Nancy Kaffer: The broken promises of school choice

Paul Robeson Malcolm X Academy, according to the ideology of charter school advocates, shouldn't exist.

Twenty-four years ago, that was the promise of Michigan's charter school movement, helmed by Betsy DeVos, now U.S. Secretary of Education: The market can solve the deficiencies of the public school system; the competition provided by charter schools will force struggling or failing traditional public schools to improve or shut down. 

So perhaps DeVos, whose plans to expand school choice even further, can explain Paul Robeson Malcolm X. Academy. 

The Detroit elementary school, subject of a Chalkbeat Detroit article published Tuesday, recounts significant troubles: Because Detroit is experiencing a 100-plus teacher shortage, with another 260 vacancies filled permanently by substitute teachers, a staff absence means no subs are available. So classes double up — on the day in question, teacher Rynell Sturkey's class comprised 37 first-graders crammed so tightly into a classroom that Sturkey could barely move around the room. It happens, Sturkey told Chalkbeat, three or four times a month. 

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At storytime, Sturkey had to lean against the wall, warning the kids they wouldn't all be able to see the pictures. Kids don't get time in the school's computer lab, necessary to learn how to use the machines they'll take standardized tests on — the high-stakes assessments that determine whether their school will remain open — and the math workbooks teachers were required to use in a school year that started in September, didn't arrive until March. 

These are the kinds of conditions that charter school advocates assure us that choice will fix. 

That's not how it works. 

The state delivers a per-pupil allowance to each school district; when students leave for a charter, the traditional public school loses those funds. Because student departures are spread out across the district — it's not like an entire third-grade class decamps — those enrollment losses don't allow the district to make big cuts that would lead to operational savings. Instead, the money dwindles away in dribs and drabs, forcing traditional public school districts to do more with less.

The city's charter schools educate as many children as its traditional public school district, with nearly identical results — another departure from the rhetoric of charter advocates. Michigan taxpayers hand over $1 billion a year to charter school operators on the premise they'd deliver superior results.

Nor has the promised innovation — charter advocates speak frequently about the innovation schools freed from accountability can offer, without defining what that might mean — moved the needle enough for the charter school sector. Detroit's schools don't need innovation, they need money: dollars to hire, and pay, the best teachers in the state. Dollars to offer the wraparound services necessary to educate a student population with disproportionate poverty rates. Dollars to educate the high percentage of special needs kids present in the city's student body.  

In Detroit Public Schools Community District, of course, schools have closed.

But improvement? That remains elusive. The schools whose doors remain open — like Paul Robeson Malcolm X Academy — struggle with chronic equipment and material shortages, low teacher pay (the district's starting salary is about $35,000 a year), buildings in far less than peak condition, and a consistent onslaught of ever-more convoluted reforms aimed at fixing a problem whose roots are painfully prosaic.  

Chalkbeat's article was reported on the occasion of new Detroit Public Schools Community District superintendent Nikolai Vitti's first day. Vitti has good ideas — smart ideas, based on bedrock educational principles, and a clear grasp of the challenges ahead.

He needs all the help he can get. 

Detroit is home to some excellent schools. This city's children are as bright and hardworking as any in Michigan. And every parent in this city loves his or her children as much as you love yours.

Those teachers, parents and kids need all the help they can get. 

School choice? Not helping.