Who killed Walter French? A new cultural history of charter school governance, community and ownership in Michigan, 1996-2004

Walter French Academy (WFA), a charter school in Lansing, Michigan, opened its doors in 1996. After eight difficult years of operation, its chartering agency, Central Michigan University (CMU), chose not to reauthorize its charter, and WFA was forced to close in 2004. As a case study history employing an historiographical approach related to the new cultural history, Walter French Academy's establishment and trajectory can be seen as an emergence related to events taking place at a particular point in time. In this project I explore the intersection of and relationship among these diverse and often chance events, in order to theorize the complexity of choice and charter schooling as examples of current movements in education reform. I also examine competing claims for control and ownership of the school with its overlapping structures of both public and privatized governance. For the new cultural historian, language is not neutral, and is always ideological. Throughout the work I therefore analyze particular language related to community and consensus, to ownership and control that was deployed by various stakeholders who impacted the school's history in order to understand the ways that power circulated among them, making possible certain actions and foreclosing others. The question, "Whose school is this?" provides a thread that runs throughout this project. To answer this question, I include the voices of many of the adults who were connected with the school along with my own. I argue that the emergence of competing claims and claimants as well as their departure affected the trajectory of WFA in critical ways and impacted its failure and closure in 2004. It is a cautionary tale.