Michigan's public schools have been underperforming for decades, lagging nationally in most key metrics for every demographic group. That means the achievement gap is widening when children in Michigan's affluent suburbs are compared to children in affluent suburbs in other states.
So if wealthy suburban kids in public schools in Michigan get the proverbial cold, kids in public schools in Detroit get the flu.
Beyond decades of disinvestment and fiscal mismanagement by the state government, large-scale education policies make even the simplest tasks difficult for parents in Detroit.
Parents of children living in Detroit have a plethora of “choices,” but decades of Lansing policy have made the choices just plain wrong. Parents in Detroit have the unenviable task of sifting through mountains of data and local recommendations to choose which school their child will attend, rather than just showing up to enroll their child in a neighborhood school. facing.
While some parents are lucky enough to be able to enroll their children in the best schools that meet their child's needs, others feel like they're in the world of the movie “Groundhog Day” and have a hard time getting into school. Sometimes you can fall into the trap of Detroit parents are doing the best they can with the resources and information available to them, but there is no unity in the chaotic “marketplace” of Detroit public education.
It needs to change.
When a choice is not a choice
The Detroit Public Schools Community District operates 106 schools serving approximately 49,000 students. But that's only half of Detroit's kids.
Wayne County also has 97 charter schools (private public schools), most of them in the city of Detroit, and an additional 20 in Macomb and Oakland counties. Detroit kids attend those schools, too. He has about 10 traditional public school district “select schools” that accept nonresident students. Most of them are in Detroit's inner ring suburbs.
There are over 200 total public school options for every Detroit parent to consider, and the only way to compare schools is to do it manually. The same goes for registration. DPSCD and individual charters have separate registration processes.
Until Detroit parents can objectively compare their choices and enroll their children through a central process, Detroit parents have no real choice. Parents must also be guaranteed transportation to the school of their choice. Because choosing a school you can't go to is completely out of your choice.
Our Democratic Congress and Governor should act now to provide real options for Detroit parents.
We all know where good intentions lead
In 1994, Michigan voters approved Proposition A, a school funding tax. This remains Michigan's largest tax policy shift in 100 years.
At a high level, Proposition A aimed to equalize school funding by limiting property taxes to six factories and increasing the state sales tax from 4% to 6%. This created the State Foundation Allowance (also known as the per-pupil allocation), which distributes a set amount of school funding to every child in Michigan.
The measure was pitched as a way to close funding disparities among school districts that relied solely on property tax revenue. Before Proposition A was introduced, the average school district had a school tax levy of 35 million yen.
But as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Per-pupil allocation treats all Michigan public school students as equally fungible parts. Under this model, the cost of educating a second grader is considered the same as that of her 11th grader, or a student with special needs or otherwise at risk.
Proposition A initiated absurd protocols such as Counting Day. That means her daily student attendance on the first Wednesday of October accounts for 90% of school funding for every school district in Michigan. Each year, Count Day features iPad raffles and pizza parties across Michigan to ensure the highest possible student attendance (and therefore the highest revenue).
But accompanying this new tax system was the creation of charter schools and schools of choice, increasing competition for this new exchangeable commodity: public school students and the state funding that comes with them.
This policy single-handedly formed the basis for the chaos that Detroit parents have to deal with today.
A plan that didn't work out
The original purpose of charter schools was to stimulate innovation and encourage traditional public schools to do the same.
Charter schools (the number of charter schools was initially limited by the enabling law) are freed from the extensive bureaucracy of traditional public school districts and are led by teachers rather than a bureaucratic central office. The aim was to enable innovation.
But currently, most charter schools in Michigan are run just like traditional school districts by large central offices (“management companies”), with teachers having little or no say in how they teach. .
Note that these (mostly for-profit) management companies are exempt from the same disclosure requirements to which traditional school districts are bound. And 30 years later, the creation of charter schools in Michigan has not spurred innovation in traditional public schools, although Michigan has more charter schools than any other state except Louisiana. To do.
This is likely because billionaire political donor Betsy DeVos has bankrolled Michigan's uncompromising pro-charter school movement, funding groups such as the Great Lakes Education Project, a stalwart pro-charter advocacy group. It depends on the facts.
In 2011, DeVos successfully lobbied to remove the charter school cap, and the number of charter school openings in Michigan skyrocketed, with approximately one-third of all charter school students in Michigan now living in Detroit. It becomes.
Which brings us back to Detroit's parents and choices.
What DeVos did and how can we fix it?
In 2016, Detroit Public Schools was on the brink of bankruptcy. There was one thing he said the four state-appointed emergency managers couldn't resolve, and that had to do with the aforementioned per-pupil quotas.
Detroit's population has been declining for 70 years, from a peak of 2 million people in 1950. Currently, the city has only about 632,000 residents. Enrollment in public schools has declined even more rapidly, from about 299,000 in 1966 to 49,000 today.
As parents moved out of town, student enrollment naturally decreased. The decline worsened as students who remained in the city attended charter schools or preferred schools. School districts have lost students and lost revenue.
But the difference between Detroit Public Schools and the city's historic local bankruptcy is that educators' pension obligations are guaranteed by Michigan taxpayers. Therefore, a deal had to be made. The Republican governor and state legislature had to get to work.
The Senate Majority Leader at the time named Republican Sen. Goff Hansen, from Hart, more than three hours away from Detroit, to lead efforts to maintain the continued solvency of Detroit's public schools.
Hanssen was clearly not a DeVos stooge, but he was facing term limits and had no intention of getting drawn into political gamesmanship.
He has visited Detroit more than a dozen times to learn about the issues facing Detroit's children, focused on guiding policies that could improve their outcomes, and told the Senate that “DPS and schools He passed a series of bills that he described as “saving choice.”
The Senate bill created a new district, the Detroit Public Schools Community District, a debt-free organization to educate children while retaining DPS to collect school fees and pay off the district's debt.
It also called for the establishment of a Detroit Board of Education with an accountability plan. All schools, both DPS and all charters, are evaluated and given a letter grade of AF. The commission would also control the opening and location of public and charter schools. Some parts of Detroit are brimming with school options, while others are veritable deserts. Finally, there is a measure of accountability to the Charter.
Regarding the number of schools choosing between DPS and charters, Hansen said, “The confusion and chaos is detrimental to parents who want stability and positive educational options for their children. The adjustments will increase choice for parents and provide new educational options for students.'' Unsurprisingly, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan devoted his entire keynote address to that year's Mackinac Policy Conference. Dedicated to support of the Detroit Board of Education and the Hansen Bill.
However, after passing the Senate, the bill met a tragic fate in the state Legislature. Betsy DeVos and other members of her wealthy family successfully destroyed the Detroit School Board concept, including donating $1.45 million (an average of $25,000 a day) to Republicans over seven weeks. .
This law created new districts that were financially viable. But they were unable to regulate the major issues affecting Detroit's children. And because of that, Detroit parents were left in the same chaotic public education system for 30 years.
As of 2024, Democrats have a limited majority in both houses of Congress, and we have a Democratic governor who does not rely on Betsy DeVos.
Now is the time to push for a series of bills to address this mess.
I think they should call it “Detroit Kids First.”
At its core is the Detroit Board of Education, whose members are appointed by the Mayor of Detroit and should:
- Create a common admissions process for all schools in Detroit, including all charters and DPSCD.
- Create accountability standards that evaluate school performance and provide AF letter grades for all Detroit schools and post them on a common admissions website.
- Mandating a common transportation program that all Detroit schools are required to participate in and accessible to all Detroit children.
DeVos' money hasn't disappeared. Groups like GLEP continue to oppose any regulation of charter schools.
But Detroit parents, half of whom send their children to charter schools, would welcome a commission that would bring some stability and certainty to the exercise of school choice.
The idea that parents will have the opportunity to make more informed choices and attend these schools makes sense. I encourage our friends in the state legislature — Especially in the Detroit caucuses. — to take up this cause.
Detroit parents and students will be grateful.
Michael Griffie is AECOM's Detroit Metro Leader and former Detroit Charter School Principal. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.