What an exhaustive investigation!
After Eclectablog published reports of abuse of students, poorly trained TFA teachers, bulging classes, and other problems in the state’s Educational Achievement Authority, the EAA investigated itself and declared that all was well. Well, that is reassuring!
The EAA was created by Governor Snyder to take over low performing schools and turn them around. From the initial report, it sounded like a stop in the school-to-prison pipeline.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes it does sound like a “stop in the school-to-prison pipeline”, Diane, except it involves taking down teachers along with students.
Is there some discussion of this? The role of public universities in K-12 ed reform?
Because this comes up again and again in Ohio and also in Indiana. Are they doing some kind of due diligence before they endorse these ed reform experiments? What is the role of public university backing of ed reform?
“EMU’s Dean of Education Dr. Jann Joseph resigned from the EAA board Dec. 1 after 31 members of the faculty in the EMU College of Education publicly supported breaking away from the troubled district. The EAA was created by an agreement between the university’s board of regents and then Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts in 2011. To start, the EAA took 15 DPS buildings, their contents and state funding despite protests from the DPS elected board and community members.
To protest EMU’s ties with the EAA, six Washtenaw County districts and the Taylor school district are all refusing to allow EMU student teachers to practice in their schools
The EMU faculty protest continued at the Dec. 10, EMU Board of Regents meeting. “Affiliation with the politically-motivated, dysfunctionally-deployed and pedagogically-unsupportable EAA has tarnished our reputation,” said Steve Camron, EMU associate professor of special education. “The development, operations and instructional practices of the EAA run counter to our college’s mission, values and teaching.”
Since EMU regents are appointees of the governor who is running the schools, is this yet another area in ed reform where there’s no real debate until after there’s been a huge investment in the experiment and thousands of kids and tens of millions of dollars are involved?
What role are public universities playing in this?
http://michigancitizen.com/eaa-collapsing/
Chiara, This is a major issue, one generally ignored by higher education because they tend to think of their Colleges of Education as strange step-children — heretofore necessary for revenue but…In Michigan, the state constitution requires elections only for the 3 research intensive universitites (UM, MSU, Wayne State) and all the other boards are appointed. Education Reformers have pointed the Governor towards this “opening” in terms of managing things in the state. This means a “reform” minded Governor can “charter” any number of ideas through appointed boards with little or no input from university or college faculty …..
Thanks. I read quite a bit on OH, MI and IN ed reform, and the “university authorizer” issue is always just announced, never analyzed. Obviously, since I oppose the privatization of K-12 public schools I would be unhappy if a public university was working towards privatizing public schools. I don’t want to support that, although I support funding public universities generally.
I actually read this EAA contract between EMU and Detroit public schools and the grant of authority is very broad.
One of my problems with ed reform is so much of it contractual. I think it’s folly, phony “transparency”, to say people know what’s going on unless they’re reading these contracts.
They’d also need to read the contract between the charter and the authorizer, and the charter (the legal entity that is “the school”) and the EMO.
Click to access Interlocal-Agreement-EMU-DPS.pdf
Thank you for that info, Ken.
I used to find the University community oddly silent on issues of reform. You hear a little more here and there now, but I don’t understand why I have never seen nor heard of or from any professors I had in education seeking input, support or community from their former students in the flushing away of our public schools. Parents are just starting to get in on the game in NC (I’ve seen several petitions lately opposing rampant testing), but why didn’t the professors I have send out messages a couple years ago predicting the threats of reform to the institution of public education? Is it because they were the ones coming up with the stuff? Or were they what people like to assume all public school teachers were/have been with an assuming complacency?
Who predicted where we are now? Who could have? Who should have?
I meant input on preventing the flushing away of our public schools
Silent? Well there are over 50 professors marching in Moral Mondays. https://www.nccivitas.org/moralmonday/
And many professors are working to help organize protest events and petitions and studies in the news. I think most were fairly apolitical like teachers until they realized what was happening.But now many are fighting the reforms. Since professors also work for the state they also run some risks. Plus higher ed has it’s own RTTT now and they will be in the exact same situation as teachers. Public universities are under attack too. Many books and articles have been coming out from professors. Some of the main blogs I read like School Finance 100 is from a professor (Bruce Baker). Some of the best research to refute reformers is from universities. Not all professors got bought out.
It sounds like Ralph Nader was right about the rise of corporate crimes.
Ralph has been right about many things for the last FIFTY years.
I was trained to not pay attention to Nader because he helped get VW bugs outlawed (engine in the back). I guess I should not have held my bug-loving mentor on so high a pedestal that I didn’t pay attention to Ralph, eh?
I think I will look him up and do some reading. Maybe he proclaimed the prophecies I find so oddly missing from my last decade or two. I certainly never saw public schools ending up in the tenuous position they are now in. Never saw it coming.
The EAA was the first privately-funded district in the US. It didn’t stay privately-funded, of course, they now pull boatloads of public funding, but it was established by the same gang ‘o billionaires we have all come to know and love 🙂
Is it really “free” money when you give up public control of your school district? I think that’s a hefty price people in Detroit paid for 10 million dollars in funding. These donations aren’t really “gifts” at all, are they?
This reminds me of when people inherit land from grandma and buy a trailer to go on it with an interest rate that jumps up high in two years with the land as collateral. Not a good deal for the person buying the trailer if they default (which is likely with the interest rate jump). But they wanted a place to live without buckling down hard to have a house on it, the trailer looked so nice and shiny—but then the land is gone. And then no trailer either.
I know one person who works for EAA (a lot of them went there from KC). I imagine they believed this was a shiny (like the new trailer) way to get in and fix a frustrating education situation, without attending to the issues of family and community. There was clearly a haze of trust leading them to sign away grandma’s land, trusting that the “benefactors” also had good intentions. The name itself seems enough to give pause to any outsider looking in (achievement authority—truly an unbelievable name in this country). The housing authority probably could have helped more (I mean if we are looking for an office that is an authority, that’s about the only one I can think of that makes any sense). And I guess the EAA were paying well, so people took jobs there despite the name (but seriously I think that name would have scared me off).
I like this post. It is a chuckle that they excused themselves.
Attending to public schools and fixing the ones whose surrounding communities either took them down or let them down, I think, requires the same type vision, commitment and sacrifice as redoing an old home. EAA is like a trailer in this analogy. And many charters are like new construction (figuratively).
Actually, that makes sense as an analogy because the real estate market went bust (for a while) and up popped the education market. Surely it will follow some of the same patterns. The wise will hang on to their “buildings,” and “land” and not leverage them for something that loses value.
With vision, tolerance while you work and remodel, a beautiful and functional restoration can occur. It just takes time. I think we are all going through renovations right now. Some are bailing for newer construction, some are signing away for trailers, but at the end of the day we are all witnessing the giant renovation (or demolition) of this old institution, public education.
I hope communities quit mortgaging the proverbial farm for trailers (that they will also lose), and restore what was more solidly built (where suitable). We might have to deal with the smell of paint and mud being tracked in, and loud noises from drills, hammers and saws, but at least we get to see the process (like professional development always was, and conferences in your field, and the excitement of a new school year).
Some people look at old things and just see something to be trashed. Others see ways to grow and improve and thrive. And be alive!! That’s the way I want to be.
Nice try EAA. All due respect. But with a name like that, did you ever really have a chance?
I think if you said to people “the US has a universal, publicly-run K-12 education system (flawed as it may be!) – do you really want to replace that with a fragmented, privately-run, publicly-funded collection of schools OR would you rather improve what you’ve invested 150 years in building?”
It’s the only publicly-run, publicly owned universal system we have in this country. Do they really want to throw that away? I don’t think they do. It’s valuable. It has value.
The title of this article reads straight out of something we would see in “The Onion”!
The EAA is taking on water and sinking fast. How much longer will this sham go on???It is really disgusting that it was allowed to be established in the first place.