Letter to the Editor: Charter School Bill 'Is Poor Public Policy-Making'

The Michigan Senate just approved Senate Bill 618 that lifts the cap on charter schools in Michigan. For-profit charters do worse academically than traditional public schools, spend less money on instruction, and sort and select students.  The Senate-approved bill is a one-size-fits-all “cure” for urban schools’ ills that will drain resources from high-performing community schools across our state.

Charters – a few facts:

• Seventy-five percent of charter schools in Michigan are for-profit schools ... and school is a very profitable undertaking if you just run K-8 schools.
• Eighty percent serve students in K-8 (schools’ profit centers) – most charter operators do not run comprehensive high schools.
• Some facts on Michigan’s Charters from the Senate Fiscal Agency:
  
  • Transportation cost per pupil: traditional publics $416, charters $89
  • Pension cost per pupil: traditional publics $966, charters $50
  • Special education population: traditional publics 14.3 percent, charters 4.1 percent
  • Percentage spent on instruction: traditional publics 54 percent, charters 45 percent

Conclusion: Charters sort and select students, service vastly fewer high-needs special education students, send challenging students back to publics after count day, transport far fewer students, disproportionately enroll high-profit students (elementary), don’t run comprehensive high school programs and spend far less on instruction. 

• Stanford Sixteen (16) State Charter School Performance Study:
  
  • “37 percent deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their student would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.”
  • “Nearly half of the charter schools nationwide have results that are no different from the local public school options.”
  • “17 percent provide superior education opportunities for their students.”

• Miracle cure: The Senate has approved a “cure” that will have no effect nearly half of the patients, make 37 percent of them sicker, and “cure” 17 percent. How is this good public policy?
• Transparency: Where is the board of the charter school located? Where is the authorizer located? If this bill becomes law, these authorizers can be any university or community college in the state.
• Local control: The Legislature has removed locally elected school boards from controlling their districts.
• Accountability: Charter school boards can be located anywhere, even out of state.  How do we hold people accountable who are not elected, we don’t know, and aren’t located nearby?
• School consolidation?: This establishes “mini-districts” all over the state.
• Michigan tax dollars: Out-of-state authorizers stand to make huge amounts of money from this.

Public high schools are centers of community life and pride. This bill drains resources away from community schools ... schools that serve all comers. One thing is for sure – this charter bill is not about serving students better or school quality, the data above prove that. The bill is poor public policy-making at its worst.

– Superintendent Mike Simeck