‘Am I optimistic that they can avoid it . . . ? I am not.” That’s what retired judge Ray Graves said this week when asked whether the Detroit public schools, which he is advising, would be forced into bankruptcy. Facing violence, a shrinking student body, and graduating just one out of every four students who enter the ninth grade on time, the city’s schools have been stumbling for years. Now they face a seemingly insurmountable deficit and are expected to file for bankruptcy protection at about the time that students should be settling down in a new school year.As embarrassing as such a filing would be, it also may be the only thing that can force the kinds of changes Detroit schools need—as the financial turmoil is just the latest manifestation of a system in terminal decline.
Detroit is like many urban school districts—large, unwieldy and bureaucratic, with a powerful union that makes the system unable to adapt to changing circumstances and that until very recently had an indulgent political class that insulated it from reform. That insulation came in two forms. The first was neglect. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick spent several years distracted by a scandal stemming from his affair with a staffer. He resigned last year, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, and was sentenced to four months in jail. Had he been an effective mayor, he might have also been a powerful advocate for students.
The other insulating force was a conscious decision to wall off Detroit from charter schools. In 1993, Michigan’s legislature made it difficult to create new charters in Detroit by declaring that only community colleges could authorize charters for primary and secondary schools in “First-Class Districts”—defined as those with more than 100,000 students. Detroit was the only First-Class District. In 2003 the state, under pressure from the Detroit Federation of Teachers, turned down a gift of $200 million from philanthropist Robert Thompson that would have established 15 charter schools in the city. Those charters are needed today.
Funny how "progressives" insist on more competition in health insurance but somehow think that competition for schools is sacrilege.
What's so "progressive" about a 25% graduation rate?
More...........
1 comment:
I am a foriegn manufacturer that competes with Detroit-based auto and parts companies. If I wanted to destory Detroit competition what would I do? I would hire special agents to infiltrate those companies and systematically steal their profits and flush it down the toilet so they could not effectively do business long term. Then, just when they were on the brink of bankruptcy, I would raise the percentage that I was stealing a few more points.
Luckily I don't have to bear the expense of hiring those special agents. That's because the dirty job of stealing profits, and flushing them down, has been consistently carried out for the last 50 years by Michigan and Detroit local governments themselves. And I didn't even have to ask them. I love American liberals!
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