When I visited Michigan in the past few years, I met an extraordinarily smart and dedicated friend of public schools. Her name is Ellen Cogen Lipton. As a state legislator, she was fearless in challenging Governor Rick Snyder and his rightwing agenda of privatization.
The fight for public schools will be her leading issue as a candidate for Congress.
“Lipton, of Huntington Woods, served three terms in the state House and lost in the Democratic primary for the 11th District state Senate seat in 2014. She said she is running in the 9th Congressional District to fight against the policy goals of President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
“I’ve taken on Betsy DeVos to fight for public education and I’ll do it again,” Lipton said in a statement. “With my background in education, science, and the law, I’ll take on Donald Trump and the special interests who put the well-being of corporations before families trying to make ends meet.”
Ellen deserves our support. If you live in Michigan, please volunteer.
yay. Michigan has had ed reform for SO long. They’ve dominated since Engler. There are adults in Michigan who have known nothing else but “market based” ed reform. They have never heard ANYTHING else.
They gotta be ready for some new ideas. At least one or two new people.
“The evidence is adding up: The Great Recession did real damage to student learning.
New research suggests that when states cut funding in the wake of the economic downturn that began a decade ago, test scores and graduation rates both dropped. Those findings come on the heels of another study that found that being in school during the recession hurt students’ reading and math test scores.
The latest analysis, conducted by three Northwestern University researchers, found that the impact of the spending cuts was substantial. Cutting per-student spending by 10 percent throughout a student’s high-school years reduced their likelihood of graduating by nearly 3 percentage points.”
This is the second study that purports to show that public schools have been harmed since 2009. If ed reformers had done NOTHING else but protect funding levels they might have gotten greater gains than all the initiatives and plans and schemes.
If they had just plowed RttT into existing public schools to mitigate the losses as a general budget booster they would have done more good than they did with that whole elaborate scheme. But it was public schools. So no one could be bothered with boring problems like budget cuts. Don’t need consultants for that!
I believe this is Sandy Levin’s district (he is retiring after 4 billion years in Congress).
Speaking of disastrous ed reform in Michigan, the lead architect spent yet another day surrounded by the same 150 members of the ed reform club she’s been talking to for the last 20 years:
“Following are the prepared remarks by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to the American Enterprise Institute conference, “Bush-Obama School Reform: Lessons Learned,” today in Washington.
Thank you, Rick, for that kind introduction. Who would’ve thought that after we were last together on a panel in Grand Rapids a couple of years ago, I’d be here in this capacity today?”
Who indeed? I might have, since she meets exclusively with the same set of fellow travelers over and over again.
What would be really unusual would be if she ever met with anyone who supports or attends or works in a public school. That would be really cage-busting. How about a public school graduate? Do they even get hired in DC anymore, or do those resumes get pitched in the trash?
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/betsy-dick-devos-family-amway-michigan-politics-religion-214631
When I lived in Michigan, there was this push to get more people selling Amway. OMG, I was badgered. I was even told that I would be doing God’s work. Can’t make this stuff up. Of course, I did NOT sign up to sell soap and be a part of this well (fill in the blanks).
By the time you realize that you’ve been swindled you’ve become a swindler yourself. That’s how they get away with it.
Godspeed, Ms. Lipton!
How courageous….she will be standing up to Trump and DeVos. She should read “Follow the Money” by Michigan state professor Sarah Reckhow, and get a few clues about the role of the big money corporations encouraged by Arne Duncan and Bill Gates, who, despite his “generous help” to public education had his net wealth go from 68 billion to 93 billion dollars.