Stephen Henderson

Detroit Free Press Editorial Page Editor

There's a very simple set of ideas at the core of the growing calls for Michigan to shape up in the way it oversees public charter schools.

Standards. Accountability. Consequences.

If only we could confine the debate to those three concepts, and the way they prioritize favorable outcomes for kids over everything else, we would be doing fine.

But this is Michigan, where charters are now a billion-dollar industry with a powerful lobby to protect its interests. And for too many people, the idea of charter schools is caught up in the ideology of charter schools free-marketeering and anti-regulation, rather than educational results.

So 20 years after the first charter law was passed, 20 years after advocates promised charters would not only provide quality options for parents but also improve the public schools, Michigan is almost nowhere in the quest to build a rational system for dealing with nontraditional public schools.

Nowhere.

It's an embarrassment. And it's absurd that we continue to allow reckless charter authorizers and operators to exploit the state's children and sully the reputations of those who are truly committed to making education better.

Back when the Free Press outlined the state's sloppy and ineffective accountability for charters, 2014 looked like a great opportunity for improvement. The Legislature had all summer to think about the issue, and all fall to get something done.

It didn't happen.

Now, with just days left in the session, the best we might do is incremental. Better than nothing, I suppose, but far from where we ought to be.

This is an area where Gov. Rick Snyder's leadership should have been stronger and more forceful. The GOP majority in the Legislature appears too steeped in pro-charter ideology to deal with problems, or too bought off by charter advocates' deep pockets.

The most comprehensive bill introduced this year came from Sen. Hoon-Yung Hopgood, D-Taylor, in October, and it would have gotten Lansing's arms around much of the unregulated charter mess. Senate Bill 1104 would have created more oversight for charter schools, forced important transparency on their finances and limited new charter school creation to high-performing authorizers. It would also have attempted to rein in the unregulated market for charters by requiring certificates of need for new schools; Detroit, in particular, suffers a glut of charter schools that have contributed to a 20,000-seat surplus in the city.

Hopgood's bill was shouted down pretty vociferously by charter advocates, as were other Democratic offerings, including a bill that would have put a moratorium on new charters until tighter accountability could be enacted.

Remnants of Hopgood's ideas, however, have wound up in HB 5112, a Republican alternative that has a much stronger chance of passing before the holiday break.

Mostly, the bill would institute an A-F letter-grade system for all schools in the state, switching from the color-coded evaluations that exist now. (Red for bad, moving toward green for good.)

It's an artificial change, really, but some believe it will be easier for parents to understand.

An amendment to the bill, though, would eliminate so-called "authorizer shopping," which happens when a poor-performing school gets closed by one overseer and tries to reopen under another.

It happens rarely (principally because so few authorizers shutter bad schools), but it's a start toward filling the truck-size holes in the current charter oversight infrastructure.

There's still far more to do, though, and even if HB 5112 passes, Michigan will remain a national laggard when it comes to charter accountability.

Is that good enough? I don't think so, and I'm a charter parent.

Last week, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers ranked Michigan among the worst states for charter accountability, noting that almost none of the policies it recommends (standards for granting or renewing a charter, provisions for closing poor performers, reporting and transparency requirements) is law in this state.

In many categories, Michigan got no points for accountability — no way to hold authorizers accountable for school performance, for instance, and no way to evaluate authorizers.

And recently, EducationNext, a journal that supports major change and reform in education, published a scathing look at Michigan's loose oversight of charters. Focusing on Detroit, the magazine showed how charters have created lots of choice with few quality options, and laid the blame on the lack of sensible regulation.

What's interesting about the EducationNext report is that it's not an attack on the idea of charters or choice. It's simply an indictment of the neglectful way that Michigan has pursued those ideals for the past 20 years.

EducationNext is all about radical reform and change, and completely embraces the idea that a competitive marketplace can help boost the number of quality options for parents.

But they see how Michigan has gone too far, paid too little attention to quality, and allowed anti-regulatory fervor to replace educational outcomes as the primary purpose for public schooling.

If that's not a lesson for the Michigan Legislature to heed, I don't know what is.

They won't get to it this year. Gov. Snyder and the new legislative leadership should be sure 2015 produces better results.

Stephen Henderson is editorial page editor for the Free Press and the host of "American Black Journal," which airs at 12:30 p.m. Sundays on Detroit Public Television. Follow Henderson on Twitter @ShendersonFreep, or contact him at 313-222-6659 or shenderson600@freepress.com.

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