Jeb Bush, the puppet-master of corporate reform, is convening his annual “summit” of people who support his love of charters and vouchers. The queen of school choice is the superstar of the event: Eva Moskowitz.
Peruse the agenda to see who supports Jeb Bush’s efforts to privatize public education.
The registration fee is $649, enough to keep out the riffraff.
John Thompson of Oklahoma attended the NPE Conference in Indianapolis and learned a lot about how allies in other cities and states are resisting the Corporate Goliaths invading public schools.
He writes:
“Previously, I overestimated how much of Goliath’s failure was due to the arrogance of power. Today’s Silicon Valley Robber Barons’ hubris can match that of their 19th century counterparts, but their control of data makes them uniquely dangerous. As the latest NPE presentations enlightened me on what is working for us Davids as we successfully resist Goliath, I was mostly struck by the evidence that he only continues to exist for the purposes of privatization, profits, and the monetization of data.
“Fortunately, the 2018 NPE conference was extremely positive, so I can move beyond my errors to a post which provides an overview of a) what I learned and b) some ideas on future messaging.”
Thompson attended many workshops and all the keynotes and he weaves together a coherent narrative, answering the question:
“Why do they [the Corporate Goliaths] keep infusing money into charters?
“The answer, it is now clear, is that they are monetizing data. Pearson testing company thinks it knows more about the children they test than their parents do. As Leonie Haimson has shown, Goliath has bought 400 identifiable data points on students. And Summit Learning says it will follow your child through her entire life.
“Pasi Sahlberg’s presentation on GERM, the Global Education Reform Movement, showed graphically how the corporate reform assault undermined schools around the world. He then described counter-attacks against GERM in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Liberia, Scotland, Chile, and elsewhere. Educators have a duty to reclaim our professional autonomy. But we also must be willing to state some hard truths.
“Sahlberg says that people want to believe that the kids are “alright.” But, globally, they face a threat that must be explicitly addressed. The well-being of students is declining as screen time increases. Students and teachers must push back against the Goliath which profits from more eyes being glued to digital devices.
“Susan Ochshorn and Denisha Jones brought this dangerous trend closer to home. They condemned children being placed in front of keyboards before they are ready. And this may be the narrative that will really take off. Silicon Valley elites don’t put their 4-year-olds in online courses.
“During the previous generation, Goliath used charters that increased segregation to supposedly undo the damage done by segregation, but most voters didn’t send their children to the high-poverty schools that were targeted. So, many people didn’t understand why those corporate reforms were doomed to fail. Surely the broader public will grasp the absurdity of placing 70 students and 2 teachers in “personalized” learning to address toxic stress that is made worse by premature exposure to too many hours in front of keyboards.
“Helen Gym’s account of victories in Philadelphia is also encouraging. Goliath won when they rushed implementation of policies without an open discussion of their theories. After the Reformers got so overconfident they consulted parents, they lost. In other words, to know Goliath’s agenda is to understand that they grasp very little about what students need and parents want.”
I will be in Washington, D.C., on Thursday for a “discussion” about education. I put the scare quotes around discussion because the schedule is jam-packed, and there won’t be enough time for any in-depth discussion of anything. But hope springs eternal.
A few things on the program of interest.
What will Rahm Emanuel say about Chicago? Will he boast about the historic day in 2013 when he closed 50 public schools in a single day, displacing thousands of African-American children?
What will Arne Duncan tell us about how federal policy can reform the schools, after seven years of trying?
I understand this two-hour event will be live-streamed and available online.
WASHINGTON POST LIVE
Education in America
November 29, 2018
4:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Washington Post Live Center
4:00 p.m.
Opening Remarks
Kris Coratti,
Vice President
of Communications and Events, The Washington Post
4:05 p.m.
Educating in America’s Urban Cores: A View from Chicago
A case-study of the opportunities and challenges facing the city of Chicago’s public school system — from funding to demographics to violence in schools.
Rahm Emanuel,
Mayor, Chicago
@ChicagosMayor
Janice K. Jackson, EdD,
CEO, Chicago Public Schools @janicejackson
Moderated by
Jonathan Capehart,
Opinion Writer,
The Washington Post @CapehartJ
4:30 p.m.
The View from the
Ground: Tackling the Challenges of K-12 Schools
Educators and prominent
activists on the front lines of America’s K-12 classrooms offer perspectives on the social, academic, safety and resource challenges facing students and teachers, including the aftermath of this year’s nationwide teacher strikes. Speakers will also discuss
how access to technology affects student learning.
Lori Alhadeff,
Member, School
Board of Broward County, Florida @lorialhadeff
Geoffrey Canada,
President, Harlem
Children’s Zone
Mandy Manning,
2018 National Teacher of the Year, Joel E. Ferris High School, Spokane, Washington @MandyRheaWrites
Randi Weingarten,
President, American
Federation of Teachers @rweingarten
Moderated by
Nick Anderson,
National Education
Policy Reporter, The Washington Post @wpnick
4:55 p.m.
The Case for Social and Emotional Learning
The majority of students and young adults report that their schools are not excelling at developing their social and emotional learning (SEL) skills. This session will highlight the importance of SEL, direct from the viewpoints of today’s youth.
John Bridgeland,
Founder and CEO, Civic Enterprises
Interviewed
by Victoria Dinges,
Senior Vice President, Allstate Insurance Company
Content
by Allstate Insurance Company
5:10 p.m.
Education 360:
Defining the Debates
National education leaders debate the most pressing issues facing the U.S. education system, including school choice, standardized testing and federal, state and local funding for public schools. These experts will also discuss how well K-12 institutions are preparing students for higher
education and the jobs of the future.
Bridget Terry Long,
PhD, Dean, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University @bterrylong
Robert Pondiscio,
Senior Fellow and
Vice President for External Affairs, Thomas B. Fordham Institute @rpondiscio
Diane Ravitch, PhD,
Professor, New
York University and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education (1991-1993) @DianeRavitch
Moderated by
Valerie Strauss,
Education Reporter,
The Washington Post
@valeriestrauss
5:35 p.m.
The National Landscape:
Evaluating Federal and State Education Reform Efforts
Where do Washington and
the states go from here on education reform? Former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and former Michigan Gov. John Engler discuss the role of the federal and state governments in crafting education policy and look ahead to what’s next on the agenda
for the nation.
Arne Duncan,
Managing Partner, Emerson Collective and Former U.S. Secretary of Education (2009-2015) @arneduncan
John Engler,
President,
Michigan State
University and Former Republican Governor of Michigan (1991-2003) @MSUPresEngler
Moderated by
Christine Emba,
Opinion Columnist
and Editor, The Washington Post @ChristineEmba
Peter Goodman, who blogs as “Ed in the Apple,” usually writes knowledgeably about education politics in New York City and State.
In this interesting post, he asks the Question of the Day/Hour/Month/Year: Is Ed Reform dying?
Reformers are turning against testing; parents are catching on to the Charter School Hustle.
What next? Can Reformers save a dying brand?
Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham think tank in D.C., penned a piece suggesting that Ed Reform was over, that it had reached a stalemate with its enemies, but that whatever it had done was here to stay. He called it “The End of Education Policy,” a very cheering thought. Now it’s time to zero in on practice, he wrote. I was happy to see an admission that Ed Reform had run out of gas, but I had no idea how he imagined that he or any of the other reformers would have a role in improving “practice,” unless he meant doubling down on the Common Core.
Peter Greene made sense of all this, as he always does.
He begins:
From time to time Mike Petrilli (Fordham Institute) grabs himself a big declaration and goes to town. Last week, the declaration was “We have reached the end of education policy.”
He frames this up with references to Francis Fukuyama’s book about the end of history, and I don’t know that he really ever sticks the landing on creating parallels between Fukuyama’s idea (which he acknowledges turned out to be wrong) and his thoughts about ed policy, but it establishes an idea about the scale he’s shooting for– something more sweeping and grandiose than if he’d compared ed policy to video game arcades or no-strings-attached sex.
His thesis?
We are now at the End of Education Policy, in the same way that we were at the End of History back in 1989. Our own Cold War pitted reformers against traditional education groups; we have fought each other to a draw, and reached something approaching homeostasis. Resistance to education reform has not collapsed like the Soviet Union did. Far from it. But there have been major changes that are now institutionalized and won’t be easily undone, at least for the next decade.
Okay. Well, first I’d argue that he has it backwards. It was reformsters who championed centralized top-down planning and the erasure of local governance, often accomplished with raw power and blunt force, so if somebody has to be the Soviet Union in this analogy, I think they fit the bill.
He ticks off the gains of the reformist movement. Charters are now fact of the landscape in many cities. Tax credit scholarships, a form of sideways voucher, are also established. He admits that the growth of these programs has slowed; he does not admit that these reform programs reach a tiny percentage of all US students.
One data point surprised me– one fifth of all new teachers are coming from alternative certification programs, which is really bad news for the teaching profession and for students. We’ll have to talk about this.
Testing, he says, in claiming a dubious victory, is less hated than it used to be, maybe? He makes some specious claims here about the underlying standards being stronger and the tests being more sophisticated and rigorous– none of that is true. He says that teacher evaluation systems have been “mostly defanged,” citing ESSA, but from where most teachers sit, there’s still plenty of fang right where it’s been. “School accountability systems,” he claims, are now less about accountability and more about transparency. No– test centered accountability continues to serve no useful purpose while warping and damaging educational programs across America.
The era of broad policy initiatives out of DC is over, says Petrilli. Hallelujah, says I. Only policy wonks would think it’s a great thing if state and federal bureaucrats crank out new policy initiatives every year. Every one of them eats up time and effort to implement that could be better spent actually educating students. The teaching profession is saturated with initiative fatigue, the exhaustion and cynicism that comes when high-powered educational amateurs stop in every year or two to tell you that they know have a great new way for you to do your job that will totally Fix Everything. One does not have to spend many years in the classroom to weary of the unending waves of bullshit. It would be awesome if those waves actually stopped for a while.
Petrilli’s claim is that they have, and that now is a time for tinkering with actual education practices, but his list sucks. “To implement the higher standards with fidelity” No. No no no no NO no no, and hell no. “With fidelity” is reform talk for “by squashing every ounce of individual initiative, thought, and professional judgment out of classroom teachers. “With fidelity” means “subordinating the professional judgment of trained educators to the unproven amateur-hour baloney of the Common Core writers.” “Improve teacher preparation and development” is a great goal, except that I don’t think that means “train teachers to do better test prep and go through their days with fidelity.” Then we have “To strengthen charter school oversight and quality,” which seems like a great idea, though “strengthen” assumes that there is anything there to strengthen in the first place, which in some states is simply not so (looking at you, train wreck Florida). Charters need to be reigned in– way in– and if that means that many operators will simply leave the charter school business, well, I can live with that. Work on the whole Career and Technical Education thing, a goal that I have a hard time getting excited about because in my corner of the world, we’ve been doing it well for fifty years. If you think CTE is a brand new thing, you are too ill-informed to be allowed anywhere near CTE policy.
That’s where he starts.
Now who will take the lead in changing practice, Greene asks. Not Petrilli. Not Bill Gates. Not Zuckerberg.
Greene writes:
It’s all on you.
That’s okay. As Jose Luis Vilson often says, we got this. Even if nobody is going to help us get it, we will still get it, because we have to, and because that’s why, mostly, we signed up for the gig.
Practice is where the action has always been. Education reformsters have tried to create a title of education reformers for themselves, but the real education reform, the real growth and change and experimentation and analysis of how to make things work better– that work has been going on every single day (including summers, thank you) since public schools opened their doors. Whether bureaucrats and legislators and thinky tank wonks or rich guys with too much time on their hands have been cranking out giant plans or just twiddling idly while waiting for their next brainstorm, teachers have been honing and perfecting their practice, growing and rising and advancing every single day of their career, doing everything they can think of to insure that this year’s students get a better shot than last year’s. Just one more reason that the whole “schools haven’t changed in 100 years” is both insulting and ignorant.
So thinky tanks and reformists and wealthy dilettantes and government bureaucrats can continue fiddling and analyzing their fiddlings as they search for the next great Big New Thing in policy. In the meantime, teachers have work to do.
Jeff Bryant reviews the victories for public education in the last elections.
The big victories were the overwhelming defeat of voucher legislation in Arizona and the Tony Thurmond’s election over the charter lobby’s candidate Marshall Tuck in the Califotnia race for state school superintendent, despite Tuck’s more than 2-1 funding advantage.
And there were many more victories, especially in governors’ races.
In gubernatorial races across the Midwest, Democrats ran and won with strong oppositional messages against school privatization.
In Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer won a governor’s seat formerly occupied by Rick Snyder after campaigning to “end the [Betsy] DeVos agenda in Michigan,” close for-profit charter schools in the state, and propose additional oversights for charters.
In Minnesota, Democratic challenger for an open governor’s seat Tim Walz, a former public high school geography teacher and football coach, pledged to block any proposed voucher programs. He won decisively.
In Illinois, Democratic challenger J.B. Pritzker defeated incumbent Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, while pledging to end the state’s education tax credit voucher program, which already diverts public tax dollars to pay for private school tuition for 5,600 students….
In what is perhaps the most startling of charter school turnarounds, midterm elections in New York took down a longstanding coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the state Senate who colluded with charter advocate Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo to expand these schools and keep them relatively regulation-free.
As New York City public school art teacher and citizen journalist Jake Jacobs reports for the Progressive, a faction of eight Democratic state senators calling themselves the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) had for years shared power and donors with Senate Republicans to work with Governor Cuomo in maintaining a “favored status” for charter schools in the state.
In September primaries, six grassroots-backed Democratic candidates ousted IDC members, and then, in turn, handily beat their Republican opponents in November. Despite being vastly outspent by the Republicans, the insurgent Democrats pressed their cases to stop charter schools from taking over space in public school buildings and to block attempts to lift the cap on the numbers of charters that can operate in the state. Most supported a moratorium on new charter schools proposed by the NAACP.
Because of victories by these insurgent Democrats, who will insist on more scrutiny of charter schools, Jacobs foresees “a new landscape” in the state legislature “where evidence and research matter more than Albany’s rampant ‘pay-for-play’ arrangements” that have given charters the upper hand.
Similarly, in red states where teacher rebellions have begun to turn the tables on the school privatization industry, public school advocates are seeing a transformed political landscape where resistance is not only possible but winnable.
After midterm elections in Arizona, “we will have the most balanced state legislature since the 1980s,” says Beth Lewis, “with roughly half of the legislators having declared full support for fully funded public schools.”
John Thompson here writes about his reaction to the annual conference of the Network for Public Education, where the implicit theme was that David is beating Goliath, but Goliath just keeps stumbling forward, crushing public schools and advancing privatization, with no evidence of success. I argued, in the opening address of the conference, that the Reformers are akin to Goliath, and that Goliath has failed and failed again but is so powerful that he continues to wreak destruction on communities. He is among the Walking Dead. He is, in fact, a zombie.
Thompson was a teacher in Oklahoma; he recently retired. He lives in the belly of the beast, a state where Goliathians control the legislature and the governorship. At least they don’t pretend to be “progressives.” They are DeVos-Trump extremists, with links to ALEC and the Koch brothers.
Thompson admits that he was slow in realizing that the Reformers are intent on undermining public schools and that they were acting in concert. But he is convinced now, not only that they are doing so, but that their promises have not been kept and that, in fact, they have failed wherever they set their sights.
He ends with this:
Knowing that Indianapolis is at the heart of the dying, but still dangerous corporate reform movement, I expected that Chalkbeat would choose its words carefully and make sure that its reporting didn’t threaten its donations from Goliath. Chalkbeat Indianapolis didn’t cover the NPE conference but Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat New York has been covering Indiana’s Mind Trust and its successor, the City Fund. (Chalkbeat Indiana has since linked to WFYI Indianapolis’s report on one of the city’s 20 “innovation schools” which is receiving $1.3 million in management fees.)
This leads to the biggest question that I brought to the NPE. We Oklahomans have failed to communicate with our state’s edu-philanthropists on how their science-based, holistic early education and trauma-informed instruction programs and the Indianapolis Goliath are inherently incompatible. We know that the City Fund seems to have its eye on Deborah Gist’s Tulsa Public schools. We could use some help from NPE conference participants in explaining to Tulsa philanthropists why their “portfolio model” is likely to undermine their contributions to high quality pre-k, just like it did in New Orleans.
As a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood and a board member for the ACLU/OK, I developed great respect for the Kaiser and Schusterman foundations and other Tulsa philanthropists. I still struggle to understand how those leaders could not see how their humane, evidence-based programs are threatened by Goliath’s data-driven, reward and punish corporate reforms. But one of the first people I saw in Indianapolis was Tom Ultican, and he gave me information on the $200,000 Schusterman donated to California privatizers such as Antonio Villaraigosa and Marshall Tuck. If nothing else, I would like to explain to the philanthropists why educators can’t lower our guard and stop defending ourselves against their scorched earth tactics. I’d appreciate any help the NPE can provide in explaining why we will fight Goliath to the end.
Imagine that. Chalkbeat has an outpost in Indianapolis, but did not think it was worth its time to send a reporter to cover a conference of 500 educators from across the country that took place in Indianapolis! Is that media bias? Would their funders (Walton, Gates, etc.) have objected if they sent a reporter to write about a major event in their city?
Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider talk here about school closings in Boston. Berkshire recently read sociologist Eve Ewing’s phenomenal book about school closings in Chicago, so the podcast approaches the Boston events from the perspective of the victims. If, like me, you seldom listen to podcasts, here is the transcript.
It is simply a matter of fact that corporate reformers never close schools in white communities, only in communities where parents are apparently powerless. The school closings serve the purposes of gentrification. The excuse is always “test scores,” but the effect is replacement of one group of people by another, more affluent group. It happened in Chicago, it will happen in Boston.
Boston plans to close schools serving some of the city’s most vulnerable students, so they can be redistributed to other schools. As the exchanges in the program show, these students will suffer from the changes and the displacement.
I urge you to listen or read this segment
Indianapolis has been a major target for the privatization movement. A group called The Mind Trust, funded by billionaire foundations, has led the effort to destroy public education, while presenting its motives as benign and admirable.
The corporate reform attack on Indianapolis was described vividly in this post by Jim Scheurich and Gayle Crosby.
Tom Ultican wrote about the destructive role of The Mind Trust in Indianapolis, which claims to be allied with the Democratic Party.
Locals, lacking the resources of the privatizes, have fought to save their public schools.
Here is a report on the recent elections from Dountonia Batts, an active member of the Network for Public Education:
Sending a clear message that the community is fed up with corporate reform, voters in Indianapolis ousted two incumbents on the Indianapolis Public School (IPS) Board, replacing them with opponents of the district’s corporate reform agenda.
First-time candidates Taria Slack and Susan Collins were backed by the IPS Community Coalition (the Indianapolis AROS Chapter) and the local teachers union and ran against incumbents backed by Stand for Children and the Mind Trust, a corporate reform institute. Slack and Collins are vowing to pressure the IPS administration to improve transparency, genuine community collaboration and engagement, and hold the administration accountable.
Indianapolis schools have been under persistent attack by corporate reformers over the past decade, with increasing numbers of charters and public school closings. The district—under the tutelage of the Mind Trust—has also created so-called “Innovation Schools,” which are IPS schools that are handed over to a charter management organization. Innovation Schools have complete autonomy, a school board that is not elected by the public, and receive public funds. Additionally, this structure allows charters under the IPS umbrella to take advantage of district-provided services such as transportation and special education services at no cost. This victory is proof that ordinary citizens can defeat big money. People power trumps money power. IPS Community Coalition is organized, prepared, and ready to reclaim our schools
Sincerely,
Dountonia S. Batts, J.D., M.B.A., N.S.A.
Tom Ultican posted this research about the damage wrought by the Destroy Public Education movement on Michigan and Detroit last March. I missed it. It is still painfully current.
What is the DeVos agenda? It is an aggressive version of Christian evangelism that opposes public schools.
He writes:
The destroy public education (DPE) movement’s most egregious outcome may be in Detroit and it is being driven by a virulent Christian ideology.
In 2001, Dick and Betsy DeVos answered questions for the Gathering. Dick DeVos opined that church has retreated from its central role in communities and has been replaced by the public school. He said it is our hope “churches will get more and more active and engaged in education.” Betsy noted “half of our giving is towards education.”
Jay Michaelson writing for the Daily Beast described the Gathering:
“The Gathering is a hub of Christian Right organizing, and the people in attendance have led the campaigns to privatize public schools, redefine “religious liberty” (as in the Hobby Lobby case), fight same-sex marriage, fight evolution, and, well, you know the rest.”
“The Gathering is an annual event at which many of the wealthiest conservative to hard-right evangelical philanthropists in America—representatives of the families DeVos, Coors, Prince, Green, Maclellan, Ahmanson, Friess, plus top leaders of the National Christian Foundation—meet with evangelical innovators with fresh ideas on how to evangelize the globe. The Gathering promotes “family values” agenda: opposition to gay rights and reproductive rights, for example, and also a global vision that involves the eventual eradication of all competing belief systems that might compete with The Gathering’s hard-right version of Christianity.”
In the Gathering interview, Betsy talks about how she and Dick both come from business oriented families. From their experience, they understand how competition and choice are key drivers to improve any enterprise. She says public education needs choice and competition instead of forcing people into government run schools.
She was also asked how she felt about home schooling? She replied, “we like home schools a lot,” and humorously shared, “not sure our daughters do, they were homeschooled for three years.” Then Dick added how impressed he was with Bill Bennet’s new project, K-12. He said it wasn’t a Christian oriented on-line curriculum but it was a complete education program that could help homeschoolers.
By the 1990’s Dick and Betsy DeVos were successfully influencing Michigan education policies and using private giving to drive their agenda. Christina Rizga wrote about the DeVos’s philanthropy for Mother Jones.
“… [T]here’s the DeVoses’ long support of vouchers for private, religious schools; conservative Christian groups like the Foundation for Traditional Values, which has pushed to soften the separation of church and state; and organizations like Michigan’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which has championed the privatization of the education system.”
As the new century opened, the DeVos agenda was being ever more adopted in Lancing. If improving the education of children in Michigan was the goal, then the DeVos education agenda has proved to be a clear failure. On the other hand, if destroying public education to accommodate privatized Christian schools was the goal, they are still on track.
Betsy and Dick DeVos got a referendum on the ballot in Michigan in 2000, aiming to revise the state constitution to allow for vouchers, so students could use public funds to attend religious schools. Their constitutional amendment was overwhelmingly rejected by the voters. So, the DeVoses turned to charter schools as their means to promote choice.
From 2000 to 2015, Michigan’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress fell from 14th in the nation to 43rd.
Ultican describes what happened to Detroit. First, the state wiped out the elected board and established mayoral control. Then the state restored an elected board. Meanwhile the district’s debt kept rising as its enrollment was plummeting. Detroit was flooded with charter schools, most of which operated for profit. The district was left with “stranded costs” as students transferred from public to charter schools.
He writes: The extra-costs associated with privatizing DPS were all born by the public schools.
As charters continued to open and enrollment continued to fall, the state stepped in again:
Not acknowledging their own role in creating the financial crisis in Detroit, the state government again pushed the elected school board aside in 2009. Education policy was theoretically left under the purview of the school board but financial management would be the responsibility of a governor appointed emergency manager. This time it was a Democratic Governor, Jenifer Granholm who selected a graduate of the unaccredited Broad superintendents’ academy class of 2005, Robert Bobb, to be the manager.
Not only did Granholm select a Broad academy graduate, but Eli Broad paid part of his $280,000 salary. Sharon Higgins, who studies the Broad academy, reports that a civil rights group and a coalition of teachers who oppose charter schools questioned “whether Bobb was in conflict of interest for accepting $89,000 of his salary from a foundation that supports private and charter schools.”
Bobb made significant cuts to DPS. He closed many schools and eliminated 25% of the districts employees. He also sold several school buildings. The Detroit News reported in March 2010, “Instead of a $17 million surplus Bobb projected for this fiscal year, spending has increased so much Bobb is projecting a $98 million deficit for the budget year that ends June 30.”
Bobb blamed unforeseeable costs related to declining enrollment. Curt Guyette at the Metro-Times relates that many people blamed spending on high priced consultants and contracts. Guyette provided this example:
“Of particular note was Barbara Byrd-Bennett, hired by Bobb on a nine-month contract to be the district’s chief academic and accountability auditor. She received a salary of nearly $18,000 a month plus an armed personal driver. In addition, Byrd, a former chief executive officer of Cleveland’s public schools system, ‘brought with her at least six consultants who are collectively being paid more than $700,000 for about nine months of work,’ according to a 2009 Detroit Free Press article.”
In 2011, Republican Governor Rich Snyder ushered through two laws that had a negative effect on DPS. The first law, Public Act 4, gave the emergency manager total control and removed all powers from the elected school board. The second law, Public Act 436, created a state school district called the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) which took effect in 2013.
The EAA’s first task was to take over 15 of Detroit’s lowest performing schools. This immediately removed another 11,000 students from DPS and further stressed its finances.
Counting Robert Bobb there were five emergency managers at DPS between 2009 and 2016. Mercedes Schneider reports that “The most recent Detroit Public Schools emergency manager, Darnell Earley, is chiefly responsible for water contamination in Flint, Michigan.”
By 2016, the schools of DPS were in such a disgraceful condition that the New York Times called them “crumbling” and “destitute.” The Times’ article included this quote: ‘“We have rodents out in the middle of the day,’ said Ms. Aaron, a teacher of 18 years. ‘Like they’re coming to class.”’
July 1, 2017 the EAA returned the fifteen schools to DPS and the Michigan legislature finally acted to mitigate the debt crisis created in Holland and Lancing not Detroit. Also on July 1, 2017 Nikolai Vitti the new superintendent of DPS took on the challenge or rehabilitating the public schools of Detroit.
Robert Bobb was handsomely paid. So was John Covington. So was Barbara Byrd-Bennett (who is now in prison, after being found guilty of taking kickbacks while CEO of the Chicago public schools). The leaders made lots of money.
The charters were a disaster. The Educational Achievement Authority was an even bigger disaster, consuming high administrative costs and producing nothing for the children of Detroit.
Ultican identifies one of the villains in this chain of events that harmed the children and the public schools of Detroit: the Skillman Foundation of Detroit. With “the best of intentions,” this local foundation has supported every raid on the city, its children, and its public schools. It continues to support the Destroy Public Education Movement despite its repeated disasters and its failed experiments on children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 