It’s worth noting, I think, that these kids very much wanted to come as a group to Water Street to walk the site, help remove invasive species, and see what we were planning firsthand. Unfortunately, however, due to budget cuts, and the district’s reliance on private buses, they couldn’t make it. (I’m told that they would have had to pay $300 to use a bus for the day.) So, we did the best that we could to make them a part of the process, given the parameters. Last week, we shot video of the site and sent it to their teacher, so that they could get a sense of what we were doing, and, today, Jeff and I went into their classroom to show them how to make seed bombs, while talking with them about everything from the history of May Day to colony collapse.

Given the feel good nature of this post, this probably isn’t the right place for me to launch into a tirade about the systematic defunding of public education in Michigan, but I really do think it’s criminal that these kids, and their incredible teacher, Tonia Porterfield, lack the ability to even make it across town to work on a project that would tie together so much of what they’re learning about in the classroom, from the real life application of math (in laying out the site), to the importance of species diversification. Assuming this initiative of ours takes off the way that we’re hoping, and the seed bombs made by these young folks this morning actually work, and successfully bring about positive change in our downtown, I’m thinking that we should have another fundraising campaign next year, so that we can rent buses and bring them to the site, so that they can see firsthand what they’ve helped to create… And, yes, I know that a lot of them will have other opportunities to get to the site on their own, but they won’t have the benefit of being able to hear from native plant experts, and professionals working in brownfield remediation, etc, the way they would if we set up something comprehensive for their entire class.

When one of the girls in the class thanked Jeff and me for coming out today, saying excitedly, “This makes it so much more real than a video,” it really brought home the fact that these kids are anxious for real, hands-on opportunities to learn and make a difference in the world. (As much as Michigan Republicans would like it to be the case, on-line education isn’t sufficient by itself.) And, even with a teacher as creative and resourceful as Ms. Porterfield, who took the initiative to call me after hearing about the seed bombing project, asking me to include them somehow, the opportunities for project based learning outside the traditional school setting are few and far between. And, since meeting with them this morning, I can’t stop thinking about ways to get them more engaged… So, if you do come out to help us slingshot and catapult seed bombs onto Water Street this Wednesday, and you happen to see a few middle school-aged kids standing around, thank them for helping make the bombs, and talk with them about the kinds of things they’d like to do in the community. Not only will it be good for them to know that adults actually give a damn, but I think you’ll get something out of it too, as they begin talking about the kinds of contributions they’d like to make, and the kinds of experiences they’d like to have. It’ll restore your faith in humanity. I promise.

Speaking of May Day, thanks to the efforts of the lovable young radicals of the Ypsi Free Skool, a number of other activities will be taking place in addition to the seed bombing. Here’s the schedule.

12:30 – 1:30 – Skill Share – MiniZine Workshop with David Chapman

1:30 – 2:00 – International Worker Solidarity March

3:00 – 4:00 – Skill Share – Radical Labor History with Phil Patterson

4:00 – 5:00 – Skill Share – Food Forests with Jesse Tack

5:00 – Seed Bombing

5:30 – Potluck and Bonfire

Further information can be found at YpsilantiMayDay.org.

And, one last thing… It’s just come to my attention that, as luck would have it, the voice of the international worker, Billy Bragg, is scheduled to be in Ann Arbor on May Day for a show at the Ark. And I’m thinking that it would be really cool if we could get him out to Ypsi for a while, to join us in a song or two. I don’t know how realistic it is, as I’m sure his schedule is tight, but I’ve just reached out to a brilliant designer friend, asking him to drop everything and begin work on a “This Machine Plants Flowers… The People of Ypsilanti Would Love to Share a May Day Meal with You, Billy” poster. My thought is that, if we can get people to put them up all over Ann Arbor tomorrow, there’s a chance that he might see one, or someone might mention it to him. (It’ll also, of course, draw the attention of folks in Ann Arbor to our May Day activities. As I’m not aware of a May Day event taking place in Ann Arbor, I suspect there are some folks who would like to come out and join us on Water Street.) I’ll keep you posted… In the meantime, though, please do what you can though your networks to reach Billy Bragg. If you know someone at the Ark, pick up a phone and call them. Or perhaps send him an invitation through Facebook.

[note: Background on the seed bombing of Water Street can be found here.]

…The education reform advisory team has dubbed itself a “skunk works” project working outside of the government bureaucracy and education establishment with a goal of creating a “value school” that costs $5,000 per child annually to operate, according to meeting minutes and reports obtained by The Detroit News.

The records show designers of the “value school” are in talks with Bay Mills Community College about opening a technology-centric charter school by August 2014. The school would seek to maximize the roughly $7,000 annual per-pupil funding regular schools get from taxpayers by applying “concepts familiar in the private sector — getting higher value for less money.”

Other records distributed to group members indicate they want to explore using fewer teachers and more instruction through long-distance video conferencing. Each “value school” student would receive a “Michigan Education Card” to pay for their “tuition” — similar to the electronic benefits transfer used to distribute food stamps and cash assistance for the poor.

Students could use leftover money on the “EduCard” for high school Advanced Placement courses, music lessons, sport team fees, remedial education or cyber courses, according to an outline of the advisory team’s agenda.

Snyder confirmed Thursday the existence of the work group, but told The News “there is not a specific outcome” for the project…

And, when they say “leftover money,” they don’t, as I understand it, mean the balance of the $7,000 which is to be allotted per-pupil at the beginning of the school year, but the balance of those funds which remain after the above-mentioned for-profit entities take their cut, which, I’ve heard, is likely to be about $2,000 per student. So, essentially, according to this vision, we’ll be educating our children for $5,000 per year, and handing $2,000 over to the companies running the system. And, if kids should happen to use less than that $5,000, they’ll be given the balance on their “EduCard”, so they can do extracurricular things like purchase online American history modules of questionable value from the likes of Mike Huckabee.

Michigan Education Association (MEA) President Steve Cook had the following to say when made aware of the secret initiative.

…The members of this self-defined ‘skunk works’ come from the same political and corporate interests who pushed through a tax break for themselves that was paid for by a $1 billion cut to our children’s schools. Now they’re developing a secret plan to cheapen our kids’ education and replace teachers with teleconferencing. Their skunk works moniker is very accurate – this plan truly stinks.

Their goal to create so-called ‘value schools’ would spend less than half what we currently spend to educate a student, putting those remaining meager funds on debit cards for parents and students to purchase their learning – not unlike food stamps. Such schools would use long-distance video conferencing instead of qualified, professional teachers working with students.

Snyder’s secret group deliberately shut out input from educators in favor of information technology companies who stand to make money off this scheme. This is a direct attempt to undermine elected school boards, principals and school employees, and it’s a slap in the face to teachers and education support professionals, who work tirelessly to educate our children every day.

Rather than holding secret meetings with corporate special interests to concoct new school voucher schemes and value-meal education, Snyder should be making the proper funding of our kids’ schools a top priority.

Michigan kids deserve a world-class education – not a dime store diploma.

It’s also worth noting that the use of so-called vouchers is presently illegal according to the Michigan constitution, which clearly says that public aid cannot be directed toward non-public schools. And the voters of Michigan overwhelmingly rejected constitutional amendments in 1978 and 2000 that would have changed that. Clearly, though, Snyder and company feel as though they have a way around the little problem of illegality.

So, just to recap… We’re presently not able to adequately educate our kids for $7,000 per pupil, so we’re going to try a radical solution. Instead of hiring better teachers, putting kids in smaller classrooms, and investing more, we’re going to fire experienced (and thus more costly) teachers, and invest significantly less. And we’re going to “empower” our students by giving them a choice as to which online edutainment service they choose to sign up for (the one sponsored by Taco Bell, or the one sponsored by Coke). The unfettered free market, you see, will solve everything. All we have to do is remove teachers from the equation.

On a side note, I find it kind of ironic that these same Republicans who are now fighting so hard to get quality educational content streaming into the cubicles of Michigan’s students are the same ones who demand every year that we slash the budget of Sesame Street, the one program which has actually been shown to improve the intellectual aptitude of children… I hate to by cynical, but I have to wonder if maybe it’s not the quality of the content they really care about, or event the education of the students themselves, but the potential revenue that they represent.

And, before you leave a comment about how this wasn’t being done in secret, you should know that it’s been reported that Snyder’s Chief Information Officer, David Behen, asked members of this group to communicate by way of their private email accounts, and not their state ones, which would be more easily accessible by way of FOIA. That, I think, says it all.

Oh, and here’s a great quote, if you want a laugh. It comes from Governor Snyder himself: “Michigan’s citizens are tired of the divisive political culture in Lansing. Midnight deals, closed doors meetings, lobbyists, and special interest influence have stood in the way of long-term solutions. As Governor, I will ensure that government is open, fair, and accountable to the citizens by making Michigan a national leader in transparency and ethics.”

Lastly, I don’t have the time to dig too deeply into this at the moment, but a cursory search shows me that InfoReady CEO Bhushan Kulkarni was among the top contributors to Snyder’s campaign for Governor. Make of that what you will…

The road to the massive cheating scandal in Atlanta runs right through the White House.

The former superintendent, Dr. Beverly L. Hall, and her 34 obedient subordinates now face criminal charges, but the central role played by a group of un-indicted and largely unacknowledged co-conspirators, her powerful enablers, is barely noted.

Beyond her “strong relations with the business elite” who reportedly made her “untouchable” in Atlanta, she was a national super-star for more than a decade because her work embodied the shared educational policies of the Bush and Obama administrations. In the testing frenzy that characterized both No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top Dr. Hall was a winner, consistently praised over many years by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for raising test scores, hosted at the White House in 2009 as superintendent of the year, and appointed in 2010 by President Obama to the National Board for Education Sciences. When the Atlanta scandal broke in 2011 Secretary Duncan rushed to assure the public that it was “very isolated” and “an easy one to fix.”

That’s not true. According to a recently released study by the independent monitoring group FairTest, cheating is “widespread” and fully documented in 37 states and Washington D.C.

The deeper problem is reducing education to a single narrow metric that claims to recognize an educated person through a test score. Teaching toward a simple standardized measure and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the “outcomes” both incentivizes cheating and is a worthless proxy for learning.

I recently interviewed leaders at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools—the school Arne Duncan attended for 12 years and the school where the Obamas, the Duncans, and the Emanuels sent their children — and asked what role test scores played in teacher evaluations there. The answer was none. I pressed the point and was told that in their view test scores have no value in helping to understand or identify good teaching.

-William Ayers

Distinguished Professor of Education (retired)
University of Illinois at Chicago

And here’s a clip from the National Center for Fair & Open Testing press release which Ayers referenced:

(A) new survey reports confirmed cases of test score manipulation in at least 37 states and Washington, D.C. in the past four academic years. The analysis by the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) documents more than 50 ways schools improperly inflated their scores during that period.

“Across the U.S., strategies that boost scores without improving learning — including outright cheating, narrow teaching to the test and pushing out low-scoring students — are widespread,” said FairTest Public Education Director Bob Schaeffer. “These corrupt practices are inevitable consequences of the politically mandated overuse and misuse of high-stakes exams.”

Among the ways FairTest found test scores have been manipulated in communities such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, El Paso, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, New York City, Philadelphia and the District of Columbia:

• Encourage teachers to view upcoming test forms before they are administered.
• Exclude likely low-scorers from enrolling in school.
• Drill students on actual upcoming test items.
• Use thumbs-up/thumbs-down signals to indicate right and wrong responses.
• Erase erroneous responses and insert correct ones.
• Report low-scorers as having been absent on testing day.

Schaeffer continued, “The solution to the school test cheating problem is not simply stepped up enforcement. Instead, testing misuses must end because they cheat the public out of accurate data about public school quality at the same time they cheat many students out of a high-quality education.”

The bottom line, as much as it pains the wealthy to hear it, is that decent education cannot be commoditized, and children cannot be taught like they’re cows being fattened-up on factory farm feedlots. The fact of the matter is that teaching to the test, even when cheating isn’t involved, does not create the kind of inquisitive young learners we need to solve the very serious problems that face the world today. Sure, it may be cheaper to pack kids in classrooms of 60, and have poorly paid script readers prepare them for tests between film strips of questionable educational value, but it just doesn’t work. What works, as we well know, is hiring great teachers, putting them in small classrooms, and empowering them to make independent decisions based upon their firsthand knowledge of the kids who have been entrusted to them. Unfortunately, our adversaries are the ones with all the money, and they don’t have any intention of giving up, as evidenced by their funding of Michelle Rhee and others.

Here, for those of you who are interested, is the high-level background… At the end of the month, employees working in union environments, within the state of Michigan, will be able to avail themselves of union services without having to pay for said services, either through union dues, or what are called agency fees. This, however, does not apply for those union entities that have preexisting agreements in place prior to March 28. For the terms of those agreements, as long as they’re executed prior to the so-called right-to-work legislation going into effect, the unions in question would be able to continue on as they had in the past, collecting dues and agency fees, and using the resulting funds to ensure workplace safety, fight for better wages, etc. The Republican attempt to cut off their funding, via this new legislation, in other words, would be delayed until such time that a new contract had to be negotiated. So, clearly, there’s a desire on the part of unions to lock in lengthy contracts now, before the law goes into effect. And, as you might imagine, the Republicans who conspired to make Michigan a right-to-work state are not too happy about it.

It’s also worth noting that Michigan Republicans have long had a tempestuous relationship with the state’s universities. On one hand they know that our universities are probably the only things keeping us from sliding into economic irrelevancy, but, on the other, they absolutely hate the fact that universities are, by their very nature, breeding grounds for bright, inquisitive individuals, who often aren’t inclined to accept simplistic rhetoric and vote for candidates pushing anti-science agendas. (Republicans in Lansing like to think that cheap labor is enough to turn the state around, but they know, deep down, in their twisted, shrunken hearts, that they need the high-tech start-up companies and that educated graduates that our research universities are turning out.) And, every so often, things come to a head. As you may recall, things heated up a few years ago, when House Republicans attempted to withhold funding from Michigan universities that continued offering domestic partner benefits, in spite of the fact that many in the legislature made it known that the Lord was opposed to the idea of insuring homosexuals in committed relationships. (God, as we know, prefers his gays to be promiscuous and sickly.) Fortunately, in that instance, the Governor slapped the more rabid members of his party back. It’s not so clear what will happen this time, though, as the Governor hasn’t recently shown a willingness to stand up to the fearful, anti-intellectual, Tea Partying base of his party.

It’s probably also worth noting that this whole thing is playing out in front of a backdrop of already steadily-declining state support for higher education. Last year, the state, which already spent more on prisons than on higher education, passed a budget that saw university funding decrease by an additional 22%, prompting speculation on the part of many that the University of Michigan would eventually make the choice to become a private institution. (The currently proposed Republican budget, it should be noted, would see university funding go back up by 2.2%, but that, of course doesn’t take into account these penalties which are being threatened against schools like Wayne State and U-M. “Without the penalty,” according to AnnArbor.com, U-M is set to receive $278.9 million in state appropriations, a 1.7% increase over this year.”)

Here’s what the Higher Education Subcommittee provision in question states:

“Provides that funds appropriated for fiduciary responsibility in employee contracting be paid to a university only if it does not extend, renew, or enter into a labor contract under certain circumstances between December 10, 2012 and March 28, 2013 without achieving 10% or greater savings and does not enter into a contract between the same dates that contains only terms that constitute a union security agreement that requires any of several specified employee actions as a condition of employment.”

It is, of course, worth mentioning that this language coming out of the subcommittee could well be stripped and/or edited in the House and Senate, as they continue to debate the bill, so this isn’t by any means a done deal. It does, however, illustrate to me just how vindictive and hypocritical our Republicans in Lansing are. The fact that they’re thinking of punishing universities for acting in accordance with the law, and negotiating openly with their unions, while they themselves conspired to ram though divisive right-to-work legislation during the lame duck session, behind police barricades, and without any public debate, I think, speaks volumes. And, one suspects, this isn’t the end of it. If they’re going after our universities for proactively coming to terms with their unions prior to March 28, then you can assume they’ll attempt to do the same thing with our local governments, that are attempting to do the same thing.

update: M-Live has a response from the Governor’s office, as well as quotes from two of the Republicans responsible for this proposal. Here’s a clip.

…How will Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration respond to the proposal?

Snyder spokeswoman Sara Wurfel said in an email “it’s just one part of the legislative process and we’ll watch closely as the issue and appropriations process progresses.”

Wurfel said that Snyder has indicated that “if there was significant economic benefit or savings in long-term contracts” that were negotiated, they could be of value and “make sense.” But if those contract changes offer “very little substance, then it’s fair (to) bring up questions and concerns.”

And here are the thoughts of Republican State Representative Al Pscholka and Republican Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville:

AL PSCHOLKA: “I think we’ve sent a pretty serious message here,” the chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee said after today’s vote. “And hopefully it’s received. The message is: Protect taxpayers. If you’re going to do contracts, make sure that you come up with real taxpayer savings. We haven’t seen any yet.”

RANDY RICHARDVILLE: “What I favor is reasonable representation to the people that were appointed to these boards,” Richardville said today on the Senate floor. “If it’s a quote-unquote money grab to increase contracts in a way that isn’t normal because a law was passed, then I think that the people that either attend or help pay for that — the taxpayers in general — should have some serious questions about the way they’re spending that money… I wouldn’t see the fact that we are not going to throw more money into people’s hands that aren’t responsibly looking at it as necessarily a punishment. I think it’s being responsible with taxpayer dollars, and they need to make sure that they are responsible.”

Tonight’s post was going to be a simple one. I was just going to pass along the following note from my friend Maria, and encourage you all to let your opinions be known… but then I opened my front door to find a package from an anonymous source. (More on that in a moment.)

Support our children! Please come to Monday’s Consolidated school board meeting. The board is planning on choosing the new superintendent of the consolidated district. This decision not only affects our children, it affects the economics of our entire community. Let’s meet in the parking lot at 6:45pm to show our solidarity. Pass It on!

When: Monday, February 25
Rally: 6:45, Willow Run High School Parking Lot
Meeting: 7:30 Willow Run High School auditorium

Now, about that package… I suspect that, like Dan Rather, I might be walking into a trap right now, but something was left on my doorstep this morning that I feel compelled to share. I don’t know if there’s anything to it or not, but, given that we’ve got this big meeting tomorrow night, where the Board of Education will apparently be deciding whether or not Martin and Lisiscki will be hired to serve as co-superintendents of our newly-merged district, I felt as though I didn’t have a choice.

Before I get into the specifics as to what was left for me, though, here’s the relevant background as I know it.

A few weeks ago, AnnArbor.com ran a story about former Ypsilanti High School principal Rob Belous. Belous, as you might recall, had been put on administrative leave in October. Representatives of the Ypsilanti School District had said at the time that Belous, who has since been fired by the District, was put on leave so that an investigation could be carried out. (Apparently there were concerns regarding his performance.) In this February article, however, Belous offered a different reason. It was not his performance that put him on the wrong side of the administration, he said, but the fact that he’d been conducting an investigation of his own, looking into district spending, especially as it related to federal grant money being spent at Ypsilanti’s two high schools – Ypsilanti New Tech and Ypsilanti High School. The following clip is from AnnArbor.com.

…Belous said the first red flag came in March 2012, when he was approached by Assistant Superintendent Jennifer Martin to sign off on a number of grant expenditures for his building.

“I thought it strange that we never got an actual audit report… and that grants were done this way,” he said.

Belous was hired prior to the start of the 2011-12 academic year to lead YHS through a redesign and various other reforms. The high school was required to undergo a redesign after appearing on the state’s persistently lowest achieving schools list.

Belous began noticing “gross inequities” in how much money was dedicated to YHS per student compared with Ypsilanti New Tech per student, he said. Both schools serve students in grades 9-12, yet New Tech receives more resources from the district, Belous said.

Ypsilanti New Tech High School opened its doors in fall 2010 and follows a national model of project-based learning with an emphasis on technology.

Belous brought up the subject of spending inequities numerous times to Irvine, Jennifer Martin and Dedrick Martin, he said.

In September 2012, Belous noticed several expenditures in a grant summary that did not occur, he says. Belous claims he was told by more than one district administrator in September to stop talking about the district’s spending “if he cared about his career.”

Belous filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education regarding the district’s spending of Title 1, Title 2 and Title 31A grant dollars. Title 1 and Title 31A funding is provided primarily to help school districts supplement instruction and support services for at-risk and low-income or economically disadvantaged students. Title 2 provides funds for staff professional development to improve instructional quality….

When asked about this by AnnArbor.com, YPSD Executive Director of Human Resources Sharon Irvine said that officials hadn’t known, when they put Belous on administrative leave, that he had been looking into the district’s spending. (In the district’s defense, a representative with the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General, when contacted by AnnArbor.com, said that, while they’d received the Belous complaint, they’d “closed the matter,” after looking into it. Furthermore, as I understand it, there were legitimate reasons to question Belous’s ability to lead. That doesn’t mean, however, that he might not have been correct about funding inequalities between Ypsilanti’s two high schools, misuse of funds, etc.)

And here’s where I need to choose my words carefully, so as not to unjustly accuse anyone of wrongdoing. As I mentioned above, I don’t like dealing in innuendo, especially when it’s third-hand, via an anonymous source, but, as this critically important decision is scheduled to be made tomorrow, which may well determine whether Ypsilanti has a viable public school system going forward, I don’t think I have any choice but to share it.

From what I am told, AnnArbor.com filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the YPSD, asking, among other things, for the expense reports of administrators. According to the anonymous package that I received, however, they did not fully comply. Some receipts, it would seem, were either purposefully, or inadvertently, left out. I, of course, have no way of knowing whether or not this is true. (I have a call in to AnnArbor.com, but I’ve yet to hear back.) What I do know, however, is that I’ve got a stack of photocopies of what appear to be a high-ranking administrator’s expense reports, some of which appear to be signed-off on by said administrator herself, which, as I understand it, is not accepted protocol.

As I stated above, this is a tricky business. While it looks as though there were some expensive meals, for instance, I feel hesitant to comment, not knowing the context. There are, after all, occasionally situations that call for larger dinner meetings at places nicer than Applebee’s. Without knowing what the situations were, or who was involved, I’m not inclined to assign blame. Of the material that has been provided to me, however, there’s one particular event that seems, even upon my cursory inspection, to warrant a closer look. It’s a July 2012 trip to Las Vegas. According to the note that I received, this administrator took her secretary and stayed for about a week, although the conference only ran for three days. (It was a user group meeting for PowerSchool, the web-based student information system used by YPSD.) The note that I received said that this administrator attended along with “her secretary and her two other friends,” although the district’s person designated to run PowerSchool, who ostensibly could have benefited from having been there, was not allowed to join them, given the fact that there were insufficient financial resources to send him.

It’s probably also worth noting that the person who passed these receipts along to me clearly has a grudge against this administrator. “Dedrick Martin gave her the reins of the district, which she has destroyed,” the person writes. “And, if the board selects Dedrick Martin (to serve as superintendent of the new, unified district), she will stay.”

I personally do not have a vendetta against Dedrick Martin. As I said in my post a few days ago about our search for a new superintendent, I think that he might very well be the right person to lead the new district forward. I just wanted for there to be a broad search, open to external candidates, before a decision was made to give him another chance… And, as I said above, I don’t know for certain that the above allegations are legitimate. Given the fact that the new school board could be voting tomorrow to hand over the reins of the new district to Martin, though, I felt as though I should say something. At the very least, I’d like to suggest that we give ourselves a few additional days, and look into these new allegations of impropriety under his tenure. As I said, I have reached out to AnnArbor.com and have offered all of the photocopies that were left for me, and I would be happy to share them with members of the new Board of Education as well. This is much too big of a decision for our community to rush, especially when allegations like these are being made. As we all know, we won’t have a second chance at this.

update: Shortly after a reader posted this screen grab from the Twitter account of the YPSD administrator in question, said administrator deleted the post. Within a few hours, the entire account had been terminated.

1. Under serious pressure from the state, our two school districts agreed last summer to restructure as one entity, in hopes of further slashing expenses and staving off a forced take-over at the hands of a Governor-appointed Emergency Manager. (They had good reason to be concerned. As you’ll recall, at about this same time, the Emergency Manager given the power to oversee Highland Park’s schools disbanded all of them, replacing them with for-profit charter schools operated by The Leona Group.)

2. The administrators of the two schools, their respective boards, and the powers-that-be within the Washtenaw Intermediate School District (WISD) lobbied hard on behalf of the merger, and, in November, the citizens of both school districts voted to make it happen, convinced that it was the only way to keep some semblance of local control. (As you may recall, WISD Superintendent Scott Menzel made the case for the merger in an interview on this site. “(T)he key question to ask is whether it is possible for Ypsilanti and Willow Run to remain independent school districts,” said Menzel. “Given the current trajectory – declining enrollment, increasing deficits, poor academic achievement – the answer to that question is no. The cuts required to balance the budget will result in driving more students from the district and compromising any effort to improve achievement. This is a death spiral. The only viable option going forward is to pursue consolidation of the districts and work diligently to create a new district that is both financially viable and designed to raise the level of achievement by implementing a 21st century, world-class education.”)

3. Having gotten the go-ahead from the voters, WISD administrators began to put their plan into action. A new board for the unified district was created (pictured right), composed of members of both previous boards, as well as several un-elected individuals appointed by the WISD. Community meetings were held. Subcommittees were formed. And it was agreed, among other things, that all of Ypsilanti’s teachers would be fired at the end of this school year, with the understanding that many would then be hired back to teach within the newly-formed district. Curiously, the same did not hold true for the superintendents of the two original school districts – Dedrick Martin (Ypsilanti) and Laura Lisiscki (Willow Run) – both of whom were given contracts through 2016.

4. Paying $12,000, the WISD engaged consultants at the Michigan Leadership Institute to aid in the search for a new superintendent. The idea, as I understood it, was that they would do a wide search for external candidates with experience in merging districts, and turning around failing school systems. The community was surprised to learn a few weeks ago, however, that, before this outside search could be conducted, both Martin and Lisiscki would be given an opportunity to be considered for the post. Only if neither was chosen by the new board of education, we were told, would the broader search be conducted.

5. There was, however, a third internal candidate for the position. Sharon Irvine, a lawyer and educator who currently serves as the Ypsilanti Public Schools’ executive director of human resources, indicated that she would like to be considered, alongside Martin and Lisiscki. Irvine, from what I understand, gained the respect of many for having successfully worked with the teachers’ union last year to cut costs without having to resort to the 30% across-the-board pay cuts which had been proposed. Video of Irvine, explaining what she would bring to the job, and how she managed to win concessions from teachers while retaining their support, can be found here. (Irvine’s interview is followed by those of Lisiscki and Martin.) It’s probably also worth noting that Irvine, in addition to seeking the job of Ypsi’s superintendent, was also pursuing the job as the head of Tecumseh’s school system. From what I’m told, however, she’s now out of the running, as Tecumseh’s board of education has made it clear that they want someone for the job who lives in their community, and Irvine lives in Ypsilanti, and, I believe, intends to stay here.

6. Last Thursday, on Valentine’s Day, the new board of education publicly interviewed all three candidates. (The video link can be found above.) The public, during this session, also had an opportunity to voice their opinions and to ask questions. While there was support for Laura Lisiscki from members of the Willow Run community, Dedrick Martin didn’t fare as well. In fact, many of his former constituents voiced their dissatisfaction with his performance, and urged that the board consider hiring Irvine, based, apparently, upon the vision that she put forward during her interview. It’s unclear how much weight, if any, however, will be given to public opinion. At least that’s the sense that I get from comments made by board member Don Garrett, who was heard urging other board members to avoid talking to constituents, as they might unduly “influence” them. (I haven’t found it yet, but I’m told the audio can be found somewhere among the video’s on this Willow Run site. I intend to go through them tonight, in search of the clip I’ve been told about, where Garrett says to a fellow board member, “WISD appointed YOU to the Board not the community.”)

7. Then, over last weekend, things really heated up, as people, from what I understand, started to get the sense that Martin’s appointment might be a foregone conclusion. When the board reconvened on Monday to discuss the candidates, they were met with a packed house, a vocal majority of whom, I’m told, were Irvine supporters. According to some who attended the meeting, the board did not seriously deliberate the merits and deficits of each candidate. Furthermore, I’m told that board member David Bates took the opportunity to chide the audience for making negative comments about Martin, and for asking him unduly probing questions during the Q&A the week before. Ypsilanti Education Association (YEA) President Krista Boyer, I’m told, attempted to read a statement concerning the superintendent search, and was cut off mid-sentence. In the end, Garrett and Bates suggested that the board might consider an administrative structure that could include both Martin and Lisiscki as co-superintendents, rewarding them, I suppose, for having run two of the State’s worst-performing school districts. (I apologize for the snark. I imagine that, to a great extent, their failures were predetermined by the constricting budgets that they were forced to work with, and other factors. But I still find it odd that we’d be seriously talking about one of them, let alone both, which, to my mind, kind of defeats the purpose of the merger.) According to our friend Maria Cotera, who has written extensively about the state of education in Ypsilanti on this site in the past, there were audible gasps from the crowd when this dual-leadership model was suggested, and some people were even shouting, “No!” (As all of this played out, Martin and Lisiscki were apparently seated at the front of the room, with the board of education, while Irvine was seated in the audience.) Maria approached one of the board members after the meeting to explain why people in the Ypsi community felt so strongly about the need for real change in district leadership, and a heated exchange ensued. She copied me on the letter which she sent to the board member with whom she had exchanged words, and you’ll find it below, with her permission, along with a bit of a preface, putting the whole thing into perspective.

FROM MARIA COTERA:

A very depressing update on school consolidation and the crisis in leadership…

As you know, I have been participating in the redesign of Ypsilanti Community Schools in the wake of the Ypsi-Willow consolidation. I’ve been going to weekly meetings for a little over a month (my group is focused on “climate and culture”) and I have been very inspired and impressed by the good community people who are committed to seeing this process through. The group has included teachers, school social workers, and community organizations (Neutral Zone, Ozone House, etc). We have been talking a lot about “restorative justice” paradigms for improving school culture, and there are people at the table who are very committed to centering social justice in our “climate” conversations. For some time now, I’ve been meaning to update your readers about this wonderful work because it has made me very hopeful for Ypsilanti Community Schools. Unfortunately, recent events have interrupted this idyll, and it looks like it’s business as usual for Ypsi. About a month ago, we were informed that our search for a new superintendent would begin internally, and that the current superintendents would be interviewed before any external candidates. Luckily one internal candidate, Sharon Irvine, who was head of HR in Ypsi Schools decided to throw her hat into the ring, and last Thursday she, along with Dedrick Martin and Laura Lisiscki, gave public interviews to a standing room only crowd. I was absolutely wowed by Sharon Irvine’s presentation. She came off as professional, thoughtful, and committed to improving the district. She gave one of the best interviews I have ever seen, and I wrote enthusiastically to board members afterward, expressing my strong belief that she would be the best person to lead the district as we transition into greatness. Apparently many, many others did as well. Then, on Monday night, the board met to discuss all three candidates, and you can read all about the depressing turn of events here. In a nutshell, the suggestion was made by Don Garret, and seconded by others on the board, that we pursue hiring multiple candidates (presumably the two former superintendents), throwing Sharon Irvine under the bus. This decision was made despite overwhelming support for her from Ypsi constituents. I got into a rather heated exchange with a board member afterward, and rather than recite what happened here, I’m sharing the letter that I wrote at 5:30 in the morning.

Dear Board Member___________,

First of all, let me apologize for losing my temper last night. I regret very much not being able to convey to you my strong feelings about the situation (as well as my commitment to Ypsi Schools) while holding to basic standards of civility.


Honestly, I think I might have been able to hold it together a little better if I didn’t feel like I was watching the Chapelle debacle happen all over again. And it bears mentioning that what was most painful about that situation was not that our beloved school closed, but the way in which the board and administration dealt with us. When parents fought against the closing of Chapelle we were consistently treated with disrespect by the board and the administration. We were treated as if we had no business trying to tell the board or administration what to do, as if we were just interfering with business as usual. That struggle was not just about one school and whether it would stay open, but about whether, and to what extent, the board and administration was accountable to the very people who were its PRIMARY stakeholders: parents and families. Consistently, as with the discussion last night, the people who spoke out were marginalized as “just a few loud voices” as if what we were fighting for was irrelevant to the rest of the community. Never did anyone back then (other than Kira Berman or Andy Fanta) suggest that maybe we were actually articulating the sentiments of the parents who couldn’t make every meeting. Indeed, our community meetings (organized by us, not the board or the administrations) numbered in the hundreds and included all sectors of the Ypsi community. In short, we know very well that the community can be mobilized when they care about something. Just as it would be incorrect for us to assume that we speak for the entire Ypsi school community, it is simply flawed thinking for you and the rest of the board to assume that the people who were not there last night support Dedrick Martin (as Linda Horne suggested). Indeed, it has been my experience that when people in the community do feel strongly about a situation, they will come out in force, as they did to save Chapelle, and they will not rely on surrogates to speak their minds.

Why am I talking about old history (Chapelle) here? Because to my mind, that situation helps us to diagnose the real problem with Ypsi schools, a problem that goes way beyond its budget woes, and one that will (apparently) not be resolved in this current effort to “re-imagine” the schools. It was on display last night, and many in the audience recognized it immediately. Three years ago, when faced with the community outcry over Chapelle, our relatively new superintendent could have approached the situation very differently. He could have seen the huge outpouring of support as an indicator of public investment, not just in a building, but in what that building represented—in its vision of community. He could have thought: “maybe we can parlay this passion into renewed passion for our schools?” He could have said: “what is Chapelle doing right? How is it getting stakeholders from across Ypsi to care so much? And how can I develop that passion in all our schools?” THAT is leadership. THAT is visionary thinking. Had he done that, perhaps we would be in a different situation right now. Perhaps we would be able to sing the praises of Chapelle and all of the other schools we care about, perhaps our enrollments wouldn’t be in a death spiral (an outcome many of us predicted). Had he done that, he would have earned the undying support of many of us, and we would now be begging you to keep him. This is not just about “giving in” to community pressure, but about having the courage to listen to his constituents and TRULY think outside of the box. But he didn’t do that. What he and the board did instead was to circle the wagons, take a defensive posture, and discount everything we had to say as if it were irrelevant. 

Which is why I reacted so strongly when you gestured toward the pictures on the wall (of the superintendents) and said (rather dismissively) “you people aren’t satisfied with anyone, how many of these men have you run out of the job?” Frankly, the suggestion that we are merely irrational complainers who would hate anyone who took on the job of superintendent is deeply offensive to the intelligence of the community that you currently represent, and displays an attitude of disregard that seems consistent with the attitude of past board members. We, the community, the parents, the teachers are on the ground every day in our schools, we know, better than anyone else what the health of our educational ecosystem is because we live and breathe it. Our impressions and ideas are not just irrational “reactions;” they are informed by experience, and in the case of the teachers, real knowledge about the best educational environment for our children. As a board member, and our representative, your commitment, your compassion, and your respect, should be as available to us as it is to the current superintendent. 

Someone said last night, out of earshot, “Ypsi will never change.” After Chapelle closed, many, many people said the same thing, but we remained committed to the schools and passionate about their success. Over the last three years that passion has waned, as we have watched our schools slowly decline. We no longer encourage new parents to enroll their kids, and when people express doubts about the schools, we no longer passionately defend them, we merely shrug our shoulders and say “it is what it is.” This is tragic. The closing of Chapelle did not break us, it was what followed: the revelation that David Houle (who Martin hired from Willow Run and who called for the closing of Chapelle) had made our finances vastly worse (and hidden that fact), the half-baked curricular changes that were introduced to the public seemingly at random, the dysfunctional consolidated busing system, the reactionary resistance to field trips and other enrichment activities, the unwillingness of the administration to engage ANY new ideas (contrary to Martin’s assertion, New Tech was in the works before his arrival), the disaster at the high school. By any measure the last three years have been a depressing parade of failures. This is not a personal attack—it is an accurate diagnosis of REALITY that is backed up by our lived experience as well as the district’s declining enrollments.

When this consolidation effort got underway, I joined it because I still had an sliver of hope that we could turn out schools around. We were promised a “complete reboot” and though many of us had doubts about consolidating, we mobilized our friends and family to support the effort. Over the last few months I have been involved with the process, and I have been impressed by the WISD’s ability to bring many stakeholders to the table. I work over 60 hours a week, and I still dedicated every Thursday I could to helping the process along. Last Thursday at yet another meeting, I sat through an interview that simply blew me away, and I began to believe that we could really make this happen. As I listened to Sharon Irvine talk, I began to see a new vision of Ypsilanti Community Schools. I saw a leader that could stop the flow of students out of the district, and who might even bring a few back! I saw someone who could get people behind her, even when she was asking them to make deep sacrifices. I thought: “we won’t find anyone better, even if we do an outside search.” And I began to hope again, and dream, just a little bit, that things would be better. I came home, singing her praises to my husband, and I began to see a glimmer of hope in his eyes as well.

Last night it was a different story. I saw the same old dysfunctional decision making at play. I saw the condescension and outright hostility towards anyone in the community who spoke their mind when their opinions didn’t concord with those of certain board members. I saw appeals to consider the “bravery” and “resilience” of superintendent candidates for undergoing a consolidation process that was inevitable, coupled with the outright disdain for the bravery of teachers, who risked their professional futures by speaking out. I saw an upside down world in which a candidate who has no support from his current staff and has earned the outright hostility of many members of the community he supposedly represents, being praised for “taking-risks” and for making decisions that were unpopular. I saw people on the board suggesting that his lack of support was actually a “plus” and enjoining us to support whomever was chosen, for the good of the district, apparently not realizing that support from the people needs to be EARNED not demanded.

So I let my passion for the future of our schools get the best of me, and I lost my cool.


Yelling is never the answer, I know that, but a lot is riding on this decision, and, as I said last night, my commitment to the district is both deeply personal and political. I believe, very strongly, that the public schools, especially in a place like Ypsi where divisions between communities can run deep, are one of the last civic and social places where people come together. There’s lots of talk of the “diversity” of our schools, and usually its empty rhetoric, but just last Friday I was at a dance at Estabrook and I marveled at all of the people there. It was a true cross section of our community, with people of all races and classes mingling freely as their children ran like crazy all over the place. For me, this has always been the wonderful thing about Ypsi schools, and it has kept us here even when the future seemed very bleak. As I have said many times before, the public schools are our last, best, laboratory for democracy. They are places where people from all sides of town come together, with a singular mission, to teach our children that we must all stand together or fall apart. 

Ultimately, this is less about who will guide our future, than about how decisions are made, and whether the input of a community’s primary stakeholders carries any weight at all in the decision-making process. Unfortunately, in Ypsilanti, the community has been seen as an impediment, not a primary partner in this process. I thought this would change with consolidation, but after last night, I realize that I was wrong.

Respectfully,
Maria Cotera

Personally, it seems odd to me that the board would even consider bringing back either Martin or Lisiscki without first doing a comprehensive outside search. That, to me, is lunacy. I can accept that one of them might be the right person for the job, but I don’t see how the board could be expected to make a decision of that magnitude without first knowing who else is available and willing to take on the challenge. Not doing a broad search for a position of such critical importance is, in my opinion, irresponsible at best. As Maria points out, we have a huge opportunity here, and we cannot afford to make the wrong decision when it comes to leadership. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this is the last shot that we have to turn around Ypsil public schools, and we cannot squander the opportunity. Now is the time for bold change, and we need a visionary leader to make that happen. And, to be quite honest, I haven’t seen the potential of that from either of our previous superientendents.

The meeting to select a superintendent has been delayed until this Monday, February 25, at 7:30 PM. The meeting will take place at the Willow Run Community Schools Auditorium at 235 Spencer Lane, and it promises to be a doozy. A PDF of the agenda can be found here.

Also of interest: Apparently, the YPSD has taken down its own Facebook page because it was getting overloaded with negative comments, but some rebellious community members have established their own Facebook page to replace it, and ensure that information gets out in a timely fashion.

MARK: So, what just happened a Cesar Chavez?

DANIEL: Cesar Chavez Academy (CCA), the largest charter school in Detroit, and second largest in Michigan, just won a union election by a greater than 2-to-1 margin. They elected to join the Michigan Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (Michigan ACTS), an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), AFT Michigan, and the AFL-CIO. CCA has 4 campuses — lower elementary (K-2), upper elementary (3-5), middle (6-8), and high (9-12) — and educates about 2,200 students. The size of our bargaining unit is about 150 and is comprised of teachers, specialists, counselors, and social workers. CCA is managed by a private company, The Leona Group, so staff are not considered “public employees.” Because of this, the election, and subsequent contract, will be sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) – the federal agency that oversees private-sector labor laws.

The election victory is the culmination of months of organizing that began last April. After building an Organizing Committee, the campaign went public at the beginning of the school year, in late August, and a petition was filed with the National Labor Relations Board at the end of December, after a large rally where hundreds of members, parents, and community supporters demanded a quick election. The election was scheduled in early January.

MARK: Am I correct that, while there have been successful attempts to organize in other states, that this is the first charter in Michigan to unionize? And, if that’s the case, what did we learn from these experiences elsewhere?

DANIEL: Actually, this isn’t the first charter school in Michigan to organize. AFT-MI represents two other charter schools — most notably Arts Academy in the Woods (AAW), a charter school in Fraser that unionized last year. AAW is also a member of Michigan ACTS. But, yes, there are only a few that have successfully unionized.

This is, however, the first for-profit school to go union in Michigan. CCA is the flagship school of The Leona Group, the nation’s third largest for-profit management company. Leona has schools across the country – in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Florida, and Arizona. CCA is also one of the oldest charter schools in the state, having been established back in 1996. It’s also the first school that The Leona Group managed.

There are other AFT “ACTS” projects around the country, including campaigns in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Ohio, and New Jersey. All are working to organize charter school teachers, and many have a number of successful organizing drives. We’ve learned a great deal from theses other campaigns, but perhaps most notably that it can be very difficult to successfully organize charter school employees. Each campaign presents it’s own specific set of issues so we must spend quite a bit of time preparing for our organizing drives.

MARK: Another state may have overtaken us, but, as of a few years ago, Michigan, I believe, had more for-profit charter schools than any other state. What can you tell us about the current situation in the state? How many charters do we have, and how do they break down between for-profit and non-profit?

DANIEL: We are still number one in terms of for-profit education management organizations (EMOs). Our state legislature has passed a number of laws that allow for-profit EMOs to thrive – thus the high number.

The 2010/2011 numbers: 44 for-profit companies managing roughly 180 schools, 12 non-profit schools managing 35-40 schools, and a handful of self-managed schools without an EMO.

These numbers have gone up in the past year and will continue to rise. Last year, legislation was passed that lifts the cap on charter schools in Michigan. Currently, in Detroit, more than half of all students are being educated in “non-traditional” school distracts. This includes the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) and charter schools.

MARK: Given the relatively high turnover rate of charter teachers, I would think that unionization would be a challenge. After the success here, however, are you enthusiastic about the possibilities in other charter schools?

DANIEL: For a number of reasons, unionizing charter teachers is challenging. Like many of our graduate and adjunct locals, turnover is high. We’re also dealing with private management companies that are not interested in yielding the unmitigated power they have at their schools.

Nevertheless, we do know that charter educators, like teachers in traditional (unionized) school districts, want a voice in their school communities. Overcoming fear and dealing with dictatorial EMOs is difficult, but not impossible. We are eager to continue working with charter teachers across the state. The buzz surrounding this election will certainly help new educators discover CCA ACTS, but the real victory will come after we win a contract.

MARK: Organizing in small, individual schools, I imagine, is something new for you, and will require a somewhat different model. How are you adapting to make this happen?

DANIEL: Chavez is a rather large school district — larger than many of our traditional K-12 districts. While organizing at individual schools/districts is different than organizing larger higher-ed locals, the basic model is still very much the same. We must build real relationships across our school communities and work everyday to ensure that we’re talking about our issues and united in our effort to improve them.

More than ever, we need to work alongside community groups and parents, as their voices are integral to our success. At CCA, parents and community activist were crucial in helping us get to the election. They came out en masse to Board meetings, attended our rally, and even signed a letter to The Leona Group for us.

MARK: If a teacher at a charter school happens to find this interview, and wants to pursue unionization at his/her school, what would you recommend that they do?

DANIEL: Contact Michigan ACTS! It will take some real time and effort, but we can help you develop a plan that will work at your school. You can email us at: michiganacts@aftmichigan.org. Or call: 313-393-2200. And, if you want to follow what we’re doing, you can like us on Facebook.

MARK: What, realistically, can the teachers at unionized charter schools in Michigan expect in terms of results? Where will you be focusing, and what do you think is achievable?

DANIEL: We’ve accomplished a lot already — building a authentic school communities, empowering teachers to speak-up for what they believe in, etc. Of course, we believe that there is much more to do contractually.

Charter school teachers have almost none of the protections that teachers in traditional k-12s have. Job security, professional compensation, standardized rules and procedures, and having a recognized voice in school policy are all important.

We will prioritize our bargaining platform after we survey membership and establish a Bargaining Committee. We know that we’re going to face a lot of resistance from The Leona Group, so continuing to build power — both at school and in the community — will be the lynchpin of our success.

MARK: How does the recent passage of so-called right-to-work legislation in Michigan complicate the effort to unionize charter schools?

DANIEL: As you can imagine, the so-called right-to-work legislation makes organizing even more difficult. The important takeaway from Chavez, I think, is that despite the attacks on organized labor in recent years, teachers still want to join unions. Governor Snyder claimed that people should have the right to join unions, and the educators at CCA made their decision loud and clear. They’re saying “Union YES!”

Here’s hoping the teachers at Cesar Chavez all the best as they move forward, and fight not only to protect their rights, but to change an industry which has proven itself, over and over again, to care more about corporate profits than the futures of those young Americans they’re paid to educate and the long term viability of those communities in which they operate.

[note: The top two images are from the December 20 Cesar Chavez Rally for Recognition, and the bottom one is from their victory party a few days ago.]

Maybe I’m unusual, but I find it interesting that an organization dedicated to the principle of putting children first would spend half a million dollars in an attempt to keep weaken labor, and, as a result, bring down the quality of life of countless families, many of whom have children. But apparently the right of workers to unionize is what’s been keeping the children of Michigan from reaching their full potential, and not the fact that resources are evaporating at an alarming rate, as class sizes rise and demoralized teachers flee. If I were a smart ass, I might suggest that her $500,000 could have been better to put to use i downtown Detroit, where we’ve been told that they’re considering class sizes of 60, or at the Catherine Ferguson Academy, where, not too long ago, we witnessed teen mothers being dragged away in handcuffs for refusing to just walk away, and accept that their beloved school was being closed. But, instead, Rhee invested in ads that warned how, if Prop 2 were to have passed, we couldn’t have fired drunk teachers that were putting our children’s lives at risk.

If I were a cynical person, these facts might lead me to believe that the folks funding StudentsFirst don’t care nearly as much about the education of our children, as they do about destroying unions, containing costs, and driving down their own tax burdens. And, if I were really, really cynical, I might even go so far as to consider that they’re pushing Rhee’s agenda, which relies heavily on rote memorization and standardized testing, because they’d rather have good, obedient workers, than a bright, inquisitive citizenry capable of independent thought. But, clearly that can’t be the case, as the very name of the organization declares that that they’re all about putting the needs of the students first, right? I mean, an organization dedicated to putting corporate interest first wouldn’t be called StudentsFirst, would it? Unless of the tag line of the organization was something like, “Who shall we fuck?”

Speaking of these good samaritans that are financially backing StudentsFirst… these selfless men who only want the best for America’s public school children… it’s hard to find much information about them. Rhee, it would seem, doesn’t like to answer questions about where her funding comes from. (Maybe these wealthy titans of industry are just shy, and she’s protecting them.) Despite that, however, some of them are know. Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch, for instance, is a big contributor, as is New Jersey hedge fund manager David Tepper, and right-wing billionaire Philip Anschutz, who helped make Rhee a household name by featuring her in his 2010 propaganda film Waiting for Superman. (Murdock has “pledged to spend more than $1 billion to bring for-profit schools, including virtual education, to the entire country by electing reform-friendly candidates and hiring top-notch state lobbyists.”) Regardless of their motivation, they all, it would seem, like the StudentsFirst philosophy, which has been summed up as follows by Huffington Post.

…Among the reforms it advocates: abolishing teacher tenure; permitting more teachers without formal education training to take charge of classrooms; evaluating teachers in large measure by their students’ growth on standardized tests; and expanding charter schools, which are publicly funded but typically run by private corporations, including for-profit management firms…

And these conservative leaders of industry are apparently willing to pay Rhee to be the “former teacher” out front, leading the charge, while they watch from the wings. In the first nine months after its launch in the fall of 2010, StudentsFirst had already raised $7.6 million, much of which was spent in Michigan, where, according to the Huffington Post, the organization “spent $955,000 (in the fall of 2011) to lobby state lawmakers for an education package that included evaluating teachers primarily by student test scores and restricting union bargaining rights, so issues like the new evaluation system would not be subject to negotiation.” And, as these reforms passed the legislature, it looks as though their investment paid off. It’s also worth noting, I think, that Rhee has expressed a desire to raise $1 billion in five years, so I think it’s safe to assume that we’ll see a lot more of her here, putting money behind friendly candidates, buying radio and television ads, and lobbying our elected officials.

Speaking of funding politicians friendly to their cause, they’re already doing it in Michigan. According to an MLive report in October of 2011, StudentsFirst gave Michigan Representative Paul Scott “roughly $70,000″ to avoid a recall effort initiated by the Michigan Education Association as a result of his work to push Rhee’s teacher tenure reform laws. In this instance, however, the sizable contribution wasn’t enough. State Representative Scott was recalled on November 8, 2011.

Rhee’s entire system, and I probably should have mentioned this earlier, is built upon the belief that everything boils down to test scores. She doesn’t think about the intangibles. She doesn’t think about art. She doesn’t think about creative problem solving and innovation. School, for Rhee, is about learning english and math, and taking standardized tests to demonstrate proficiency. Tests yield data, and, from this data, decisions can be made as to which teachers are fired, and which are promoted. It’s that simple. Students are, in the view of Rhee, simply widgets on a conveyor belt, and their teachers are nothing more than factory workers. And, if you turn out faulty widgets, you lose your job… And, when I say “students,” I mean public school students. Clearly this isn’t the way any of these people who are funding StudentsFirst would want their own children educated. This is just about bringing those who can’t go elsewhere up to an acceptable level of competence as inexpensively as possible. This is No Child Left Behind followed through to its logical conclusion.

And, speaking of testing, I should mention that many of the gains that Rhee made in D.C. public schools turned out to be largely fiction. Teachers and administrators, fearful of losing their jobs, simply found ways to give Rhee the numbers that she needed for the press conferences that she was so fond of calling. [The USA Today investigative report on the D.C. cheating scandal that lost Rhee her job can be found here.]

I could keep going with this, but I think, at this point, I’ll hand things off to our much more competent friends at Frontline, who just produced an incredible piece about Rhee, using, among other things, a great deal of footage they shot while she was working in the D.C. public schools… I particularly like the part where she called in the PBS camera crew to get footage of her firing a principal who, according to her metrics, was underperforming. (She’s very good at self-promotion.)

Watch The Education of Michelle Rhee on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

One last thing, as long as we’re talking about charter schools, and the lack of oversight. Did you happen to see the story the other day about the $20 million racketeering case against the founders of an Oregon charter school company? In case you didn’t, here’s a clip.

Tim King and Norm Donohoe, who ran a chain of taxpayer-funded charter schools across small-town Oregon from their headquarters in Clackamas, scammed the state out of $17 million and must repay that plus $2.7 million more, the state said in a court filing this week.

The legal claim, brought Thursday by the Oregon Department of Justice in Marion County Circuit Court, accuses the pair of racketeering, money laundering and other fraud from 2007 to 2010…

The state provided startup grants of up to $450,000 per charter school. The state Department of Educationalso paid about $6,000 a year for each student enrolled, relying on the charter school operators to document the number. The state now says those records were “erroneous, false and misleading.”…

Some of the schools abruptly closed during the school year, leaving students and teachers in a lurch. Others have since stopped operating. Still others operate under new auspices…

It’s probably worth noting at this point in the conversation that, if the Public Education Finance Act of 2013 is put into effect in Michigan as it’s currently written, there will be no ceiling on the number of charter schools allowed in the state, and these schools will only be answerable to a governor-appointed chancellor, and not to either the State Board of Education or the State School Superintendent. Given what just happened in Oregon, I’m inclined to say that this would be a horrible idea, but I’m sure that Rhee and her backers would argue otherwise.

Oh, guess what I also just learned…. As of a year ago, Michigan had a quarter of the nation’s for-profit charter schools. And that’s before the passage of the Public Education Finance Act of 2013, which will really open up the floodgates. (The legislation would even make it possible for for-profit charters to buy up former public school buildings, which had been built with taxpayer dollars, for pennies on the dollar.) One can just imagine what the education landscape in Michigan will look like in anther year or two.

[note: I can't take credit for the images which accompany this article. I just woke up and found them in my mailbox. It would appear that I have elves.]

Saying “I’ve never considered myself a conspiracy theorist—until now,” Rob Glass, the Superintendent of the Bloomfield Hills School District, sent a letter out to parents in his district yesterday, outlining the education reform plans unveiled last week by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. “This package of bills,” said Glass, “is the latest in a yearlong barrage of ideologically-driven bills designed to weaken and defund locally-controlled public education, handing scarce taxpayer dollars over to for-profit entities operating under a different set of rules.”

The 302-page legislative package, which you can download by clicking here, was drafted by Lansing lawyer Richard McLellan, a former official in the administration of Republican Governor John Engler, and the cofounder of the Koch Brothers-funded think tank, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. (To give you an idea as to where they are ideologically, we have the Mackinac Center to thank for the concept of financial martial law.) McLellan, who has long been a proponent of implementing a school voucher system in Michigan, which would channel public money into the coffers of private, for-profit schools, had been given the task last year by Snyder to rewrite the State’s 33-year-old School Aid Act, which is essentially the blueprint that dictates how our public schools are funded. Here, in the words of Superintendent Glass, is an explanation of what McLellan, through his prestigious-sounding new organization – the Oxford Foundation – has come up with.

House Bill 6004 and Senate Bill 1358- Would expand a separate and statewide school district (the Education Achievement Authority of Michigan or EAA) overseen by a governor-appointed chancellor and functioning outside the authority of the State Board of Education or state school superintendent. These schools are exempt from the same laws and quality measures of community-governed public schools. The EAA can seize unused school buildings (built and financed by local taxpayers) and force sale or lease to charter, non-public or EAA schools.

House Bill 5923- Creates several new forms of charter and online schools with no limit on the number. Bundled with HB 6004/SB1358, many of these schools could be created by the EAA. Public schools are not allowed to create these new schools unless they charter them. Selective enrollment/dis-enrollment policies will likely lead to greater segregation in our public schools. This bill creates new schools without changing the overall funding available, further diluting resources for community-governed public schools.

Senate Bill 620- Known as the ‘Parent Trigger’ bill, this would allow the lowest achieving 5% of schools to be converted to a charter school while allowing parents or teachers to petition for the desired reform model. This bill… disenfranchises voters, ends their local control, and unconstitutionally hands taxpayer-owned property over to for-profit companies. Characterized as parent-empowerment, this bill does little to develop deep, community-wide parent engagement and organization.

So, this legislation, if passed, would essentially create a parallel, for-profit education system, right alongside the Michigan public school system, unanswerable to anyone, save for an appointee of the Governor. There would be no accountability to the State Board of Education of the State Superintendent of Schools. And, as Glass points out, these for-profit entities would be able, like parasites, to take over our vacated public school facilities, which had been constructed with taxpayer dollars, for pennies on the dollar.

And the idea, it would seem, is to force this legislation through the Republican controlled House and Senate now, during the lame duck session, before the new legislative class makes their way to Lansing… which doesn’t leave us much time to get organized. (I believe I’ve heard that we have about two weeks before this would come to a vote.)

Here, in the interest of fairness, is how McLellan, through the Oxford Foundation, is positioning the legislation.

…The new Michigan Public Education Finance Act of 2013 is aimed at creating a public education funding system that allows a student to learn “Any Time, Any Place, Any Way and Any Pace,” and create the path toward more robust performance-based funding. Below are five major concepts included in the draft.

1. Removal of District “Ownership” of a Student. A student will be allowed to take a course, multiple courses or the student’s entire bundled education package from any public education district in the state. A local school district will maintain its ability to determine whether to participate in open enrollment.

2. Creation of Online Learning Options with Performance Funding. Technology is changing the delivery of instruction to students. A student will be allowed to access instruction from across the state using advancing technology. The district providing the online course will immediately receive public funding, based on performance measures. Again, a district will not limit a student’s choices.

3. Funding will truly follow the Student. Under the current model, a school receives 90% of its state general education funding based on where a student sits on the first Wednesday in October. We create a dynamic system, where the funding will actually follow the student. 15 other states are already using the Average Daily Membership method for allocating funds.

4. Framework for Performance-based Funding for all courses. We are setting the framework for the full implementation of computer-adaptive student growth and assessment tools that are on the horizon. We are maintaining the current growth funding incentives for the next fiscal year until the Smarter Balanced assessment and the recommendations from the Michigan Council on Educator Effectiveness are complete.

5. Early Graduation Scholarships. We are creating an incentive for students – who are ready – to graduate early. $2,500 will be available for each semester a student graduates early. Let’s help those students who are ready to graduate.

So, if I’m reading this correctly, not only will our students be incentivized to leave school early, thus lessening the burden on Michigan tax payers, but they’ll also be able to complete their coursework from home, having used Michigan taxpayer dollars to purchase online modules of questionable educational value from the likes of Mike Huckabee… Sounds like a great plan, doesn’t it?

Michigan Senate Democratic Leader Gretchen Whitmer, who, along with other Democrats, had proposed a competing plan called Michigan 2020, apparently doesn’t buy the bullshit line about how this is being done to help children. She took to Daily Kos almost immediately after the Governor’s plan became public, and shared the following thoughts.

…(W)hile so many of us advocate for the need to reinvest in our schools throughout the state and provide each and every student with a world class education, Governor Snyder, the so-called tough “nerd”, has taken the opposite approach. He has pushed through budgets over the past two years that have raided nearly $2 billion from our schools and used it instead to provide tax handouts to big corporations without the promise of a single job being created. He has blamed teachers for poor performing schools while gutting the funding needed to keep our schools competitive and made it more and more difficult for students to achieve the success necessary to compete in a rapidly changing global job market.

Yesterday, Governor Snyder released the latest and most offensive step in his anti-education agenda in the form of a proposed overhaul of Michigan’s school aid funding. The deeply flawed plan would end public education as we know it in Michigan by enacting nearly the same voucher system that Michigan voters overwhelmingly rejected in 2000. It would create fiscal uncertainty for every single school in the state and only succeed in lining the pockets of the CEOs running for-profit corporate schools.

It isn’t a plan that looks forward, it’s one that only looks back on previous attempts by out-of-state interests to profit off of Michigan’s students. It’s a plan that says the education of our children is better left to the corporate accountants at “Schools, Inc.” than it is with the teachers in our classrooms. It’s nothing short of a disaster waiting to happen and one that I find simply offensive as both a legislator and as a mother of two young girls…

So, here’s how this trick apparently works, for those of you in other states who would like to attempt something similar… You defund education to the point of collapse, and, then, pointing to the inevitable failure, you make the case that the only option left available is to essentially hand the whole thing over to corporate America. And you bring in an anti-public education operative with ties to ALEC and the Koch Brothers, hiding behind the facade of a pro-education foundation with “Oxford” in its name, so that it sounds super smart, to draft the whole thing. Then, you announce it right before the Thanksgiving break, knowing that no one will take notice. Evil and brilliant, right?

The problem is, people in Michigan, who already voted down the idea of school vouchers in 2000, are taking notice, and the momentum against Snyder is beginning to build as more and more superintendents are stepping up to inform families in their districts. Following, as an illustration of the fact that the people are beginning to line up against Synder on this, is a clip from the recent editorial in the Detroit Free Press.

Lame-duck legislative sessions are typically the devil’s cauldron, filled with a steaming heap of cowardly and ill-thought-out legislation that wouldn’t have a prayer of passing if citizens (or even lawmakers) were paying much attention.

This year is no different, with the Republican majorities in both chambers weighing serious, sweeping structural changes to public education in a hurried and haphazard fashion. Certainly, the goal of this sloppy legislation isn’t to improve schooling (you’d need a far more careful approach to do that) so what’s the motive? Likely, it’s ideology — which is often the enemy of improved outcomes…

There’s no question that Michigan could use more innovation in education, and open minds about school finance and governance are going to be a prerequisite in the ongoing conversation about change. But in a host of bills that hadn’t seen the light of day until after the Nov. 6 election, the Legislature is poised to ram through reforms that really ought to be discussed and debated in a much broader context, and probably over a much longer period of time.

And much of what’s being proposed looks a lot like McLellan’s voucher system, just by another name.

The legislation being debated would essentially open up the state to creation of an unlimited number of schools run by for-profit charter outfits, businesses, universities and just about anyone else, with the use of money that now funds public school districts. Even the newly created Education Achievement Authority, which debuted this year as a special district for chronically low-performing schools, would gain sweeping power to create new schools under one of the bills being considered.

The idea behind them is principally to introduce more market competition for public schools, and to allow for more innovation.

Neither is a bad idea.

But, as crafted, these bills would not have these new schools face the kind of oversight — standard-setting and enforcement — that the state has been inching toward implementing for other public schools.

This has been a running problem with the efforts to expand charter schools since Snyder was elected in 2010; advocates believe the market for independent schools is self-regulating, and that bad charters will close because Michigan families won’t choose them.

The problem is that, in practice, that hasn’t happened in the most robust charter market in the state, Detroit, where scores of middling or even awful charters stay open year after year, providing no better education than their public school counterparts…

Assuming you agree, there are a few things you can do immediately. On one end of the spectrum, there’s civil disobedience. And, on the other, there are petitions. Here, for those of you who’d prefer not to chain yourselves up to the fence surrounding the Governor’s gated community, or protest at a local for-profit charter school, is a link to a petition, which, as of right now, already has over 11,000 signatures. Here’s what it says.

“Do not continue to promote the passage of HB 6004 or any other legislation that replaces locally elected representatives of the people with unelected State appointed bureaucrats. We do not want the education of our children privatized and our tax dollars and local school buildings turned over to for-profit corporations.”

[note: The Lansing Democrats have now rolled out a petition of their own, and I suspect that, if you sign it, and give them your contact information, they'll keep you updated.]

And, once you share this post with your friends, you could also write to your representatives in the Michigan House and Senate, and tell them that you’re adamantly against Michigan State Senate bills 1358 and 620, and Michigan State House bill 6004 and 5923. And, while you’re at it, you could write to the Governor as well. Here’s his contact information.

Governor Rick Snyder
P.O. Box 30013
Lansing, Michigan 48909
Phone: (517) 373-3400
Email: click here

UPDATE: Oakland Schools Superintendent Dr. Vickie L. Markavitch weighs in….

When I received the above message earlier this afternoon, I didn’t think there was any way that it could possibly be true… I knew, of course, that Ypsi’s schools had suffered severe cuts. Just a few weeks ago, I’d watched Linette design a poster for Fly Children’s Art Center, drawing attention to the fact that kids in Ypsi Public Schools now get, on average, only 20 minutes of art instruction twice a week. I knew that the situation was dire. But I was truly shocked to read that one librarian was servicing all of the children attending our five elementary schools. I wasn’t mentally prepared to accept the fact that we lived in a community where children could no longer access books… So, this evening, I contacted Amanda Uhle, the executive director of our local creative writing non-profit 826 Michigan, and asked her to tell me that, somewhere along the line, a mistake had been made, and this wasn’t really happening in Ypsilanti. Sadly, though, she confirmed it, telling me that, through Amy Sumerton, 826′s program director, they were working diligently to pull together a small team of volunteers, each willing to go into a school for a few hours a week, and help children check out books, conduct research, etc… I told her that I’d help by putting the word out… And, now that I’ve done that, I’m going to rant.

How long are we going to put up with this insanity before we take to the streets and demand that something be done? What’s the breaking point? When do we start chaining ourselves to the doors of our public schools, demanding that our kids be given the educations that they’re entitled to? When do our kids, like the kids of Detroit, start walking out, and demanding what’s rightfully theirs?

I totally respect the folks from 826 for doing this. Nothing could be more noble, in my opinion, than finding creative ways to overcome obstacles and put books into the hands of children. But at what point to we stop participating in this broken system? At what point do we stop covering for the legislators in Lansing who, quite honestly, would rather pay to incarcerate our children than provide them with educations, and the tools they need to pull themselves out of poverty? Their agenda, as we know, is to dismantle public education, and replace it with a for-profit system that allows corporate interests to siphon money from the public coffers, while destroying the teachers union in the process. We know this is the case, and yet we continue to rationally deal with each problem along that path as it arises, rather than to go after those we know to be responsible.

Enabling the rich to pay less in taxes while our children are unable to access their school libraries, I would argue, is a treasonous act. And we need to start acting accordingly.

Is there waste in the public school system as it currently exists? Yes. Should we work to eliminate it? Absolutely. But it’s not school teachers who wrecked our economy, and, contrary to what Mitt Romney might say, it’s not Big Bird that’s got us into debt. (The entire budget of PBS is spent by the military in a mere six hours.) We’re here today because of deregulated financial markets, a reckless foreign policy that put our troops on the ground in the middle east, and the Bush tax cuts. We are not here because we employed too many librarians, and spent too much in our socialist quest to teach toddlers how to count using puppets.

Humanity, as we know, is facing a crisis the magnitude of which modern man has never seen. Our population is swelling, our natural resources are dwindling, and our ecosystem is collapsing. We are running out oil. The “dead zones” in our oceans are growing. Temperatures are rising. Species are dying off. And “thousand year” storms are becoming commonplace. We’ve not only left the next generation a dying world, but, now, terrified and consumed by greed, we’re taking away their educations. We’re taking from them the only lifeline that they have. If we were smart, we’d cut class sizes in half, recruit the brightest people in our country to become teachers, and invest in education at unprecedented levels. Instead, we’re upping class size, encouraging our most knowledgable teachers to retire, and effectively shuttering our libraries. This is not a viable long term solution. This is the way a civilization commits suicide.