Students in Detroit are suing the state of Michigan for its negligence and failure to fund adequately the public schools of Michigan.
The state’s response: we are required to provide schools but literacy is not a fundamental right.
http://nypost.com/2016/11/25/michigan-ag-claims-school-kids-have-no-right-to-literacy-suit/
“The state of Michigan is fighting a lawsuit by seven Detroit schoolchildren who say their schools are horrible—by countering that “there is no fundamental right to literacy.”
“Michigan’s attorney general made the bizarre argument in requesting that a federal judge toss the kids’ lawsuit, Fox News in Detroit reported Thursday.
“The kids sued the state in September, saying that decades of indifference have left Detroit’s schools in deplorable condition.
“Schools don’t have enough teachers or books, are plagued by vermin and extreme temperatures, and have unsafe conditions, the kids argued.
“The state is obligated to teach kids to read and write, they assert in the lawsuit, which was filed by Public Counsel, a California-based law firm that helps the underprivileged.
“But Michigan is asking that the judge dismiss the case outright because under its constitution, state officials are required only to “provide for a system of free public schools.”
“What goes on in the schools isn’t their responsibility, they claim, and besides, “there is no fundamental right to literacy.”
“The lawsuit counters that the state has been responsible for Detroit’s schools since 1999, when it took them over.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oh God, how specious can an AG argument be? A collection of free public school buildings does not and indeed cannot possibly be “a system of free public schools.” For a collection of things to be a system, there must be some manner of interdependencies between the things. So guess what gives rise to the interdependencies between free public school buildings that would make them “a system of free public schools?” Yep, public laws, public rules, public policies, public regulations, and all other public authorities that govern all the schools as to what is supposed to commonly go on in them. The only way Michigan AG’s argument can make sense is for the public to be nonexistent — and maybe it isn’t in Michigan if the DeVos have bought the state.
This school reform mess has gotten to be just plain sick. Bollocks seems – no – is an appropriate word for it.
Way to stand behind your product: We’re obligated to provide you free schooling, but we make no assurances that we can teach you to read.
Like, we sell you the car without a warranty that it will run.
Diane, not sure how to reach you more directly, but just thought you might be interested in adding a separate post on how the DeVos family avoided paying property taxes on their summer home, thus depriving schools of revenue.
“She’d rather not pay school taxes at all, and was nabbed in a tax dragnet by the state of Michigan for trying to avoid paying her fair share of taxes on one of the couple’s vacation homes in 2013.” – http://www.eclectablog.com/2016/11/dick-and-betsy-devos-avoided-paying-school-taxes-on-summer-home.html
And yet, if the students cannot read, regardless of the lack of effort by the state, is it the state’s fault? Of course not! It’s the teachers–in crumbling, unsanitary schools, with huge class sizes and no financial support. How does that make any sense (rhetorical question–I know you all know the answer)?
Hmmm….. This seems like what most of the parents of Dyslexic and Dysgraphic students face for their entire time in public schools in pretty much every public school district in EVERY state, not just Michigan. This will be a very interesting case to watch!
Please pass the popcorn!!!
In New York State the Campaign for Fiscal Equity law suit wended its way through the courts for over a decade before the highest state court sustained the litigants – however – the court also ruled that the remedy was with the legislative process = a Pyrrhic victory – the Michigan suit is in the federal courts.
Is it possible to look at DC’s embrace of privatization as an opportunity?
I know this sounds overly optimistic, but if DeVos takes over and all of ed reform goes chasing after charter and voucher funding doesn’t that leave a huge hole that public school advocates could fill?
In other words, if the political pros (lobbyists, think tankers) wash their hands of public schools completely under Trump, doesn’t that almost force people who love and value public schools to step up?
Maybe it could be a kind of rebirth, bottom-up. We could go in a different direction.
We can’t possibly do a worse job as public school advocates than the “pros” have, can we? Public schools have been losing funding at the state level since 2008 and at the federal level since 2010. Our schools have lost and lost and lost for the last 6 years.
We have very little to lose at this point – instead of begging ed reformers in DC to embrace public schools we could just go on without them 🙂
Chiara, that was the point of the (satirical) endorsement of DeVos, which many people misunderstood. I had to label it SATIRE. Having DeVos at the top embarrasses all the “reformers.” They can’t hide any more. They are unmasked and they haven’t figured out how to deal with the reality that their agenda is Trump’s agenda.
It could be happening already. Between cooking veggies & turkey over the last couple of days, I’ve been reading the thousands of comments engendered by MSM articles about the DeVos appointment. A place where no-govt wingnuts usually bask in each others’ approval. At this point they seem to be whittled down to one lady w/ rose-colored glasses & a couple of ancient curmudgeons getting heaped w/ scorn by the cynical, including many Trump-voters. & astonishingly, a couple of my conservative midwestern relatives are FB-sharing a list of 11 BDeVos factoids indicating her unsuitability for heading up a fed dept representing a populace which includes a huge contingent sending kids & grandkids to pubschs run by locally-elected BOEds.
“I have decided to stop taking offense,” DeVos wrote, “at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues. We expect a return on our investment.”
At least Betsy (Make that “Beastie”) DeVos is honest about show she is what she stands for.
An ROI on her investment into election campaigns: how utterly villainous.
yes. The DeVos give money to politicians and they expect the politicians to dance to their tune. Simple.
“At least Betsy (Make that “Beastie”) DeVos. . .”
Liking your command of the English language NW!!!
Maybe she’s a “Besty”, you know, one of the bestest of the bestest as attested to by her attachment to so much wealth.
Unfortunately, Michigan’s argument against having an obligation to actually educate its students ends up right in the privateers’ pockets.
If the state can’t, won’t, and/or doesn’t take responsibility for teaching children, its agents eagerly will surrender control to any non-governmental entity that will be only too happy to take the state’s money and make a profit from another inadequate effort (as well as line its politicians’ campaign coffers).
Two ironies in Michigan’s case, though: (1) It has been systematically starving these schools and making it impossible for them to succeed, and (2) it has set up its educators as scapegoats.
From Jersey Jazzman on the corporate vultures of education: Teachers gain the most in effectiveness over the first few years of their careers; yet nearly half of the teachers at Dick DeVos’s charter school [West Michigan Aviation Academy] have less than three years of experience. To be fair: WMAA is quite typical for charter schools in Kent County, most of which employ relatively large numbers of inexperienced teachers.
What’s the takeaway here?
Betsy DeVos says American schools are “failing,” yet her husband’s charter school, which she holds up as an exemplar, educates far fewer special education and LEP students compared to the other schools in the region.
Betsy DeVos believes America’s schools are overspending, yet her husband’s charter school spends more on total salary than almost any other school in the region.
Betsy DeVos says “choice” will unleash innovation and efficiency, yet her husband’s charter school doesn’t appear to put much of its spending advantage into actual instruction.
Betsy DeVos says she values good teachers, yet her husband’s charter school has a staff where nearly half of the teachers are inexperienced.
High spending schools, enrolling proportionally fewer students with special needs, taught by inexperienced teachers. That’s Betsy DeVos’s vision for American education — just ask her husband.
Everyone OK with this?
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com
DeVos’ husband’s school spends among the highest amount of the comparison schools in Michigan; yet the instructional salaries are in the middle of the pack. What drives up the costs are the high administrative salaries. Why should charter administrators make so much more than public school administrators?
Same with Eva Moskowitz vs. Carmen Farina salary wise; Eva gets almost 2x as much for substantially less students.
In Charterland, the admins, owners and profiteers pay themselves quite handsomely, and rely on a revolving door of uncertified, unqualified, unlicensed, inexperienced teachers, to teach from a script, and treat their “scholars” like prisoners.
Like Bob Marley said,
“Rat race!
Oh, it’s a disgrace
To see the human-race
In a rat race, rat race!
You got the horse race;
You got the dog race;
You got the human-race;
But this is a rat race, rat race!”
C’mon, TC, no teasing allowed here. For all not familiar:
Less we forget that they’ve already been through this debate before:
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/12/is-there-a-right-to-literacy/
” Obviously, not every child succeeds at school, but those with no significant cognitive issues can usually be taught to read and write well enough to become self-sufficient adults. Unfortunately, we know a lot of school systems fail at delivering that kind of education, and it’s not usually a question of funding schools — it’s a question of funding priorities in schools. In a report last year, Michigan ranked 22nd in the nation in per-student spending, at almost $12,000 per student. That should be sufficient to at least teach literacy, and the fact that so many in Highland Park district aren’t achieving it suggests that the problem is specific to the district.
Michigan, though, passed the law that requires interventions from the state when children fail to read at grade level between grades 4-7. They have to follow the law. That doesn’t create a “civil right” as such, but it does create a requirement for the state to adequately resource its education system to follow its own legal code. The question of “rights” in this case should really be secondary. Primarily, Michigan and its taxpayers should be reading these essays from Highland Park students and asking where the $94,000 spent so far on Quentin’s education has gone.”
Timely post RE: DeVos” ‘ home-state ed-priorities , as she ascends to Sec’y of Ed: .
Liteay? Not a goal…l
The most damaging part of this won’t be redirecting funding from public schools to private and charter schools.
The most damaging part of this will be the US Department of Education pushing garbage, low quality products into US public schools.
That’s where the real money is – pushing product into K-12 PUBLIC schools. DeVos will be Lead Salesperson. There will be a huge political and marketing campaigns, because that’s what DeVos does- she’s a political strategist.
Local schools will have to search for independent analysis that hasn’t been corrupted and compromised – they can’t rely on anything that comes out of DC.
We have to get smarter. Question all of it. Assume it’s profit-driven unless proven otherwise. Don’t invest in whatever fad or ginned-up outrage these folks are driving.
I would expect a full-on political campaign against public schools, run out of the US Department of Ed and covered (mostly) uncritically by media complete with “studies” and “experts”. The hard part won’t be the privatization- 20 billion is a lot of money but 20 billion won’t destroy public schools- the hard part will be the propaganda they’ll be churning out.
The key to understanding DeVos style ed reform is one word :”cheap”. They’re looking for cheap solutions to complex problems. They’ve pegged 5k a year as the “cost” of public education for low and middle income children and everything stems from that cost goal- they start with 5k and all the “science” and “policy” derives from that.
Strip everything DeVos says away (it’s 90% ed reform slogans anyway) and focus on their goal- which is cheap, “effective” education for low and middle income children.
When they present a proposal to state lawmakers or local schools you won’t be fooled or bamboozled if you focus on what THEY want- to drive down costs to 5k a year per child.
Wonder where they got that $5k # bandied about so frequently it already rolls off the tongue of critical-thinking-challenged ‘news’-consumers? Oh, yeh, it’s less than half of the ave US pubsch per-pupil expenditure. A giant step in slashing OH as we race to the bottom in our determination to match our global-trade profile to those of emerging low-QOL nations.
There’s an intra-ed reform battle in Ohio that might be of interest to people outside Ohio now that DeVos is taking over.
As everyone knows, ed reform in Ohio is a disaster because it was driven by ideologues and people who were making a lot of money privatizing public services. It took a decade, but state lawmakers finally woke up and realized it was a disaster so they acted to begin to reform ed reform. But a lot of adults were making a lot of money on ed reform, so there was pushback – a fight between one ed reform faction and another:
“But combining this news with the crazy, unwarranted and clearly politically motivated attacks against state Sen. Peggy Lehner and her family (which will be the subject of a standalone post form me later), one starts to think that perhaps the quality-based choice advocates are about to be crushed.”
Lehner is a moderate Republican. They’re going after one of their one.
This will happen nationally. They’ll go after the “agnostics” and moderates in ed reform and purge them- they’re all about to get crushed by the most extreme and corrupt factions in the “movement”.
It was inevitable.
http://www.10thperiod.com/2016/11/ohios-largest-campaign-finance-violator.html
You wonder if “liberal” ed reformers will smarten up and realize they got played when the far Right wing takes over.
Duncan gave conservative ed reformers everything they wanted and this is how they repay him- they roll over his ed reform faction.
I don’t have any sympathy for them. It was obvious to anyone who wasn’t ensconced in the “movement’ echo chamber that that’s where this was heading.
They’re expendable now- Republicans don’t need them anymore. They’ll get absolutely crushed, which they deserve. They’re too easily bamboozled to run anything.
And yet you all are missing the point by not talking about the children receiving less than effective education while they continue to be ILLITERATE at grade level!!!
Also the point is that Michigan appears to be the only state that requires schools to intervene with extra help at grades 4 and 7 to bring a student to grade level within a year!
But go on talking about yourselves and worrying about why these other alternatives are popping up …..
Ignore the increasing drain of students to homeschooling and other private schools…..
Keep blaming everyone and everything else rather than the current, broken model in place…..
I’m sorry, but I really thought that I was living in the United State of America. My address is in Ohio, but I’m not sure where I am anymore. Is this actually my home now that the election is over and every day brings another surreal moment? I don’t recognize this country at all. We are overcome with evil, and I’m getting tired of fighting. BUT I’m not giving up yet. There has to be hope somewhere in all of this.
Sue,
Join the Network for Public Education.
Sue,
Join Wolf PAC!!!
Michigan’s constitutional authorization for public education (one of ten that mention a benefit to society as a reason for public education):
Michigan
§ 1 Encouragement of education.
Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.
§ 2 Free public elementary and secondary schools; discrimination.
The legislature shall maintain and support a system of free public elementary and secondary schools as defined by law. Every school district shall provide for the education of its pupils without discrimination as to religion, creed, race, color or national origin.
No public monies or property shall be appropriated or paid or any public credit utilized, by the legislature or any other political subdivision or agency of the state directly or indirectly to aid or maintain any private, denominational or other nonpublic, pre-elementary, elementary, or secondary school. No payment, credit, tax benefit, exemption or deductions, tuition voucher, subsidy, grant or loan of public monies or property shall be provided, directly or indirectly, to support the attendance of any student or the employment of any person at any such nonpublic school or at any location or institution where instruction is offered in whole or in part to such nonpublic school students. The legislature may provide for the transportation of students to and from any school.
So if literacy is not a “fundamental right,” then it’s a “privilege” for only a selected few, correct?
The whole situation in Detroit is an outrage. The reason for the terrible conditions in not just the school, but the area, is due to a lack of serious investment in the poorest of communities. Sadly, this is not just a Detroit problem. If you could be so kind as to check out my blog and tell me what you think.
Yet one more slap in the face to the youngest and most vulnerable students in Detroit…
http://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2016/12/15/detroit-schools-reading-recovery/95167014/?hootPostID=04aee60afc29fec5196914f8378d04b4
This situation goes against everything I stand for as a teacher.
I know there are many different sides to a story, but the fact that the state is arguing that it is only their job to “provide for a system of free public schools”, doesn’t seem fair or morally right. When the politicians do not seem concerned about the education being provided to the future generations, in my mind, they are telling the people who have voted them into office that they do not care for them. As a teacher, it is my job to give the best education to the students that are in my classroom. It doesn’t matter if it in my job description or not. It is what I do because this is what I signed up for. I believe that many of the teachers I work with or have met believe the same. Unfortunately, the politics that surround education is at work here. Why wouldn’t we want our future generations be provided with the most exceptional education possible? Why would we say, we have done the bare minimum “stated by law” and are not required to do more? This shocks me to the very core. It is unfortunate that not only in Michigan, but all over the United States, we are losing excellent teachers because of situations very similar to this. There is a shortage in teachers in the field as well as a drop in the percentage of students wanting to become teachers. A field that at one point in my career didn’t have enough positions for graduating education teachers, now can not get enough teachers to fill the vacant positions. Hopefully soon, someone in charge will see the issues being presented in education and take steps to fix them instead of creating more problems like we see in this situation.
This article is extremely upsetting to me. I am a public school teacher and I take pride in my profession. The attitude of the court ruling makes me believe that educators are not appreciated in Michigan. Is education even valued? I thought we had come further than this. Literacy may not be viewed as a fundamental right but the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates that all children regardless of ability level have access to a free and appropriate public education (FAPE). This school system is in clear violation of FAPE, the lack of funding has led to a dilapidated school system. The justification of the government stating they are only responsible for providing “a system of free public schools.” This goes back to Plessy vs. Ferguson and the revolutionary concept of separate but equal, just as the schools then were separate but not equal it is happening in this district.
The government claims they are not responsible for what goes on in the schools. However, when you look on the Michigan Department of Education website, the State Superintendent states, “We have a tremendous opportunity, working together as a state, to lift student achievement.” This statement shows the responsibility of the government to provide quality education for all students in Michigan.