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Eli Broad Pays Yale University $100 Million to Take Charge of His Controversial Broad Leadership Academy

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2019 //
72

Many school districts have had unfortunate experiences with “Broadies,” the graduates of Eli Broad’s management program for future school leaders. The Broad Leadership Academy has sent forth hundreds of would-be superintendents to impose Broad’s top-down management style, his faith in data, and his belief that the best way to reform a public school is to close it and replace it with a privately managed charter school. Broad is one of the major funders of charter schools in the nation. Although he graduated from the public schools of Detroit, he has zero interest in public schools other than as objects for privatization. In my 2010 book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, I referred to the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Walton Foundation as the Billionaire Boys Club. Since then, I have discovered that the club has dozens of billionaire members, and a few (think Alice Walton) are Girls, not Boys. All, however, share an animus toward public schools and a passion for privatization of what belongs to the public.

The big news is that Eli Broad has given $100 million to Yale University to administer his efforts to train future leaders of schools. It is not clear where the faculty will come from, since the Broad training program is unaccredited and is led by Broad allies, not academicians or scholars.

Now the graduates will be accredited, but their degree won’t mean much unless the philosophy of the program  changes from its current emphasis on DPE (“Destroy Public Education”) to SPE (“Support Public Education”). That change is hard to imagine. If you want to see the fruits of Broad’s distorted thinking, look no farther than Detroit and Oakland, where Broad-trained leaders encouraged (or imposed in the case of Oakland) massive charter expansion, a goal shared with Betsy DeVos. Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority, whose leadership he selected, collapsed in failure.  Oakland continues to suffer from the disruptive actions of Broadie leaders. His efforts to hand half of the students in Los Angeles over to charter schools have thus far been foiled.

Read Mercedes Schneider’s account of the multiple failures associated with Eli Broad’s agenda. 

Eli Broad is aggressive in using his money and policy agenda to destabilize and disrupt public education.

Here is the press release from the Broad Foundation/Broad Center, with the usual puffery and zero admission of the failed policies (privatization, school closings, high-stakes testing, VAM) that Broad and the graduates of his program have inflicted on American schools over most of the past two decades.

 

The Broad Center Will Become Part of Yale University to Train Future Generations of Public School Leaders

$100 Million Donation from The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation will Fund The Broad Center at the Yale School of Management to Offer Tuition-Free Master’s Degree to Emerging Education Leaders and Advanced Management Training to Superintendents and Senior Leaders in Public School Systems

 

Los Angeles, CA – With a gift of $100 million to Yale University, The Broad Foundation today reaffirms its commitment to public K-12 education and makes possible the launch of a major new initiative of the Yale School of Management focused on strengthening leadership in public education. Building on transformative work by The Broad Center in Los Angeles, the initiative will ensure in perpetuity high-impact programs to advance excellence and equity in education.

 

The Broad Center at Yale SOM will develop research, teaching, and policy initiatives devoted to improving the effectiveness of top leaders in America’s public school systems. The ambitious initiative will leverage Yale SOM’s expertise in delivering rigorous management education to talented professionals in fields that have broad societal impact, while furthering and amplifying the previously independent Broad Center’s mission of ensuring high-quality leadership in public education.

 

“I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished in the last 20 years and I can think of no better future for The Broad Center than Yale University,” said Eli Broad.

 

The gift is the largest ever received by the Yale School of Management and will enable the creation of a master’s degree program for emerging public education leaders and advanced leadership training for top school system executives—successors to The Broad Residency in Urban Education and The Broad Academy, respectively. The Broad Center at Yale SOM will also develop extensive research endeavors aimed at assembling the premier collection of data on public education leadership.

 

“With its mission to educate leaders for business and society, Yale SOM is a natural home for The Broad Center,” said Yale SOM Dean Kerwin Charles. “We have long recognized public education as critical to the health of our communities, and we believe that our distinctive approach to management education and research can have tremendous impact. Our efforts will build on the extraordinary work of The Broad Center team over the past two decades. Indeed, we are impressed by and grateful for what they have done to advance excellence and equity in public education.”

 

The Broad Foundation has learned through its 20 years of investing in public education that schools alone can’t solve for the inequities, indignities, and challenges facing students from underserved communities: Having The Broad Center housed at Yale SOM means all of its programs can be enhanced with input from Yale University’s leading thinkers in management, public health, law, child development, policy, criminal justice and economic development. The center will draw on the experiences and insights of practitioners, including Broad Center alumni and Yale SOM graduates, to help guide and inform its efforts in both teaching and research.

 

“I am honored that The Broad Foundation is entrusting Yale to carry out this important part of Eli and Edye’s philanthropic legacy. Educating leaders who will serve all sectors of society is part of Yale’s mission, so it is fitting that the Yale School of Management is creating a master’s degree program tailored to delivering management and leadership training that meets the unique needs of public education,” said Yale President Peter Salovey. “The school’s dedication to leadership education and cultivation is unmatched. Its track record of producing transformational leaders across a range of fields speaks to the tremendous promise of the new Broad Center at Yale SOM.”

 

The two programs of The Broad Center, The Broad Academy (founded in 2002) and The Broad Residency in Urban Education (founded in 2003), have trained more than 850 education leaders working in over 150 urban school districts, public charter school networks and state education agencies nationwide. More than 150 Broad Center leaders have served as superintendents or chief executives of local and state systems, and over 70 are currently in these roles. Each program has made great strides in building a diverse network of leaders that better represent the students and families they serve.

 

“The Broad Center has been committed to evaluating and evolving its work since it was founded – continuous improvement is in our DNA,” said Becca Bracy Knight, Executive Director of The Broad Center. “Organizational leadership has a direct effect on school quality, which is why The Broad Center has worked for two decades to elevate the field of public education management. We look forward to new opportunities to increase our impact by combining each organization’s unique and complementary strengths in service of our shared mission to improve public education.”

 

The current cohorts of fellows and residents will finish their programs through The Broad Center as currently structured; successor programs run by SOM will begin in 2020.

 

In its 20 years of investing in public education, The Broad Foundation has made grants to transform school governance, improve district operations, grow high-quality charter management organizations, engage in education policy and advocacy, and develop talented leaders, managers and teachers for public school systems.

 

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Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Detroit, Education Industry, Failure, Los Angeles, Michigan, Privatization

ProPublica: How a Tax Break Meant to Help the Poor Benefited a Billionaire Trump Donor

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2019 //
2

ProPublica, the invaluable investigative journalism website, tells a sorry story about how a billionaire developer who donated large sums to the Trump campaign and won a hugely profitable tax break for his properties in downtown Detroit.

Billionaire Dan Gilbert has spent the last decade buying up buildings in downtown Detroit, amassing nearly 100 properties and so completely dominating the area, it’s known as Gilbertville. In the last few years, Gilbert, the 57-year-old founder of Quicken Loans and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, has also grown close to the Trump family.

Quicken gave $750,000 to Trump’s inaugural fund. Gilbert has built a relationship with Ivanka Trump, who appeared at one of his Detroit buildings in 2017 for a panel discussion with him. And, last year, he watched the midterm election returns at the White House with President Donald Trump himself, who has called Gilbert “a great friend.”

Gilbert’s cultivation of the Trump family appears to have paid off: Three swaths of downtown Detroit were selected as opportunity zones under the Trump tax law, extending a valuable tax break to Gilbert’s real estate empire.

Does this qualify as “draining the swamp?”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Detroit

Michigan: State Takeover of Detroit Schools was a “Costly Mistake”

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2019 //
7

Koby Levin of Chalkbeat reports that a study of the state takeover of Detroit’s public schools–which lasted for 15 years–was “a costly mistake.”

The state was supposed to solve intractable problems that elected school officials in Detroit could not.

It made things worse, according to a newly released report on the 15 years during which the Detroit school district was largely controlled by state-appointed officials.

The study, which was commissioned by the current school board, found a pattern of “startling mismanagement” in academic and financial matters whose consequences continue to weigh on the district’s future.

While some had hoped that the report would eventually lead to a lawsuit against the state, that seems unlikely. Instead, it provides a 172-page confirmation of what many Detroiters have argued for years: that installing state officials in place of the elected school board wasn’t enough to make the district’s problems disappear.

“The legacy of emergency management coupled with the continuing effect of inequitable school funding, will inevitably cause the District to hit a ceiling and impede its current progress toward a complete turnaround of traditional public education in Detroit,” the seven board members wrote in a statement in response to the report.

As state officials closed dozens of schools, they failed to adequately maintain the properties — “a costly mistake,” the report found, “as many of the vacant buildings have been stripped and/or vandalized.”

Tom Watkins, who was state superintendent from 2001 to 2005, said there was little hope of improving the district’s financial situation simply through effective management — not without solving underlying issues with declining enrollmentand Michigan’s school funding structure.

“It’s like trying to bail out a sinking yacht with a thimble,” he said.

The state threw everything it could think of at the struggling district–emergency management, charters galore–but not the funding needed.

 

Categories Detroit, Education Reform, Failure, Funding, Michigan

Nancy Bailey: If Only Students Could Sue Betsy DeVos and the Corporate Reformers for the Damage They Have Done

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2019 //
17

Nancy Bailey writes here about the long-term damage that corporate reformers (the Disruption movement) have inflicted on two generations of students.

If only students could sue them for ruining their schools! If only teachers could sue them for ruining their profession! If only the public could sue them to disruption their schools and communities!

She begins:

Frustrated by public schools? Look no further than the corporate education reformers and what they have done to public education.

Education Secretary DeVos and her corporate billionaire friends have been chipping away at the fabric of democratic public schools for over thirty years!

The problems we see in public schools today are largely a result of what they did to schools, the high-stakes testing and school closures, intentional defunding, ugly treatment of teachers, lack of support staff, segregated charter schools, vouchers that benefit the wealthy, Common Core State Standards, intrusive online data collection, and diminishing special education services.

Big business waged a battle on teachers and their schools years ago. The drive was to create a business model to profit from tax dollars. Now they want to blame teachers for their corporate-misguided blunders! It’s part of their plan to make schools so unpleasant, parents will have no choice but to leave.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Cruelty, Detroit, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Jeff Bryant: How Billionaires Corrupted the School Leadership Pipeline

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2019 //
16

Jeff Bryant writes here about the billionaires who corrupted the school leadership pipeline. Chief among them, of course, is billionaire Eli Broad, who created an unaccredited training program as a fast track for urban superintendents.

Bryant has collected stories about how superintendents who passed through the Broad program hire other graduates of the program and do business with others who are part of their network. The ethical breaches are numerous. The self-dealing and the stench of corruption is powerful.

Bryant begins with the story of a phone call from Eli Broad to one of his graduates:

It’s rare when goings-on in Kansas City schools make national headlines, but in 2011 the New York Times reported on the sudden departure of the district’s superintendent John Covington, who resigned unexpectedly with only a 30-day notice. Covington, who had promised to “transform” the long-troubled district, “looked like a silver bullet” for all the district’s woes, according to the Los Angeles Times. He had, in a little more than two years, quickly set about remaking the district’s administrative staff, closing nearly half the schools, revamping curriculum, and firing teachers while hiring Teach for America recruits.

The story of Covington’s sudden departure caught the attention of coastal papers no doubt because it perpetuated a common media narrative about hard-charging school leaders becoming victims of school districts’ supposed resistance to change and the notoriously short tenures of superintendents.

Although there may be some truth to that narrative, the main reason Covington left Kansas City was not because he was pushed out by job stress or an obstinate resistance. He left because a rich man offered him a job.

Following the reporting by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times about Covington’s unexpected resignation, news emerged from the Kansas City Star that days after he resigned, he took a position as the first chancellor of the Education Achievement Authority of Michigan, a new state agency that, according to Michigan Radio, sought “radical” leadership to oversee low-performing schools in Detroit.

But at the time of Covington’s departure, it seemed no outlet could have described the exact circumstances under which he was lured away. That would come out years later in the Kansas City Star where reporter Joe Robertson described a conversation with Covington in which he admitted that squabbles with board members “had nothing to do” with his departure. What caused Covington’s exit, Robertson reported, was “a phone call from Spain.”

That call, Covington told Robertson, was what led to Covington’s departure from Kansas City—because it brought a message from billionaire philanthropist and major charter school booster Eli Broad. “John,” Broad reportedly said, “I need you to go to Detroit.”

It wasn’t the first time Covington, who was a 2008 graduate of a prestigious training academy funded through Broad’s foundation (the Broad Center), had come into contact with the billionaire’s name and clout. Broad was also the most significant private funder of the new Michigan program he summoned Covington to oversee, providing more than $6 million in funding from 2011 to 2013, according to the Detroit Free Press.

But Covington’s story is more than a single instance of a school leader doing a billionaire’s bidding. It sheds light on how decades of a school reform movement, financed by Broad and other philanthropists and embraced by politicians and policymakers of all political stripes, have shaped school leadership nationwide.

Charter advocates and funders—such as Broad, Bill Gates, some members of the Walton Family Foundation, John Chubb, and others who fought strongly for schools to adopt the management practices of private businesses—helped put into place a school leadership network whose members are very accomplished in advancing their own careers and the interests of private businesses while they rankle school boards, parents, and teachers.

Covington’s tenure at the Education Achievement Authority in Michigan was a disaster, and the EAA itself was a disaster that has been closed down.

Bryant compares the Broad superintendents to a cartel.

The actions of these leaders are often disruptive to communities, as school board members chafe at having their work undermined, teachers feel increasingly removed from decision making, and local citizens grow anxious at seeing their taxpayer dollars increasingly redirected out of schools and classrooms and into businesses whose products and services are of questionable value.

In fact, Broad superintendents have a very poor track record. They excel at disruption and alienating parents and teachers by their autocratic style. Despite their boasts, they don’t know how to improve education. They are not even skilled at management.

What they do best is advance themselves and make lucrative connections with related businesses owned by Broadie cronies.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Atlanta, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Detroit, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Kansas City, Michigan, Nashville, New York City, Privatization

Detroit: Top Students At Charter School Face Punishment for Critical Graduation Speeches

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2019 //
10

 

At graduation, the top students at Universal Academy in Detroit spoke critically of the school, and now their diplomas arebeing withheld. 

The school might have been proud of their graduates for showing independence and critical thinking, but no.

A piece of certified mail arrived for Tuhfa Kasem this week. Kasem hoped the envelope contained her long-awaited high school diploma.

What she found instead seemed to her like a threat.

Kasem, one of the top students at Universal Academy, surprised school administrators by delivering a graduation speech in May that criticized the school. 

Nearly two months after her speech went viral, an official from Hamadeh Educational Services, the company that manages the school, wrote to Kasem and Zainab Altalaqani, who delivered a similar speech, that they had committed acts “of dishonesty and deceit.” The letters ask the students to meet with administrators, noting that they “have every right to bring an attorney…”

The students say they’re being targeted for putting a spotlight on problems at their school, which sits on the western edge of Detroit. In their speeches they argued that the school employs too many long-term substitutes, and raised concerns that students face punishment or retaliation if they speak up.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Students

Detroit: At Graduation Ceremony, Two Top Students Blast Their Charter School

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2019 //
21

The graduation ceremony at a charter school in Detroit was disrupted when the two top students in the school used their addresses to criticize the school for “an inferior education and a culture of secrecy.”

The school said the students being used by adults with an agenda, which is an odd and condescending thing to say about your best students.

The pair accused Universal Academy on Detroit’s west side of churning substitute teachers through their classrooms, backing out of promised benefits, firing teachers who advocated for kids and silencing students and parents who speak out.

CEO Nawal Hamadeh ordered the microphone silenced during the second speech but by then, the point had been made, said Tuhfa Kasem, 17, whose speech was cut short.

“She asked for me to be escorted out but the parents had my back,” Kasem said. “The cops came in. The parents were like ‘you’re not going to touch her….’ “

A YouTube video of the scene took the speech to a much larger crowd than the one that was packed into the school gymnasium earlier this month.

“I’m happy that it raised the awareness that it did,” Kasem said.

Kasem’s speech followed a shorter speech by Zainab Altalaqani, a co-salutatorian and friend. The girls accuse the school of using long-term substitute teachers and other means to save money at the expense of the education of the children…

One of the teachers, Phillip Leslie, heard about the girls’ criticisms of his former employer and later posted a video of the graduation ceremony online.

“The school had gotten what we perceived as progressively worse,” he said. “We had raised a number of concerns with the principal. When they lost teachers, they would use paraprofessionals as substitutes.”

Leslie and some of his colleagues were fired, they said, for attending a board meeting at the school to complain.

They filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board and ultimately settled for lost wages and reversal of their firings, so they wouldn’t be hamstrung when they sought work at other schools. 

“They were the best teachers in the school,” said Sara Saleh, 18, who graduated last year and now attends Wayne State. “Most of the staff members that I’ve spoken with had complained about the same things.”

The school caters to a student population that includes many immigrant children, including those from Yemen and Iraq, who need additional help learning English. Saleh said her English teacher last year was a certified math teacher, who learned English as a second language herself and couldn’t help students.

See an interview with one of the students here.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit

Michigan: State Attorney General Will Take a Position Opposite to the Governor in Detroit Literacy Lawsuit

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2019 //
4

Now, this gets interesting.

Two days ago, I posted about the battle in Michigan over who is responsible for the deplorable conditions in the public schools of Detroit. Critics claimed that Governor Whitmer was abandoning her campaign promises.

The new Democratic Governor Whitmer disappointed some supporters by asserting that the state was not responsible for the miseducation of the children of Detroit, although Detroit has been under state control for nearly 20 years.

The State Attorney General disagrees. 

Mackinac Island — Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said she will file in opposition to the governor’s position in a lawsuit alleging that the state deprived Detroit students of their right to literacy due to deplorable conditions at the facilities and dwindling numbers of teachers and textbooks.

At the Mackinac Policy Conference Wednesday, Nessel told The Detroit News that while her office has a duty to represent the governor she also is an independently elected official with an obligation to represent the people of the state of Michigan.

She intends to file parens patriae, or on behalf of the residents of Michigan, “to do what I think is best for them personally.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Friday argued in a response to the lawsuit filed by the attorney general’s office that because Detroit schools have been returned to local control the state should not be subject to the lawsuit..

“Sometimes I’m not always going to be in lock step with the arguments that are set forth by our clients, our client agencies or the executives,” Nessel said. “When that happens sometimes I have to go my own way and make the arguments that I feel are just and that I feel are appropriate and that’s what’s happened in this case.”

At least one state board of education member named as a defendant in the lawsuit also has said she will not be taking or supporting the state’s position made Friday in a brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals that sought a dismissal of the 2016 lawsuit.

Compensation is needed to make amends for the state’s control of the district for almost 20 years, Michigan Board of Education Vice President Pamela Pugh said.

“Anything short of Governor Whitmer and state education officials completely separating from former Attorney General Bill Schuette’s arguments, and taking responsibility for our children of color being granted the equal right to critical learning conditions that are afforded to students in other school districts is simply unacceptable,” Pugh said.

Categories Accountability, Detroit, Michigan

Michigan: Time for Governor Whitmer to Keep Her Promises!

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2019 //
8

Thomas Pedroni of Wayne State University sent the following urgent message for readersof this blog.

Professor Pedroni writes:

“In 2016, seven Detroit school children and their parents joined together as plaintiffs to sue the State of Michigan for depriving them of what they deemed to be their basic right— the right to access literacy in minimally sufficient learning conditions. The plaintiffs, along with the vast majority of Detroit school children, had endured years of worsening conditions in the district— exploding class sizes, dilapidating and rat-infested schools, freezing or searing classroom temperatures, classrooms with no teachers and no books, profit-driven experimentation by self interested ed tech companies— all during a time of direct and unchecked control of the district  by a string of state-imposed emergency managers.

“The students’ class action lawsuit, brought pro bono by California law firm Public Counsel, was dismissed in 2018 by Judge Stephen Murphy of the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Michigan in Detroit. Judge Murphy argued that although students were inarguably being subjected to what he called deplorable learning conditions, and although literacy was clearly necessary for the full enjoyment of life in the United States today, there was no constitutional right to access literacy. The students  immediately filed an appeal.

“Candidate Gretchen Whitmer campaigned for Michigan Governor in part on an agenda of strengthening the state’s public schools. She explicitly addressed the lawsuit in interviews, arguing that, “Despite what the federal court said, despite what Bill Schuette and Governor Snyder say, I believe every child in this state has a constitutional right to literacy.” In the fall, an independent audit of the state of the district’s buildings concluded that an investment of at least $500 million would be required to bring the city’s schools, which had simply been neglected during the period of state emergency management, to minimally acceptable condition.

“But on Friday, the administration of newly elected Governor Whitmer submitted the state’s brief in response to the plaintiffs’ ongoing appeal. According to the brief, all of the parties named as defendants in the filing, including the Governor, the state superintendent, and the elected State Board of Education, asked the court to dismiss the appeal on mootness of grounds. The defendants now named— including Governor Whitmer— were no longer the defendants named in the original case, the state’s brief argued, and some local control had been returned to the Detroit Public Schools; moreover the Governor has committed to increased educational spending in her new budget.

“In fact, not all members of the State Board of Education saw things as stated in the State’s filing. While seven board members held that the case was moot, with the two Republicans on the board also rejecting outright the notion that the state constitution guaranteed access to literacy, one member’s perspective was not represented in the State’s brief at all. Board Vice President Pamela Pugh, a Saginaw Democrat who is also the Chair of the NAACP Michigan State Conference Education Committee and the Chief Public Health Advisor to Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, withheld her fundamental agreement with the arguments of the plaintiffs in the case.

“Instead, Vice President Pamela Pugh has issued the following statement, titled The Time is Now for Governor Whitmer, Education Officials, and Michigan Lawmakers to Guarantee Michigan Children’s Fundamental Right to Learn to Read and Write.”

Vice President Pamela Pugh wrote:

Greetings,

This message serves to inform you that relative to the Detroit Right to Literacy lawsuit, I have notified the office of the Michigan Attorney General that I did not communicate in any way that I would be taking or supporting the legal position that the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit should dismiss Plaintiffs’ appeal on mootness grounds. It was represented in the reply brief filed by the State Defendants on Friday, May 24, 2019, that this is the legal position taken by all named defendants in this litigation.  I have also confirmed with the office of the Attorney General that I am exploring the options available to me, as a member of the Michigan Board of Education, to properly and procedurally address this matter.

This case has caused me to reflect deeply upon my beliefs, my values, and the very reason that I decided to run for the office of the State Board of Education; a role that the framers of our state constitution created to function distinct from that of the Governor and the state’s Executive Branch

I am reminded that in 1964 Rev. Dr, Martin Luther King pronounced, “the walling off of Negroes from equal education is part of the historical design to submerge him in second-class status”.  Dr. King went on to say, “As Negroes, we have struggled to be free and had to fight for the opportunity for a decent education.”  Now in 2019, 55 years later, with African Americans still struggling and fighting to be free, and to have an opportunity for an equitable and decent education, I am reminded of the urgency of the matter. 

Michigan ranks among the worst states in the nation for the educational performance of African American students.  While our children and educators are being labeled as failures, Michigan’s K-12 public education has been built on a crumbling foundation of racism and historic segregationist practices; many of which were sanctioned by our very own state government.  There is no doubt that these practices, and the policy makers who were unwilling to determinedly address the inequitable effects of them, are ultimately responsible for the failure of our children, their parents, and their teachers/educators.  

Through decades of inequitable funding and disastrous education program experiments, there’s been a perpetuation of children of color being deprived of the basic and proven conditions necessary for them to learn. Classroom learning is thwarted without literacy. Essential to a decent education are an adequate number of well trained teachers, sufficient teaching resources, and school buildings that aren’t environmental health hazards.  

Compounding this is the misuse and overuse of standardized tests, and, more importantly, the manipulative and abusive consequences that now accompany them.  These devices, and their penalties, such as “Read or Flunk” and “A-F” Laws, are now the primary tool, or the new and improved 21st century mechanism, used to submerge and maintain African Americans and communities of color in second class status.

In 1947, as an undergraduate at Morehouse College, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King told us that, “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”

I am reminded of our beloved Martin’s call for us to think for ourselves, to be outspoken and committed to what’s moral and right. As the Vice President of the Michigan State Board of Education, I am motivated by his words which call for us to speak with clarity and boldness in standing against the real and imminent threats to a decent and equitable education for all Michigan children.

Anything short of Governor Whitmer and state education officials completely separating from former Attorney General Bill Schuette’s arguments, and taking responsibility for our children of color being granted the equal right to critical learning conditions that are afforded to students in other school districts is simply unacceptable.  This is especially true for Detroit Public Schools where special compensation is needed due to state control of the district for almost 20 years. In my opinion this robbed Detroit children of the basic right to literacy, a fundamental right which I believe should be determined to be guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution, as well as other constitutional rights which require literacy skills. .

The time is now for Michigan lawmakers, the Governor, and state education leaders to move with urgency, clarity, and boldness to call for an appropriate level education funding for all our children. We owe the children of our state a decent education that includes adequate literacy skills as a core component to their training. This is an urgent matter, especially in the face of the cumulative effects of destructive policies that have derailed the educational progress of our low income children and children of color, and caused the failure of Michigan’s K-12 public education system.

Pamela L. Pugh, DrPH, MS
Michigan State Board of Education

Vice President
pampugh@umich.edu

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Detroit, Education Reform, Michigan

Chalkbeat Reporter Tried to Attend Board Meetings at Charter Schools, But…

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2019 //
4

 

Koby Levin, reporter for Chalkbeat, tried to attend meetings of the board of 10 charter schools in Detroit. It was challenging, to say the least.

When parents have an issue with their child’s school, there’s at least one place where they’re guaranteed a hearing on anything from school finance to student discipline: a school board meeting.

Yet in Detroit, a city with an infamously troubled school landscape, dozens of charter school board meetings are hard to find or poorly attended — if they happen at all.

Even finding the meeting times can be difficult. When a Chalkbeat reporter called to inquire about the board meeting at Covenant House Academy, the person on the other end of the line said “I don’t have that information,” and quickly ended the call.

David Ellis Academy did post its meeting schedule online, but the April meeting was set for Easter Sunday. It was canceled without notice.

These schools had not broken the law. But critics view such incidents as proof that charter schools in Detroit, which bring in more than $350 million from taxpayers for the 36,000 students they serve each year, aren’t doing enough to engage the community…

A reporter tried to attend 10 charter board meetings, proceeding roughly in alphabetical order. Four were canceled. When meetings took place, the reporter was the only person in the room who didn’t work for or oversee the school, except for one meeting where an advocate spoke on behalf of a student she believed had been wrongly expelled.

This is a pattern of disrespect.

As a side note, I will add that this story exemplifies why I admire Chalkbeat. Even though it is funded by billionaires including Gates, Walton, and Broad, it’s journalism is not tilted to favor the funders’ clear preference for charters. That’s why I make a small annual donation to Chalkbeat. It is informative and honest.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Industry, Privatization
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