How the charter school racket operates in Michigan
By Walter Gilberti
2 July 2014
Over the past two decades, Michigan has become “ground zero” for the spread of for-profit charter schools. The state ranks first in the nation in the percentage of charter schools run by “education” companies that derive revenue from the resources siphoned from the public schools.
A whopping 78.8 percent of these schools are for-profit enterprises in Michigan. The next highest percentage is found in Missouri, having 36.6 percent of its charters for-profit.
Largely unregulated and run by politically connected businessmen seeking to cash in on the half-trillion dollar year education “market,” several charter school operations around the country have been exposed as corrupt rackets. (See: “Charter school companies in US face corruption charges”).
The Detroit Free Press has released what it calls an exhaustive year-long study of the financing, operation, oversight and education outcomes of Michigan’s charter schools on its “Freep.com” website. The study, which includes articles, documents, PDF files and videos, is a damning indictment.
The exposé, however, does not draw any connection between the spread of charter schools and the deliberate dismantling of public education by the Bush and Obama administrations. The Democratic president has overseen the doubling of the number of charter school students since taking office in 2009.
The Free Press points out there are several states, including Mississippi, not generally thought of as a paragon of public education, that have explicitly banned profiting from educating young people.
Detroit ranks number two in the country in the percentage of schools that have been chartered, trailing only New Orleans, where the school district has been completely privatized. In the case of New Orleans, the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, exacerbated by the criminal neglect of the Bush administration, was used as a pretext to dismantle public education. In Detroit it has been a protracted campaign of budget cuts, school closings and the elimination of thousands of teacher and support staff jobs, carried out by a succession of local Democratic Party administrations, which were aided and abetted by the Detroit Federation of Teachers union, that opened the door to a takeover by charter schools.
In recent years, all manner of charlatans, con artists, preachers and retired professional athletes have opened charter schools in Detroit, pocketing money that would have gone to traditional public schools. In fact, enrollment in charter schools in the city has now surpassed that of the public schools.
The most blatant example of the reckless insinuation of these elements into public education was witnessed with the transformation of the Catherine Ferguson Academy, an award-winning school devoted to the education of unwed teenage mothers and their children, into a charter school in 2011. The new chartered CFA would be run by a dubious outfit, Evans Solutions, Inc., owned by Blair Evans, brother of a former Wayne County sheriff.
The World Socialist Web Site, whose supporters actively fought against the privatization of the school, warned at the time, “The Detroit political and corporate establishment has no interest in defending CFA. Their conscious strategy is to shut down large sections of the public school system, while subordinating the rest to the direct operations of for-profit companies.”
Earlier this month it was announced that Catherine Ferguson Academy would be shuttered permanently.
A summary of the Free Press investigation’s most significant findings, include the following:
1. Charter schools spend $1 billion per year in state taxpayer money, often with little transparency.
2. A majority of the worst-ranked charter schools in Michigan have been open 10 years or more.
3. Charter schools as a whole fare no better than traditional schools in educating students in poverty.
4. Some charter school board members were forced out after demanding How the charter school racket operates in Michigan - World Socialist Web Site:
