This past April, folks at the New York Times, using data collected by the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford, created an online tool allowing users to explore the correlation between money, race and academic success across America’s school districts. Following are two screen captures. The first shows where the Ann Arbor school district […]
The Whitmore Lake School District, which presently serves approximately 1,000 K-12 students, is reported to be $60 million is debt. And word on the street is that Lansing might dissolve the entire thing in favor of an all-charter system, unless a way can be found to put the district back on a path toward solvency. […]
Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, Ypsilanti will, as it’s done for the past seven years, play host to the incredible Michigan music festival known as Mittenfest. Following is a short interview I conducted online with organizers Brandon Zwagerman, Jeremy Peters and Amy Sumerton on how Mittenfest got started, how it’s changed over the years, […]
In early 2011, a University of Michigan janitor by the name of Jean-Claude Toviave was arrested and charged with enslaving four West African children in his Ypsilanti home. The four, it would seem, were forced to cook, clean, iron and shine shoes for the 6-foot-3, 230-pound Toviave, who, when he was unsatisfied with their performance, […]
