Detroit's Cautionary Tale

Yesterday's New York Times carried the story of America's failure to educate students. Detroit's schools are a glimpse into an education future that should never be allowed to happen.When educators warn about creating a two-tier or caste system of schools, the glaring example of this has to be Detroit's schools. Detroit has created education choice, but the rush to something other than the public school system - schools that accept all comers  - has come with a steep cost to families and students left trying to find a good academic fit.  Tales of schools attempting to lure students from one school to another include enticements such as raffle tickets, bicycles, and cash.The history behind the current state of education in Detroit is, of course, based in the corporate tradition of making money.

To throw the competition wide open, Michigan allowed an unusually large number of institutions, more than any other state, to create charters: public school districts, community colleges and universities. It gave those institutions a financial incentive: a 3 percent share of the dollars that go to the charter schools. And only they — not the governor, not the state commissioner or board of education — could shut down failing schools.

Just as marketers and sales people entice customers with "delighters", schools that can offer no improvement over another, are using the same corporate-based incentives to lure students from one school to another. Why? Because the Detroit's school-age population cannot support the number of charts operating in the City.Think about that for one moment. Michigan allows a large group of institutions to create charter schools, there is an additional financial incentive above and beyond the per pupil costs, and the decision to close a failing charter is not made by a state board of education, it's made by the charter institution. Is it any wonder that 80 percent of charter schools in Michigan are run by for-profit corporations?The story of Detroit's schools, the failures of state and local governments and elected representatives to protect and provide for the education of all children, the blatant abuses by higher academia and corporations. This is a cautionary tale for all of us.Read Kate Zernike's entire piece in the June 28 New York Times here.   

It's Not All That.....

    I work in a smallish/medium sized urban school district. In recent years, the school budget has been cut so to eliminate instructional technology teachers and the staff holding up the technology infrastructure hangs on by their collective teeth. We are not an affluent community; no PTO is holding a raffle to raise funds for Smartboards or laptops or anything else as a matter of fact. The not-a-recession has hit this community - and thereby the budgets - fairly hard.In my own classroom, I have one old iMac "jellybean". It no longer gets operating system updates or browser updates. CDs make an interesting hum when spinning in the drive. The "teacher/desk" computer is 2 years old; I've taken it off my desk so the kids - all 24 -- can be a crack at using it in the classroom. For my own technology use, I brought in my old (6 years) Dell laptop. Because it is my own personal property, the District won't allow it to access the school network or the Internet.Getting the picture? Technology just isn't pretty in this urban district.I used to feel pretty sorry about this, but an article in the Times and Boston Globe this weekend is causing me to rethink. Here is a link to the Times article about a Silicon Valley School where technology is not part of the infrastructure of a student's learning.Think about it. When do you use technology? Is it a tool for getting work done? Or is it entertainment/edutainment?I think there's probably room for both types of applications in education. And while I certainly would appreciate having some hardware that wasn't purchased before my students were born, maybe the application of technology needs a revisit.