Susan J. Demas, publisher and editor of Inside Michigan Politics, writes that the exposé of charter school scandals by the Detroit Free Press should cause Governor Snyder and his allies to admit they were wrong about schools run without supervision by entrepreneurs.
She writes:
“Education should be about children, not adults.
“For the past three years, Republicans wielded this powerful soundbite as a weapon while they reshaped public education in Michigan to fit their free-market ideology.
“If you cared about kids, you backed their plan to help open dozens more online and charter schools run by good-hearted private businesses.
“If you didn’t, you were determined to damn students to failing public schools so you could deviously enrich fat-cat union teachers.
“The fact that outright falsehoods and gross oversimplifications passed for high-minded debate in the Legislature should make us all weep.”
Michelle Rhee helped. To write the law and spent $1 million to help it get passed. Now charlatans and grifters are using their charter schools as their personal piggy banks and cashing in on kids. Taxpayers are defrauded. Scams, self-dealing, and fraud are commonplace.
Demas calls on the governor and the legislature to correct their mistakes. That will take courage. Sadly, in many states where school money is handed out to greedy and unscrupulous entrepreneurs, they give generously to key politicians to protect their domain. Yes, it will take courage to protect the children from those who are using them as profit centers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let’s all try to get this straight once and for all —
There is nothing “Free Market” about taxpayer-funded schools.
Of course not. However, you have politicians who believe in “outsourcing” public institutions to private individuals or corporations, and never mind they don’t understand or don’t care about the reason public schools and other public institutions exist. These politicians believe public is evil because it is public. We have people in power who believe in a stupid, sociopathic cult of libertarianism or neoliberalism, and all of the facts in the world won’t change their minds.
Yes, I’m sure Governor Snyder will be admitting he was wrong any moment now. In fact, I’m holding my breath….
Yeah, Me, Too
I am so confused about something…the governor of Michigan continues to say that public non-charter schools need more accountability and transparency . I thought that every district was/is mandated to publicly report all of their data out, and has been for years. Every single district website I see has a “transparency in reporting” link. Budgets and expenditures are regularly made public at school board meetings. All performance data was given to S&P to fill in our color ranking system in MI, at a cost of millions. Title I schools and special education programs are regularly audited. If he requires more transparency, he is going to need to define it more clearly, hopefully first informing himself, in detail about the requirements in place that have been abided by for quite some time.
You’re not the one who is confused.
Duh Governerd has a knack for the politics of SQUIRREL ❢❢❢
Every time you bring up charter schools they crank up the public school bashing machine.
Which is amusing. Because you’ll tecall they sold this scam to voters based on “improving public schools”
Every time Snyder and Duncan launch an attack on public schools, public school parents should ask them why ed reform failed to improve public schools.
They failed at both objectives. They harmed publuc schools and created a second system that is ALSO a failure.
Unlikely to change.
According to Politico (today), the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council is out with the agenda for its July meeting in Dallas. Some provocative proposals.
ALEC will consider two model bills that could vastly expand funding for charter schools, including facilities funds.
Another would require states or districts to pay charters for their entire first year of operation based on the enrollment figures administrators projected before they opened their doors – not how many students actually show up. (Any discrepancies would be addressed with adjustments to funding in the second year.) Read the agenda and model bills: http://bit.ly/TAFxCC.
This is a sure-fire way to raise havoc with any budgeting process and scheduling of classes in public schools. Most public school districts receive funding based on “a date certain” attendance figure. Charters will play the game of opening after that date, keeping their actual enrollment figures under wraps, and screwing up district budgets. In addition, existing and future plans for building use/renovation/construction have to include the charters. Squeeky wheels will get the grease.
ALEC Also wants to close a a lot of public universities on a fast track.
Members will consider endorsing the “Affordable Baccalaureate Degree Act,” which would require all public universities to offer degree programs that cost less than $10,000 total for all four years of tuition, fees and books.
What’s more, the bill would mandate that at least 10 percent of all four-year degrees awarded at state schools meet that price point within four years of the act’s passage.
Universities would be encouraged to use online education and shift to competency-based models rather than the traditional credit-hour model to keep costs down.
If members endorse the bill, they will begin circulating and promoting it in state legislatures.
The bait will be taken in state legislatures. This is a fast track toward the demolition.
The cost of $2,500 a year is a mid-century last price point for two full semesters of course work.
The intent is also to devalue specific degrees, namely those in the liberal arts and humanities, and “impractical” sciences e.g., archaeology) where “competencies” are cur and dried and tend to consolidate over the course of multiple years. The wish is for all colleges and universities to become vocational schools with on-line course completion the primary evidence of competence. This also opens the door to more degrees based on “skill sets” from life experience–not entirely without merit but a can of worms.
Thanks for reporting this. I hope it makes it to “post” status at the blog.
Typos,,,Competencies are not cut and dried.
Next …
http://www.freep.com/article/20140627/NEWS06/306270037/close-charter-school-michigan
Good Grief, it’s been a long time since I sampled the astroturfage on my local Michigan Media and I’d forgotten just how Michiguna it can be.
Here’s the sort of “I Can’t Believe Everybody Didn’t Already Learn This In Jr. High&rduqo; primer material that I find myself having to point out, now no less than 5 years ago.
Will Snyder and the republicans say they were wrong? No, he won’t because he marches to his own drum and believez heis the savior of school funding. Now the chances of it happening are even less. He increased per pupil spending by a whopping $50 by the time the shuffling of the money was done. And he will be hailed as the savior of the schools. Snyder is a RINO ar best, a progressive at worst and needs to be unelected.
Some charter schools are “hit and run” – “take the money and run” – and the ones who profited don’t care that the schools did nothing for the children, or that they got closed. They already got PAID.
The reformers know this. Time and again, that has been what happens. They come to a city/state with their agenda. Re-set the regulations and rules. Get one of their TFA or Broad Supes embedded by appointment (i.e. Cami Anderson, Newark, NJ), or the Governor/Mayor (?) fires the elected school board and appoints reform-minded zombies to the School Board. Then, public schools are defunded, school staff is fired, teachers are vilified, and the door for “choice/change” is open and the unaware-hypnotized communities are left with charters, that initially are embraced, until it is realized that the charters were no panacea. People have lost jobs to arrogant elite 21 year olds. Neighborhoods are disrupted. The k-12 school got closed, and in its place, a few grade charters opened, and the rest of the leftover kids must go across town, possibly to a worse neighborhood, and there is no accountability on the charters.
The charters leave town cuz there is no more $. Or, they are closed because there is misappropriation of funds. Or, double dealing/dipping. Or plain bad education without books, supplies, large teacher turnover, etc.
Yes, charters fail as much as they succeed, isn’t that true? BUT WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE when they fail? Where is the school bashing by the reformers when the charters close? PIck up and leave because they weren’t profitable enough for the thieves?
Where are the reformers when the Principal of a charter that serves 300 kids is making $300,000 annually while the Principal of a public school serving more kids is making substantially less? Where is the outrage when a management company is charging ridiculous rent for the school, or when these charters are opened in inappropriate locations/buildings? The reformers are so satisfied that they closed public schools and opened charters, that their deed is done. THE DEED IS DONE.
They come in like a tornado, and leave a mess when they are done. The neighborhoods are left picking up the pieces, and the reformers are satisfied. THE REFORMERS GOT PAID TO DO THEIR JOBS. Michelle Rhee doesn’t give a damn about education or kids…at this point, she is a paid tornado. The more damage she does, the more the 1% donate to her “non-profit” that she certainly pays herself handily to run.
The reformer list contains the same names, over and over, doing the same damage, over and over. They ruin one area, and move on to the next area, often with large bonuses before they go.
Why are the reformers so concerned with the salaries of qualified, certified teachers? No one who teaches is in it for the money. It cost about $100,000 to become a teacher now, and if you are lucky to get a teaching job your first year salary is between $38,000 and $48,000 in parts of New Jersey, depending on the district and school type. And, you’ve likely got loans to pay. And the reformers say….teachers are the bottom of the bottom. The lowest of the low. The DUMBEST of the college educated. I wonder how many of them had awful, horrible, ineffective, stupid, dumb teachers….who educated them, all the way to where they are now in their political positions of power.
Its all a lie, all an end game. The public taxes available to feed these monsters are vast and never ending. No wonder they chose education to rape and pillage. They have no consciences.
People are waking up though, and thanks to many of you here, and bloggers and writers without intimidation, perhaps the general public, the hypnotized public, will wake up and see that the charters are meant not to fix education, but to profit a select few, at the expense of our children.
It is not only a Republican problem. When Gov. John Engler first promoted charters Bill Clinton came and stood beside him and supported the growth of charters. Gov. Granholm was also a member of the reform movement. There was accountability of charters during her time in office. Gov Snyder has been the worst of all yet, Arne Duncan promoted expanding this garbage in Michigan.
correction: There was NO accountability of charters during Granholm’s time in office.
I am a professor/teacher educator and former school teacher. I have been engaged in research for over a decade, attempting to determine how and when public schools became ensnared in the free market feeding frenzy. My new website, Public Schools Central will be dedicated to this inquiry (http:publicschools.com).