Casandra E. Ulbrich, president of the Michigan State Board of Education, responded to an editorial in the Detroit News complaining that the State Board rejected $47 million for new charter schools. She explains why the Board declined to spend the money awarded to the state by the federal Charter Schools Program. It doesn’t need new schools or new charters. About 80% of the charters operating in the state are “for-profit.” Furthermore, as Michigan has invested in charters, its test scores have dropped dramatically.
She writes:
This month, the State Board of Education was presented with grant criteria that ultimately could spend $47 million in taxpayer money on new and expanding charter schools. As elected board members, we raised legitimate questions about the need and the nature of these expenditures, following the release of a national research report indicating that over $1 billion of similar grant funds have been awarded to entities that either never opened a school, or opened and then closed.
In the 2002-03 school year, Michigan educated 1,713,165 public K-12 students. Last year, that number fell to 1,507,772. That’s a drop of over 200,000 students. The National Center for Education Statistics predicts that public school enrollment will continue to decline by another five percent by 2025.
Despite these declines, Michigan’s public education system continues to expand. Since 2008, 226 charter schools have opened in Michigan (38 have closed). For every new school, there are additional costs to the system, including administration and, as often is the case with Michigan charters, profit.
All this new school creation has not led to increased achievement for students. In fact, Michigan has seen the opposite. According to the Nation’s Report Card, in 2003 Michigan fourth-grade students were ranked 28th in the nation for reading scores. Last year, we ranked 35th, and in fourth-grade math, 38th….
The second major concern we expressed relates to the results of the last round of federal charter school grants. From 2010-15, 186 Michigan entities were approved for funding under this grant program. Of those, 67 received funding but never opened a charter school….
The editorial also indicates that charter schools “dominate” the list of Michigan’s highest performing high schools. Based on the state’s index system — approved by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos as Michigan’s school accountability system — this simply is not true. Only three charter schools that offer high school grades rank in the Top 100 of Michigan’s federally-approved Index system.
The lesson from Michigan: Choice produces profits, not better education.
Michigan has been Betsy DeVos’s petri dish to demonstrate her theories about school choice. It undermines public schools without producing better results by any metric. But it does enrich investors.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s a good local article that pulls back the curtain on Andre Agassi’s charter funding business:
https://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2019/05/22/andre-agassi-fund-southwest-detroit-charter-school/3765115002/
They continue to open (and then close) charters in Detroit while completely neglecting the public schools. It’s chaos for students and families. But the charter funders are making money!
It is up at Oped https://www.opednews.com/populum/comments.php
with this comment , below which has links at the above address.
Can you spell FRAUD? Betsy DeVos spells it ‘Choice.” Her orwellian term that allows the grand theft of taxpayer money into private schools, while starving public schools.
here is a tiny portion of the theft in but a few of the 15,880 district in 50 states which are the great prize for the hedge funds and privateers .
Let’s begin with A telling story about a charter school controversy in a rural Alabama county
And here:Jeff Bryant reports here on the waste of millions of federal dollars poured into charter schools in Louisiana.
In this article , Carol Burristhe executive director of the Network for Public Educationexamines the charter school mess. Florida has about three million students. About 300,000 attend charter schools. Some members of the Legislature have direct conflicts of interest but nonetheless vote to shower favors and money on the state’s charters.
Burris reports that nearly half of the state’s charters operate for profit. Entrepreneurs have flocked to Florida to get the easy money.
and also:Southern Poverty Legal Center On Florida Vouchers By signing S.B. 7070 into law yesterday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis set his state on the path to further decimate its public schools through an unprecedented expansion of private school vouchers.
Florida already diverts nearly $1 billion of scarce public funds to unaccountable, under-regulated private schools each year through several different voucher programs. This massive diversion of public funds has led the state to fall from 24th among states in per-pupil funding to the bottom 10.
Former Milwaukee School Board President Michael Bonds was convicted of accepting bribes to help a Philadelphia charter school operator.
THIS one is good: “Can you spell FRAUD? Betsy DeVos spells it ‘Choice.” A great billboard campaign….
Sorry, here is the link to Oped https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Michigan-President-of-Sta-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Choice_Diane-Ravitch_Education_Education-Funding-190526-708.html#comment734838
Thank you for all you do on behalf of our students. I appreciate you very much!
You are my shero!
Paulette White
Diane is the hero to all who value democracy, to all who believe families in communities across America deserve quality public schools and to all who understand that people like the Sacklers and DFER’s Wall Street hedge funds, destroy, not build.
States should be taking a more reasoned approach to how they are using resources. Why are states accepting imposed inefficiency for no better results? Public schools are the only schools accountable and transparent. So-called choice reduces how effectively states can deploy resources. We cannot fund parallel systems for the same dollar. We create multiple weakened institutions while grifters get rich. I hope more states take a critical look at how money is being spent on wasteful privatization.
Casandra Ulbrich is a hero–one of an increasing number of state board members willing to stand up and cry foul at the depredations of the Ed Deformers. Kudos, Ms. Ulbrich. This is a courageous and wise stance.
Ed reformers, probably realizing they have become completely irrelevant to the 90% of families who use public schools, are now planning on controlling “content” in schools:
“Dr. Bennett will conclude our speaker series by returning to the original question and asking: What is the purpose of school?
He argues that conservatives must rally behind a unified vision of comprehensive content and curriculum reform, and that states must take the lead in making such a vision real. He contends that a content-rich curriculum must be central to any true answer to this fundamental question and asserts that it’s time to re-build a conservative education consensus with content at its core. Too often, Bennett observes, conservatives have lauded school choice while neglecting other essentials. Often teamed up with liberals, they’ve made important progress on choice, which remains crucial, but is no panacea. Conservatives have also made great progress—again, often in joint efforts with liberals—on standards and accountability, although implementation has often been stymied by botched federal interference and an overreliance on test scores that has alienated parents and teachers.”
Why would public schools welcome ed reformers’s plans? They don’t support our schools. They provide absolutely no benefit to any student in any public school, anywhere.
Why would we take direction from them? If we’re interested in “curriculum reform” wouldn’t we turn to people who actually value our schools and our kids?
Twice in one day I get to answer this question! ““Dr. Bennett will conclude our speaker series by returning to the original question and asking: What is the purpose of school.”
I delineate the purpose of public education in Ch. 1 “Purpose of Public Education” in my book “Infidelity to Truth: Education Malpractice in American Public Education”. After examining what the 50 state constitutions say about the purpose of public education I propose the following composite purpose”
“The purpose of public education is to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.”
Bennett- Americans have the right to die in the gutter like feral dogs.
Bennett (like DeVos), born on 3rd base, White privilege, son of a banker, product of private schools.
Well… that’s bad news for the Arnold-funded education center at Michigan State University.
Where’s the pity party for them?
I appreciate her speaking out, but if she were really brave she would mention that public universities in Michigan have been enthusiastically promoting charters for years- and they get a cut of every charter school dollar:
https://www.gvsu.edu/cso/school-profiles.htm
Betsy DeVos isn’t the only person to blame for Michigan’s lousy charter sector and Michigan’s abandonment of public schools- some public colleges and universities assisted DeVos every step of the way.
The whole state was captured by ed reform. It was a group project. No one in higher ed questioned it because a lot of people in higher ed were and are benefiting from it.
Part of the key to how ed reform captures these states is they spread the money around. A lot of people and entities are benefiting from Michigan’s “wild west” charter sector.
“Dispelling fears that a universal application system for high schools would drive more students to charters, a new study shows enrollment at neighborhood schools is up slightly.
About 100 more Chicago Public Schools freshmen enrolled at neighborhood high schools during the 2018-19 school year, an increase from 22 to 23 percent over the previous year, according to the study, from the UChicago Consortium on School Research and Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The percentage-point jump marks the first such increase since 2014, when 26 percent of district high school students attended neighborhood schools.”
If this is true then why don’t ed reformers invest in and expand public schools?
We were told this was “market based” and that they were “agnostics”. Yet when people “choose” public schools the echo chamber continues their exclusive focus on and promotion of charter schools and vouchers.
This isn’t about “better schools”. It’s ideological. They have an ideological preference for privatized school systems. If they weren’t we would see them advocating for existing public schools and we don’t see that. In fact, we see the opposite.
How do public schools win this rigged game? Under what set of circumstances do ed reformers start working on behalf of students in public schools? How do we get out of second class status?
I think there’s been a slowly dawning realization in both Ohio and Michigan that 20 years of chasing charters and vouchers hasn’t done anything to benefit or improve public schools. In fact, it’s harmed the states as a whole- both states have slipped in national rankings since ed reformers captured state government.
It’s bipartisan. State lawmakers in Ohio (like Michigan) have quietly moved away from the lockstep ed reform dogma and started doing some actual work on behalf of the public schools in these states, after a 20 year hiatus.
There won’t be any apologies or mea culpas or reexamination of the dogma- they’ll just quietly start supporting public schools again and hope no one in the public notices that they abandoned public schools for 20 years.
Too bad we had to go through this entire tragic process instead of just using the resources for public schools in the first place