As I've stated I've been in and around both here in the state of MI and I can assure you public schools offer a much more enriching experience. Charters often promise to specialize in something and rarely do. West Bloomfield schools are a great example of folks in an urban to suburban area making the choice between charter and public schools. Pontiac merged and is still in serious financial disarray. There are several charters folks in the community could chose as an alternative, but the vast majority of former Pontiac students are coming in droves to West Bloomfield. Many claiming that the local charters were just as poor as the former multi-HS Pontiac school district.
The fact is that at least here in MI charter are often underfunded and not provided the resources and materials they originally boast. At least in my own experience the only school I have been in that has been worse than nearly all the charters schools I've been in was Saginaw High; another failing school and district.
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in Chicago, the charter schools are essentially an extension of Teach America. Teachers stay 2-3 years or less--then either off to the suburbs or use it as resume building to go back to grad school or a more lucrative non-teaching job. Not a career.
http://www.theonion.com/multiblogpost/my-year-volunteering-as-a-teacher…
Teach for America, however well-intentioned, is a terrible idea in practice. Bring in people with very little training and ask them to teach the most at-risk student populations in the country. It usually works horribly.
It must be said, though, that the situation isn't much better for regular public schools in inner cities. Teachers there suffer massive burnout and frequently get out when they can. Adolescents go through a lot of issues even in the most optimal of circumstances; now throw poverty and violence into the mix, and creating/maintaining a good learning environment is a real challenge.
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When Snyder got elected, one of his first initiatives was to try to get school districts to merge and consolidate, so that the state could get more money to kids by getting rid of duplicative administrative positions (e.g. curriculum directors, assistant superintendants, principals etc).
Then 6 years later, they blow the cap off the number of charters... therby creating duplicative positions and increasing overhaed.
Sparty no?
It's hard for me to talk about our education system without getting political. Let's just say there are a lot of assholes making decisions who have no idea how to prioritize a budget. We need a drastic reassessment of our priorities or we'll seriously risk being a former power. We're cutting ourselves off at the knees for any advancements in science or industry. Sad to see a country actively disadvantaging itself and having virtually no power to stop it.
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I went to Plymouth Canton 25 years ago and we competed against the Farmington schools in the old Western Lakes Athletic Association. I seem to remember it was North that was the dump. I remember a track meet we had at Harrison and I was impressed with how "new" and clean the school seemed even though the school I was attending was only 16 years old at the time.
What the heck happened?
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people my age and older like to bitch about how stupid kids are these days. How selfish Milennials are etc etc, and yet those same people dont support schools while in city after city there is at least one shiny (relatively) new sports arena built on the backs of taxpayers at the request of billionaires. Of course they're stupid, you closed their schools and took their (likely outdated) books! (just kidding kiddos, dont get upset, im working towards a greater good here)
Seriously, people have to wonder about this kind of crap? How is this possible? Why do we let our politicians be bought and sold by corporations like chattel? Everyone says the system is broken, yet no one seems to ever be able to do anything about it.
If anyones got any ideas, Im all ears. We cant just let this country get run into the ground.
my rant wa not directly related to the situation at FHH and I interjected it where it may not necessarily belong because as I was reading through the comments about charter schools and politicians etc etc my blood proessure started rising, and this has been something on my mind for some time, so I figured I'd let it fly.
But, you are correct.
We live in the Plymouth Canton school district and charter schools are popping up like weeds. They have definitely hurt the district.
I disagree with Natalie. The charter schools control the narrative in Lansing not the public schools. In the most recent budget many of the charter schools in our district received substantially higher increases in their per student funding than Plymouth Canton.
If it was truly about school district performance, there would be fewer charter schools in Plymouth Canton as Plymouth Canton is routinely one of the highest rated districts in the state. Or maybe it is about performance because most of the charter schools have scholar, or achievement or similar word in their names.
School funding is broken in Michigan. As a result of Headlee and Proposal A, rather than local control a districts funding is almost entirely determined in Lansing rather than locally. A local community has essentially no power to raise taxes to improve schools. Unfortunately, Lansing has shown a willingness to divert money from schools to support other causes rather than cut those areas or raise taxes (or forgo a tax cut).
PC schools were nothing special in the 80's - 90's. They had a habit of pushing out academically challenged kids out to other schools in order to make the numbers for the high schools look better. I wonder if they still do that?
I got a decent education there, but the district's reputation is much better than it deserves.
things hurt/get ugly when regions downsize. This downsizing in MI and specifically SE MI is hitting home now.
Personally, outside of AA, nothing east of US 127 in MI appeals to me. West of 127 is where anything worthwhile is in MI.
Detroit, Ferndale, Royal Oak, Birmingham
I could rant and get very political with this, but I'll try to play nice with a few short comments.
-My kids attended Troy High and talked the prison look nonsense. Its a beautiful scchool compared to my Romulus High.
-I'm 57(Boomer) and our kids the Baby Boomlet are out of school. The school systems are shinking from this and maybe other reasons.
-One of our political parties(John Engler) declared war on the Teachers unions years ago. These folks would rather fight the union than fix the schools.
-I think the charters were started as another nail in the coffin of the Teachers union, The political folks claim charters were to help the inner city kids. When have the political folks given a crap about inner city folks? Never. Now we have a lot of broken public schools and a mostly broken charter school system. They should have fixed the public school system to start with.
-Whew - Rant over!!! BTW - I am not a Teacher or related to one. I fled Royal Oak for Troy just for the schools.
Slow, sad unravelling of Michigan public school districts. The sources are multiple and beyond the scope of this board.