Michigan And Cyber Charter Schools

A while ago, I created a place holder entry so that I could talk about Senate Bill 636 when I had a bit more time on my hands.  At the time, SB-636 had been introduced into the Senate in June 2009, had gone through the Education Committee in September, and was being referred back to the committee as a whole – but then it’s forward progress stalled.  You see SB-636 would have, among other things, created this entity called “Neighborhood Public Schools” that could take one of the following forms:

• A family educational service center, which would offer a combination of early NPS to be calculated in the same childhood, adult education, and social services that were designed to enrich and support neighborhoods, and provide a more holistic approach to pupil and family education and development.
• An early childhood learning center, which would primarily focus on offering preschool and kindergarten educational programs.
• A neighborhood elementary or middle school, which would operate innovative educational programs or programs with innovative instructional approaches, enrich educational programs through partnerships with community and cultural organizations, provide enhanced counseling and social services, or operate other research-based programs or services designed to improve pupil achievement.
• A career education high school, which would focus on preparing pupils for jobs immediately upon graduating.
• A college preparatory high school, which would focus on advanced placement, international baccalaureate, or another type of college preparatory academic curriculum.
• A middle college, which would operate programs that allowed pupils simultaneously to earn a high school diploma and an associate’s degree.
• A dropout recovery center, which would provide educational programs to pupils who were up to the age of 21 and who either had previously dropped out of school or were at risk of dropping out.
• A cyber school, which would provide full- time instruction to pupils through online learning or otherwise on a computer or other technology, which could be remote from a school facility. (emphasis added)

This last bullet is an important one because cyber charter schools have been banned in Michigan for about a decade or more.  Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of information that one can find or quote to discuss this ban on cyber charter schools in the state.  For example, while looking through the Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning reports, while Michigan appears in each issue from 2004 to the present, the first mention of online charter schools in Michigan was in the 2007 report and it simply stated “no online charter schools” (p. 103).  The same four words appear in the 2008 report (p. 109) and the 2009 report (p. 100).  I should note that this is not a criticism of the work done by the authors of these reports, only that my understanding is that in most of the states where there are no cyber charter schools it is largely because the legislation or regulatory regimes simply doesn’t allow for their creation.  In Michigan, however, they did exist and were specifically banned by legislation – which seems kind of unique to me and I’m a little surprised this hasn’t been explored more.

In speaking with one cyber charter school provider I was told that it was due to the actions of one bad apple “which caused the state to rule that cybers are prohibited by the section of the charter law that ‘requires each charter school to operate at a single location.’” In talking to one of my colleagues shortly after, he provided me with some additional context.  Apparently there was a single elementary school district that was under considerable financial strain who entered into a partnership with Noah Webster Academy to create a K-7 cyber charter school.  We didn’t have time to get into all of the details, but my colleague had been quite friendly with the leadership of the district at the time (and he didn’t provide specific names or positions, so I can speak to exactly which leadership), but the district initially saw this as a way to assist their financial position and initially expected a couple hundred enrollments.  I suspect the problems began when there were a couple thousand students from several other school districts that either enrolled or wish to enroll in this cyber charter school.  Like in other jurisdictions where cyber charter schooling was largely unregulated, there was considerable resistance to what other districts perceived as a ploy to use homeschooling students to “steal” money from these other districts. And it was this incident that caused the ban on cyber charter schools in Michigan. [Note: the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory has a general summary of the issue in an article entitled, "Webster Fails to Make Grade for Tax Money"]

I mention this today because late on Friday, I came across an article on MLive.com that was discussing a new education package that is making its way through the legislature here in Michigan in relation to the federal Race for the Top funding (see Michigan lawmakers agree to more charter schools, allowing ‘cyber schools’ to qualify for federal Race to the Top funding).  Rightly or wrongly – and I would argue wrongly – the federal Government has decided to abandon its liberal values and promote the commercialization of education as the way to save a failing system in the United States (and note my beef is with charter schools in general, having said that since Michigan does allow for brick-and-mortar charter schools I simply don’t understand – and am stunned even – that cyber charter schools continue to be banned).  The article mentions:

“Draft language of the school agreement also would allow two operators of online “cyber” schools to set up shop in Michigan. In the first year, each school could enroll 400 students. In the second year, the schools could enroll one student for every high school dropout or alternative education student they bring to the program, for an additional 600 more students each.”

While I can likely guess which two operators will be allowed to set up shop here in Michigan, I do like the cautious, measured approach (as I’ve mentioned before, see Georgia Virtual Academy: Taking A Measured Approach to Cyber Schooling) as I believe that it allows for a planned approach that can be based upon data and accurate information (and also tends to prevent the kind of backlash that led to the original ban).

In trying to take apart this legislative package, it appears I am going to need a bit of time.  There are a series of bills before the Senate (and at least one of which is tied to a House bill) that I’m going to need to print off and figure out what exactly each is proposing to do.  Since the article doesn’t mention which one or ones are in “the legislative package”, let me link and briefly describe each here (and indicate at what stage each bill was as of Saturday morning):

• Senate Bill 628 – allows an exception to teacher tenure regulations for the “neighborhood public schools” that are proposed in SB-636 (passed the Senate, currently in the House Education Committee)
• Senate Bill 925 – creates a new category of charter school called a “school of excellence”, allows the state to classify high achieving charter schools as “schools of excellence” which would allow for additional regular charter schools to be approved, also allows the state to close under preforming charter schools (passed the Senate, currently in second reading in the House)
• Senate Bill 926 – essentially allows for these proposed “schools of excellence” to be funded and to have their enrollment regulated in the same manner as charter schools (passed the Senate and House, currently in the Senate Conference Committee)
• Senate Bill 965 (same as House Bill 5596) – requires the state to establish a process for a person to earn an interim teaching certificate that qualified them to teach in the public schools and earn a permanent teaching certificate using the process (passed the Senate, currently in the House Education Committee / HB 5596 passed the House, currently in the Senate Committee of the Whole)
• Senate Bill 981 – provides the state with a process to be able to take over schools that have been under performing for a period of four consecutive years and designate it a “turnaround school” (passed the Senate and House, currently in the Senate Conference Committee)
• Senate Bill 982 – allow for the addition of the chief educational officer of a designated “turnaround school” to the collective bargaining process, along with the public school employer that previously operated the school (passed the Senate, currently in the House Education Committee)
• Senate Bill 983 -  requires the public school employer that previously operated a school designated as a “turnaround school” to provide all funding allocated to that “turnaround school” to the chief educational officer appointed for that “turnaround school” (introduced in the Senate, currently in the Senate Education Committee)
• Senate Bill 994 – requires the state to create a system of teacher performance evaluation that is based, at least in part, on student performance on standardized testing (introduced in the Senate, currently in the Senate Appropriations Committee)

Please note that there is a notation with a number of these bills that reads, “TIE BAR WITH: SB 0638’09, SB 0926’09, SB 0965’09, SB 0981’09, SB 0982’09, SB 0994’09“; which I assume means these six bills form some kind of collective group – maybe even the legislative package referred to in the article (although with the differences in where each bill is in the legislative process I’m not sure).

Update: On Saturday in my Yahoo! News Alert for cyber school there were two items that indicated that some of these bills had passed as part of the education reform package (see School reform passes, more charters possible and Michigan lawmakers pass education reform).  It appears that SB 926, HB 5596, and SB 981 had passed both legislative bodies when these two news articles were posted online.