In the previous post, I noted that the emergency manager in Detroit was instructed to “blow up” the district.

In the other districts controlled by emergency managers–Muskegon Heights and Highland Park–the emergency managers closed down public education and handed the buildings and students over to for-profit operators.

This article in Education Week brings out important facts.

1. “African-Americans make up 88 percent of the students in the Muskegon Heights system, and 98 percent of the Highland Park system’s enrollment.”

2. The emergency managers picked two for-profit operators whose record is unimpressive:

“And critics of the strategy say that neither Mosaica Education nor the Leona Group has an impressive record of turning around low-performing schools.

“We think that there’s a huge opportunity closed when the state steps in and decides to intervene in a place like Highland Park and Muskegon Heights,” said Amber Arellano, the executive director of the Education Trust-Midwest, an education policy and advocacy group in Royal Oak, Mich.

“Our concern is that, based on what we know about those operators,” she continued, “it would appear as if [this] opportunity may be wasted … because those are two of the lowest-performing charter operators in Michigan.”

Read that last line again: “…those are two of the lowest-performing charter operators in Michigan.”

3. “Some experts point out that Mosaica students nationally do not show as much academic growth as students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds in regular public schools.”

What more do you need to know?