ALEC v.

Kids: ALECs Assault On Public Education

Executive Summary
What is ALEC? ALEC is a secretive bill mill. Its members are corporations and rightwing extremist advocacy groups, who meet behind closed doors to write laws that directly benefit their bottom line. Then they hand these model bills to right-wing elected officials, who pay their membership dues using our tax dollars. How many Michigan lawmakers are ALEC members? Last year, 26 Michigan lawmakers and Snyder Administration officials were ALEC members. This year that number is down to 21, after Reps. Horn, Agema, and Gilbert were forced out of office by Michigans term limits law. Sen. Rick Jones announced last year hed no longer be paying dues to keep up his ALEC membership. Former Sen. Patricia Birkholz left the Snyder Administration last year to take a post with the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. How does ALEC influence education policy? ALECs Education Task Force combines private corporations that seek to profit off public education with radical rightwing advocacy groups seeking to siphon funding from community public schools or entirely privatize public education. ALECs Education Task Force includes the cyber school company K12 Inc., for-profit charter school operator National Heritage Academies, and the Mackinac Centers parent organization, the State Policy Network. Its little surprise, then, that ALECs Education Task Force prioritizes profits over results, secrecy over accountability, and corporations over kids. What does that mean to states? The model legislation and policies pushed by ALEC are often advanced and enacted in states around the country with little to no alteration. Predictably, from cookie cutter bills come cookie cutter results. Our report seeks to draw lines directly from the corporations that sit on ALECs Education Task Force, to the bills passed that allow them to pad their profits with taxpayer dollars siphoned away from community public schools. What does that mean to Michigan? Since Lansing politicians successfully passed an ALEC bill allowing unchecked expansion of privately-run charter and cyber schools in the state, for-profit cyber school operator K12 Inc. announced 2012 revenues of more than $700 million. While K12 Inc. makes massive profits off taxpayer dollars, they provide an inferior product: the on-time graduation rate for K12 Inc. schools is 49.1%, compared to 79.4% for all students in states in which K12 Inc. operates. National Heritage Academies, a Grand Rapids-based for-profit charter school operator founded by Republican donor J.C. Huizenga, has seen 17.5% growth since the passage of the ALEC model bill allowing unchecked expansion of privately-run charters. Huizenga has said his involvement in the charter school industry is because he believes privatizing public education was not only practical but also desperately needed. For-profit corporations manage about 80% of all charters in Michigan.