State Representative Tim Kelly, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, called for the dissolution of the Detroit public schools. This is a sign of abdication of responsibility by those on control.
“The state has controlled DPS for much of the last 15 years. It has been run by governor-appointed emergency managers since 2009, and was under state control from 1999 until 2005.”
Kelly admits the state has “some” culpability, but nonetheless wants to eliminate public educationin Detroit, which the citizens of that city have not controlled for 15 years.
Republicans are talking about turnong Detroit into an all-charter district, but as the newspaper points out, charters in Detroit do not outperform the maligned public schools. Some are talking vouchers, but there is no reason to believe that they would be any better.
In short, the same people at the top who have sliced and fixed the schools of Detroit for 15 years are now throwing up their hands and saying, “Let’s abandon the state’s obligation to educate the children of Detroit and instead hand them over to the private sector.”
This is not a solution, it is a retreat from the state’s responsibilty. Why is it that state takeovers and suspension of democracy seem to be concentrated in black districts?
At the Network for Public Education conference in April, Jitu Brown of Journey for Justice described these takeovers as “the new colonialism.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Detroit has so many serious problems. Becoming a charter operation would enhance their problems. Seriously addressing foundational problems like poverty and crime and health would assist schools and teachers. Detroit is so sad, so sad.
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When I was finishing my masters in the late ’80’s, one of our instructors warned us about people who were trying to create a two class education system. That seems to be what’s playing out. Charters have been promoted as ways for minority kids to escape bad neighborhood schools. But as you pointed out in one blog about Milwaukee, 86% of those using vouchers were already attending private schools before. So I’ve always believed the whole voucher thing had two motives, neither of which was to help minority kids. One, to create a mechanism to legally funnel taxpayer dollars to for-profit charters and those creating and running them. Two, to allow those who choose to send their children to private schools to recapture their own tax contributions, dollars they resent paying, and resent having go to other peoples kids, including minority families they don’t think should be getting help. I suspect these families are typically at a much higher income strata than most minority families. Even worse, if these families choosing the private route have multiple kids, they could even end up having taxpayers subsidize their personal choices to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. These two groups, charter entrepueners (sp?) and private school families make perfect allies – they both gain, while everyone else loses.
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in the case of the charter school industry, can lawsuits be brought, against state/municipal governments, in Ohio and/or Michigan, for regulatory failure to eliminate/mitigate the schools as “attractive nuisances”? Potential plaintiffs are taxpayers, communities, students and their families.
Can defendants charged with charter school corruption, construct a defense based on “enticement”, by government officials?
(1) Would the defense be strengthened by evidence that, for more than a decade, government officials continued a plan that dangled money, to unwary innocents, with knowledge of a repeated result, legal or regulatory action against the plan operators?
(2) Is there contributory culpability by government officials, when they were aware that, in an overwhelming number of cases, their enacted model was unsuccessful?
(3) Is merit added to the enticement case, when the political party of the government officials, may have received benefit, in the form of political contributions, from failing to pass legislative prevention, that could have curtailed the infractions?
Just a thought.
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Once the public schools are gone and the private sector Charter schools—with their sky high attrition and expulsion rates—don’t have to take and attempt to teach every child, what happens to the kids who get the boot?
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Who is the worst, Michigan or Indiana politicians. Close race – to the bottom.
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