Clearly money and/or racism cannot explain the continuing implosion of Detroit's public school system. For 30 or so years blacks have run the system and all city government. The fleeing of students from the system for at least 20 years has been all "black flight", as the district is 90% black, and has lost about 60,000 students between 2001 (160k students) and today in 2006 (about 100k). According to this article, DPS "enrollment dropped 23 percent between 1994 and 2005 but its per-pupil revenue increased 94 percent." In absolute terms, "Detroit received $11,631 per full-time student in state, federal and local cash -- more than several suburban districts."
I am attempting to verify that figure, and identify the "several suburban districts" that receive less per-pupil funds than does DPS (the Detroit News article's reference is vague). Many appolgists for failing public school systems claim that the failing systems get unfairly starved of funds, and that this at least partially explains their failure.
If these figures are accurate, they present more evidence that the failure of TODAY's black-majority public schools do not result from racism or lack of funding. As presented before on this blog, one of the nation's worst public schools is DS's, which also is the highest-funded and tied for most dominated by black municipal and school officials and teachers.
RL readers know that I believe US schools in general, including private schools, are slipping into medicrity, as are its students in general. But black students in particular, and the schools where they dominate, are on average performing much worse than average. Those school, and those students, more than any others need the reforms that I have articulated for solving all academic problems:
1. Require teachers to have BS and BA degrees in academic fields; eliminate "Education" as an accepted field.
2. Eliminate electives and all non-academic classes from the curricula.
3. Require non-english seconary language for all students every day K-12. As a practical matter, we won't fire all the Education teachers. But we will stop hiring them. And we'll stop increasing salaries for teachers who get advanced degrees in Education, but instead for scholarly degrees.
4. Require musical instrument every day K-12 for all students.
5. Eliminate inter-scholastic athletics from schools; shift those to local Parks and Recreation departments.
6. Transform some high schools to trade schools for students who prefer learning trades to earning a High School diploma. Take these facilities seriously, so that graduates with a "Trade Certificate" have something of value. Include some mandatory classes in reading, writing, and math, the sort of watered-down classes that dominate most of the current failing schools.
7. Declare some factilities as daycare holding pens for students who refuse to participate at either High Schools or Trade Schools.
8. Eliminate all non-academic activities from the school day: No AIDS Awareness or Career Awareness assemblies; no visits from local professional sports teams; no Just Say No rallies; no field trips.
9. Extend the school day, and reduce homework. When kids leave at 4:30pm, they should be ready to have fun and participate in sports. With all the above reforms, students will spend more time on scholarly matters, under the tutalidge of subject matter experts. Eight hours of serious scholarly work should be enough!
10. Eliminate junk food, and replace cafeteria foods with nurishing foods.
11. Eliminate mandatory attendance. Students who refuse to participate productively will get shifted over to the Daycare Holding Pens, where they will have options to earn their way back to schools. We cannot let refractory children ruin the sacred teacher-student efforts! Preachers and coaches would not tolerate such behavior, and teachers must not either!
12. Vouchers! And not just partial vouchers, or only vouchers for peopel below a special income level. Full vouchers... for everyone! Let Detroit parents have the full $11, 000 to spend were ever they like. The market will demonstrate who makes the better schools.
Black schools and black students need these reforms, on average, more than anybody else.
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9 comments:
Wow! On page 50 of this document you will find that Detroit is the best-funded district around! In all of Wayne County, only one district gets more per-pupil total funds than Detroit's $11,631, it's another failing black district, Inkster, at $14,406! All the fancy subburbs (Livonia, Canton, Plymouth, Dearborn, Gross Pointe, they all spend less per student than Detroit (and Ikster)! This is revolutionary information, and flatly falsifies one of Nadir's repeated claims about this situation.
"This is revolutionary information, and flatly falsifies one of Nadir's repeated claims about this situation."
Not true. This is not revolutionary information. And according to numbers obtained by The Michigan Citizen, Detroit's students get 3/5 of the per pupil funding that Birmingham gets.
There is a strong argument (made by Carter G. Woodson among others) that poor students should receive MORE per pupil funding than rich students.
But Paul is right. This isn't the real problem.
The real problem with Detroit's Public Schools (aside from real educational reforms - I agree with about 7 out of 11 of Paul's recommendations) is gross financial mismanagement and outright theft by first the state takeover board and now by the current elected school board.
During the 1999-2005 state takeover, the district went from a $91 million budget surplus to a $250 million deficit. The privatization of district services with bloated contracts to industry and massive layoffs have accounted for much of the budgetary shortfalls. (Paul would applaud the privatization even though this meant tremendous loss of tax revenue for Detroit residents who worked at the schools).
The current elected board is playing business as usual, and is operating as it did under the state takeover. Board member Marie Thornton was suspend for 60 days for voicing her opposition to many of the board's unwise actions.
This mismanagement has nothing to do with racism. It has everything to do with political cronyism, capitalist greed, union busting (though the teachers union is not completely innocent in this debacle) and outright theft from the students of DPS.
Black politicians are not the only public officials guilty of horrific financial mismanagement and greed (see the George W. Bush administration), but because Detroit's politicians are in the poorest city in America, they should be more careful with the public's money.
As an African, I am embarrassed by the greed of Black politicians in Detroit and some nations of African. However, as a human, I realize that white folks are just as guilty of greed and mismanagement as Blacks are. But white people hold more wealth from years of slavery and imperialism, so they can lose more money without as many negative effects.
Nadir: Let's discuss the 7 of my 11 planks that you endorse, and the four that you refute.
The vaunted Michigan Citizen is incorrect, according to the primary source. Detroit gets $11,600, and Birmingham gets $13,000. That's not a big disparity. And Inkster ties Bloomfield Hills for the most -- $14,000 -- and while being "just as black" as Detroit's district, if anything it performs worse.
Nadir: Why do you have to be African (a claim that I dispute) to be embarrassed by Africans behaving poorly? Should you, as a human, be equally embarrassed or proud by the actions of others? I am.
"1. Require teachers to have BS and BA degrees in academic fields; eliminate "Education" as an accepted field."
I somewhat agree. Some education classes, which teach teachers how to instruct, and provide useful tools for instructional methods are quite beneficial. I do agree that teachers should be scholars in a particular subject and should teach that subject when they get a teaching job.
"2. Eliminate electives and all non-academic classes from the curricula."
I would say "reduce" not eliminate. Some electives (art, music, economics, civics) are beneficial in the educational process.
"3. Require non-english seconary language for all students every day K-12."
Agreed. Every four years students should pick up a new foreign language, so that by the time they leave high school they are semi-fluent in no fewer than four languages (English and Spanish required, and choices between French, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, German or any number of other tounges.)
"As a practical matter, we won't fire all the Education teachers. But we will stop hiring them. And we'll stop increasing salaries for teachers who get advanced degrees in Education, but instead for scholarly degrees."
Shouldn't this be part of two?
"4. Require musical instrument every day K-12 for all students."
I somewhat agree. In Kindergarten class instruction of a musical instrument is difficult. (Private instruction is quite successful for small kids.) But certainly music classes should start this early and singing should be incorporated into all aspects of learning. We all learned to sing our ABC's and for some of us this is still the best way to remember the alphabet.
"5. Eliminate inter-scholastic athletics from schools; shift those to local Parks and Recreation departments."
Paul is slowly changing my opinion on this, though I'm not all the way there yet.
"6. Transform some high schools to trade schools for students who prefer learning trades to earning a High School diploma. Take these facilities seriously, so that graduates with a "Trade Certificate" have something of value. Include some mandatory classes in reading, writing, and math, the sort of watered-down classes that dominate most of the current failing schools."
Absolutely. I think apprentice programs should also be a large part of these schools.
"7. Declare some factilities as daycare holding pens for students who refuse to participate at either High Schools or Trade Schools."
Some so-called "alternative schools" have already become this for all practical purposes.
"8. Eliminate all non-academic activities from the school day: No AIDS Awareness or Career Awareness assemblies; no visits from local professional sports teams; no Just Say No rallies; no field trips."
I disagree somewhat here. Educational field trips are quite beneficial. Visits from sports teams or local professionals could be helpful if they reenforce the educational message. Career awareness assemblies could be done in a way that they add value to the educational experience and they can truly prepare students for life after high school. I agree that these should all be limited, and should always be linked to a specific lesson.
"9. Extend the school day, and reduce homework. When kids leave at 4:30pm, they should be ready to have fun and participate in sports. With all the above reforms, students will spend more time on scholarly matters, under the tutalidge of subject matter experts. Eight hours of serious scholarly work should be enough!"
Agreed.
"10. Eliminate junk food, and replace cafeteria foods with nurishing foods."
Agreed.
"11. Eliminate mandatory attendance. Students who refuse to participate productively will get shifted over to the Daycare Holding Pens, where they will have options to earn their way back to schools. We cannot let refractory children ruin the sacred teacher-student efforts! Preachers and coaches would not tolerate such behavior, and teachers must not either!"
This does not eliminate mandatory attendance. It says, "if you aren't going to be active in learning, we are going to send you to day-care, where you will be treated like a child." However, I agree that disruptive students should be segregated from students who wish to learn.
"12. Vouchers! And not just partial vouchers, or only vouchers for peopel below a special income level. Full vouchers... for everyone! Let Detroit parents have the full $11, 000 to spend were ever they like. The market will demonstrate who makes the better schools."
I still disagree with this, but only because I believe the money that public schools lose to vouchers could be used for educational reforms. If many of Paul's educaction reforms are enacted in public schools, you would eliminate the need for vouchers.
Also school board members and administrators MUST be committed to the educational experience of the students and not to their own greed and power trips. Otherwise, the cycle will continue.
"The vaunted Michigan Citizen is incorrect, according to the primary source. Detroit gets $11,600, and Birmingham gets $13,000. That's not a big disparity. And Inkster ties Bloomfield Hills for the most -- $14,000 -- and while being "just as black" as Detroit's district, if anything it performs worse."
$1400 per student is a severe disparity when some Detroit high school students don't have toilet paper in their schools and Birmingham 1st graders are being taught algebra.
The real equalizer, however, is educational and administrative reform.
Nadir: It looks like you agree with me on everything except vouchers. I can accept that, since if the other planks get adopted I am confident that success would result. I suppose we should add: Shift expendatures from administration to teacher salaries. If Detroit spends $10k per student, with 20 students per teacher, that's $200,000 per student. Can't a teacher get $100,000 of that?
1. Looks like we agree so long as I agree to some teacher training classes. I do agree with that, but I would put them outside of the university experiance.
2. Art, music, and economics I would not consider electives. I will change my language to "non-academic electives".
3. We agree here. I think that your aim for 4 languages over 12 years is too ambitous, especially with us going now from 0 to 1. But I would not fight against your proposal.
4. We agree. Classes for very young students could constitute learning about notes and reading music. That would satisfy your concern about very young people learning an instrument in a group setting, vs. one-on-one. How about mandating that all schools offer for-fee one-on-one lessons after school?
5. Starting to agree here! Very promising!
6. Agreed! Go trade schools! Nothing to be ashamed of. What if a few thousand otherwise-wayward or uneducated Detroit kids were fully qualified as welders and masons upon graduation? Or graphics artists or web site builders!
7. Looks like we agree here.
8. Nearly agreed here. I just fear that once we let any assemblies or field trips, an avalance will occur. What classes would you cancel to accomidate them?
9. Agreed!
10. Agreed.
11. We agree here: The refractory students would get shipped to the holding tanks, to play basketball and cards all day. They would also have available to them options to earn their way back to High School or Trade School.
12. Vouchers, our only source of disagreement. "If many of Paul's educaction reforms are enacted in public schools, you would eliminate the need for vouchers." Looks like you agree either completely or practically with 1-11.
"Also school board members and administrators MUST be committed to the educational experience of the students and not to their own greed and power trips. Otherwise, the cycle will continue." I contend that 1-11 above would insulate students from curruption, especially if we add: 13, Half of all funding goes to teacher salary.
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