Vulture Philanthropy Descends on Detroit Schools

[Hannah Bell]

4/09


"A school district's financial debt is used as the excuse to put it under the control of a state-appointed dictator recommended and trained by Eli Broad** {**rich "philanthropist" who funds right-wing education "reform"}.

The local school board is stripped of its authority and reduced to advisory votes. The state appointee immediately implements a program of school closures, layoffs, and more charter schools. Does this sound like Oakland circa 2003? Well, it's deja vu all over again.

The city is Detroit. The new school czar is Robert Bobb, former Oakland City Manager who went through the Broad Urban Superintendents Academy a few years back....Bobb has emerged as the $260,000/year (plus $84,000 in moving expenses) state-appointed tyrant of Detroit Public Schools. The campaign to exterminate public education in Detroit is even more savage than what's been done here in Oakland."

Read Diane Bukowski's account in the Michigan Citizen:

By Diane Bukowski
The Michigan Citizen

DETROIT — The alliance to completely dismantle the Detroit Public School system is rapidly growing, including both foes and ostensible friends.

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm’s DPS czar Robert Bobb has announced that Detroit’s children can expect to see at least 50 more schools close in the coming year, accompanied by thousands of lay-offs, to offset an alleged $306 million deficit...

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/search/label/Eli%20Broad

[bluestateguy]

1. Detroit high schools could be fixed right quick with Joe Clark as principal

and the Detroit School Board is an incompetent, dysfunctional body.

There are high schools in the city that have graduation rates below 20%; and some people want to act like all that has to be done is a little tinkering around the edges.

[Hannah Bell]

4. ho-ho-ho

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. Cause threatening kids with a baseball bat is the way to reform schools

:sarcasm:

Dude, Joe Clark was thankfully fired.

[Taitertots]

2. Detroit needs to close a bunch of schools and fire teachers

The population in detroit is shrinking at among the highest rates in the nation. With that decrease comes a decrease in available funds for schools.

Of course they have a budget deficit. It is a city built for close to 2,000,000 people and there are closer to 700,000 people living there now.

There is simply no need to operate a 2,000,000 person level infrastructure in a city with 700,000.

[Hannah Bell]

5. which is, of course, why they're paying bobby a quarter of a million.

[Taitertots]

6. How much they pay him isn't going to change the fact that

Detroit is a city built for 2 million that needs to work for 700,000 and probably very much less in the coming years.


Schools must close and teachers must be fired.

[Hannah Bell]

7. which is why they're hiring scabs.

let me ask you, this population loss, did it happen in the last year? do you think there are hundreds of excess teachers in detroit, such that the student-teacher ratio is 20, or 10, or 5 to one or something?

it isn't. because the population decline from 2 million to under 1 million occurred over 40 years. Its peak population was 1.8 million in 1950.

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:yW7o-U7UJIMJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit+detroit+2+million+population&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

[Taitertots]

8. When was the last time they closed schools and fired teachers?

The continued decreasing population means there must be a continuously decreasing infrastructure.


If you know about Long run economic planning you would understand why Detroit needs less schools and fewer teachers. We are at a capital base where our desired output is well below the minimal average cost.

[Hannah Bell]

9. why do you think they'd need to fire teachers when teacher-pupil ratio

= 24:1?

Does it sound like they've got excess teachers?

Better ask, when was the last time they hired?

Besides the recent scabs, I mean.

[Taitertots]

10. Ok, Just close schools

In my wealthy suburb, the ratio was over 30:1 teachers to pupils. In a city bleeding people, 24:1 is rapidly shrinking. They have room to contract.

[rucky]

20. 30:1 is high.

20:1 or less is preferable.

[Taitertots]

24. Somehow we got much higher test averages

20:1 does not guaranty well educated students with high graduation rates. It is an obvious advantage to have a good teacher to student ratio. However, an education system that is too centered on one factor is too limited.

The city is shrinking away, and showing little signs of stopping. The system needs to be downsized. We have less and less students going to schools. So we need much fewer buildings with lower fixed cost, fewer administration, fewer maintenance, and maybe if appropriate fewer teachers.

[proud2BlibKansan]

38. Economic status is a better predictor of achievement

than any other factors.

[maryf]

32. Wealthy suburb is a clue

Lots more money for books, supplies, and possibly teacher assistants...also, in wealthy districts, parents generally have more time to be involved, unlike in poor districts where many parents have to work multiple jobs; plus the kids have to work as well...

[salin]

17. the district has been closing schools through out the past decade.

And it was just as dysfunctional two decades ago.

[Taitertots]

23. Detroit's roughest times are still to come

It is really at a crisis point where I'm not sure what could even be done to save the school system. Any plan has to take into account that the whole city is in great depression level economic meltdown.

People are pouring out at an increasing rate. The government can't even sell the property they have in tax foreclosure. There is a whole million person city sized abandoned area; but they are all past being saved or very close to it.

[salin]

27. It is hard to envision ... there were already an average of 3 abandoned homes on each block in 1992

Take into account that there were still some thriving neighborhoods... that meant more than 3 in many areas. I can't even conjur up an image of what it is like now. Heart breaking.

[Taitertots]

35. I have an economics professor that grew up in Russia

When she recently saw Detroit for the first time she told the class that it looked like the aftermath of a war.

This is no exaggeration. There are blocks with only 3 standing houses. There is literally a whole large city worth in abandoned Detroit.

[alp227]

3. Robert Bobb? Is that his real name? Or is he just a clown wearing a business suit?

Based on what I'm reading here and what the other two posters said, he doesn't sound too serious about real reform!

:rofl:

[salin]

11. Detroit schools have been a mess for several decades.

I worked with them in the early nineties, when fewer than one out of three freshman would make it to 12th grade, and about only 1/3 of those students would be able to pass the 9th grade level MAP (then the Michigan graduation test). It has been a district in crisis for a very long time. Under numerous different superintendents and school boards, money kept not being spent at the school building level.

I think it was under two superintendents ago (2 before Bobb) that the district went from running on a surplus to having a 2-3 (or more) million dollar deficit. Apparently there have been few spending controls per contracts to outside vendors and it appears to be quite difficult to find where all of the money has gone. One thing I can bet is that little of it went to the individual school level.

To the poster suggesting "close schools"... they have been closing numerous schools over the past decade.

I have no idea what the 'solution' should be. Heck working there is what drove me to graduate school to try to find an answer (yes, I was that naive way back then to think one could 'find' the answer.) I worked with hundreds of high school students, very few of whom ended up graduating, and a number ended up not making it out of adolescence (lost to death or long-term incarceration.)

I just wanted to jump in and say that Detroit public schools have been in crisis for a long time having devastating effects on its students. I think the problems have long stemmed both at the district level, and from an ongoing economic crisis (and the social ills that come along with that) hitting the city for decades. For tens of thousands of students who would never get even a high school education, it has been tragic. While I do not think it is representative of urban districts around the country. It could, however be a harbinger.

I would be interested to hear from other urban educators as to what some proposed solutions might be - and leaving the district be is no solution as generations have been lost to a very dysfunctional system where very few students (percentage wise) ever graduate from high school.

[Celebration]

12. my daughter is a teacher at a "Big Picture" school

It tries to address potential dropouts by doing the following.

1. same teacher for all four years of high school, teaching all subjects
2. very small class size (14 students).
3. parents encouraged to become involved at school; they have the teacher's cell phone number, and they use it.
4. a mentoring system for students, with people who hold jobs in the community.
5. project based learning, depending on the student's interests.

These things seem to address the dropout problem, and test scores are about the same as traditional schools. My daughter had one kid who had been in special education test at grade level in reading, and her parents had been told that was impossible to achieve.

They are a bit more expensive because of the student/teacher ratio. These schools are also very time consuming for the teacher. Teachers end up being part social worker for each student.

Adequate funding for schools in necessary, but not sufficient, to good education.

[salin]

16. I think this is a very interesting model, but one that relies

upon exceptionally talented, dedicated and intellectually agile educators. As I understand, it is predominantly project driven and a teacher is responsible for multiple content areas (per working in skills development activities into the projects.) Kudos to your daughter.

[rucky]

22. Project-based is doable with some training.

The upside is, the teacher's role in the project-based model changes from less of a "knowledge-passer" to more of a project manager. Most of the knowledge isn't coming directly from the teacher to the student, so it doesn't depend on deep subject-matter expertise. Teachers need to know enough to provide the scaffolding, and point students to the right resources. So a different set of skills come into play - and they can be taught. Really it's the teacher's management skills that make this learning method a success.

I went from being a teacher to a corporate project manager. I used my classroom management skills to run my projects on-time & on-spec - even when I didn't know as much as my team about the subject-matter I was working with. I would love to go back and teach project-based curriculum, using the project management skills I picked up from my last job. I'm pretty confident it would be a success in any classroom.

[rucky]

21. That sounds like a great program.

Curious to know if that's a district school, or charter or private?

[Celebration]

29. Big Picture Schools are not charter schools

But work within the districts. Obviously the district has to be flexible. It is an interesting mix of students--some who had to get away from bad influences (drugs, friends, etc.) at their regular schools, or kids that had been bullied at the other schools, those who really DO have one main interest that they want to pursue, and those that need more caring adults in their lives.

Although this model is underutilized, Big Picture schools are growing rapidly. And, it is just one small part of an answer to the dropout problem.

As someone pointed out, it is pretty difficult on the teacher. My daughter's students are graduating this year, and I have a feeling she won't be there next year, because she would like more of a life outside school.

[proud2BlibKansan]

31. Bill Gates funded a similar program in our district

[Hannah Bell]

13. you identified the problem already yourself.

[salin]

14. Indeed, but the challenge is identifying solutions

that will stem the tide of students who enter this system, but never matriculate all the way through to graduation.

[Hannah Bell]

15. The solutions are obvious too, but won't be happening. You know

them yourself, everyone does.

[salin]

26. Which leaves us with generations

more of under-served (like those in Detroit) perpetuating a growing underclass. Its so wrong, on so many levels.

[proud2BlibKansan]

25. The biggest problem in my urban district right now is school violence

The violence on the streets pours into the schools. It is much worse this year since the district moved to a K-8 model for elementary schools.

So my first idea to fix the problem is to get the middle schoolers out of our elementary schools.

It would be a good idea to enforce the Code of Conduct, which is largely ignored by administrators.

We need after school recreation programs for kids. And more mentors. We have a few but need hundreds more.

We could also use more security and parent involvement.

All seemingly simple solutions but they seem to fall on deaf ears. It's very frustrating. But until we make our schools safe we can forget about kids actually getting an education.

[salin]

28. The laws of basic needs...

unless the first order of needs are met (e.g., food, shelter, safety) it is hard to attend to higher order (e.g. thinking/learning) needs.

My experience is in urban education - so to those in other school environments I don't know that what I type is the same.

In too many schools that I have worked in/with administrators are not terribly active in the life of the school - and without being very hands-on - present in hallways/classrooms/ and willing to devote time to conduct issues - then it is far too common that it is the kids, not the adults who set the tone of the culture of the school.

I also think that for too many (admin, and teachers) out of frustration and institutional drag... there tends to grow an almost institutional depression as if the whole organization gets sucked into a depression and a position of what can't be done. When that happens, as it does for many, its as if it just becomes a job. The urgency of the importance of making sure students are learning what they need to learn (and preparing for one's future is, to me, an urgent endeavor) gets lost. A lot of moving through the motions. When that happens it can really become (at least at middle and high but have seen it at some elementaries) chaotic - and indeed scary for students (esp younger students) - and for those working in the schools. Inevitably there are some teachers still working like crazy, doing all they can for the students, but often somewhat in isolation from one another - so not able to build on the energy of each other.

I agree that more parent and community involvement (ala mentors) would be great. Sadly this is so hard to achieve.

Who conceived of the idea of adding 6-8 into the elementary schools?!? Yikes.

[proud2BlibKansan]

30. "Who conceived of the idea of adding 6-8 into the elementary schools?!?"

The Catholics :)

In our case we had middle schools that were failing and under NCLB needed to be restructured. So a supt who was later fired came up with the K-8 plan. Of course he was no longer around when it came time to implement the plan. And it is an abysmal failure.

[blindpig]

19. k&r, n/t

[maryf]

33. Thanks Hannah...

Testing, testing, how quickly can a public school system be dismantled... hmmm, may be a prototype set up for across the nation...

K&R

[proud2BlibKansan]

34. Hannah I just remembered the Detroit teachers just took a big hit

Was that here that I read this? The Detroit teachers lost their health insurance plus the district is taking $500 a month out of their paycheck.

[Hannah Bell]

36. yes, it was this guy who pushed that through. pretty recently.

[Kid Dynamite]

37. Vulture Philanthropy

this is redundant