Michigan Tea Partier: Charter Schools Are for Kids From "Ethnically Challenged Families"
| Mon Feb. 4, 2013 9:03 AM PST
A few weeks ago, the Michigan chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-backed conservative advocacy group, held a "citizen watchdog training" in a suburb of Detroit. The training was billed as a workshop for regular folks to learn "the best tools and techniques in investigative journalism, social media, and opposition research." Featured speakers—including local activists, conservative state legislators, and Scott Hagerstrom, AFP-Michigan's director—would also speak about efforts to "reform" Michigan's schools.
Among the AFP set, reforming public schools usually means converting them into non-union, privately-run charter schools. Nationally, AFP is a vocal proponent of charters and "school choice." And at the Michigan citizens training, one of the featured speakers, Norm Hughes, a member of the North Oakland Tea Party Patriots, offered this take on charters:
Kids aren't going to charter schools if they're "A" students. They go to charter schools because they're failing students and, by and large, the charter schools have a higher percentage of poor families, ethnically challenged families…
Ethnically challenged? Hughes did