In his column last week for the Education Opportunity Network, Jeff Bryant examines a scary question: Can school choice create the conditions that entirely shut down a community’s public school system? Bryant reports on Michigan where school choice laws permitting inter-district open enrollment and unregulated expansion of charter schools conspire with the state’s school finance system to undermine the stability of the state’s public school districts.
“In Michigan, the intense competition for students is taking bigger bites out of student enrollments in some of the state’s largest districts. In Flint, where there are 14,325 public-school students living in the district, 39 percent attend charters and 32 percent are enrolled in another district—meaning the district loses 71 percent of its students. In Pontiac, with 10,985 public-school students living in the district, 36 percent attend charters and 29 percent travel to other districts, leaving local schools with only 35 percent of the…
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