
Michigan Gambled on Charter Schools. Its Children Lost - mooreds
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/magazine/michigan-gambled-on-charter-schools-its-children-lost.html
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sparrish
Contrast that to Colorado, where charter schools are among the best performing
and diverse schools in the state.

The cause of Michigan's charter school problem may be more of a Michigan issue
than a charter school issue.

[http://watchdog.org/215385/charter-schools-top-denvers-
list-...](http://watchdog.org/215385/charter-schools-top-denvers-list-highest-
performing-public-schools/)

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rmason
I'm from Michigan and there have been charter schools that have been huge
successes and a number that have been huge failures. It may be too easy to
create them and some start underfunded from the beginning.

People are fleeing the Detroit Public school system and a larger number of
failing charter schools are in the Detroit area. The article fails to mention
the huge amount of graft and embezzlement in DPS and the very poor condition
of the schools despite a fairly high amount spent per pupil.

[https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/former-detroit-
public-s...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/former-detroit-public-
schools-director-grant-development-sentenced-fraud-charges)

[https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/former-detroit-
public-s...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/former-detroit-public-
schools-principal-sentenced-bribery-charges)

[http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/...](http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/05/23/detroit-
public-schools-corruption-tutoring-scam/84787254/)

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zip1234
FWIW, I live in Michigan and know people that send their kids to charter
schools and they are quite happy with it.

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ceejayoz
There are people who go to Applebees and enjoy it, too.

Doesn't make it a good restaurant.

(There are, of course, likely to be some genuinely phenomenal charter schools.
The article does cite stats for Michigan that say, on _average_ , they're
worse than average.)

There are empirical measures of school performance. Anecdotal happiness isn't
really one of them.

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maxerickson
Statistics only matter when you are questioning the sample size of a study
without examining the power of the sample the study did use.

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danans
I live in an area with several great charter schools, several badly under-
performing charter schools, and similarly several under-performing and high
performing public schools, all in the same school district.

The biggest difference between those that under-perform vs over-perform boils
down to the average SES of the families whose students attend the school,
which translates fairly well into the resources (time, $, and skills) that a
community is able to put into their school.

At the schools that perform well, regardless of whether they are public vs.
charter, there is a critical mass of parents who dedicate not only their money
(via PTA donations), but their time, organizational and technical skills (i.e.
managing budget, strategic planning, fundraising) to the school. The existence
of the critical mass of people with such resources is often a function of
geography and other selection biases among the students/families that attend.

All this organizing, fundraising, and student selection bias has a
disproportionate effect on school performance. In particular, government
funding (California in this case) often falls hundreds to thousands of dollars
short per student. So PTAs fund programs like science, art, and music, and
teachers aides to support classrooms. As a result, higher SES schools tend to
have those programs while lower SES schools tend not to have them.

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lwhalen
Anecdata, but I'm the product of a K-8 charter school in Flint, MI, and I do
pretty well for myself. I haven't kept fastidious track of my fellow grads,
but the handful I talk to every few years or so also seem to be similarly
successful. If having kids were in the cards for me, I would have no problem
sending them to a charter school as well.

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specializeded
Can I just say I love the attitude re: charter schools ITT, a refreshing
change of pace from the public school obsession elsewhere.

It's like I've just nipped into the waterboard room for a quick drizzle, will
be riding this high the rest of the day.

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pamqzl
This reads like someone set out to write an article on "why charter schools
are bad" and then went off to cherrypick some evidence, rather than someone
set out to write an article which investigates how Michigan's experiment with
charter schools is going.

~~~
SilasX
Yeah, I suspect if you looked at the worst Michigan public schools, you could
make a much stronger case that "Michigan gambled on government-run schools.
Its children lost."

