Whitmer, Michigan Democrats have to fix what Betsy DeVos did | Opinion

Michigan public schools have been in a free fall for decades, with every demographic group lagging their peers nationally on most key measures. That means when affluent suburban kids in Michigan are compared to affluent suburban kids in other states, the achievement gap is widening.  

So if wealthy, suburban kids in Michigan public schools caught the proverbial cold, Detroit kids in public schools have the flu.  

Beyond decades of disinvestment and state-controlled financial mismanagement, major education policy has made even the simplest tasks difficult for Detroit parents. 

Parents of children who live in Detroit are flooded with “choices,” but decades-old Lansing policies have made choice nothing more than a fallacy. Instead of just showing up to enroll their children at a neighborhood school, Detroit parents face the unenviable task of sifting through mountains of data and community recommendations simply to select a school for their child to attend. 

Some parents get lucky, enrolling their child in the best possible school that meets their child’s needs, while other parents feel like they’re in the movie "Groundhog Day" — stuck in an enrollment trap they can’t get out of. Detroit parents do the best they can with the resources and information available, but there is no cohesion in the chaotic “marketplace” that is public education in Detroit.  

It needs to change.  

When choice isn't a choice

Detroit Public School Community District operates 106 schools, serving nearly 49,000 students. But that represents only half of Detroit children.  

There are also 97 charter schools (privately run public schools) in Wayne County, most in the city of Detroit, and another two dozen charter schools in Macomb and Oakland County. Detroit children also attend those schools. There are a dozen or so “schools of choice” traditional public school districts that accept nonresident students. Most of them are in inner ring suburbs of Detroit.  

In all, there are over 200 public school options for every Detroit parent to consider, and the only way to compare schools is to do it manually. So is enrollment — DPSCD and each individual charter have separate enrollment processes.   

Until Detroit parents can objectively compare their choices and enroll their children through a central process, Detroit parents don’t have real choice. Parents must also be guaranteed transportation to get to whatever school they choose, because a choice you can’t get to is no choice at all.  

Our Democratic Legislature and governor should act now to offer Detroit parents real choice.  

We all know where good intentions lead

In 1994, Michigan voters approved the school funding tax Proposal A — still the single largest tax policy shift in Michigan in the last 100 years.  

At a high level, Proposal A was intended to equalize school funding by capping property taxes for school funds at 6 mills, and raising the state sales tax from 4% to 6%. This created the state foundation allowance (also known as per pupil allotment), which distributes a set amount of school funding to every child in Michigan.  

This move was sold as a way to eliminate funding disparities between school districts that relied solely on property tax revenue. Before Prop A, the average district levied a 35-mill school tax.  

But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. 

The per-pupil-allotment treats public school children in Michigan as fungible widgets, all the same. The cost to educate a second grader in this model is viewed the same as an 11th grader, or for students with special needs or at risk in other ways.  

Proposal A launched absurd protocols such as Count Day — student attendance on the first Wednesday in October, a single day, accounts for 90% of school funding for every school district in Michigan. Each year, Count Day brings iPad raffles and pizza parties all over Michigan to ensure the highest student attendance (thus highest revenue) possible.  

But accompanied this new tax scheme was the creation of charter schools and schools of choice, adding competition for this new interchangeable commodity — the public-school student, and that student’s accompanying state dollars.   

This policy singlehandedly formed the basis of the mess that Detroit parents must deal with today. 

A plan that didn't work

The original aim of charter schools was to stimulate innovation, and push traditional public schools to do the same.  

Charter schools — the number of charters was initially capped by the legislation that enabled them — were intended to break free from the large bureaucracies of traditional public school districts, allowing for innovation led by teachers and not bureaucracy-heavy central offices.   

But today, most charter schools in Michigan are run exactly like traditional school districts, with large central office bureaucracies ("management companies”), in which teachers have little to no say in methods of instruction.   

It should be noted, these (mostly for-profit) management companies are exempt from the same public disclosure requirements traditional school districts are bound by. And, while 30 years later, the creation of charter schools in Michigan has not pushed traditional public schools to innovate, Michigan has more charter schools than any state but Louisiana.  

This is perhaps due to the fact that billionaire political donor Betsy DeVos bankrolled the no-compromise, pro-charter school movement in Michigan, funding groups such as the Great Lakes Education project, a staunch pro-charter advocacy organization.  

In 2011, DeVos successfully lobbied to remove the cap on charters and charter school openings in Michigan skyrocketed, and now roughly one-third of all charter school students in Michigan are residents of Detroit. 

Which brings us back to Detroit parents, and choice. 

What DeVos did, and how we can fix it

In 2016, Detroit Public Schools was facing bankruptcy. Four state-appointed emergency managers couldn’t solve one thing, and it related to the above-mentioned per-pupil-allocation.   

For 70 years, Detroit’s population has been declining from its 1950 peak of 2 million residents. Now, the city has just around 632,000 residents. Public school enrollment has fallen even faster, from around 299,000 in 1966 to 49,000 today.  

Student enrollment declined, of course, as parents moved out of the city. The drop was exacerbated as students who stayed in the city went to attend charters and schools of choice. As the district lost students, revenue declined.  

But the difference between Detroit Public Schools and the historic City of Detroit municipal bankruptcy, is that the pension obligations for educators are guaranteed by the Michigan taxpayer. So, a deal had to be done. A Republican governor and state Legislature had to get to work.  

The Senate Majority Leader at the time tapped Goeff Hansen, a Republican senator from Hart — over three hours away from Detroit—to lead the work on bringing Detroit Public Schools to continued solvency.   

Hansen — clearly not a DeVos puppet — was facing term limits, and wouldn’t get caught up in political gamesmanship.   

He visited Detroit over a dozen times to learn about the issues facing Detroit children and focused on shepherding policy that could improve their outcomes, and led the Senate to pass a package of bills he described as, “saving DPS and school choice.”  

The Senate bills created a new district — Detroit Public Schools Community District — a debt-free entity that would educate children, while preserving DPS to collect the school millage and pay off the district’s debt.  

It also called for a Detroit Education Commission that included an accountability plan. All schools — both DPS and all charters — would be assessed and receive a letter grade of A-F. The commission would also manage public and charter school openings and locations — some Detroit neighborhoods are inundated with school options, and some are veritable deserts. Finally, some measure of accountability for charters.  

As to the number of schools to choose from between DPS and charters, Hansen said that “confusion and chaos negatively impacts parents seeking stability and positive educational options for their children. This new level of coordination will bring about increased parental choice and attract new education options for students.” For good measure, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan dedicated his entire keynote at the Mackinac Policy Conference that year in support of the Detroit Education Commission and Hansen’s bills. 

But after passing the Senate, the bills suffered a tragic fate in the state House. Betsy DeVos and other members of the wealthy family went on a spending blitz, donating $1.45 million to Republican members over a seven-week period — an average of $25,000 a day — successfully killing the notion of a Detroit Education Commission.  

The legislation created a new, financially viable district. But it did nothing to regulate the major issues that affect Detroit children. And it left Detroit parents in the same chaotic public education system 30 years in the making. 

Now in 2024, there is a limited Democratic majority in both legislative chambers and a Democratic governor unbeholden to Betsy DeVos. 

The time is now to advance a package of bills that addresses this chaos.   

I think they should call it “Detroit Kids First."

The core should be a Detroit Education Commission, with members appointed by Detroit's mayor, that:  

• Creates a common enrollment process for all schools located in Detroit including all charters and DPSCD;  
• Creates an accountability standard that assesses school performance and provides an A-F letter grade for every school in Detroit, located on the common enrollment website;  
• Administers a common transportation program in which every school in Detroit is mandated to participate and to which all Detroit children have access. 

The DeVos money hasn’t disappeared. Outfits like GLEP will still oppose any form of regulation involving charter schools.  

But Detroit parents — half of whom send their children to charter schools — would welcome a commission that can provide some semblance of stability and certainty to the exercise of school choice.  

The notion that parents will be able to make more informed choices and have an opportunity to attend these schools, just makes sense. I encourage my friends in the state Legislature — particularly in the Detroit Caucus — to take up this cause.  

Detroit parents — and students — will surely be grateful.

Michael Griffie is the Detroit Metro Leader for AECOM and a former Detroit charter school principal. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.