“When did we stop believing in democracy? Not so long ago most Americans would have professed a belief that democracy shielded citizens from the callous excesses of distant power.
“Today in Michigan we’ve become mush-mouthed about democracy. On the one hand, we will still send our children to die thousands of miles away in its name. Yet back at home we scuttle it with barely a murmur — as if it were an ornate relic, no longer adequate for facing down the challenges of perennial budget shortfalls in our schools and municipalities since the financial collapse of 2008.
Flint’s water should have woken us up. Did it? If the reality of lead in tainted city water damaging the brains of Flint’s children isn’t enough to bring us back to our belief in citizen oversight of government, then we really have unilaterally surrendered. The citizens of Flint spoke out for months, but stripped of their democratic voice under emergency management, the problem developed unchecked.
Detroit lawmakers say keeping school board top priority
“If you’re finally paying attention now, then take note: The same power that poisoned Flint’s children — the power of state displacement of locally elected governance — announced last week that it intends to double down on the damage already visited upon the minds of Detroit’s children through Gov. Snyder’s newly unveiled plan for the city’s schools.
“Just as in Flint, the facts are now clear. Detroiters remember that before the succession of state interventions started in 1999 DPS had a $93 million dollar operating surplus, enrollment over 173,000, and academic gains. Six years of emergency management from Lansing since 2009 has widened the performance gap between Detroit’s students and their Michigan counterparts; enrollment has plummeted; and the district’s operating deficit and long term debt have smashed all previous records. Throughout those years, educational and financial professionals and impacted parents warned us, but stripped of an empowered Board to appeal to, the problems grew.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Death” is a bit too passive. “Murder” would be more appropriate.
Isn’t it “funny” how so-called education reform, touted by its carnival barkers as “the civil rights issue of our time,” results in the loss of democracy and local control for a city that is eighty percent Black.
Perhaps the leaders of the legacy civil rights organizations, who continue to support Common Core, high stakes testing and other parts of the so-called reform regime, should bear that in mind before they cash another check from Bill Gates.
The most aggressive takeovers seem to occur in communities of color: New Orleans, Newark, and now Detroit. Civil rights organizations should wake up to the fact they are being duped by the rhetoric and perhaps the cash, and remember that “separate is never equal.”
Have they abandoned the cheap, quick-fix “online learning” program that was supposed to raise test scores but instead was a disaster?
It was called BUZZ. Here’s a famous ed reformer endorsing the product:
With its bright colors, customizable themes and even school-specific branding, it “speaks their language” as it holds their attention. Experts agree:
“The Buzz platform from Agilix… [is one of] the best examples of platforms that support an individualized course of study combining digital content and projects”
– Tom Vander Ark, Smart Cities
It’s so great how they combine being ed reform “rock stars” and also selling product. Synergy!
http://agilix.com/buzz
“And so this became the test of a completely new system of schooling.
It turned out to be another kind of test as well.
A test of software, developed by one for-profit corporation and marketed by another.
A product named Buzz.”
http://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/the-eaa-exposed-an-investigative-report/Content?oid=2249513
Snyder lobbied to take BUZZ statewide, although they had absolutely no idea if it had any value at all. Further, Eli Broad lobbied to take the EAA statewide, again with absolutely no evidence AT ALL that it was or would be successful.
Here’s Arne Duncan promoting the experimental products they were testing on public school children:
The Obama Administration says an Education Achievement Authority school in Detroit is “the future.”
In an article in the July 22 edition of the magazine Scientific American, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=arne-duncan-how-technology-will-revolutionize-testing-learning U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan began by writing “Recently I had the opportunity to visit the future. It was located in Kristie Ford’s classroom in Detroit.”
Duncan wrote that teacher Ford’s classroom of fifth and sixth graders was “a hive of activity and motion, which Ford did not need to closely direct. Instead as she talked individually with a few students, others worked independently in small clusters discussing their study of the solar system or sprawled on the floor constructing 3-D models. Still others were enmeshed in learning games and apps on laptops.”
I mean for God’s sake. Is he on the company payroll? Buzz was an absolute disaster and everyone knew it. They shelled out 250k additional to make the software work AT ALL.
Why would the US Sec of ED hold it up as a model for US public schools?
Here is a report just issued which details the extent that the banks, venders and politicians have gutted the Detroit Public Schools. DPS now has $3.5 billion outstanding liabilities. The debt service payments are now greater that the payroll. It forecasts DPS to be bankrupt by this April.
Remember DPS had a budget surplus when the state took it over.
Click to access Detroit_schools_legacy_costs_indebtedness_2016.pdf
If we’re going to run experiments, let’s run experiments in pricey private schools:
“But where does the new $23,000 a year ($25,000 for grades 6-12) brick-and-mortar Khan Lab School in Silicon Valley fit into that mission?”
I’m all for ed reformers experimenting in the private system.
If “blended learning” works out for these kids at 25k a year we can then risk investing in it in ordinary public schools. That sounds like a reasonable plan. Pricey private schools can be the innovators. They can afford the downside risk.
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/01/05/461506508/sal-khan-on-learning-coding-and-why-virtual-ed-is-not-enough
It’s not that Democracy has failed, it is that representatives elected democratically are re-elected in spite of their corruption.
Perhaps we need some mean leaders…
you know, say what they mean AND mean what they say!
Oh wait, that’s too much like Bernie & Donald.
We can’t choose them, they are not “proper” politicians!
I don’t understand why parents and teachers–and simply bystanders–aren’t trying to use the courts “offensively” against such vendors and rip-off artists. The courts were a most useful resource for the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 60s–think, for example, Montgomery. And attorneys like Fred Gray, Bill Kunstler, Arthur Kinoy, and many others created meaningful suits that helped activists pursue a variety of direct actions.
Paul Lauter, the civil rights groups in the 50s and 60swere allied with labor. Now they are fundedbyGates.
Back then, your cases would have been heard by Thurgood Marshall and William O. Douglas.
Today they’d be heard by the likes of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. In fact, at this moment the Supreme Court is likely gearing up to destroy public employee unions, via the Friedrichs case.
Unless/until people rise up in resistance and change the political culture, the federal courts will increasingly be a death trap.