracurricular activities are least able to afford them. They have been intentionally starved making a claim to excellence that much harder especially when the only measure is test scores.
Way back then, charter groups said they could provide an education for less money than those bloated public schools. What happened?
Again. . .fodder for an offense!!
Paging Joe Nathan. Paging Teaching Economist. Please come and defend your “choice” system – I’m sure we’d all love to hear from you (cough, cough).
exactly. Make them defend!! not teachers. not public schools. Those who think they need to change it all. Them. Make them do the work.
Keep calm and make them defend.
Don’t forget the libertarian/wing nut troll, Harlan Underhill….I hope I have that name right. (barf, barf). Teaching Economist, such a guy, OY!
Harlan is harmless. He’s trying on ideas. I think of him as the Archie Bunker of Dr. Ravitch’s blog.
HU and TE offer much needed different and sometimes insightful thoughts, concerns and ideas to the blog. Neither are “trolls” although HU does like to goad the goat at times. So do I.
Harlan Underhill is a troll on steroids, he thinks we are all Marxists and commies because we support unions and collective bargaining rights. He is worthless. TE is disingenuous, deflecting and a constant apologist for the reformers. Sorry, I find nothing enlightening about him but that’s me.
“Harlan is harmless”
If you are willing to ignore his race bating and sexism, yep.
Dienne,
Did either of them ever show up to defend the choice concept they both crow about so frequently?
crickets?
Oh well, perhaps they are sitting at a bar asking each other pointless, deflecting, disingenuous, endless,”mobius strip” type questions.
They’ve destroyed everything else. That’s why they have moved in on the public schools. Tons of money to be made as they completely destroy public schools as we know them. Hope they all like very hot places. That is where they are all headed. I know how the story ends.
But remember there was fuel and momentum given to these actions by studies and efforts beginning in the 80s to figure out how to make everyone ready for the 21st century and elevate teaching etc. etc.
I don’t simply assign greed to this mess. It’s much more complex than that. There are issues of race, gender (as opportunities for women have opened up, how has that affected the teaching pool), the digital age, the information age, economic frenzy, political party disgruntlement, real estate decisions made in the 1960s, philosophies of tax, philosophies of societal values, religion. It is about as complex a situation as there could be, I think—-because unlike war, it is not just about money even though it seems that way. It is about the future.
Joanna, I agree with you that it is a complex situation, but when push comes to shove, if corporate raiders had not seen the opportunity for incredible profit, we would not be where we are today. The profit motive has unleashed powerful forces that believe might makes right and that they have the might.
Engler did more than work to bring down public education through the Proposal A fiasco. He issued executive orders (1996-6 & 7) and stripped our State Board of Ed of its elected authority. In small talk, he created a dictatorship, giving our non-elected State Superintendent full authority to wreak havoc. Of course our governors have enjoyed this authority and can use our State Superintendents as puppets. (Democrat) Jennifer Granholm was of this mindset but Rick Snyder has taken it to a frightening extreme. Our State Board’s elected authority needs to be restored or we need a constitutional amendment to “again” elect the State Superintendent. Engler built the public education/special education coffin in Michigan. Rick Snyder continues to nail it shut.
A reminder: In three statewide referenda Michigan voters voted against diversion of public funds to private schools in 1970 (57% to 43%), in 1978 (74% to 26%) and in 2000 (69% to 31%). — Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
Debbie Stabenow is a well-meaning liberal sort of person, but all too often people like that simply fail to comprehend the depth of perfidy that lies in the hearts of their opposite numbers, especially on the legislative trading floor. So she got snookered — Big Time — and public education in Michigan has been behind the 8 ball ever since.
“Stabenow proposed a 100% cut.”
Seriously?
what kind of clown……?
You have to read the article for the context —
http://stateofopportunity.michiganradio.org/post/day-michigan-killed-public-schools-and-then-created-system-we-have-today
From a naive idealist point of view it could have been the beginning of a central but equal distribution of education dollars, but she appears to have been oblivious to who was Governor at the time.
Read the article, thank you.
Wow, just wow.
I still say, clown.
Isn’t there some pithy quote about knowing what the answer will be to a question prior to asking it? A lawyer friend references it frequently. How dumb to suggest the nuclear option if you did not understand your opposition.
I guess many of us still do not ” get” the opposition. That is why they are kicking our behinds big time, IMHO.
For anyone wondering, see Naomi Klein’s the shock doctrine.
The Education Retroformers discovered early and often that the People of Michigan would keep on rejecting what they were peddling, so they changed their propaganda, not their agenda, and switched to stealth mode. Since that time they have exploited every means possible to pull their end runs around the electorate.
Dishonesty is the hallmark of the Retroform Agenda. They do not play by the rules of open democratic process, They cannot put their real agenda on the table and they cannot win without cheating and lying about everything they are doing under the table.
That is the most terrifying thing I have every seen.
Oh Happy Day ❢❢❢
The Detroit Free Press rouses from its Slogmatic Dumbers just a teeny weensy bit …
State Of Charter Schools : How Michigan Spends $1 Billion But Fails To Hold Schools Accountable