High school students in Ann Arbor, Michigan, made this video to express their views of Governor Rick Snyder’s assault on their public schools.

It is only 3 minutes. Please watch and tweet.

Categories Education Reform

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mamoushkey says:

March 19, 2014 at 11:09 am

Michigan Public Schools!!! Thank you students!

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The Reading Professor says:

March 19, 2014 at 11:12 am

Nice job, kids. This is what real education is about…collaboration and learning. Now that I’ve written this, I wonder if Gates, Broad, et. al. have ever collaborated on any student-based learning?

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- KYTeacher says:
  
  March 19, 2014 at 1:43 pm
  
  I wonder if they’ve every collaborated with anyone–period
  
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Laura H. Chapman says:

March 19, 2014 at 11:17 am

Thanks, and congrats to your teachers.
Gives hope when so many policy makers are intent on making all public schools private.

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Lloyd Lofthouse says:

March 19, 2014 at 11:27 am

For Twitter: Just copy, paste and ReTweet often. The short link was converted through Bitly to make room for more content in the Tweet, and the link leads to the video Diane mentions in this post. The video is included with this comment so you may watch it first.

What Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder is taking away from children in his state
By closing public schools
Watch video
http://bit.ly/1elrk3Q

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KrazyTA says:

March 19, 2014 at 12:05 pm

Terrific video.

But suddenly, like the 373 to 1 financial advantage @student@year that Eva M enjoys over Carmen F in NYC, I could hear a booming voice in my ear:

“Those kids are stooges of lazy LIFO teachers! Couldn’t they have just shut down their schools and taken them to lobby like everyone else does on field trips????”

For the math, see my comment on this blog—

Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/15/sara-stevenson-fearless-librarian/

😎

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Lloyd Lofthouse says:

March 19, 2014 at 12:51 pm

Booklist is offering free seminars on the Common Core

http://ala-publishing.informz.net/InformzDataService/OnlineVersion/Individual?mailingInstanceId=3893601&subscriberId=1028240347

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Chiara Duggan says:

March 19, 2014 at 2:00 pm

They’re doubling down on deregulation and privatization in Michigan, but there’s finally some pushback:

“The biggest rap against Michigan Education Achievement Authority isn’t that it threatens teacher unions; it’s that it fails kids. Why any lawmaker would consider the authority’s expansion, given its checkered track record, defies logic.
So instead, we have House Bill 4369, which astutely avoids any mention of the authority yet has the potential to do just as much damage. Although its backers don’t call it an “EAA expansion,” it does exactly that — and then some.”

“House Bill 4369 is not a coherent nor effective school turnaround strategy. Michigan is the only state in the union creating a completely unregulated marketplace of new schools, which is now hurting the performance of all schools,” the statement said.

“How about, as education historian Diane Ravitch suggested on her blog, research-based interventions such as reduced class sizes, wraparound services, the arts, medical care, and a sustained effort to reduce poverty and segregation?”

I’m so pleased to see that someone in Michigan is looking at what the unregulated privatized charter sector is doing to ALL the public schools in Michigan.

The public schools there have been ignored and disregarded long enough. Ed reform is damaging every school in the state.

This will be the ed reform legacy in Michigan. A weaker system for ALL students. It’s already happened in Ohio, and Michigan will be next.

http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20140317/OPINION01/303170026?odyssey=mod%7Cmostcom

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Chiara Duggan says:

March 19, 2014 at 2:05 pm

Here’s Arne Duncan in Detroit endorsing Governor Snyder’s anti-public school agenda. Either Duncan was unaware last spring that Snyder had been undermining and weakening every public school in the state or he was too cowardly to mention it:

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2013/05/06/we-need-to-be-wildly-successful-says-u-s-education-sec-in-detroit/

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Chiara Duggan says:

March 19, 2014 at 2:12 pm

And here’s Michelle Rhee endorsing Michigan’s ed reform, which has left a weaker public school system and a for-profit, unregulated charter sector in it’s wake:

http://www.freep.com/article/20130530/NEWS06/305300105/michelle-rhee-education-reform-authority

“Michigan has become a leader in education reform, she said, ranging from a recent bill that would base teacher salaries on performance, to turning failing schools over to a state-run Education Achievement Authority.
“As we look across the nation, Michigan has been one of the most aggressive states on education reform,” Rhee said. “These are some of the innovations and initiatives that are going to lead the country in the next few years.”

Michigan is a disaster in ed reform, and so is Ohio. Unregulated, for profit chaos, with public schools taking the brunt of the damage.

When are ed reformers going to be held accountable for what they’ve done in these midwestern states?

The EAA is a failure, and they all endorsed it. They endorsed it because it was backed by the Broad Foundation. They had no earthly idea if it had any merit. That the backer was politically powerful and wealthy was enough for them all to rubber stamp it.

Who is going to clean up the mess ed reformers left in Michigan and Ohio? Have they all just moved on to the next state(s)?

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Chiara Duggan says:

March 19, 2014 at 2:20 pm

https://twitter.com/BroadFoundation

This is the Broad Foundation Twitter feed. You’ll find lots and lots of ads for charter schools (although you won’t find anything about public schools) but oddly enough there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot on the EAA in Detroit.

Why is that? Everyone in Michigan knows the Broad Foundation backed EAA, because they crowed about it. What happened?

Why don’t I hear anything about the Detroit takeover district from ed reformers anymore?

Did Detroit somehow fall off the map when I wasn’t looking? What gives?

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Chiara Duggan says:

March 19, 2014 at 2:27 pm

12 hours ago, in Detroit:

“By the time this rag hits newsstands, the state House may have pushed a bill along that would codify the Education Achievement Authority and expand it to allow the district to operate as many as 50 schools statewide. The move has critics of the authority calling on lawmakers to pump the brakes. Recent test scores from the EAA’s students suggest an expansion isn’t necessary, and may be unjust.
The EAA currently operates 15 of Detroit’s lowest academically performing schools. It’s a separate, independent school district governed by a board whose majority are appointees of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.
An extensive analysis published last month by Thomas Pedroni, a Wayne State associate professor of academic studies, lends support to those who take issue with the authority’s possible expansion. The Michigan Department of Education recently published the latest cohort data from the Michigan Education Assessment Program, commonly known as the MEAP test, which shows mean averages of students’ proficiency in reading and math have in fact slipped. ”

The Detroit public school kids are doing WORSE with “blended learning”. They’re being harmed by it.

Why are ed reformers expanding their failed Detroit experiment in “blended learning” all over the state of Michigan? How irresponsible and reckless is this? Where are the adults in ed reform to call a halt to this?

They all toured Detroit when the failed experiment was launched, Duncan, Rhee, the whole gang. Why are they so quiet now? Are they really gonna “scale” this all over Michigan? Why?

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- Dee Dee says:
  
  March 19, 2014 at 4:53 pm
  
  They are quiet because everyone knows it is a complete disaster. They lost 25% of their population and will probably lose more next year. The video shown is absolutely true. The charters do not offer a wide curriculum. They are a rip-off.
  
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- Detroiter says:
  
  March 19, 2014 at 10:03 pm
  
  Chiara is quoting great article in the Metro Times: http://metrotimes.com/news/news-hits/critics-doubt-education-achievement-authority-1.1652596
  
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Harlan Underhill says:

March 20, 2014 at 12:51 pm

BUT, has “public education” in Ann Arbor actually produced “good citizens,” or mostly kids with minds filled with mush about global warming, cultural relativism, statist approaches to solving social problems, or indeed about the “theory of education.” The teacher gives her opinion that the only way to make a good citizen is through a diverse student body. The logical fallacy is that a government RUN school is the only way to get a diverse student body. Charters do it too, if diversity mean diversity of color, race, ethnicity. The student speaker at the end says that unless the kids depicted go to a public school they “may” not get a chance to play on a soccer teams, play in the orchestra, etc. They may not, but on the other hand they may. I don’t object to good public schools. No one does. I DO object to the illogical way they are defended. This video itself is an illustration of the tendentiousness of so much defense of public education. When it’s good is an OK way to go, but it is NOT the ONLY way to go to get it. The fundamental confusion is the basic insensitivity to the difference between “all” and “some.” A young person in sixth grade in whom I am interested goes to a local charter and is having a superior experience. Education POLICY on this blog is too often offered as science, as though the math proof formula, “if and only if” applied.

Ann Arbor is a very good school system, in general, but it is also surrounded by a rich and thriving mix of charter and private schools. I accept that it is debatable whether the choices should be ONLY between private and public. But private is not going to go away.

Is the argument on this blog that private education should not be permitted? If so, it exposes once again the anti-capitalist bias on this blog.

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