Report Decries State Takeovers through “Opportunity” and “Achievement” School Districts
You might imagine that the morass in Michigan—the tragedy of Flint’s water poisoning under a state-appointed emergency fiscal manager, the dilapidated condition of Detroit’s public schools under a state-appointed emergency manager, and Governor Rick Snyder’s own admission of the failure of a now three-year state takeover of 15 low-scoring Detroit schools into a “Michigan Education Achievement Authority”—would cause other states to re-think plans to impose state takeovers on struggling cities and school districts. When local citizens no longer exert any control through elected city councils and school boards over the officials who oversee their towns and schools, government doesn’t seem to work very well.
But states persist with plans to take over poor places. On Tuesday, officials in Atlantic City agreed to a takeover by the state of New Jersey to avoid bankruptcy. Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner has threatened to take over the Chicago Public Schools (though the state legislature in Illinois seems adamantly opposed to such a takeover), Ohio is proceeding with plans fast-tracked through the legislature last summer to take over the public schools in Youngstown, and voters in Georgia will decide on a proposed constitutional amendment which would enable the state to take over low-scoring public schools.
Kent McGuire, president and CEO of the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) has published a commentary in Education Week, A Failing Grade for K-12 State Takeovers. McGuire explains: “Louisiana was the first state to implement such a model in 2003. Its Recovery School District is now the nation’s first all-charter district… A decade later, New Orleans still reports some of the nation’s lowest achievement scores and graduation rates. Beyond poor academic outcomes, recent research from Stanford University found a host of negative consequences, with a majority of families reporting long commutes to school, overcrowding, a bewildering gauntlet of enrollment procedures, high rates of pushout, and difficulty finding schools able to serve students with special needs (including that the most vulnerable are the least likely to Report Decries State Takeovers through “Opportunity” and “Achievement” School Districts | janresseger: