Below is a message that Sen. Rebekah Warren (MI-18) asked us to pass along in response to the petition “Stop the Takeover of Public Education in Michigan” (http://signon.org/sign/stop-the-takeover-of-1).
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Dear Friend,
Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition to legislation that would transfer control from some of our public school districts to the newly created Education Achievement Authority (EAA).
House Bill 6004, along with House Bill 5923 and Senate Bill 1358, seeks to expand the scope of the EAA and allow unregulated school choice in Michigan. As you may know, the EAA was recently established to assume control of underperforming schools in the city of Detroit. This new package of bills broaden that power to allow the EAA to oversee schools deemed to be in the lowest performing 5% of schools statewide.
This hastily crafted legislation has already had several hearings in the House Education Committee and appears to be on the fast-track for passage in lame duck, despite the fact that the EAA has only been in place since the beginning of this school year, and has not yet been fully evaluated, much less vetted for statewide implementation. This legislation also allows for the unfettered proliferation of new schools, without regard for educational quality or outcomes, or the financial implications of further stretching increasingly scarce public resources.
I do not have to tell you that this sweeping legislation comes on the heels of a $500 million cut to the School Aid Fund and the passage of key elements of the “Parental Empowerment Package,” which most notably lifted the cap on charter and cyber schools. As these bills came before me on the Senate floor last year, I opposed all of them for a number of reasons, but largely because I remain deeply concerned about the far-reaching impact they stand to have on our children and the future of our public schools.
Here in Michigan this legislation is particularly alarming as 80% of our charter schools are operated by private, for-profit education management companies (EMOs), more than any other state in the nation. In response to growing concern about this astounding number, I am pleased to let you know that I have introduced Senate Joint Resolution R, which seeks to amend the state constitution to prohibit the operation of a public school on a for-profit basis.
Make no mistake – we are confronting a systematic and unrelenting assault on public education in Michigan. While House Bills 5923 and 6004 and Senate Bill 1358 have yet to come before the Senate, please rest assured that I will continue to fight for our public schools and work to ensure that all of our children have access to the top-notch education necessary to compete in our increasingly global economy.
As always, thank you for your advocacy on this important issue. Should you have any questions or need any further information, do not hesitate to contact me at (517) 373-2406 or senrwarren@senate.michigan.gov.
Sincerely,
Rebekah Warren
State Senator
18th District
RLW/wh
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hmm…untested legislation that is hastily pushed through and that majorly affects public schools? Now where have I heard that before? Oh yes, New Jersey, New York…care to add o this list?
The movement to expose this privatization crusade needs to get up off the “grass roots” level and out to the mainstream.
Wisconsin.
People who don’t read this or similar blogs must wonder what’s so bad about “unregulated school choice” – not too long ago, I, as a parent, would have thought that sounded great. It’s always important when getting messages out to the general public to explain exactly what terms like that mean. We have to remember that the privatizers have spent bucketloads of money on PR in order to re-write the language and sell their product.
In a market, “Choice” just means that you get to choose among the choices that marketeers choose to put on the shelves.
Yes, but to Joe-average, low information voters, that sounds a lot better than your only choice being the “government school”. After all, the marketeers have to “compete”, don’t they? Won’t that competition create a “superior product”? This is the meme that the privateers have successfully infused into mainstream thinking, so this is what we’re up against.
The best “choices” will go to the wealthiest and the smartest. The special needs kids and poor will be left behind. It is segregation all over again. This is a step backward not forward.
There is a new Facebook page for keeping up with Michigan developments:
https://www.facebook.com/SaveMIPublicSchools
Our governor here in Michigan won’t stop until the untapped profit center of the public schools results in nothing but private and charter schools. It’s amazing to me that the public thinks this is ok, but they elected him once. Time to wake up, Michigan.
Re: Dienne
That’s what Joe Astroturf gets paid to say, but Michigan voters have voted down voucher schemes twice in the past, recognizing that community schools are more accountable to the people than corporate schools ever will be.
Which is why the bazaarophiles and voucher capitalists are now trying to pull this end-run around the people.
Thank you for fighting this insanity. I must ask “what is wrong with the voters in that state that they will allow these people, if you can call them that, to be elected with these issues to put into law which are totally destructive to our future?” In my opinion the public is to blame for all of this by sitting around and watching American Idol and such instead of being interested on policy which really effects their lives. This is the only way things like this can happen. In Europe and the Middle East they are not sitting on their rears they are putting their entities on the line to fight what they do not like. We are such a corrupt fascist nation. People had better wake up to reality.
Once more thank you for fighting back with sense and concern for the taxpayers and our youth.
The public in Michigan is partially clueless because their media sources have done an extremely poor job of reporting the truth. They are definately sub-par. Charter school accountability in Michigan is an absolute joke. If you can get approved to run a charter you’ve got it made in a financial sense. If the people in Michigan could see how their tax dollars are being used they would be very angry. My question, why do parents in the inner city charters accept so little? No libraries, minimal supplies, incredible staff turnover, large numbers of suspensions and expulsions, etc. Amazing. Why does the media not report this? Why do universities collude in granting charters in schools of this nature? Why are the graduates in their own educational schools allowed to be subjected to this nonsense?
As far as I know, some universities are still operating charter schools on the original model, and most folks I know never had a problem with that. Charter schools of that sort are valid components of a university’s RST (Research, Service, Teaching) roles, and they were never intended to be profit-making enterprises, usually the opposite.
I gather that other universities are a bit more entrepreneurial, but I don’t have any statistics on the current proportions of models among university-sponsored charters. More research is needed, as they say.
Chris Savage • Michigan GOP education “reform” drawing fire from across the state, Muskegon Heights charter failing miserably