By Brett DeGroff and other Okemos Parents for Schools members
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| Brett DeGroff |
There
are two visions of education vying to define Michigan schools — the voucher
vision of state and corporate control and the public vision of local control.
The
public vision is familiar. For better and for worse, it’s what we have had in
Michigan. Through locally elected officials, the community uses public funds to
build a publicly owned and operated institution which offers an education to
each child.
The
philosophy behind the public vision is that the entire community benefits by
providing an excellent education for every child. Today’s graduates will be
tomorrow’s community members and we are all better off when folks think
critically, have the ability to learn new skills, and appreciate the principles
of democracy.
The
public vision sees education as a direct function of the community. Education
is an obligation which demands more than writing a check or issuing a voucher.
This obligation demands direct involvement and oversight. These are our kids
and our responsibility. Many communities in Michigan are already living up to
this responsibility and providing excellent public education.
Along
the way, they are also doing something more. As people come together at school
board meetings, athletic events, concerts, plays, and parent groups they are
building a sense of community. These small acts of civic engagement may not
seem significant, but in aggregate they are what bind our communities together.
All
of these events happen because these are public schools — because these
are our schools. We are proud of our schools because they are ours, and
because they are ours we work hard to make them something to be proud of. This
powerful incentive is what makes the public vision work. In the public vision,
schools belong to communities and to citizens.
The
voucher vision is built on faith in an entirely different incentive. The
voucher vision relies on the notion that people and institutions behave only in
their own self-interest. The voucher vision sees a future for Michigan
education where every child takes a piece of public education funding and shops
in a market of cyber and charter schools.
In
the voucher vision, communities have no role in education. The institutions
providing voucher education are for-profit corporations or non-public entities
and are not accountable to the local electorate. Parents and students who get
voucher education can only take their vouchers elsewhere if they are
displeased. They have no ownership or ability to impact the school because it’s
not their school. In the voucher vision, students and parents are mere
customers and the rest of the community is cut out altogether.
Proponents
of the voucher vision have cleverly masked it with rhetoric about “choice,”
“unbundling,” and money “following” children. Voucher vision proponents have uncapped
the number of charter schools in Michigan without providing safeguards for
quality. Voucher vision proponents tucked an “unbundling” measure into last
year’s school aid budget without public debate. Finally, voucher vision
proponents engaged in a secret “skunk works” plan to create cheap schools paid
for by voucher cards.
But
the voucher vision proponents never give evidence their takeovers and markets
produce better results. They never articulate how their takeovers will result
in a return to local control. They never explain how they expect challenged
communities to rebuild themselves around for-profit corporations. And if
anecdotal evidence coming out of the EAA and Muskegon Heights, the country’s
first fully privatized school district, is to be believed, the “something” they
are doing is not working.
Struggling
schools need help. But what they need are the resources to build great public
schools to serve as the core of their devastated communities.
The
voucher vision is a cynical one based on the idea that citizens won’t or can’t
work together to build great schools. It depends on markets and experiments to
invent new ways to run schools. It reduces us to mere customers and divorces
our schools from their communities and the democratic process.
The public vision is a hopeful one based on
ownership and community. It hasn’t always been perfect, but it has produced
many great schools and, with investment, it can turn around our troubled
schools. Between these two visions, the public vision is the only choice. After
all, these are our schools, our kids, and our responsibility.
Brett DeGroff is an appellate attorney and member of Okemos Parents for Schools. This column was written with input from multiple members of Okemos Parents for Schools and ran in the Lansing State Journal on February 15, 2014.
