By Harrison Blackmond, DFER Michigan State Director
With apologies to Billy Shakespeare and Hamlet, that is still the question charter school advocates continue to face even though charter schools were approved by the Michigan state legislature and signed by the governor in 1993! For almost twenty years the idea of charter schools in Michigan has still not been completely settled. Until the legislature passed “Race to the Top” legislation in late 2009 relaxing the limits on charters that could be authorized by colleges and universities, there was a cap of 150 charters that could be authorized by all of the state’s four year colleges and universities. That’s 150 total in all of Michigan!
Since 1990 I have been involved in many efforts to improve access to quality education in Michigan. In 1992, as Executive Vice President of the Michigan Partnership for New Education in East Lansing, when Minnesota was the only state in the nation that authorized charter schools, I helped organize and participate in discussions with legislators and the Engler administration regarding efforts to establish charter schools in Michigan.
At the time I was very suspicious of any idea that seemed to threaten free, public education, as many, especially those on the left still seem to be skeptical today. My thinking began to change however, when I was given an article published in the Harvard Educational Review by Dr. Kenneth B. Clark. Dr. Clark is the famous African American sociologist whose work with children in segregated schools formed the basis for the attack on segregation that led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule against “separate but equal” in Brown vs. Topeka Kansas Board of Education in 1956.
Dr. Kenneth Clark b. 1914 – d. 2005