Tom Pedroni and Karen Twomey write in the Detroit Free Press that it’s time to restore democratic governance to the public schools of Detroit.

Plans and proposals are flying around from every district but all of them involve state control and privatization.

This is ironic as Detroit has had its fill of failed state control.

“All three proposals place inexplicable faith in the state’s ability to rectify the very problems that it, more than any other government entity, has created. Under the state’s watch for 13 of the last 16 years, the district has lost two-thirds of its students — more than 100,000 kids. Meanwhile, long-term debt has ballooned from around $700 million in 1999 to more than $2.1 billion today. Worst of all, state-mandated assessments, including the MEAP, reveal that Detroit’s students have lost even more ground to their state peers since 2009, when the state imposed emergency management.

“The closure of nearly 200 schools since 2002 has exacerbated student flight from the district while hurting already fragile city neighborhoods. What little funding the district retains is increasingly steered by emergency management from the classroom to administrators, consultants and contractors. A district that under the elected board drove 55%-60% of its revenues to classroom instruction — a proportion similar to most suburban districts — now allots the classroom less than 47%.”

The status quo–state control–has failed. The authors propose a return to democratic governance, with state assumption of the District’s debt. They propose a series of common sense reforms that could put Detroit public schools on the path to revival instead of extinction.