Mercedes Schneider has posted a powerful visual description of conditions in Detroit’s battered and neglected public schools.
The emergency manager of DPS is Darnell Earley, who previously was EM in Flint. While in Flint, he was responsible for cutting off safe water and poisoning the people of Flint. He saved money, but the damage done by lead poisoning may cost the state hundreds of millions in litigation and corrective measures.
What might he do to the children of DPS?
Look at the pictures, see the video, and ask yourself: How could any state allow children to attend school in such dilapidated and filthy buildings? Who would willingly let their child go to schools that the state has shamefully abused and neglected?
In our federal system, the state is responsible for a system of public schools. Are Michigan officials allowing the public schools to rot so as to encourage flight to charter schools?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Glad you have found and are circulating these images. There is a studied neglect of the physical conditions in many public schools with injury added to insult by another round of support from Congress for schemes to finance facilities for charter schools, these perks embedded in ESSA.
I am aware of longstanding issues in the governance of Detroit, and likely in the administration of Detroit schools, but sending Darnell Earley there after his “management ” of water quality in Flint is really insulting.
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Here’s the spin from the malignant Fox News- It’s Flint residents fault!
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What a disgusting commentary by Fox News.
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The column is not completely accurate and rather than enlightening, misleads the reader.
This link will take you to the March 12, 2014 newspaper article that reports on Flint Mayor Dayne Walling lauding the beginning of the change over.
http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2014/03/flint_residents_should_be_drin.html
The column places all the blame on one man but says nothing about the Regional Head, and her staff, of the (Federal Government) EPA also knew about the Flint water problem for over six months and also did nothing to warn the people of Flint.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/through-hell-and-flint-water-1453336838
Your column also does not say that information from the Mackinac Center shows that the Detroit public schools spent (2013/14) about $16,000 per student, nor that less than 20% of the pupils can read proficiently.
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Classic blaming the victim
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With due respect, how is the knowingly silent EPA the victim?
Also I think we agree that the real victims are the public school children of Detroit who are not taught by people taking over $16,000 per year and teaching less than 20% of them to grade level.
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Tom,
Hold the governor accountable. He controls the schools and the money.
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Tom,
The state of Michigan has controlled the Detroit public schools for years. What has state control yielded? Zip? Who is accountable? Governor Snyder? Where does the buck stop? The state cant even provide decent facilities. What a disaster.
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Detroit Public School Teacher ‘Sick Out‘ Underway While Just 8% of Students Can Read Proficiently
Lindsey Burke / January 20, 2016
Nearly all schools in Detroit were closed Wednesday due to a massive teacher “sick out,” preventing students from attending class.
Teachers have complained about over-crowded classrooms, poor school conditions, and dissatisfaction with the idea of charter school growth in Michigan.
The teachers’ sick-out includes a planned march, which will conclude near a venue being visited by President Barack Obama Wednesday. Meanwhile, 46,000 kids are unable to attend school in Detroit.
Among those 46,000, it’s likely that less than 4,000 of them can read proficiently.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, just 8 percent of Detroit eighth-graders can read proficiently. Eight percent.
And just seven in 10 students graduate.
But lack of progress is due not to a lack of resources in Detroit public schools, which spend roughly $16,000 per pupil per year. According to the Mackinac Center and a separate analysis by Randan Steinhauser:
– About 75 percent of the annual District budget goes toward paying employees covered by its current collective bargaining agreement for teachers.
– Out of a new $7,450-per-pupil grant the Detroit school district will receive this year, $4,400 will be spent on debt servicing and benefits for teachers who have retired.
– The average Detroit Public Schools (DPS) superintendent makes between $121,091 and $178,871 a year.
– The superintendent can select up to two “professional associations” (unions) to be a member of each year, and the district (taxpayers) will reimburse his membership dues.
– DPS has a debt of over $3.5 billion, which includes unfunded pension liabilities.
Funneling money into a mismanaged school system has not created an environment conducive to improving academic achievement in Detroit.
Serious reforms to the district are necessary. Policymakers in Michigan would do well to enable every Detroit child—and every child in the state—to exercise school choice through the use of education savings accounts (ESAs), accounts that enable families to harness the funds that would have been spent on their children in their assigned pubic school to craft a customized education plan. They can begin by considering how to tackle the barriers to school choice that currently exist in the state.
Print
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Tom,
Everything you say is an indictment of Governor Snyder. He controls Dtroit Public Schools. He is accountable.
He is also accountable for the physical deterioration of DPS schools. It is on him, not the children or the teachers.
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Diane,
Can the Governor fire the teachers who are not performing or does he need the union’s permission?
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Tom,
The rightwing Mackinac Center is not a credible source. The governor controls Detroit schools.
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Just a few points.
“$16,000 per year”—absolutely meaningless figure unless tied to specific expenditures, e.g., fixed costs, administrative costs, standardized testing costs, technology initiatives aka fiascos, public monies diverted to charters and other privatization schemes, and so on.
“grade level’—one of the emptiest phrases in ed jargon. Think of “cut scores” aka pass/fail points set by politicians and their appointees that don’t know anything about education. One of the ways to avoid saying something meaningful is to be imprecise but sound like you’re saying something important and scientific.
And when you have emergency managers calling the shots—they are responsible for completely avoidable and predictable train wrecks.
No excuses.
What an immoral and vacuous set of talking points meant to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted.
Yes, Detroit’s teachers are the heroes.
😎
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How does the Governor control the teachers and the staff? Can he fire the nonperforming teachers or does the union control that?
My guiding principle is that if the public schools insist that children go there, then they have the obligation to teach the children. If they do not want to assume that responsibility then they should let the children go to the school that will teach them
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Tom,
Anyone willing to teach in the neglected and beaten-down Detroit public school system is a hero and deserves our thanks. Why don’t you try it before you criticize those who serve?
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Tom, check out the disaster called the Education Achievement Authority, created by Gov Snyder and his friends at the Mackinac Center.
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Tom: On the EPA.
The power structure, controlling Congress has defunded the EPA so they cannot function as they are supposed to function. Check it out.
This is the sneaky way they operate, defund an organization and then blame if for not functioning properly.
Case in point – our public schools.
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This was crossposted on YAHOO from WAPO.
“Detroit teacher: ‘Why is separate and unequal okay in 2016?’”
Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/01/23/detroit-teacher-why-is-separate-and-unequal-okay-in-2016/
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” [Frederick Douglass]
Time to get unfit.
😎
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Mr. Wilder and Diane,
How does a cut in budget (that did not cut any of the Flint area employees or salaries) stop any EPA employee from calling the newspapers or the EPA in Washington to get publicity against the other government bureaucrats not doing their job of protecting all the public? I don’t think any of the bureaucrats that we and the taxpayers in Michigan paid — did their job.
I am surprised at the Fredrick Douglass quotation. Most of the inner cities are run by elected members of the Democrat Party.
Regarding the way the $16,000 per pupil was (2013/14) spent — I understand about 75% goes to paying teachers and school staff and they are covered by its current collective bargaining agreement.
According to the Mackinac Center (Diane, if you do not like the source, kindly provide another set of per pupil numbers Mackinac says the state provided the numbers): Current expenditures $7,700 for Instruction; $7000 for Support Services; $926 for Non Instructional Services (food); Property Expenditures $110 Construction; $93 Community Services.
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Tom, Detroit teachers have not had a raise in 10 years. Have you?
Detroit is not controlled by Democratic politicians. It is controlled by Governor Rick Snyder.
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dianeravitch: thank you for pointing out the obvious.
And again with the squishy ‘hard data points’ of corporate education reform: there have been numerous discussions on this blog, and others, on the utter uselessness of such vague (and often misleading and misused) figures.
“I am surprised at the Fredrick Douglass quotation. Most of the inner cities are run by elected members of the Democrat Party.”
Embarrassing to read such an obvious deflection from, and avoidance of, a genuine discussion of the topic of this posting. Hint: this blog is called “Diane Ravitch’s blog A site to discussion better education for all.” Look again at the last four words: “better education for all.” It is immaterial whether it’s a Mayor Rahm Emanuel or a Governor Rick Snyder: everyone feels the heat on this blog.*
*Hint for those deeply engrossed in their Common Core ‘closet’ reading of decontextualized informational texts: Emanuel (DEM) and Snyder (REPUB). Google the acronyms if necessary.
😎
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