This is an unbelievable story. I first learned about the Catherine Ferguson Academy from the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC. It is (or was) a school for pregnant girls in Detroit, with an innovative curriculum, for example, the girls learned to garden and tend farm animals and engage in projects and activities.
But the future of the school was in doubt because of the city’s financial crisis. Someone, perhaps the financial manager, decided to “save” the school by turning it over to a charter operator.
Next chapter: the school is now a harsh, tightly disciplined “no excuses” school where the girls get an inferior education. The students are now suing the city of Detroit and the charter operator, called Blanche Kelso Bruce Academy, for giving them a substandard education.
Listen to this from their egalitarian complaint:
“The defendants have terminated many state mandated courses, done away with all classes, ordered teachers not to teach classes, failed to employ certified teachers in math, physical education computing, health education and music and stamped an additional badge of inferiority on these girls through unjustly casting their entire school as a strict discipline academy for students with serious criminal and discipline problems, and have failed even to provide a student code of conduct, leaving all students subject to arbitrary discipline.”
And:
“There are no certified teachers in foreign language, physical education or computer science at the Catherine Ferguson Academy. In addition, according to the suit, “CFA students were told that none of their math work for the school year would be given credit because BKBA laid off the two certified math teachers. Since then, an uncertified math teacher has been assigned to ‘teach’ math and has received all students’ work and graded it.”
What a disgrace!
Calling Rachel Maddow! The girls of Catherine Ferguson Academy need you!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just one minor correction: “But the future of the school was in doubt because of the city’s *manufactured* financial crisis.”
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Thank you Dienne! The word ‘manufactured’ should always precede the words financial crisis.
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Manufactured indeed. DPS can’t get an additional penny but the EAA has a donation fund. Then they’ll compare on an uneven playing field and call the EAA the winner.
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Why do you use the word manufactured?
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The same way every alleged “crisis” has been manufactured lately – like the Illinois pension “crisis”, for instance. They claim there are budget shortfalls when there are in fact budget surpluses. Even when there are actual shortfalls, you can always trace it back to corruption, mismanagement, handouts to corporate cronies, tax breaks for rich corporations, etc., all of which continue despite the alleged financial “crisis”. Chicago is apparently in such “crisis” that they have to close 50 schools. But at the same time there’s money laying around to pony up $100 million for a sports stadium for a private Catholic college. The only real crisis (no quotes this time) is how the robber barons have stolen from the poor and middle class to enrich the 1%, and people like you are the biggest apologists for it.
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Public pensions are in real trouble. I think that there is simply a structural problem with polititions being able to make promises about compensation that future polititions will have to carry out. A defined contribution plan would make the polititions negotiating the agreement responsible for paying for it.
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Public pensions are in “real trouble” because they’ve been systematically looted. Read RETIREMENT HEIST.
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I don’t disagree that they have not been funded. It is also a mistake to assume an average 7.5% return on investment.
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If you have followed the saga of the public employee pension funds in Illinois, you know that legislators have chosen to use funds that should have been allocated to the pensions for other services. Rather than dealing with an antiquated tax policy and years of corporate giveaways, politicians chose to borrow/steal from the pension funds.
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Racism at its worst!
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This is so sad. Sounds like a school I would have sent my own children to.
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Could be, but I believe it’s specifically for single moms and single-moms-to-be, or was before the idiots took over last year.
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Suing. That’s all we got, it seems.
It reminds me of that movie in the 80s where the little girl sues her parents. I knew a kid in college who did the same thing and actually got custody of his brother.
The younger generation having to sue the preceding generation for the basics.
As sang Oliver: “Where is Love? Does it fall from skies above? It is underneath the willow tree, that I’ve been dreaming of?”
Like Annie: “Maybe far away, or may be real near by.”
It is no wonder those two characters were dreamt up during the depression. It is all so similar now. Just no dust bowl.
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actually, Oliver was not from the depression.
(not that anyone cares what I type in my monologues anyway)
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I like your monologues. There’s always a depression somewhere, we know what you mean.
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It is a disgrace. And who was responsible for the financial crisis of the Detroit Public Schools?
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The state of Michigan. The series of emergency managers continually worsened the situation (while making lots of money themselves). Check out the record of Robert Bobb.
What’s most interesting is that Catherine Ferguson had carved out a unique and innovative model for a specific demographic in a traditional district while the charter went to a drill-and-kill style.
I thought charters were the innovators?
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And just HOW did the State of Michigan run Detroit and it’s school system into the ground? Come now. But city and school system destroyed itself by over spending and by flight of the middle class tax base from the city to the suburbs. You liberals crack me up. It’s always someone else’s fault when a civid entity doesn’t operate within it’s income. Can you say, U.S. Congress?
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I’m replying above your post.
First, be careful about the incorrect attribution that I am a liberal. I have a voting record that suggests otherwise but it wouldn’t fit your preferred narrative.
You paranoid conservatives crack me up. Always saying liberals don’t know a thing when conservatives are just as flawed. Beware the rigidness of ideology.
Second, yes, DPS was in trouble a while ago but the state’s appointed EM actually worsened the situation and increased the deficit. To be fair, there are many sources of mismanagement here. But it is worth noting that the EMs have made no real difference.
And I’m glad that you point out Congress because the fact that it’s split is the reason it gridlocks. Both sides to blame? That’s crazy talk.
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I recall that the Detroit deficit grew under Emergency Manager Robert Bobb. By the way, while Bobb was the EM, Barbara Byrd-Bennett was in charge of academics for Detroit. She is now the superintendent in Chicago.
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*manufactured* crisis.
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A) Feast your eyes on this exemplar of cagebusting achievement-gap closing innovation that serves as a model for public schools.
B) It’s all about $tudent $ucce$$.
You decide.
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Detroit’s population decreases by 22% over the last ten years while the total revenue to the government only declined 11% (in nominal terms). Nominal revenue per Detroit citizen is actually higher than in the past. If expenses decreased proportionally to the population decrease, the city would be running a sizable surplus.
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Perhaps I’ve missed any comment to this effect above, but my concern is, “How do we help the kids at Catherine Ferguson Academy to get their school back?” I think there are lots of other places to argue about who is responsible for the financial issues in Detroit and its public schools.
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Why don’t we talk about Bill Clinton in this mess. In 1994 he signed NAFTA and the WTO which wiped out jobs here with offshoring and paying companies to offshore. In !996 he wiped out the “Free Press” with the 1996 Telecommunications Act which also made sure that no health problems with cell phone towers could even be discussed in hearings for those towers. I know this intimately as we stopped 3 of them until we wiped the floor of one of the majors top attorneys in appeal and we won. Suddenly they found a way to do it without any public notice. Three Clinton signed the 1999-2000 Banking Deregulation Acts which except for at the time Canada, India and China who did not buy our financial craziness and did not participate in the CBO’s which wiped out everyone except the wealthiest. The Banking Deregulation Acts have created this nightmare on purpose. One thing you cannot say about Clinton and Obama is that they are stupid and do not know what they are doing. This is all a plan for Fascist Amerika, get real. This is the same plan as started in Austria in 1919 by a priest named Seipel. Read “Hapsburgs to Hitler” if you really want to know what is going on. 9-11 which we helped to happen if not planned to finish off this total invasion of our personal freedoms, privacy and money. Big things do not happen by accident they are planned. Go listen to Roosevelts former Vice President just before he left office near the end of the war talk about the fascists wanting to take this country. They learned from Hitler to take their time and do it without guns and that is what is happening. When you put fear into people they freeze and you can do anything you want. Just listen to Obama today defending taking our phone records with no reason except total domination. Obama is a wolf in sheeps clothing as this could not be done without democratic presidents being in collusion with the other side and the billionaires who want total domination. So teachingeconomist and Mr. Underhill go back to school and learn how things really work. I think your knowledge of history, finances and politics is lacking. And to put this into more perspective these people are amateurs to what has happened in the past concerning complicated politics and destruction.
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