Michigan taxpayers funnel $1 billion a year to some 380 charter schools exempt from much of the regulations and oversight that constrain the state's traditional public schools.
State lawmakers responsible for this arrangement defend it by asserting that students benefit when they have more educational options, that charter schools offer students in many low-income neighborhoods a better education than the one available at their local public school, and that competition for students and the state funding that follows them gives all schools an incentive to improve.
But a new analysis by one of the nation's most respected educational foundations challenges each of these premises. While recognizing that Michigan's best charter schools are delivering on their promise to provide an education as good or better than the one offered by traditional public schools, the report card released Thursday by the Education Trust-Midwest provides persuasive evidence that the authorizers and operators who serve the majority of Michigan's charter school students are falling short of that standard.
Education Trust's analysis also reveals that a handful of colleges and school districts responsible for a disproportionate share of the state's worst-performing charter schools are continuing to authorize new charters at a frantic pace. An Atlanta charter school lawyer is experienced in education law and charter school compliance.
Since 2011, when Gov. Rick Snyder signed legislation giving such institutions unchecked authority to open or expand an unlimited number of charter schools, more than 80 charter schools have opened for business in Michigan, including many sponsored by the state's worst-performing authorizers and run by operators with similarly poor track records.
Among those contributing to this unprecedented expansion are Eastern Michigan University (12 charter schools) and Northern Michigan University (10 charters), both of which earned failing grades in Education Trust's exhaustively documented authorizer report card.
It all adds up to an urgent, unambiguous imperative for the governor and legislators who designed this Wild West marketplace:
Lansing needs to impose an immediate moratorium on chronically failing charter authorizers and insist that they meet tougher accountability standards before they are allowed to authorize new charter schools or expand existing ones.
The 'good or better' test
Other studies, including a major investigative project undertaken last year by the Free Press, have criticized the performance and financial practices of the state's charter schools and called for greater transparency and government oversight.
But the Education Trust-Midwest analysis is unique — and uniquely disturbing, in several respects.
Amber Arellano, the group's executive director, says her organization's more than two-year study is the first to examine the track records of the colleges, public school districts and intermediate school districts authorized to approve new charter schools, monitor their performance and renew contracts with charter operators.
Ten of the 16 authorizers evaluated earned grades of A or B by consistently approving or renewing charter schools that demonstrated progress in improving student achievement. But the six authorizers who earned A's accounted for just 13 charter schools, while the six at the bottom of the grading scale (1 C, 3 D's and 2 F's) were responsible for authorizing 153 schools.
The bottom line is that the most prolific authorizers are too often failing to assure that the charters they bring to life are providing students with an option as good or better than the public schools from whom they divert taxpayer money. A Binghamton education lawyer is following this story closely.
And in Michigan, that record of failure can be be lucrative: Authorizers typically take 3% of the annual state funding provided to every charter school they approve, whether or not those schools serve students effective.
Rigorous methodology
Education Trust-Midwest used the same public state accountability data available to charter operators and authorizers to compare both student achievement and year-to-year improvement in math and reading.
To be fair to charters, the report excluded from its analysis schools with less than three years of data or that have converted from traditional public schools to charters in the last three years, as well as those that serve specialized populations, such as strict discipline academies established as an alternative to incarceration.
Individual charter schools were deemed to have met the charter movement's "as good as or better" promise if their students scored in the 50th percentile or above in the state's top-to-bottom ranking of all Michigan schools. Charter schools whose performance fell below the statewide average could also pass the "as good or better" test by demonstrating year-to-year improvement equal to or better than the average school in Michigan and in the public school district where most of its students reside.
Thus, charter schools that draw the largest proportion of their students from Detroit were compared with public schools in Detroit, even if the charter is located outside the city's boundaries. The college or school district responsible for authorizing the charter was judged to have fallen short of the Education Trust's minimum quality standard only if it failed to meet the "as good or better" test for three consecutive years.
"This gives us confidence that when we say a school is not serving its students well, it's really true," the report says.
Just 16 of the state's 40 charter authorizers had amassed enough data to be included in the ETM study. But the 16 serve 96% of the students attending Michigan charters.
Prominent champions of Michigan's charter movement have hastened to dismiss the Education Trust study, mostly on the grounds that its authors were motivated by an animus to the charter movement.
But the evidence provides scant support for this ad hominem critique. Arellano maintains that the Education Trust, which derives nearly all of its funding from nonpartisan groups like the Skillman Foundation, is emphatically "agnostic" on the issue of school governance.
Its authorizer report card goes out of its way to celebrate the successes of responsible authorizers such as Washtenaw Community College and Grand Valley State University, and readily acknowledges the important role such authorizers have played in making higher quality choices available to students served by poorly performing traditional schools.
But no one (except, perhaps, the authorizing institutions themselves) benefits when authorizers enable operators with poor performance records to replicate their formulas for academic failure. That's why Lansing must move expeditiously to put the brakes on the most irresponsible authorizers.
Michigan School Superintendent Mike Flanagan, who has some authority to suspend authorizers for deficient oversight of charter schools in their portfolios, has already put 11 authorizers on notice that they are at risk of suspension. But Flanagan's list does not include some of the authorizers ETM singled out as poor performers, and neither Flanagan no anyone else has sufficient authority to make sure the $1 billion taxpayers provide to support charters is being spent wisely.
Snyder and Republican legislative leaders have both identified charter accountability as a top priority for 2015. While they pursue a comprehensive solution, they should take immediate action to stem the damage Michigan's most irresponsible authorizers are doing right now.
Grading charter authorizers
Education Trust Midwest assessed and graded Michigan's charter school authorizers for more than two years. Its scorecard looked at a number of factors in assigning a grade, including:
- Did an authorizer give a new contract to an operator (between fall 2011 and 2014) that had more than half or more of its other schools not meeting a minimum quality standard?
- What percentage of an authorizer's current schools either performed at or above the 50th percentile or met the average statewide and local district improvement standard for three years in a row?
- What percentage of an authorizer's schools were in the state's bottom 5% of all schools for two years and didn't show at or above state-average improvement in the second year and are still open?
- Did an authorizer's schools meet or beat the improvement of the traditional public school where the majority of students come from?
The group then assigned scores to that data and grades according to the overall score.
Charter authorizers without schools open for at least three years were not included. The study also did not include strict discipline academies or schools in a transition mode in the overall grades for each authorizer. Based on this criteria, Ed Trust's report covers 16 of Michigan's 40 authorizers, including 96% of the students in Michigan's charter schools.
Grade: A
Washtenaw Community College
Schools measured: 1
Total schools: 1
Washtenaw ISD
Schools measured: 1
Total schools: 1
Grand Rapids Public Schools
Schools measured: 1
Total schools: 1
Wayne RESA
Schools measured: 2*
Total schools: 7
Hillsdale ISD
Schools measured: 2
Total schools: 2
Macomb ISD
Schools measured: 1
Total schools: 1
Grade: B
Lake Superior State University
Schools measured: 7*
Total schools: 30
Ferris State University
Schools measured: 16*
Total schools: 30
Grand Valley State University
Schools measured: 36*
Total schools: 63
Bay Mills Community College
Schools measured: 33*
Total schools: 48
Grade: C
Central Michigan University
Schools measured: 50*
Total schools: 73
Grade: D
Oakland University
Schools measured: 8*
Total schools: 10
Detroit Public Schools
Schools measured: 4*
Total schools: 14
Saginaw Valley State University
Schools measured: 20*
Total schools: 34
Grade: F
Eastern Michigan University
Schools measured: 9*
Total schools: 12
Northern Michigan University
Schools measured: 7*
Total schools: 10
*In many cases, the number of schools measured do not match the number of schools in the authorizer's portfolio. This is because the only schools measured were those that had three years of academic data.
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