Labor unions destroyed their auto industry, refused to yield, refused to face reality and put their members out of work
Democratic mayor for 54 consecutive years and counting
Democratic demographics, democratic unions, democratic government, democratic schools....................
of course it's the Republican's fault, them there democrats are going to be fixing it all any day now
Democratic mayor for 54 consecutive years and counting
Democratic demographics, democratic unions, democratic government, democratic schools....................
of course it's the Republican's fault, them there democrats are going to be fixing it all any day now
In late 1993, under Engler’s watch (and with the DeVos’ lobbying), the Michigan legislature passed a sweeping school-reform law allowing local school districts, universities, and community colleges to open and operate publicly-funded, for-profit charter schools. This was the coming-out party for Betsy DeVos’ education shadow government.
She continued wielding influence as chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000 and a zealot member of the donor class, leaning hard on the state legislature to shape Michigan’s schools according to her vision—and that was just the beginning.
Aside from her husband’s 2006 gubernatorial election loss to Jennifer Granholm, which is another story, DeVos has suffered only one true and public defeat in Michigan: a ballot proposal in 2000 that would have allowed the use of vouchers for private and religious schools. It was soundly derailed, losing 69 percent of the vote. (President Trump has called for a $20 billion voucher program.) But the shellacking at the polls did not deter DeVos.
In 2001, after the ballot initiative was rejected, she formed the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP) with her husband. They wasted no time. In 2002, according to Politico, GLEP had more money than the United Auto Workers or the state’s most powerful teachers’ union or any Democratic-affiliated PAC in the state. GLEP got to work bullying lawmakers and launching attack ads, and the fight for unchecked charter expansion and school choice in Michigan was underway. The landmark Citizens United case in 2010 made their lives even easier and enabled them to wholeheartedly use their immense wealth to shape school reform. GLEP has a 501(c)(4), the GLEP Education Fund, which allows it to accept unlimited contributions without disclosure.
In 2011, nearly 20 years after Michigan passed its school-reform law, DeVos and GLEP lobbied the state to lift the cap on charter schools and fought against legislation that would have prohibited low-performing charters from expanding. As a direct result, Detroit charter schools can underperform and not only continue to enroll new students but open up more schools—something that more conventional charter advocates, who have long baked accountability into their model, find patently insane.
Massachusetts, where a ballot measure that would have lifted the cap on charter expansion was shot down this fall, has what a report from the Education Trust-Midwest called “an unrelenting commitment to accountability.” The state of Michigan has roughly 40 authorizers—the entities that grant charters to schools and are supposed to manage and monitor performance—whereas Massachusetts has only one: the state board of education.
The lax regulations and lack of accountability have contributed to a proliferation of for-profit charters in Michigan. Roughly 80 percent of charters in Michigan are for profit, more than any other in the country—and they don’t have to answer to anyone.
In a letter to the Senate, philanthropist Eli Broad, a student of Detroit Public Schools and a longtime charter advocate, voiced his “serious concerns” over DeVos’ “support for unregulated charter schools and vouchers.” That the Michigan native, who was unavailable for comment, would have come out so vocally against DeVos signals just how spooked the education community is by her new perch in Trump’s cabinet.
DeVos’s fingerprints are all over the school-choice movement in Michigan, but her holier-than-thou free-market education policy has had particularly devastating effects in Detroit, where the public schools have been under state emergency management 15 of the last 17 years. Fifty-three percent of students are enrolled in charters—only New Orleans has more—to little discernible benefit. A 2014 report found that charter and public-school students were essentially equally proficient in math and reading, which isn’t saying much given that in September, a federal civil-rights lawsuit was filedalleging that the state had disinvested so negligently in Detroit education that children lacked a fundamental access to literacy. Nonetheless, of the 25 Detroit schools on the chopping block for closure this year, just one is a charter.
Detroit went from a public school system with an overlay of healthy alternatives to a mess of unregulated choice where the alternatives have begun to swallow the system whole. This is what DeVos wants to bring to America.
She continued wielding influence as chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000 and a zealot member of the donor class, leaning hard on the state legislature to shape Michigan’s schools according to her vision—and that was just the beginning.
Aside from her husband’s 2006 gubernatorial election loss to Jennifer Granholm, which is another story, DeVos has suffered only one true and public defeat in Michigan: a ballot proposal in 2000 that would have allowed the use of vouchers for private and religious schools. It was soundly derailed, losing 69 percent of the vote. (President Trump has called for a $20 billion voucher program.) But the shellacking at the polls did not deter DeVos.
In 2001, after the ballot initiative was rejected, she formed the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP) with her husband. They wasted no time. In 2002, according to Politico, GLEP had more money than the United Auto Workers or the state’s most powerful teachers’ union or any Democratic-affiliated PAC in the state. GLEP got to work bullying lawmakers and launching attack ads, and the fight for unchecked charter expansion and school choice in Michigan was underway. The landmark Citizens United case in 2010 made their lives even easier and enabled them to wholeheartedly use their immense wealth to shape school reform. GLEP has a 501(c)(4), the GLEP Education Fund, which allows it to accept unlimited contributions without disclosure.
In 2011, nearly 20 years after Michigan passed its school-reform law, DeVos and GLEP lobbied the state to lift the cap on charter schools and fought against legislation that would have prohibited low-performing charters from expanding. As a direct result, Detroit charter schools can underperform and not only continue to enroll new students but open up more schools—something that more conventional charter advocates, who have long baked accountability into their model, find patently insane.
Massachusetts, where a ballot measure that would have lifted the cap on charter expansion was shot down this fall, has what a report from the Education Trust-Midwest called “an unrelenting commitment to accountability.” The state of Michigan has roughly 40 authorizers—the entities that grant charters to schools and are supposed to manage and monitor performance—whereas Massachusetts has only one: the state board of education.
The lax regulations and lack of accountability have contributed to a proliferation of for-profit charters in Michigan. Roughly 80 percent of charters in Michigan are for profit, more than any other in the country—and they don’t have to answer to anyone.
In a letter to the Senate, philanthropist Eli Broad, a student of Detroit Public Schools and a longtime charter advocate, voiced his “serious concerns” over DeVos’ “support for unregulated charter schools and vouchers.” That the Michigan native, who was unavailable for comment, would have come out so vocally against DeVos signals just how spooked the education community is by her new perch in Trump’s cabinet.
DeVos’s fingerprints are all over the school-choice movement in Michigan, but her holier-than-thou free-market education policy has had particularly devastating effects in Detroit, where the public schools have been under state emergency management 15 of the last 17 years. Fifty-three percent of students are enrolled in charters—only New Orleans has more—to little discernible benefit. A 2014 report found that charter and public-school students were essentially equally proficient in math and reading, which isn’t saying much given that in September, a federal civil-rights lawsuit was filedalleging that the state had disinvested so negligently in Detroit education that children lacked a fundamental access to literacy. Nonetheless, of the 25 Detroit schools on the chopping block for closure this year, just one is a charter.
Detroit went from a public school system with an overlay of healthy alternatives to a mess of unregulated choice where the alternatives have begun to swallow the system whole. This is what DeVos wants to bring to America.
It is worth reiterating here again that there is no cap on charter school growth in the state of Michigan. The good majority of these charters are run by for-profit management companies—many of which are out-of-state—and have zero accountability. Before the cap was lifted in 2011, if you wanted to open a charter you had to wait for an available space. When the legislature lifted the cap, it created total mayhem. There are currently 98 charter schools in Detroit as against 97 DPS schools, according to Vice.
“Once the cap was lifted you saw online charter schools, charter high schools popping up in strip malls. Just crazy stuff,” a former DPS teacher turned administrator told Deadspin. “Just wild stuff going on where everything turned into for-profit, because there’s not a not-for-profit requirement in Michigan. You have schools that are built for 2,000 kids and have 200 enrolled because there’s just so many options right now that it doesn’t make sense. And the lack of accountability means that even if the school is not doing anything well, it still remains open.”
Yes, the city of Detroit has grappled with a shrinking population and disinvestment and a virtually non-existent mass transit system and high crime rates. But it was a diminishing tax base coupled with the rapid expansion of for-profit charters —which siphon students and public funding away from local neighborhood schools—that eventually led to insurmountable debt and a glut of underperforming schools.
This was not the product of bipartisan bickering in Lansing, the state capital. Detroit’s schools had been in crisis mode for the better part of two decades and lawmakers agreed legislative action was necessary. DPS needed help (and, with $467 million in operating debt, a path to solvency) and charters needed more accountability.
“We started this entire conversation by saying let’s not make this a public vs. charter fight,” Michigan State Senator David Knezek, who worked on the package starting back in 2015, told Deadspin. “This was a common accountability system that we wanted to apply to every school. Public or charter. We worked together in the Senate.”
The proposed bill, which called for a $617 million aid package, was stuffed with the kind of provisions school-choice advocates and charter-school proponents support. A mayorally-appointed appointed Detroit Education Commission (DEC)—effectively an oversight board—would be staffed equally with three charter members and three DPS members. The DEC would then grade schools from A to F and, in a city that spans 139 square miles with a scattershot population in blighted neighborhoods, decide which neighborhoods needed schools most. Charter school operators that received a C or below could not expand or open new schools, something they were previously allowed to do with zero repercussions.
DeVos and GLEP pounced.
“Once the cap was lifted you saw online charter schools, charter high schools popping up in strip malls. Just crazy stuff,” a former DPS teacher turned administrator told Deadspin. “Just wild stuff going on where everything turned into for-profit, because there’s not a not-for-profit requirement in Michigan. You have schools that are built for 2,000 kids and have 200 enrolled because there’s just so many options right now that it doesn’t make sense. And the lack of accountability means that even if the school is not doing anything well, it still remains open.”
Yes, the city of Detroit has grappled with a shrinking population and disinvestment and a virtually non-existent mass transit system and high crime rates. But it was a diminishing tax base coupled with the rapid expansion of for-profit charters —which siphon students and public funding away from local neighborhood schools—that eventually led to insurmountable debt and a glut of underperforming schools.
This was not the product of bipartisan bickering in Lansing, the state capital. Detroit’s schools had been in crisis mode for the better part of two decades and lawmakers agreed legislative action was necessary. DPS needed help (and, with $467 million in operating debt, a path to solvency) and charters needed more accountability.
“We started this entire conversation by saying let’s not make this a public vs. charter fight,” Michigan State Senator David Knezek, who worked on the package starting back in 2015, told Deadspin. “This was a common accountability system that we wanted to apply to every school. Public or charter. We worked together in the Senate.”
The proposed bill, which called for a $617 million aid package, was stuffed with the kind of provisions school-choice advocates and charter-school proponents support. A mayorally-appointed appointed Detroit Education Commission (DEC)—effectively an oversight board—would be staffed equally with three charter members and three DPS members. The DEC would then grade schools from A to F and, in a city that spans 139 square miles with a scattershot population in blighted neighborhoods, decide which neighborhoods needed schools most. Charter school operators that received a C or below could not expand or open new schools, something they were previously allowed to do with zero repercussions.
DeVos and GLEP pounced.
“We finally passed the bill out, bipartisan support—Democrats and Republicans—and it went to the House of Representatives,” Knezek said. “And it was in the House where they rammed and jammed it through and took their orders from Betsy DeVos to strip out any language that would have required charter schools to play by the same rules as public schools.”
In the version of the bill that was passed in June of last year, the schools received the $617 million but the oversight board was nixed, per DeVos’s demands. The system of grades and accountability for charters was gone. State Senator Morris Hood, a Democrat who represents Detroit, was irate.
“You cowards!” Hood yelled on the floor of the Senate. “You damn cowards to even take up this legislation before us and our community and not even have one Detroiter in the room to help to negotiate this. These are kids I have to look at every day, but you want to make decisions about their life and tell them what kind of life they’re going to have. This is the crap you’re shoving down their throats. This is going to impact them for years.”
In the version of the bill that was passed in June of last year, the schools received the $617 million but the oversight board was nixed, per DeVos’s demands. The system of grades and accountability for charters was gone. State Senator Morris Hood, a Democrat who represents Detroit, was irate.
“You cowards!” Hood yelled on the floor of the Senate. “You damn cowards to even take up this legislation before us and our community and not even have one Detroiter in the room to help to negotiate this. These are kids I have to look at every day, but you want to make decisions about their life and tell them what kind of life they’re going to have. This is the crap you’re shoving down their throats. This is going to impact them for years.”
Because of murky campaign-finance laws we’ll never know the true reach of the DeVos family’s donations, but an analysisfrom the Michigan Campaign Finance Network found that the DeVos family donated $1.45 million in disclosed donations to candidates, PACs (including $250,000 to the GLEP PAC), and the Republican Party between June 2 and July 28 of last year in the lead-up to the August 2 primary. They made $14 million in political contributions from January 1, 2015 through last year’s election, $3.4 million of which was made in the state of Michigan. None of this accounts for her dark-money ties, which Senate Democrats asked her to disclose last month.
“It is well known here in Michigan, all you have to do is look at the campaign finance reports,” Senator Knezek said. “The DeVos family looms large over the Michigan House of Representatives.”
(It’s no different in Washington. The DeVos family has donated nearly $1 million to the senators who voted on her confirmation, according to the Center for American Progress, and more than $250,000 to senators on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, who pushed her confirmation through to the Senate floor last week.)
“It is well known here in Michigan, all you have to do is look at the campaign finance reports,” Senator Knezek said. “The DeVos family looms large over the Michigan House of Representatives.”
(It’s no different in Washington. The DeVos family has donated nearly $1 million to the senators who voted on her confirmation, according to the Center for American Progress, and more than $250,000 to senators on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, who pushed her confirmation through to the Senate floor last week.)
DeVos’ vision for school choice in Detroit has created an unnecessarily chaotic education climate where “school choice” has directly led to less choice. “A lot of folks perpetuate the thought process that just because I have a choice it must automatically be a better choice,” Knezek said. “And what we’ve seen here in Michigan is that’s not the case.”
Charters pop up near neighborhood schools and recruit kids to get the per-pupil funding. When a local student moves to the charter, the DPS schools loses not just a student but the cash that comes with it. The uptick in charters dovetailed with far more punitive rules for public schools and led to a rash of closures. And the closures have completely destabilized education in the Motor City
Charters pop up near neighborhood schools and recruit kids to get the per-pupil funding. When a local student moves to the charter, the DPS schools loses not just a student but the cash that comes with it. The uptick in charters dovetailed with far more punitive rules for public schools and led to a rash of closures. And the closures have completely destabilized education in the Motor City
I don't understand. What's your problem? It's not like DeVos is going to be the principal and teacher of every school. She won't do either for any. She wants to create a choice for students and parents. ... and that is a BAD thing? It all comes down to this: liberals don't want a bunch of compitition in ideas because they don't want a bunch of choices. Is it because they don't have or they can't win on the ideas or don't trust their populous to decide for themselves? I don't know of a third option.
