Yesterday I wrote about a report from the Center for Media and Democracy that showed how 25 proposed charter schools in Michigan received $1.7 million in tax dollars but never actually opened. It turns out that one of those schools was the Detroit College Preparatory Academy, the brainchild or “dream” of a woman named Natasha Baker. Here’s what Baker’s dream […]

This week, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) released a scathing report on charter schools in 12 states which have received federal funding. The report, titled Charter School Black Hole shows that Michigan charter schools received $34,997,658 between 2010-2015 under the federal Charter School Program (CSP). 139 of the 297 charters (as of 2014, the number is up to […]

Oh, look. The corporate front group Mackinac Center wants to convert all Detroit Public Schools (DPS) to charter schools. This, they tell us would be “the best safeguard” and would “allow many independent charter school operators to try varying models for converted DPS schools.” In other words, they once again want to experiment with Detroit school children. In Highland Park, […]

It could be worse, I suppose. We could be Florida. At the risk of giving Michigan Republicans any ideas – because their love of destroying public education in favor of for-profit charter schools that sap resources from our public schools is well-documented – I present you with Florida House Republicans, leading from the rear. A recent education reform effort, one […]

Last night, the Brighton Area Schools (BAS) board declined to take a vote on chartering the tea party “classical academy” being pushed by Pasquale Battaglia and a coalition of homeschooling parents. You can read more on the history of this politically extreme group HERE. After months of heated public discussion, the Brighton Area Schools Board of Education refused to even […]

I have written before about an effort by a group led by Pasquale Battaglia to get Brighton Area Schools (BAS) to charter his “American Classical Academies” school. This group used to call them “American Christian Academies” before changing the name, and only the name, to avoid being seen for what they are: a tea party influenced school steeped in religion, […]

Jeb Bush has a Bush problem. He has a Mitt Romney problem. He has a Lehman Brothers problem. But his Jeb Bush problem may be his most telling problem of all. In The New Yorker, Alec MacGillis unravels Jeb’s adventures in education “reform,” which has increasingly become a euphemism for the right-wing’s conjoined agendas of siphoning taxpayer money into corporate […]

Last month I wrote about a conservative religious group attempting to open a charter school in Brighton, Michigan. The group was originally called the “American Christian Academies” then later rebranded themselves the “American Classical Academies”, retaining the ACA acronym. The ACA was recently successful in getting the Brighton Area Schools to sell them one of their elementary school buildings for […]

This post has been updated below. Last month, Governor Snyder announced that he was forming a 31-person coalition to present alternatives for education reform in Detroit. The coalition, called the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren, is a made up of representatives from public schools, the school reform community (many who are actively working to undermine traditional public schools), […]

Now that the election is over, you don’t hear much about the massive cuts Republicans have made to public schools in Michigan. Without someone like Mark Schauer to constantly put it out into the mediasphere, it’s simply no longer being discussed. Well, except by bloggers like me whose “intellectual content” Gov. Snyder gives “a very low number” on a scale […]

Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger wants you to believe that he’s found a magical way to fund road repairs without raising your taxes! While it’s true that your gas taxes and sales taxes won’t increase, the entire scheme is based on taking nearly a billion dollars more from schools each year. Local municipalities will take a huge hit, too. How […]