Charter Schools Are Forcing Us to Compete, Michigan Superintendent Whines

A bill to lift the cap on certain types of charter schools in Michigan is headed to the Gov. Rick Snyder's desk for approval today. University-sponsored charters (and online charters!) will be unlimited by 2015. Michigan currently has 255 charters and some pretty long waiting lists. 

Unsurprisingly, Michigan public schools superintendent Rob Glass is displeased. Because all these new schools mean that his schools won't keep getting the same amount of money for doing the same thing forever. Unfair!

"We might see a fundamental shift that takes us where we may never see where we are today again," he said at a well-attended school board meeting Thursday night at the Doyle Center. "We have to think about how we're going to compete in this new landscape."…

The changes will also dilute the funding available to districts and force them to jockey with new competitors for those dollars, Glass argued.

"We'll now have to enter these markets, not because it's where what we want to do, but just to retain the resources we have," he said.

More Reason on charter schools.

Steven Brill talks with Reason.tv about the joys of choice: