Michigan Public Schools Privatizing Teachers 'Very Real' Possibility, State Lawmaker Says

The privatization of public education in Michigan is a "very real" possibility, a state lawmaker said Monday, the Kalamazoo Gazette reports.

At a town hall forum in Kalamazoo, Democratic state Sen. Bert Johnson said the movement is being driven "by money" at a time when the state's districts face a $300-per-student budget cut -- a total of almost $500 million across the state.

In another attempt to account for the funding shortfall, Michigan's Republican lawmakers proposed last month legislation that would expand charter schools and privatize teacher hirings by employing from for-profit companies. Contracting with private teachers could encourage competitive compensation packages among teachers unions and private companies.

The legislation was introduced by Republican state Sen. Phil Pavlov, who chairs the state Senate's education committee.

The state already outsources much of its public schools' noneducational operations. Nearly half of Michigan's school districts already contract out for one of three noninstructional services of custodial, dining and transportation, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy's 2010 School Privatization Survey. And schools are expecting major savings for doing so. A 6,000-student district is expecting to save over $3.5 million over 30 months by contracting out custodial services, according to the Mackinac Center.

There is also a likelihood that the Republican push for privatization could pass through the state legislature, as there is a two-thirds GOP majority in the state Senate and a 63-47 majority in the state House of Representatives.

A poll of 800 voters commissioned by the Michigan Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union, revealed that over 68 percent are against privatizing teaching services, according to the Livingston Daily.

"What's especially troubling is the proposal to outsource teaching to private, for-profit corporations. This will undermine local control, mean less accountability in the classroom, and gut public education at a time when we should be focused on investing in our kids' future and creating good jobs that pay a fair wage," We Are the People Michigan spokesman Zack Pohl told the Livingston Daily. We Are the People Michigan is a pro-education and pro-union organization.

But Kalamazoo Public Schools Superintendent Michael Rice said at the town hall forum Monday that statewide surveys indicate residents still support "appropriate funding of pre-K-12 education" and not the the recent slashes to public schools' budgets, according to the Kalamazoo Gazette.

He also noted that districts should be permitted to solicit voters for an increase in local taxes to cover educational expenses if the state won't provide "adequate and stable" school funding.

Comments

[justwundrin]

03:59 PM on 10/07/2011

In the Oxford (Michigan) school district, their fundamentalist superintendent has been importing a lot of teachers from China, to replace American teachers. The superintendent and Chinese communists say they share a common “spirituality.” (Would that include violations of international trade laws and human rights?)
American teachers get pay and benefit cuts, while the Chinese are given free housing, meals, transportation, insurance, etc. in Oxford. (American teachers could afford to work for a lot less if such major expenses were also paid for them. Couldn’t we all?) Big business has sponsored this program. Taxpayers get stuck with the bills—that includes taxpayers outside of the district. The district has paid megabucks on false infomercials to con the public, with paid actors claiming it’s a “world class” school district, when in reality it’s not even a top school district in the county. Their test scores (i.e. ACT and MEAP) have dropped considerably—especially in math and science—since this superintendent took over, and he believes sports are more important than test scores. To add insult to injury, instead of seeing an American flag when you walk in their schools, the Chinese flag is now hanging up there with our flag, reminding people of the direction we’re headed because of such cons.

[justwundrin]

04:11 PM on 10/07/2011

Additional notes: the Oxford Schools superintendent says he wants this to be a model for the whole state and he recently received pay/benefits increases, while hypocritically telling others to sacrifice.

[Marx Twain]

05:48 PM on 10/07/2011

He is definiitely running the schools system like a business - outsourcing, union busting, lowering product quality, and collecting a fat bonus for his failure.

[Marx Twain]

01:31 PM on 10/06/2011

Wow, get ready Michigan, the same folks who lost your pensions, destroyed your 401 K plans, and shut down your auto plants and sent them to Mexico, will now be teaching your kids.

As for teachers, well look on the bright side. Private enterprise in this country is above accountability, and now you might get funded. After all, those failing banks got all the taxpayer funds they needed.

[Dram214]

11:30 PM on 10/05/2011

Yay! Look at all the private companies getting tax payer money!

Although, in fairness, this is what happens when you don't show up to vote. Michigan is getting what they voted for.

[MarvinM]

07:18 PM on 10/05/2011

Who knew Mackinac Center for Public Policy published a "Privatization Primer" so you can all bone up on the issue?

http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-school-privatization-primer

h/t to jcgrim for the link that led me to this one.

[jcgrim]

03:39 PM on 10/05/2011

Michigan will outsource teacher training to Teach for America (5 week cram course) or to online schools staffed in India and China for cheap labor.

I can hear the giant sucking sound of the teaching profession disappearing from the USA. Another middle class profession destroyed by the business roundtable, neo-liberals, and corporate america.

[Toka248]

05:06 PM on 10/05/2011

Teach for America is a joke. It's a jobs program for white privileged kids.

[A Dub]

03:17 PM on 10/05/2011

Rick Snyder is absolutely the worst Governor we ever had!

[MarvinM]

04:23 PM on 10/05/2011

My new rule of thumb next election is never to vote for anyone with "Rick" or "Scott" in their name, and especially not anyone with both!

[Sock Monkey]

04:36 PM on 10/05/2011

I'm going with the " if you have more vowels than consonants " you're automatically disqualified.

[corwin]

01:18 PM on 10/06/2011

I'm not sure. I seem to remember the last governor (initials Jennifer Granholm) had higher unemployment every year of her administration. Still, it's probably been too long for you to remember

[A Dub]

02:07 PM on 10/06/2011

Sorry my young friend but Snyder is the worst. he make Scott Walker look like Santa Clause!

He has messed up our teachers and education system,

He has given tax breaks to businesses and to pay for it he is taxing seniors more. The Snyder cut corporate income taxes by increasing taxes on the poor, elderly and middle class. So he pulled the standard conservative bologna, give tax breaks to the rich and tax the middle class, elderly and poor even more.

Now he is messing with healthcare.

He is pursuing historic legislation that would make us the 23rd state to finalize a "right-to-work" law. Instead of focusing on creating jobs, Rick Snyder and his MI republican buddies now want to pass this bad policy that would lead to lower wages and fewer benefits for those already struggling to make ends meet.

Like Scott Walker he is trying to subvert all collective bargaining practices.

This Koch brother's sock puppet will never serve another term.

[Carlos Quintero]

12:42 PM on 10/05/2011

What I truely do not understand of the privatization idea is if it is private companies doing the job of public schools, then why use public funds? If the school system is to be dismantled, then go all the way and use private money. It is not "privatization" if public money is suppporting the entire enterprise. I cannot see how this could work without simply shifting where the money goes to. The same demographics and same problems will be tackled with the same money. Just that there will be a private company attempting to make profits first, not children first.

[teacher39years]

02:43 PM on 10/05/2011

Corporations look at the Public Schools and Social Security as two "Cash Cows" that they don't already own. The Corporate Schools would be run on a "Business Model" with low paid employees and highly paid CEOs. Many are owned by Hedge Funds. That's one of the reasons the Walton Foundation (Walmart) and other billionaires are involved in School Reform and Teacher Bashing.

[Dram214]

11:32 PM on 10/05/2011

This is exactly it. Republicans have no problems spending tax payer money so long as it ends up in their own pockets. It's not spending they have a problem with, it's spending on things that don't directly benefit them they have a problem with.

[lynniemiller]

07:01 PM on 10/08/2011

If I could fan you twice, I would.

Best wishes, nice to hear your voice

[satyrday]

11:56 AM on 10/05/2011

Republicans are always looking for new ways that they can profiteer from our society's critical needs.

They've already bled Defense, Health Care, Energy and Agriculture as much as possible.

Time to move on to new frontiers.

[jcgrim]

03:22 PM on 10/05/2011

Michigan is simply extending Obama and Duncan's Race to the Top bribe. RttT and the newly mandated waivers from NCLB is the edu-privatizers utopia. It goes to show that when the owners of our elected officials (e.g., hedge fund managers, Wall Street financiers, real estate investors, CEOS, Gates Foundation, Teach for America, Broad Foundation, The Bush family, etc) suddenly take an interest in educating kids you'd best understand our public money will NOT be headed into classrooms or to teachers.

[Toka248]

05:07 PM on 10/05/2011

BS. Nobody in the current Michigan legislature like RTTT. And RTTT is only a slight reform from No Child Left Behind, so shifting all the blame on Obama and Duncan is a farce.

[kallou22]

09:54 AM on 10/05/2011

This Corporate take over and privatization of our commons has got to stop! Neoliberalism is very ugly and inhumane.

[Neenerpuss]

03:36 PM on 10/05/2011

It is the NEO-conservatives proposing this. Liberals believe in a strong public education system.

[Toka248]

05:08 PM on 10/05/2011

Sorry, I know you're on our side, but you need to look up Neoliberalism. It isn't like US Liberalism. Kallou22 has this correct. Try "A Brief History of Neoliberalism" by David Harvey. Or just look up the wiki entry..

[MarvinM]

09:46 AM on 10/05/2011

RE: Mackinac Center for Public Policy:

“A 2002 study authored by three professors in the educational field ... reviewed the Center's previous 11 years of work on education policy and found that ‘evidence presented in Mackinac Center studies is often weak and at times misleading.’ Continuing, they added that ‘it is hoped that this report has been helpful in revealing the shortcomings and the possible dangers inherent on basing public policy on the research of the Mackinac Center,’ and that the Center ‘is devoted to privatizing state institutions and to deregulating public education.’

The source of this quote is cited/footnoted just following, under the paragraph “Education Activism”.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mackinac_Center_for_Public_Policy

[MarvinM]

10:02 AM on 10/05/2011

A lot of the info from the sourcewatch site was taken from this:

http://www.mea.org/privatization/pdf/mackinaccenter-thetruth.pdf

I have only skimmed it (or have I scanned it?) and found it interesting, useful and frightening.

[jcgrim]

03:35 PM on 10/05/2011

Bruce Baker from Rutgers U refers to this alleged research by neo-liberal and conservative think tanks as 'hack science'. First, read Baker's thoughtful critiques of the privatizers who are setting public school policies.
http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/

Next, ask why Obama is surprised that he's lost his base voters since he has embraced the false rhetoric of the neoliberal edu-billionaires who are exploiting poor kids for profit.

Finally, ask why these think-tanks are allowed to use hack science to determine national education policies when the Institute of Education Science refutes every single Obama/Bush edu-mandate as ineffective. Isn't that what Bush did to silence govt. environmental scientists re: climate change?

[timberdoodle]

09:45 AM on 10/05/2011

When people can't afford the tuition for private schools they will be able to enroll their children in private religious schools at a much lower cost and learn all about creationism and get all those scientific theories out of their reach and knowledge. Expanding the religious cults is a major accomplishment of the radical right and this will help them expand their ideology from the begining to the end.

[frank1946]

08:54 AM on 10/05/2011

Public K-12 needs to get 20 % more efficient and 20 % Better at Instruction and Outcomes
for Students !

Competition does that very quickly ! Charter Schools are a good adaptation to Change !

Michigan is looking Up !

[toastedrite]

09:57 AM on 10/05/2011

...and in Ohio...25% of charter schools would be considered as failures by the same metric used to grade public schools. These would be standardized test scores of their students. Chilling statistics when you only used '20% Better at Instruction and Outcomes for Students' (Why so many capitalizations in your post? Or is it a title of a paper?)

So why is it that these charter schools continue to exist as failures? Must be a profit in it for somebody! I wonder who that Might be?

[Erin Ott Shaw]

10:15 AM on 10/05/2011

Which means that 75% of the charter schools are successes? What percentage of public schools are successful just out of curiosity? In my county in Colorado the charter schools are all very successful while the regular district schools are all failures.

[A Dub]

03:19 PM on 10/05/2011

Michigan has been looking down since Snyder took over. He is the worst we ever had.

[bbbbmer]

06:37 AM on 10/05/2011

Privatization of the American public school system is as unAmerican as Hitler or Mussolini, both of whom ALSO attempted to bust unions, and killed union leaders and workers in the process...

But privatization of the American public school system IS a part of the GOP narrative, whose mantra is to keep Americans of modest means POOR, PREGNANT, AND DUMB....

[cyanmanta]

04:42 AM on 10/05/2011

Watch as the public school system of every state slowly mutates into a string of nothing but for-profit indoctrination centers. Under such a system, corporate interests could force lesson plans and material out of the classroom with no input from the students, parents, or teachers. Children could be excluded from any and all schools on the basis of their parents' political affiliations or religious beliefs (or lack thereof). And people will buy into it because of a short-term financial need coupled with the promise of offering more choices to parents. More choice does NOT equal more freedom; either Michigan's lawmakers don't understand this simple fact, or they don't care.

[K August]

12:22 AM on 10/05/2011

Bottom line.......privatization make money for the owners at the expense of the students.
The corporations that run chains of charter/private schools MUST show a profit quarter after quarter or their stock value tanks. How long can they keep squeezing a profit out of the budget to show that profit margin and who's really going to pay for it in the end? The students, the teachers? Yep!

Look up charter or private school fraud on the net and you'll get a really good idea of why privatizing public education is not a good idea.
One company was so bad that they were banned from opening any more schools in one state.
AND these schools will be subsidized with TAX PAYER money....... but government and the public will have NO say in anything......since they'll be "privately" owned.

[toastedrite]

10:00 AM on 10/05/2011

Agreed! Government funds without the govenment oversight and control of HOW those funds are spent.

Sounds like the Taxpayers funding a private corporation, now where have I seen that recently?