Michigan charters have high-performers, so what is Ed Trust-Midwest upset about?

Dan Quisenberry is the president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, which represents the charter school industry in Michigan.

It was no surprise that when Bridge Magazine announced its 2015 Academic State Champs for high schools earlier this month, the list was top-heavy with charter schools. Particularly in the areas of the state where great schools are most sorely needed – counties with high poverty and high population – charters dominated the rankings.

Case in point: In the category of large counties with the lowest family incomes, charter schools accounted for four of the top six spots. Four of the top six – that’s remarkable, especially when you consider that charter schools account for only 10 percent of the state’s school-age population.

The school that ranked No. 1 on that list was Star International Academy, a charter school in Dearborn Heights. And indeed, it’s a remarkable school. They serve a student population that largely speaks English as a second language. But they overcome the obstacles through intense intervention and a rigorous curriculum, by getting to know the students individually, and by building an incredibly strong bond with the local community.

Despite serving a school population with more than 90 percent of students living in poverty, Star International Academy’s average ACT score last year was 19.5 – well above the Wayne County average of 18.9.

Bridge readers viewing the Academic State Champs rankings no doubt came away thinking, “Wow, Michigan’s charter schools must be making a difference.”

Imagine how confused those same readers probably were a couple days later, when a guest commentary by Amber Arellano and Sunil Joy of Education Trust-Midwest appeared in Bridge, telling them that Michigan’s charter schools are a mess.

The column by Arellano and Joy tried to make the case that Michigan’s charter school performance is abysmal. Or, as they put it, “the sector is still terribly low performing compared with strong charter sectors around the country.”

Actually, no. It’s not. By any metric – including Bridge’s Academic State Champs rankings – Michigan actually has one of the best-performing charter sectors in the country.

The guest commentary by Arellano and Joy came in response to a new, highly flawed report by Ed Trust-Midwest titled “Accountability for All: The Broken Promise of Michigan’s Charter Sector.” The report took aim at Michigan’s authorizers, concluding the state has “a very serious authorizer performance problem.”

To arrive at this conclusion, Ed Trust-Midwest used a simplistic and outdated methodology. They decided the best way to evaluate Michigan’s current charter school performance was to take the top-to-bottom rankings from the 2013-14 school year – yes, that’s two years ago – and then look at where the charter schools landed on the list.

A simplistic ranking using data that’s two years old. That was their methodology. [Editor’s note: Education Trust-Midwest’s full methodology is linked here]

They concluded that the “best authorizers” in the state were the ones with schools near the top of the list – schools in affluent areas. The “worst authorizers” on Ed Trust-Midwest’s list were the ones who authorize schools in the state’s high-need areas – urban centers with high poverty rates.

The moral of the story? If you want to score well on Ed Trust-Midwest’s authorizer report card, don’t authorize schools in Detroit, Flint, Saginaw or any other high-need urban center. Put them in Ann Arbor instead.

Unfortunately for Ed Trust-Midwest, Michigan’s charter authorizers don’t view that as their mission. Instead, they work at bringing excellent and innovative schools to the areas of the state that need them the most – areas with high poverty and high population.

Sadly, Ed Trust-Midwest’s flawed report did nothing but serve as a distraction from the real issues facing our state’s education system.

Last summer, the Michigan Association of Public School Academies and other statewide education organizations put forth a set of proposals that would bring real accountability to the state’s traditional public and charter public schools. Among these proposals was a call for all authorizers in the state to be held to the same standards that the university authorizers follow. We also called for an end to “authorizer shopping,” a practice which allows a poor-performing charter school to search for a new authorizer to avoid closure.

We asked Education Trust-Midwest to join us in calling for these reforms. They refused. It seems they were more interested in appeasing their donors by generating “reports” like this.

This is a critical time in our state when it comes to K-12 public education. Instead of attacking what’s working, we need to fix what isn’t.

The parents at Star International Academy understand that. They’ve found the pathway to a brighter future for their children at a charter school, and if you ask them whether their school is making a difference, I’m sure they’ll tell you it is.

State champs, indeed.