Posted on 01/05/2017 9:10:58 AM PST by MichCapCon
Over the past 15 years, enrollment in the Detroit school district has imploded, falling from more than 100,000 students to just under 47,000. Without enough children to fill their classrooms, scores of public school buildings have been closed. The challenge this poses for parents was the focus of a recent story in the New York-based website Vice News. It featured a Detroit mother whose child’s school was shut down in 2013.
The story was titled, “School choice gutted Detroit’s Public Schools.”
The story tracks the impact of closing the Oakman Elementary/Orthopedic School. It reports that then-Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts informed Oakman parents they could send their children to one of two other district schools, Noble Elementary and Henderson Elementary.
Before it was closed, Oakman Elementary was in the bottom 2 percent of all public elementary and middle schools in the state, according to a report card on academic performance issued by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Unlike state rankings, the report adjusts for the socio-economic status of the students in a given school, which makes for a more valid “apples to apples” comparison of which schools add more value.
But the Noble and Henderson schools – the two alternatives offered to Oakman parents, according to the story – performed even worse on the report card.
Left out of this story was any mention of the extraordinary efforts made by Detroit's top leaders to ensure those choices remained limited to non-charter public schools in the nation’s worst-performing urban school district.
Detroit Mayor Michael Duggan and the Detroit City Council adopted a citywide five-year ban on selling abandoned and vacant district schools to charter schools. The ban was enacted in 2014, and the city has taken ownership of 77 school district properties, including Oakman, as part of a deal Detroit Public Schools made to pay off a debt it owed the city.
Under the ban imposed by the city’s political leadership, none of these properties could be sold to a charter school if it was within one mile of an existing district school. Oakman fell under the ban if the distance is measured as the crow flies.
Detroit Premiere Academy, which was in the top 10 percent of all schools on the Mackinac Center report card, receiving an A grade. It was a 3.8 mile drive from Oakman Elementary.
Note to Michigan pub(l)ic school “eddikators”:
If you can’t eddikate, get outta the eddikation kitchen.
No way any caring parent would send their progeny to your schools, no matter how much money you are getting (to waste).
And using the typical liberal excuse of transferring blame, sorry, that dog no longer hunts.
Stupid is as stupid does Forrest!
This is just incredibly mystifying!! Now, why would parents not send their kids to the public schools? Hmmmm? Just don’t understand it. (Good Gawd, man!)
Stupid liberals cannot admit that people are voting with their feet.
Detroit schools, “Learn me how to shoot somebody”
I’m so glad I chose never to have kids. If I had been born when my parents were, it would be different. But with the way things are today, I wouldn’t be able to tolerate the poor quality of education, the liberal indoctrination, cellphones and the general stupidity of the other kids.
Has the number of administrators decreased?
The best place for Public Educators is Private Prisons.
WHY this MUST be FAKE news!! The New York Times just named Detroit as one of the top tourist spots in America - seriously - stop laughing they really actually no foolin’ did!
Theirs apparently a lucrative career in ISIS style kidnapping and online torture broadcasting.
It’s a bizarre “hipster” thing to try to talk up Detroit as this “cool and hip” DIY town, where you can be gritty and “big city sophisticated” at the same time.
They desperately want to portray it like parts of NYC were in the 90s, as a place where you can live in a cool old factory for cheap and make “art” or something.
Seriously one of the most absurd things I’ve ever seen.
I just retired from having taught, coached, and led FCA for 29 years in public schools; right where God put me to impact lives.
I'm sure if you ever need a cop, fireman, or surgeon you will make sure that they didn't attend public schools.
I will admit I have not spent any time trying to find the cause for their problem. But, I can gurantee you one thing. If any white conservative were to recommend changes to improve the school system they would automatically be labeled as “RACIST”
To the left, the only answer to any problem is more taxpayer money.
Now let's give the Slimes credit for this very astute information. Suppose you wish to visit a third world country in the midst of a civil war. Why go to the Middle East or Mexico or Venezuela or any of a dozen other hot spots around the globe? That would cost tons of money in air flight and a different language and all kinds of other problems. Just go to Detroit and have the full experience.
They can come on out to Oakland and live in a cool old warehouse, at least until it burns to the ground anyway.
I grew up in Detroit when it was a white city. Great schools,
smart students. Five years ago the city tore down the high school I went to, because they said the black students were doing so poorly in their test score was because the school building was too old. The city spent $57,000,000 on a state-of-the-art school. The black students (the enrollment is 98% black)t are now scoring in math and science in bottom 1%.
The story was titled, “School choice gutted Detroit’s Public Schools.”
That statement would be like a German newspaper Headline. ‘American soldiers gutted Concentration Camp efforts.’
The story was titled, “School choice gutted Detroit’s Public Schools.”
That statement would be like a German newspaper Headline. ‘American soldiers gutted Concentration Camp efforts.’
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