Emergency Financial Management: Purposes and Effects of State Takeovers of Local School Districts in Michigan, 2009–2018

Equitable education policy must be directed toward improving the quality of education for all children. Efforts to establish equity often meet with conflicting assumptions and values between those implementing reforms and those receiving them. This mixed-methods case study examines the emergency financial management legislation enacted in Michigan 2009–2018 as an education policy for governance reform in three local school districts: Detroit, Highland Park, and Muskegon Heights. From its inception, the emergency financial manager (EM) law was an intervention strategy for local municipalities in financial emergencies ostensibly meant to address educational equity gaps. However, in 2009 it was used to enable state takeovers of three local school districts experiencing financial emergencies. Evidence from interviews and media sources shows how, as an education policy, the EM law failed to attend to the expectations and reality of people of color and people living in poverty in Metro Detroit.