Poor Detroit has been a petri dish for every reformer idea. None of them has worked.
Michigan has run the entire table of reformster ideas– takeover of the district, creation of an achievement district, and charter operators brought in to replace the publics. Detroit is now a reformy buffet. Moreover, Detroit should be a beautiful display of how well the various reformster policies work. Except that it isn’t, because they don’t.
Detroit is a case study in state authorities looking at a system in crisis and saying, “Let’s try anything, as long as it doesn’t involve actually investing money and resources in the children of Those People.” Detroit has been a city in crisis for a while now, and that has allowed leaders to say, “We have a chance to fix education in this city and let some people make good money doing it. And if we can only get one of those things done, well, let’s go with the money-making one.”
When a crisis happens– a hurricane hits, the bottom is ripped out of a local economic driver– that opens up a gaping area of need in a state, officials can respond one of two ways. They can call on people of the state to rally, to provide aid and assistance to the affected communities. Or, they can try to build some sort of firewall between the affected communities and everyone else, try to insure that everyone else is protected from any effects, any cost created by the affected communities. The citizens of a state are like mountain climbers roped together and hanging onto the side of a precipice. When one loses his grip (either because of accident, weather conditions, or because he was pushed), the others can either try to haul him back up, risking trouble themselves, or they can cut the dangler loose. If they’re extra cynical, they can sell the dangler an umbrella “to break his fall,” and congratulate themselves on having saved him before they cut him loose.
Michigan’s leaders have treated the tragedy and decline of Detroit as an opportunity to sell umbrellas. They have stripped poor non-white citizens of democratic processes, of their very voices, while stripping critical systems like education and water for parts. The ship has been sinking and Michigan’s leaders have decided to fill the lifeboats with bundles of cash rather than human beings.
Reformers are willing to try anything, except spending more money to repair this woeful district. In Detroit, children of the state of Michigan have been used as guinea pigs for every faddish idea.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It was an abject failure in NOLA as well. But the point is: they give a sh(you-know-what), as long as those taxpayer funds line the coffers of these privately run firms without oversight, EVERYTHING is golden.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Peter Greene analysis of Detroit and New Orleans rings true. These cities are willing to subject poor minority students to any number of cheap, sub par forms of experimentation. What the leaders have failed to do is invest in these students. They have not used evidence to guide their decisions. They have submitted these students over to the “marketplace” where it is assumed magic will happen. The leaders of these cities and states have failed to provide equity and equal access to these students. They have abrogated their responsibilities to these families. As “reform” continues its forced march through cities, we are seeing a lot of separate and unequal treatment of minority students. It is an embarrassment that public money is used to underwrite this miscarriage of justice.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is why I don’t believe the ed reformers who say they are backing the expansion of charter schools in Massachusetts because they are “high performing charters”
They support the unlimited expansion of charter schools in every state REGARDLESS of quality.
I can’t find a single instance where they DIDN’T support the expansion of charter schools.
This is ideology. If it were about “quality” we would know that, because they would have halted privatization in OH, MI, CA and PA when it became clear they were opening thousands of low quality schools.
The most amazing part about Detroit is how badly Broad got ripped off by tech providers. He paid millions of dollars for absolute garbage. They sold him an empty platform that didn’t work. His organization is supposedly staffed with the Best and Brightest in ed reform. I don’t know a thing about education and I wouldn’t have paid ten dollars for the system he bought. It had no value. They would not have been able to sell that crap to even a moderately savvy and intelligent school superintendent, yet Broad bought it.
LikeLike
Suppose we could spend more money on education in these appalling places. How much more should we spend, and how should we spend it? And is there any evidence that it would make a real difference?
LikeLike
These “appalling” schools reflect an embarrassing level of urban blight; they at least deserve humane infrastructure repairs and renovations, air conditioning, well equipped science labs, band instruments, decent athletic facilities, real art and music rooms, modern furniture, working bathrooms, and respectable eating facilities. Money can also reduce class sizes to reasonable numbers. But money cannot provide renewed economic hope which is the only thing that will really make a difference.
LikeLike
Certainly all schools should have adequate facilities. But if this won’t really make a difference, as you say, then it will be hard to persuade taxpayers to pay for these facilities.
So the real question is: how to provide “renewed economic hope” — or, I suppose, first of all, exactly what does “renewed economic hope” look like, and what do we need to do to get it?
LikeLike