Meltdown in the Motor City

yes Adam Emerson / December 6, 2012

The last thing Detroit families need is for an incompetent school board to regain control of the Motor City’s worst schools, but that may happen now that Michigan voters have repealed the state’s “emergency manager” law. The repeal has emboldened the Detroit Board of Education to undo many of the biggest reforms that emergency managers have put in place in the district during the last four years. Perhaps the worst of these decisions (so far!) was voiding the contract that emergency manager Roy Roberts forged last year with the state’s fledgling Education Achievement Authority, a recovery district modeled on Louisiana’s and run out of Eastern Michigan University. The EAA had taken possession of the lowest-achieving schools in Detroit (and has been praised by Arne Duncan), but it remained an inter-local agreement between the university and the school district. The Detroit school board, which one newspaper columnist said was “sauced on power and staggering with incompetence,” now wants to take those schools back under its fold. Eastern Michigan has vowed to fight, but it’s hard to see how kids will benefit from this custody battle if the state doesn’t codify the recovery district into law. Two bills were introduced recently in the legislature to do just that, but their sponsors have met with critics who maintain that the Achievement Authority needs more time to prove itself. That’s an absurd position, considering the thousands of Detroit families who been waiting for an ounce of hope for years.

RELATED ARTICLE

“Fight over Detroit Education Achievement Authority control comes to head,“by Jennifer Chambers, The Detroit News, November 26, 2012.

Category: Charters & Choice