Detroit is the saddest school district in the United States.
It is a petri dish for every failed corporate reform idea.
The schools are at the bottom on federal tests.
The city has suffered de-industrialization, unemployment and extreme poverty.
And the state’s answer?
Privatization and budget cuts, merit pay and testing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why should the fact that Detroit is a Sacrifice Zone get in the way of money-making opportunities, feeding off the carcass of the city and the schools?
Don’t be so negative: there’s much profit in dislocation and misery!
As our Paul Vallas would say: “disaster as opportunity”.
Yes, and as Naomi Klein would say” “shock doctrine.”
I grew up in Detroit. It has been abandoned. That is beyond white flight. Now, my advocacy is focused on Milwaukee, where the saying is, “Thank God for Detroit,” because without Detroit, Milwaukee would be the saddest school district in the country.
Weep for Michigan…Pontiac schools are in such financial ruin due to administrative mismanagement and benign neglect by the state they can’t even get vendors to deliver toilet paper!
Detroit Public Schools like all of Detroit, died in the Riots of 1967. I am 53 years old and have watched (not in silence) this Apocalypse and loss of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Detroit is a complete bipartisan failure of leadership at the local, state and federal level. And while former Governor Engler and current Governor Rick Snyder have willfully moved the devastation along, former Governors Blanchard and Granholm did not have the passion, or courage to make the rebuilding of Detroit and surrounding cities a priority. Detroit is the worst of the largest (dwindling) school districts across the U.S. but it is far from the worst in MI. Children in Muskegon Heights, Inkster, Flat Rock,Pontiac, Highland Park, River Rouge, Hamtramck, Lincoln Park, Southfield, Oak Park, Ferndale, Lapeer, Brandon, Avondale and Taylor have little reason to go to school. Then there are the students with IEPs and the students that we turn into the disabled and they really have no reason to attend school.
All very true. Not to mention the most obvious factor, that Detroit was a town built entirely on the back of an industry that peaked almost 50 years ago. All cities have stories, and Detroit is America’s saddest.
I too often wonder why no one talks about the fact that when Toyota entered the American car industry in 1960 the Big Three were asleep at the wheel. They let the times change without them. Toyota and the Riots of 1967 destroyed Detroit and surrounding cities. Shame on We the Peiople for not fighting for the fabric of our state.
An article in Detroit’s Free Press said that the EAA was presuming that private money would be given that would help their funding. The money is not coming in. Now, they need to apply for money to fix their online computer program that was a mess and the teachers had not been trained to use it. It is the middle of the year. What took so long? This whole experiment is terrible. Michigan is run by nothing but greed. Who would allow someone to make a profit off of school children? Greedy and kooky sellouts. I also read that they thought they were going to get a large grant from the feds but DPS kept a large part because of the fiscal impact from the state taking their schools.
Detroit public schools, under the control of an agent of the Governor, helped subsidize the EAA, which was created by an edict of the Governor. The Governor’s agent gave 15 DPS schools to the Governor’s EAA, along with federal grants that were awarded to DPS. Some of those 15 buildings were new or renovated, under a bond program that Detroiters will be paying for for 20 more years.
This has truly been a major step from Lansing in the long bipartisan drive to plunder and dismantle the Detroit Public Schools and put the actual education of our children on hold as the experimentation and exploitation proceeded apace.