Nontraditional K-12 Schools in Michigan

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Michigan statutes allow a variety of public education entities to authorize PSAs, and impose a number of restrictions, such as requiring certified teachers, standardized testing, and the new high school curriculum, seeking to balance restraints on PSAs with opportunities to innovate and tailor programs to target students. Some charters have contracted with national school management organizations that have developed, and seek to replicate, successful education models that include longer school days and years, and specific governance, personnel, assessment, and community relations approaches. Advocates claim the competition from charter schools will force traditional schools to improve in order to compete.

Critics fear charters will skim the students who are the easiest or cheapest to educate, leaving the neediest (and most expensive to educate) students concentrated in traditional schools. As charters attract students and the state and federal funding that follows those students, they exacerbate the financial stresses on traditional public schools (these financial challenges have been detailed in previous CRC reports). Critics also express concern that PSA board members are appointed, not elected as are members of public school district boards.

In Michigan, PSAs are geographically concentrated in 23 school districts (50 are located in Detroit). Research indicates that while some PSAs produce excellent academic results (the school that ranked highest in MEAP performance in 2009 was a PSA operated by National Heritage Academies), standardized test scores of PSA students lag the statewide averages. However, PSAs are often concentrated in lower performing districts and, in general, PSAs perform better than the host district. This result is consistent with a recent national study that found that charter schools were more effective for low income, lower achieving students. In 2008-09, 71.6 percent of PSAs made adequate yearly progress, compared to 85.6 percent of all Michigan schools.

A controversial 2009 study of charter schools in 16 states found that 17 percent of those charter schools provided superior educational opportunities for their students, nearly half had results that were no different from the local traditional public schools, and 37 percent delivered academic results that were significantly worse than their students would have achieved had they remained in traditional schools. In spite of the inability of charter schools to prove that they produce consistently higher academic achievement, they are very popular with parents, and two-thirds of Michigan PSAs have waiting lists.

In addition to describing charter schools and the issues associated with them, Nontraditional K-12 Schools in Michigan also explores the public policy context and public funding implications of private schools and homeschooling.

This paper is the third in the series of papers CRC is publishing on important education issues facing Michigan. The first, Public Education Governance in Michigan, was released in January, 2010; the second, State and Local Revenues for Public Education in Michigan, was released in September. The goal of this comprehensive review of education provision is to provide the data and expertise necessary to inform the education debate in Lansing and around the state.

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