Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the bond ratings of 53 school districts in Michigan.
Public schools are losing enrollment to charter schools, and losing the ability to balance their budgets.
More than 80% of the charter schools in Michigan are operated for-profit.
According to the linked article,
Justin Marlowe, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who has written about local government finance, said increased charter school competition and tight state budgets are squeezing the districts.
The “proliferation of charter schools and ongoing state budget problems have put more pressure on local school districts,” Marlowe said, adding there “don’t seem to be any immediate solutions unless we rethink how we finance school districts.”
According to the Moody’s report, 425 of the state’s 549 public school districts lost students between 2004 and 2012, with total enrollment slipping 13.2 percent.
But as overall enrollment was falling, charter schools were growing: They had 120,000 students in Michigan at the end of the last school year and the number of schools rose by 8 percent for this school year, to 298.
Michigan’s Electablog reports: “This is no accident. It’s a plan that’s been in place by those who wish to diminish the ability of teachers to bargain collectively for wages, benefits, and working conditions and to redirect tax dollars earmarked for educating our children into the coffers of for-profit charter school companies.”
In short, this is the culmination of efforts to privatize public education, remove any rights of teachers, and replace public education with profit-making businesses.
Is this the work of conservatives? No, conservatives don’t destroy traditional institutions. They don’t blow up the neighborhood public school so that someone can make a profit.
As Garrison Keillor said, “When you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.”
The vandals are inside the gates in Michigan, ransacking public education across the state.
One of our regular readers wrote as follows:
Eli Broad is from Michigan, and he writes editorials in that state insisting he is NOT destroying public education. Would someone in media ask him to defend what’s happening in Michigan? 80% of the charters are for-profit and they are destroying the public school system. The governor and the state legislature are captured by for-profit education lobbyists.
Michigan could LOSE their public school system. Will Broad have to answer for what he’s done here? How far does this have to go before someone in state or federal government intervenes? Will Michigan be the first state to go to a fully privatized system?
Thanks, ed reformers. Good job! Every public school kid in Michigan will now suffer as a result of your cavalier, reckless, “cage busting” approach. Every single kid in a public school will pay.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
http://michiganradio.org/post/three-little-known-facts-about-charter-schools-michigan
Here’s more from Gary Miron at WMU (Western Michigan University), who was a supporter of charter schools:
“Michigan has more for-profit charter schools than any other state in the country. He says over 80 percent of the charter schools in Michigan today are operated by for-profit companies.
Gary Miron of WMU says we are increasingly moving away from what he says was the original charter school “ideal.”
Miron, a charter school believer who actually once helped open a charter school in Sweden told me, “I kind of resent the fact that some people are still referring to these massive, national networks of charter schools as charter schools. Because they go against the original idea, which was going to be small, innovative, locally run schools. That’s not what we have today.”
When will the ACLU, the NAACP, and/or similar groups start filing lawsuits to protect public schools? How can separate and unequal school systems be Constitutional?
Never. They have too many friends on the take.
http://www.freep.com/article/20130428/OPINION05/304280058/
This is what Eli Broad (who I believe lives in LA) writes when he’s lobbying for his specific reform agenda in Michigan:
“Over the course of the debate, legislators may become sidetracked by issues such as
the motives of foundations like ours. We are motivated by only one goal: to provide an equal opportunity for every child in Michigan — regardless of family income or background — to receive a world-class education. And we want to ensure that public schools remain public.”
But we look at Michigan and we see Broad’s reforms are directly harming Michigan public schools, and that 80% of Michigan charters are run by out of state for-profit entities. So what are we to think? How can he claim he wants to “ensure” public schools remain public? How have Broad’s reforms improved existing public schools in Michigan, and why weren’t those children who attend public schools considered when the reforms were adopted?
Easy enough – they see charter schools AS public schools. Public in the Broad sense of things, is that the public continues to pay for it. He even says so that the debate is whether this separate school system which he calls Public Schools (and has a tablet for every child and a much longer school day and year – hardly equitable funding) – and demands that they receive funding equal to the “other” non alliance public schools.
He must know that the additional funding won’t be printed from thin air, it will come straight out of the pockets of the “other” system – he sees them both as public and equally deserving (at least in rhetoric) even though it’s apparent that they’re not.
That isn’t how ed reform was sold, though. The public would have never bought “we’re planning on setting up a separate school system.”
We were told ed reformers would improve public schools. We’ve spent billions of dollars and a decade. Are existing Michigan public schools better as a result of ed reform? It’s an important question. 89% of Michigan kids attend public schools, not charter schools. Arguably, charter schools are also not doing so great under ed reform, but that isn’t my question.
The 89% need an advocate. They don’t have one at the federal level and the don’t have one in Governor Snyder’s administration and they (apparently) don’t have one in the ed reform billionaire ranks.
Yes, Chiara..Broad lives in a mansion in the wealthiest community in LA…and he is well insulated from the riff raff. His contacts are only with his peers…all wearing the blinders of vast wealth and privilege. They are the golden NIMBY group who shut the doors to others who may have simpler goals and lesser ability to accumulate lucre.
In the study of early economics, history shows that all communities developed an economic system in order to cooperatively survive. This was based on filling subsistence needs. This philosophy prevailed to Old Testament days when, through trade and the agreements made regarding barter and coin, economics grew and expanded. People then could accumulate an excess of wealth beyond their own needs, and even beyond the needs of their tribe. So then we see the development of the first bankers who loan their wealth to others….for interest.
Even Adam Smith basically taught that people worked for their own survival and that it was the job of government to aid in this goal. The ‘invisible hand’ seemed a workable philosophy up until the Clinton administration gave us the death of Glass-Steagal, and the replacement with the Gramm Leach Bliley Act, and resultant worldwide recession/depression.
Which brings us to today when the stock market closed over 16,000 and more homeless in America than ever.
Each generation seems to have become greedier and needier, and now we find we are at the 11th hour, with the impending death of our planet from overuse (read Jared Diamond, Collapse) from both overpopulation and overuse of resources for profit.
Overall, the Broad philosophy prevails. At the Broad Academy, his acolytes are taught not to view students and public schools schools for the greater good, but rather they graduate to be CEOs and finance experts encouraged to make public schools the avenue to profit. Their rationale is that this is for the public good. But so many of us do not believe these Emporers Without Clothes, and without empathy.
We educators have awakened to this huge and nefarious plot to privatize, mainly due to all our Ravitch lessons, and we see all the schemes from TFA replacing real trained teachers, to Common Core and Peason replacing creative education. There are so many elements to this vast stealth takeover that we are learning about moment by moment.
So how do we awaken the sleeping public which is not paying attention?
Ellen Lubic
joiningforces4ed@aol.com
Tis quite the correct question to ask, Ellen.
I speak to any and all who are willing to listen. So much so my son warns people not to bring up education in the conversation.
Ha ha ha ha!! Quality education for all?? He obviously has not set foot in many of Michigan’s charter schools. Michigan is the land of cash cow charter schools.
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2013/09/charter_schools_sustaining_str.html
And…..as is also the case in Ohio, charter schools don’t perform any better than public schools.
So, why are we destroying public schools, again? It isn’t “great schools” so it must be “choice”, right? Now we’re down to “choice”.
And, how is Broad different than Barry Goldwater and Milton Friedman, who never supported public schools but at least never pretended to support public schools?
Chiara, there is a difference. The difference is the repeated claim “I am a liberal Democrat,” as they privatize public schools. Milton Friedman never said that.
How about the choice not to have a charter school imposed on your already high performing school district? In NJ, the residents get no say or vote whether a charter school is dumped on their school district. Parents are in revolt in many school districts because niche or boutique charter schools are trying to set up shop in a district where the residents love and cherish the real public schools.
Recently a friend mentioned to me that the real crisis in our country is a crisis of FAMILY. and that this also includes the efforts at Education Reform.
In thinking about this, I was struck with how different our path would be if the powerful people behind corporate ed reform had turned their resources to supporting communities. “As a community family, how can we make our schools stronger, better, more useful?”
What a different conversation we would be having today.
Rank- ordering, comparing, collecting data, blaming, bribing….doesn’t work in families and it doesn’t work in communities. The tragedy being played out in Michigan is a tragedy of favoritism. Powerful people are trying out their pet projects under the guise that it is the best thing for students. It is not.
The word family changes everything. It goes to the heart of good teaching, good community work, good governance: Qualities like stewardship, caring, respect, healthy dialogue, a sense of working shoulder to shoulder for the common good, a sense of let’s figure this out together, rather than who can we blame so we can put “my people” in power.
It’s time we have that conversation.
It’s time we choose our public officials as a family through respectful inquiry and conversation.
It’s time we honor the work of educating our youth by strengthening our communities rather then outsourcing this sacred work to private business. This does not strengthen communities, it tears them apart.
It’s time we start acting like the family we could be.
I’ve thought the exact same thing. I really think the money was too good to pass up. It is all about the money now.
If I understand you correctly, Steve, you are saying that society as a whole should become your family. Isn’t that impossible?
How many people remember when Blue Cross etc were NON PROFIT organizations and the costs of insurance at that time. A pittance as to what the PROFIT health care providers charge now when CEOs make millions of dollars every year.
How long do people think it will take until the profit motive makes even the charter schools out of reach for all but the rich.
Charter schools could be great IF as Dr. Ravitch has pointed out they did what they were intended to do, that is provide for students who are having difficulties in a traditional setting. The camel got his nose under the tent and look where we are already.
When will scholars and educators get back the power to EDUCATE our children, not pass tests so that politicians can bamboozle the public.
Does anyone have a list of corporations that donate to TFA?
It’s a feature, not a bug.
My question is this! If it is a for profit school, why are they getting state funding? Public schools don’t earn a profit. It just doesn’t make sense. Since when do our tax dollars for public education go into a corporations pocket?
This happens, Ellen, when public education has wasted its money for decades by NOT running like private businesses.
Not true Harlan. With the exceptions of some large urban districts, like Detroit, most districts were brutally tight with money even in more flush economic times. Go back to 2004 and check out the size of the rainy day funds. My own suburban district had large equity funds going for the first half of my career.
Then the state started slashing money. And giving it to charters who drain it away in what is essentially a parallel school system (when one looks at the academic statistics). The new districts avoid some larger costs like transportation and not having to deal with legacy costs because they haven’t been around long enough to have legacy costs.
A vast majority of districts were always socking away “profits” in the form of these rainy day funds. Then the state government changed and the money shifted to more “important” priorities like RTW and business tax cuts that have yet to yield any demonstrable economic improvement.
So, in fact, many acted like business by not spending anywhere near all the money. Until they got so little money that they had to burn through the “profits” they had stored up for years. (My district was sitting at 12-14% equity in relation to budget until last year. Also, the state has a legal cap now on the percentage of budget that equity can be which is lower than our percentage had been. This nearly guarantees financial straits when the funding is cut.)
So your oversimplified point is simply not true in many, if not most, cases.
Possibly so. Why did the states start slashing appropriations?
Also, Harlan, if you can justify taxpayer money lining corporate profit margins, I’d like to hear it. Romney and the Republicans enjoyed saying that Obama (who I have no great affection for) was picking winners and losers. Don’t these policies regarding charters essentially do the same thing? The financial game is rigged against public schools.
Scott Walker took on the public unions and turned deficit into surplus. Ergo the districts were granting sweetheart contracts.
Charters strangling pubic schools?
Mission accomplished…