January 2, 2009



Protecting Kids From An Education

The problem is, the guy who wanted to pay for it, for inner-city kids, is white, and his plan would eliminate the stranglehold the teacher's union has on the schools (the severely failing Detroit Public Schools). Nolan Finley writes in The Detroit News:

With the Detroit Public Schools near disintegration, it ought to be noted that it's been five years since Plymouth philanthropist Bob Thompson was told to take his $200 million and get back to the suburbs. Thompson, a retired road builder obsessed with spending his fortune to get urban children a high-quality education, ran into a political buzz saw when he offered to open 15 charter high schools in the city that would guarantee to graduate 90 percent of their students and send 90 percent of those graduates on to college. Community activists denounced Thompson as a white meddler out to steal their children. They were joined in their absurdity by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who threw their lot in with the teacher union. The rejection of Thompson's millions became a national story of a city so seized by racial divisions it couldn't set them aside even to save its children. So instead of a network of alternative schools that would have rescued roughly 5,000 students from the sinking DPS, look what Detroit has today: A school district that fails to graduate 70 percent of its students; a school board that's fired two superintendents and an interim superintendent in four years; 18 of its 19 high schools on the failure list; and a fiscal meltdown. Five years after Thompson was given the boot, Detroit is officially the worst big city school district in the nation and still sends more children to welfare and prison than it does to college. Think about how different things might have been. Had the Thompson schools been built, they would be preparing to graduate their first class in the spring. Two thousand Detroit seniors would be making college plans. And Detroit's fast-fleeing middle class would have a reason to stay. Yet no one has dialed up Thompson to apologize, to say they were wrong, to beg him for a second chance. In fact, the governor and Democratic lawmakers are stubbornly blocking other Bob Thompsons from saving Detroit's children.

Idiotically, Michigan governor Granholm is refusing to lift a cap on charter schools.

And the teacher's union was, apparently, a big part of keeping him out. Here, from 2005:

Thompson, of Plymouth, Mich., originally offered the money in 2003, but was rebuffed by the Detroit Federation of Teachers and others. Despite passage of a new state law that year allowing for the creation of up to 15 new charter high schools in Detroit, none were built. The Detroit Federation of Teachers held a rally in Lansing, which was followed by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Gov. Jennifer Granholm deciding to withdraw support for Thompson. The incident shed a negative light on Detroit both statewide and nationally. Time magazine columnist Joe Klein said the DFT "led a furious, and scurrilous, campaign against (Thompson's) generosity." The Metro Times, a weekly paper, said Thompson's offer was "amazingly generous," especially "in a city where the schools, like the government, are a stunning failure." ...The Detroit Federation of Teachers, however, remains staunchly opposed to the plan. "We believe Mr. Thompson earnestly wants to make a positive difference in the lives of the children in Detroit," Janna Garrison, DFT president, told Michigan Education Report. "But we think he's going about it the wrong way."

Of course you do. Because he's exposing and will continue to expose how teachers' unions ruin it for the kids they're supposed to be educating. If teachers truly cared about educating the kids, they'd weep with gratitude for Thompson and his money. Greed and the promotion of failure in the service of it are especially ugly where kids' welfare is concerned.

Here's another story, from The Weekly Standard, by Henry Payne:

For thirty years, Detroit has been hemorrhaging population as a result of high crime, high taxes, soaring insurance rates--and a crumbling system of public education, which has left Detroit's adult population with a staggering rate of functional illiteracy (47 percent, according to the federal government's National Center for Education Statistics). This leaves a shallow employment pool for any enterprise looking to locate in the city. Seeking educational alternatives, state Republicans--against fierce opposition from teacher unions and Democrats--succeeded in passing legislation in the 1990s authorizing charter schools. These public schools are governed independently of local school boards; each is sponsored by a city or a university, and most are nonunion and have a distinctive educational approach. Since then, 39 charter schools have opened in Detroit, yet the number of Detroit families on charter waiting lists is estimated in the thousands. Moreover, most charter schools serve grades K through 6 (elementary schools are the cheapest to build), which leaves a crying demand for high schools. In 2002, Republican governor John Engler answered parents' pleas for aid with a push to bring 15 more charters to Detroit. Enter Robert Thompson. A Michigan farm boy who later taught school in Detroit, Thompson went on to found the state's biggest asphalt paving company, working out of the Detroit suburb of Plymouth. When he sold his company in 1999 for $461 million, he and his wife, Ellen, created the Thompson Foundation, dedicated to helping Detroit's poor. They first funded University Preparatory Academy, a successful K-12 charter school with a 90/90 system that is the model for the high schools Thompson now wants to build. Thompson credits his own success to the education he received, and he is determined to give Detroit's poor the same opportunities. "The only way to get those kids out of there is through education," says the soft-spoken Thompson. IN DETROIT, officials reacted to Thompson's proffered $200 million not with gratitude but with rage. The Michigan Federation of Teachers urged a walkout, declaring a school holiday so that union members could march on the state capitol in protest of charter schools. State Democrats cowered before the union, while Detroit's politicians bristled at a white suburbanite's "meddling" in the city's affairs. Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick--whose own children attended a charter school--responded to Thompson's offer by saying, with a dismissive wave of the hand, "Let us make the rules, and if he can't abide by the rules . . . " Says Thompson, "We thought if we tried to do good things, people would appreciate it. I guess we were naive."

You have to laugh at the Kwame quote. Kwame's now abiding by the warden's rules, after failing to abide by society's.

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