Michigan’s public schools consistently rank among the worst performing in the nation, so it’s no surprise 10% of the state’s students choose charter schools in hopes of a better education.

It’s a wonder the percentage isn’t larger. And it might be if the education establishment didn’t work so hard to subvert the state’s school choice laws.

The latest effort by Democrats beholden to the Michigan Education Association is to make it tougher for public charter schools to find buildings suitable for housing their students.

When charters began gaining popularity, particularly in urban areas such as Detroit where school failure was endemic, school districts refused to sell or lease them abandoned buildings. Many districts preferred to see their surplus schools torn down or left to rot rather than turn them over to the charters competing for their students.

The Michigan Legislature, controlled by Republicans at the time, put a stop to that practice in 2017 with the passage of the Education Instruction Access Act, which prohibited districts from using deed restrictions to block sales to charters.

With Democrats back in charge in Lansing, they have the law in their sights. A bill introduced by Rep. Noah Arbit, D-West Bloomfield, would repeal the act under the guise of preserving historic school buildings.

In Arbit’s own district, West Bloomfield Schools recently decided to demolish the century-old Roosevelt School in Keego Harbor rather than accept an offer from a private developer to purchase it for $1.7 million dollars. The district feared it would ultimately become a charter.

School Board member Carol Finkelstein said in a public meeting, “Roosevelt is a beautiful 104-year-old historic building that is facing demolition because we simply cannot afford to have it become a competing school.”

Stifling competition and denying students in failing schools an opportunity at a better education is not the way to improve the performance of Michigan’s schools.

So many parents have turned away from traditional public schools out of frustration with their chronic under-achievement. The way to win them back is by delivering better results.

Charter schools are not the reason traditional public schools are failing. Rather, decades of skirting accountability and putting the interests of teachers unions ahead of the needs of students are to blame.

Charter schools managed to find places to house their students before the Education Instruction Access Act was passed, and they will do so again if the law is repealed.

Communities are better served, however, by allowing charter students to fill buildings no longer needed by the district.

But as demonstrated by West Bloomfield, many school districts prefer to see those old schools torn down — at considerable expense to their taxpayers — rather than have them used for their intended purpose by charter schools.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has already reduced funding for online charter schools, a lifeline for students who are uncomfortable in a traditional school setting, and now her Democratic colleagues want to make opening charter schools more difficult.

The anti-charter bias is in conflict with Whitmer’s stated goal of attracting more families to Michigan.

Parents of school aged children won’t come to a state where the only choice they have for educating their children is a poorly performing public school system.

— The Detroit News