Michigan: President of State Board Explains Why It Declined to Spend $47 Million for New Charters
Casandra E. Ulbrich, president of the Michigan State Board of Education, responded to an editorial in the Detroit News complaining that the State Board rejected $47 million for new charter schools. She explains why the Board declined to spend the money awarded to the state by the federal Charter Schools Program. It doesn’t need new schools or new charters. About 80% of the charters operating in the state are “for-profit.” Furthermore, as Michigan has invested in charters, its test scores have dropped dramatically.
She writes:
This month, the State Board of Education was presented with grant criteria that ultimately could spend $47 million in taxpayer money on new and expanding charter schools. As elected board members, we raised legitimate questions about the need and the nature of these expenditures, following the release of a national research report indicating that over $1 billion of similar grant funds have been awarded to entities that either never opened a school, or opened and then closed.
In the 2002-03 school year, Michigan educated 1,713,165 public K-12 students. Last year, that number fell to 1,507,772. That’s a drop of over 200,000 students. The National Center for Education Statistics predicts that CONTINUE READING: Michigan: President of State Board Explains Why It Declined to Spend $47 Million for New Charters | Diane Ravitch's blog