How charter schools in Michigan have hurt traditional public schools, new research finds

By Valerie Strauss July 15 at 1:43 PM

How do some charter schools affect the traditional school districts in which they are located? Disastrously in some cases, as a new study about Michigan schools shows.

The study, “Which Districts Get Into Financial Trouble and Why: Michigan’s Story,” finds that among Michigan districts, “80 percent of the explained variation in district fiscal stress is due to changes in districts’ state funding, to enrollment changes including those associated with school choice policies, and to the enrollment of high-cost special education students.” A working paper was released last November and the study will be published in the fall edition of the Journal of Education Finance.

In the following post, Jennifer Berkshire, author of the EduShyster website, interviews the lead author of the study, David Arsen, a professor in the Department of Educational Administration College of Education at Michigan State University about the research and its implications for charter school expansion in other places. He notes in the interview that “overwhelmingly, the biggest financial impact on school districts was the result of declining enrollment and revenue loss, especially where school choice and charters are most prevalent.”

As Berkshire notes, the state of Massachusetts will have on the November ballot a referendum calling for the lifting of a cap on charter school expansion. The campaign for the measure to pass has just started, complete with a $6.5 million in advertising produced by SRCP Media, according to Boston Magazine. That’s the outfit that produced the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” smear campaign that helped ruin John Kerry’s presidential ambitions in 2004.

Along with Arsen, the study was done by Thomas A. DeLuca, an assistant professor in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Kansas; Yongmei Ni, an associate professor in the College of Education’s Department of Education Leadership and Policy College of Education at the University of Utah; and Michael Bates, an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California at Riverside.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/07/15/how-charter-schools-in-michigan-have-hurt-traditional-public-schools-new-research-finds/