A nationally recognized education researcher and writer who is a long-time critic of charter schools recently made misleading comments about Michigan’s public school landscape. The comments appeared in a Washington Post video, and included a claim that the charter school movement was a hoax.

Diane Ravitch is a professor at New York University and a former assistant secretary of education for the U.S. Department of Education under President George H.W. Bush. She made her comments in a Nov. 29 panel called Education 360: Debating the Future.

Ravitch stated that red states in the U.S. have cut school funding — something that is not true in Michigan. She also lumped Detroit charter schools’ performance in with the abysmal performance of schools operated by the conventional Detroit public school district.

These claims do not stand up to close scrutiny.

Ravitch stated, “If you look at Detroit, half the schools in Detroit are charter schools, most of them are for-profit charter schools, it’s the lowest-performing district in the country.”

It is, though, the conventional Detroit public school district that has been branded the worst-performing school district in the country, not independent charter schools located in the city. The National Assessment of Educational Progress ranked Detroit’s conventional public school district as the nation’s worst urban school district in biannual reports released in 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017. This means Detroit’s conventional district has been the worst in the country for going on a decade.

In a follow-up email to Michigan Capitol Confidential, Ravitch persisted in conflating charter schools located in Detroit with the city’s public school district.

“With all those charters, Detroit remains the lowest scoring urban district in the nation (including charters),” Ravitch said in an email.

Ravitch also criticized Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes. In 2013 and 2015 reports, CREDO said that charter school students in Michigan perform better than their peers in conventional public schools.

CREDO’s 2015 report stated that Detroit’s charter school system could serve as a model for other communities to follow.

“Sorry but I don't know anyone who would cite Detroit as a model for education,” Ravitch said in an email. “I suppose it might help to know that CREDO is Walton funded.”

Ravitch has stated that the Walton family does not like public education.

“Dr. Ravitch is correct that we receive funding for our work from the Walton Family Foundation,” said Macke Raymond, director of CREDO. “We also enjoy the support of several foundations that are on the ‘blue’ side of the spectrum. All our funders — and our state education agency partners, too — know that our work is impartial and independent. Our aim is to provide neutral analysis of important issues, policies and programs in U.S. K-12 education using the most rigorous analytic techniques we can apply. We take no advocacy positions on any of our work — and we think that makes us both unique and the trusted source for clear insight into ed policy today. Lots of foundations use our work to guide their decisions. Walton is one among many.”

Ravitch stated that 80 percent of Michigan charter schools are operated by for-profit education management companies. When contacted by email, she cited a New York Times article as the source of her information.

According to a 2016-17 breakdown by the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, that number is erroneous.

There were a total of 380 charter school buildings in Michigan that year.

Of these, 183 schools (48 percent) contracted with a for-profit, full-service educational service provider (ESP), or management company. Another 46 schools (12 percent) contracted with a nonprofit, full-service management company. Other schools used an ESP for only specific functions: 71 schools (19 percent) contracted with a for-profit ESP just to manage their staff and 26 schools (7 percent) contracted with a nonprofit ESP for human resources services. Still other schools — 54 in all (14 percent) — did not contract with an education service provider for any service.

Canton Township is currently seeking $450,000 from a pair of local landowners for removing trees from their property in alleged violation of a tree-protection ordinance. But the township itself appears to have flouted its ordinance over the last decade, when a 22-acre parcel of land it owns was clear-cut to make way for soil removed from a nearby landfill.

That’s according to Michael Pattwell, an attorney for Gary and Matt Percy. The brothers find themselves in the crosshairs of Canton Township enforcers after they cleared their own land for use as a Christmas tree farm. Pattwell says that land behind the township’s public works facility on Sheldon Road, which is in a mostly commercial and industrial-use district, was cleared. He cites multiple satellite images, documents and statements from members of tree-clearing crews that worked in the area in 2008 and in an additional location in the same parcel in 2017.

Canton Township planner Jeff Goulet, however, says those claims are inaccurate and based on flawed or misinterpreted information. A limited amount of tree removal was conducted at the public works site soon after the township acquired it in the late 1980s, he said. But according to Goulet, that was before the township enacted the ordinance in 1991.

“The photo labeled 2007 (referring to a Google Earth image that shows thick foliage on the site) is incorrect,” Goulet said. “The trees were gone long before that.”

Pattwell insists it is Goulet who is mistaken.

Multiple images from various sources depict the property at the rear of the public works facility to be heavily-treed before 2007, he said. After 2007, he added, the images all show the area to be denuded and replaced by large piles of dirt that were transported from the nearby Sauk Trail landfill, which was being expanded. Images also show, he said, that an additional 5-acre portion of the township’s land was covered with mature trees but then clear-cut between 2016 and 2017.

In a telephone interview Friday, Goulet said the ordinance had not been adopted when the land was cleared. Under the ordinance, private landowners must obtain official authorization for tree removal. It also mandates that landowners submit a plan for township approval to mitigate the removal of any trees by replanting, or pay $200 or more per tree into the township’s tree fund.

Canton Township attorney Kristin Kolb, in an email response to an inquiry from Michigan Capitol Confidential, said public works staff could not recall any mass tree removal on township property during the last 20 years.

But one of the contractors hired to perform tree removal on the township property (and who asked to not be identified) said in a telephone interview that he distinctly recalls working at the site in 2008, when “hundreds of trees 18-to-24-inch in diameter” were removed.

In any event, Kolb said, the township is not subject to its own ordinance. “Case law is very clear on this point,” she said.

And despite the legal reality, Canton Township adheres to the tree ordinance, she said.

“When Canton removes trees from its property for development, and to the extent that they are required to be replaced under the zoning ordinance, the township plants replacement trees,” Kolb said.

Pattwell said the claim is ridiculous.

“When local governments say the trees are critically important, they mean your trees, not theirs,” he said. “Canton defends their tree police ordinance as an utter necessity to the public good — trees being critical for stormwater management, pollution prevention — the list goes on. But — they don’t follow their own policies.”

Legislation generated in response to the dispute is pending at the Michigan Capitol. It would limit local government’s authority to extract payments for trees removed from private property.