Kang: Detroit’s charter school debate over

The charter school versus traditional school debate continues to rage on. Beneath the surface and the noise, however, public schools have been undergoing deep structural changes since as early as the 1960s and 1970s.

Today, for example, more than half of Detroit’s children attend charters, second only to New Orleans. So why are we still arguing over charter schools? One reason is that people have yet to understand that charter schools are a symptom of a tectonic shift. A short history lesson shows that, like it or not, we are well into a new era of public schooling, especially in Detroit.

When people argue for “saving” traditional schools they are referring to a system developed at the turn of the 20th century. The Progressive Era school reformers transformed the one-room schoolhouse into school districts run by an elected school board and superintendent.

This system worked remarkably well for the time. According to education historian Jeffrey Mirel, until the 1930s the Detroit Public Schools was one of the finest districts in the nation.

However, soon this system would be challenged by new social and economic pressures which would gradually force schools to change.

First, Detroit’s economy, which never truly rebounded after the Great Depression, strained the system. Then, after World War II, black migration from the Jim Crow South and suburban white flight changed Detroit’s racial composition, putting great pressure on the system.

In 1971, Detroit’s Black Nationalists successfully demanded “community control,” splitting DPS into several wards each with its own school board. This was the first serious disruption to the way schools were organized in nearly 50 years.

Bolstered by unprecedented federal intervention and a shared sense that the old system was discriminatory, alternative schooling arrangements sprang up everywhere — many of which were the early prototypes of charter schools.

But since 1980, declining profits, de-industrialization and the fiscal crisis have produced a new generation of school reformers who are dismantling the system because they see traditional schools as a major source of waste, corruption and ineffectiveness. Weakening the teachers union and school board has been one of their strategies. Today, in Detroit, the teachers union and school board are practically excluded from all decision-making.

In a century’s time, a school system was built and torn down. Detroit Public Schools now makes up less than half of alternative schooling options, mainly charters, in a fragmented landscape.

A new school regime comprised of the governor, mayor, philanthropists, education management companies and other agencies are calling the shots. With this reality, it makes little sense to continue debating about charters.

But what about improving instruction? Teachers, administrators, universities — those who know how to make learning exciting and meaningful — must be central to any plan for the future of Detroit’s schools.

If we want to shape the history of public schooling in the right direction for the 21st century, we need to debate less and cooperate more.

Leanne Kang is a visiting professor of social foundations at the College of Education at Grand Valley State University. She resides in Grosse Pointe Park and is writing a book on the history of Detroit’s schools in the last 30 years.