Martin Levine, writing in the Nonprofit Quarterly, explains that the example of Michigan is strong evidence that Betsy DeVos’ plans to impose choice will harm education.
Before launching a huge new initiative, it is important to have trials and see how things work out. That is why the Common Core failed. Its advocates were so eager to shove it into every state that they couldn’t take the time to see how it worked in reality, in real classrooms with real teachers and real students. They didn’t have time for feedback from practitioners. They had no idea how it would work out. And it blew up in their faces.
Martin Levine says look at Michigan if you want to know how school choice and characterizing works.
Michigan has allowed market forces to replace the planning and oversight roles for which government was traditionally responsible. Control of public education was moved from local school officials to a diverse statewide network that includes universities and community colleges alongside local school boards. A chartering organization can sanction and supervise schools anywhere in the state with no requirement that they understand or are committed to the community the school will serve.
This suggests that rather than plan for the needs of a community from a single, local perspective, Michigan wants the broader market to serve as the control rod. A school in the southeastern corner of the state serving a poor community of color can be chartered by an organization hundreds of miles away with little or no connection to the school’s home neighborhood. The motivation of a chartering organization can be the welfare of the children, or the three percent of per-pupil funding it will receive for its efforts.
The result has been an unbridled expansion of charters and a glutted marketplace:
Since 2002, K-12 student enrollment has dropped by 214,000 in Michigan, but the number of charter schools has doubled. In 2011, state lawmakers abolished the longstanding charter-school cap…So many new schools have opened in Detroit that there are an estimated 30,000 empty seats in the district.
Finding qualified teachers is difficult, as limited supply must stretch to cover too many classrooms. With open enrollment in force, scarce resources must be spent on marketing if a school expects to attract students and remain viable.
In Michigan, public education is a profit-making business. For-profit organizations can and do own and operate public schools, and for-profit businesses have grown to provide goods and services to the charter community. Eighty percent of Michigan’s charter schools are operated and managed by for-profit management organizations. Other for-profits facilitate the buying and selling of school property, finance school operations, and provide the array of goods and services a school needs, day to day. All of this business runs with little oversight, open to conflicts of interest and fraud. When these parasitic businesses fail, or privately-operated charter schools run into financial trouble, they close up shop and exit the marketplace. Their debts may remain a public responsibility to be repaid from taxes, and their students are on their own to find another school to attend.
Scott VanderWerp, who runs the public finance group at Oak Ridge Financial, told the Times how profitable the educational sector could be doing transactions that had little to do with educating children: Just buy some buildings “for a couple hundred thousand bucks, lease them to the school for a couple of years, and then sell them to the school for a few million.” Money meant to teach children is quietly converted into corporate earnings.
What are the results? Abysmal. If test scores are your goal, Michigan’s scores have plummeted. 70% of the charters in Michigan are among the lowest performing in the state. If growth is what you care about, Michigan is dead last.
Levine concludes:
We know enough to know that the market is not the magic bullet to deal with problems in traditional public schooling. Inadequate funding is nor improved by adding competition or funneling dollars to the profit bucket. Weak communities don’t get stronger because we distance schools from community. Change may be needed, but not the one the White House and its associated megadonors are pushing.
Common sense. But who cares about common sense these days? Who cares about evidence? Money rules, and money ruins. We are talking about the education of our children, not profits. Or we should be.
Michigan is Betsy DeVos’s petri dish. Michigan proves that her reforms have failed.
PETRI DISH … good one, Diane.
Excellent column.
“This suggests that rather than plan for the needs of a community from a single, local perspective, Michigan wants the broader market to serve as the control rod. A school in the southeastern corner of the state serving a poor community of color can be chartered by an organization hundreds of miles away with little or no connection to the school’s home neighborhood.”
This is why DeVos constantly comparing K-12 schools to colleges is so dumb. I get that it’s appealing to say “it’s just like private colleges and public colleges!” but that completely ignores that children are part of families and families live close to their schools. College students are different. They can travel under their own steam to college and their college isn’t central to their home community.
If she hasn’t even thought that simple difference through how can she “reinvent” public education?
Sometimes I can’t believe she’s spent 30 years lobbying for this and still gets away with repeating these facile talking points that don’t seem to have any thought behind them.
In a very real way none of these questions matter in ed reform. All of the decisions have been made. The only debate they have is how quickly to privatize and how to regulate the contractors. There’s no real debate on WHETHER to privatize- the echo chamber are all in agreement on that- “yes”.
“Liberal” ed reformers want a regulated contractor system with public schools as “last resort” schools for the kids they can’t place in a “choice” school and conservative ed reformers want wholly privatized systems with little or no regulation. That’s the extent of the “debate” in ed reform.
I actually think that’s why they utterly ignore public schools- within the echo chamber public schools don’t matter since they’re transitioning to contractor systems anyway.
DeVos always says she only believes in individuals, not systems. Yet, in Michigan she seized local control from the locals, and turned control of education to a statewide network. She created a convenient system to take local control out of local hands so she could prevail over the local democratic control. She created an autocratic system to commodify public school children. While the results have been a disaster for the state and students, it has made money for key individuals. She made such a mess of Michigan that Trump chose her to expand her poison policies nationally.
“When these parasitic businesses fail, or privately-operated charter schools run into financial trouble, they close up shop and exit the marketplace. Their debts may remain a public responsibility to be repaid from taxes, and their students are on their own to find another school to attend.”
But ed reformers have the luxury of knowing the much-maligned public system is there to act as a back-up when “choice” fails, which is WHY they are able to conduct these reckless experiments.
The public system picks up the downside risk for the privatized system. Parents can be confident if their “choice” school isn’t a good fit or fails there’s a guaranteed seat waiting at the public school they left. Public schools make it MUCH easier to “try” a charter because public schools are the backup.
Ed reformers have given so little thought to how these public/charter systems actually work in practice I think it’s nuts to hand them the whole thing.
They never, ever consider downside. They EXCLUSIVELY look at the charter side and that just isn’t how systems work.
DeVos proudly boasted about this at Harvard- she said no one knows how this experiment will come out. I guess this is supposed to indicate she’s some kind of bold innovator but to me all it indicates is she’s hugely privileged and arrogant and doesn’t have to concern herself with the downside of her actions.
I mean,l just read this nonsense and tell me this is someone who has spent 30 years familiar with how schools function, IN THE REAL WORLD:
“Near the Department of Education, there aren’t many restaurants. But you know what—food trucks started lining the streets to provide options. Some are better than others, and some are even local restaurants that have added food trucks to their businesses to better meet customer’s needs.
Now, if you visit one of those food trucks instead of a restaurant, do you hate restaurants? Or are you trying to put grocery stores out of business?
No. You are simply making the right choice for you based on your individual needs at that time.”
Maybe she can elaborate on that, ya know, in real world terms, where schools have buildings and budgets and staffing and have to PLAN.
Because her vision would be a chaotic disaster in a real community and people would get pretty upset if they were told the “food trucks” had moved on to better markets so all the schools were closed.
This is what passes for “debate” in ed reform- this ideological fantasy land of unlimited choices where everyone gets exactly what they want, when they want it and there is no downside risk. There is ALWAYS downside risk.
The fact is the only reason DeVos is able to sell this fairyland vision is because it ISN’T real. There ARE public school systems. People have the luxury of taking them for granted.
I don’t care what DeVos or anyone else at the US Department of Education ed says- if they are SO captured by this “movement” that they utterly ignore the 90% of kids in PUBLIC schools in this country then they are NOT doing their jobs.
They can’t serve 10% of the public because charter and private schools are their personal preference or they have some “vision” of a privatized system.
I get that this decision has been made in DC and they’re all busy promoting privatized systems but what that means as a practical matter is they aren’t doing the majority of their job. They are all but completely irrelevant to 90% of families, and that should concern them.
I’ve heard enough out of DeVos and Company on how they loathe public schools. I don’t care which schools they prefer and I don’t care that they hate labor unions.
They are supposed to ADD VALUE. They should get to work doing that. Produce some positive good for a public school or go work somewhere else.
“Betsy’s Petri Dish”
Betsy’s petri dish
Doesn’t agar well
For the public wish
For a school that’s swell
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Money rules, and that money ruins.
Actually, the success of a school is directly correlated to the active participation of the child’s parents. Plus, a positive School Climate makes a huge difference if children love their teachers and look forward to going to school every day. Add in all the little extras and there’s a chance you can make a difference.
I suppose it’s the difference between putting the child first vs making money being the goal.
Reblogged this on Mister Journalism: "Reading, Sharing, Discussing, Learning" and commented:
Classrooms as petri dishes…ugh.
“Elizabeth Dee” (With a lot of help from Edgar Allan Poe– “Anabel Lee”. And yes, her middle name really is “Dee”.)
It was many and many a year ago,
In a Kingdom by the sea [Michigan, by Lake Michigan]]
That a Sec Ed there lived whom you may know
By the name of Elizabeth Dee
And this billionaire lived with no other thought
Than to loathe and be loathed by me
I was a teacher and she was rich
In this Kingdom by the sea,
And we loathed with a loathe that was more than loathe—
I and Elizabeth Dee
With a loathe that the wicked devils in Hell
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago
In a Kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, whisking
Elizabeth Dee
Her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To put her up in a big White House
In a Kingdumb by D.C.
The devils, not half so happy in Hell
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this Kingdumb by D.C.)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Whisking Elizabeth Dee
But our loathe it was stronger by far than the loathe
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the devils in Hell below
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my sole from the soul
Of the voucherful Lizabeth Dee
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the voucherful Lizabeth Dee
And the stars never rise, but I hear the white lies
Of the voucherful Lizabeth Dee;
To all I confide, I will not let her ride
On my classroom— my schoolhouse — my life and my pride
In her ignorance there by the sea—
In her Kingdumb by DC