Detroit Teachers #1 Goal: Themselves

Detroit teachers and school board members have one primary concern, and it's the best possible education for resident children. Rather, it's merely saving Detroit's dying school system, which means for the board members saving the institution that they run, and for the system's teachers and admins, it's saving their jobs. As these people fight to save their fiefdom, their customers -- the students and parents of Detroit -- continue to flee, and the government school system dies.

Consider that this system gets from local, state, and federal taxes pools a total of about $12k per student each year, and all its facilities are paid for. That amounts to $240k for a single 20-student classroom. How are these people managing to produce failure with such a huge budget?

Simple: As this article demonstrates, these people ensure that only they can spend this money. They use all of their waning powers prevent anybody else from taking that money and seeing if they can succeed where Detroit's government school officials have failed. This article reminds us that some racist honkey in the suburbs a few years ago offered to donate $200 million to build a set of private schools-of-choice in Detroit for Detroit residents, provided that (1) these schools operated independently of Detroit's school board; and (2) the schools received for their students that $12k per student budget. Response from those presiding over Detroit's bankrupt (literally) school system, including Mayor Kilpatrick: No.

If they had accepted, I wonder how many Detroit parents would have given it a chance.

Here's an article that touches on the corrupted spending practices of this outfit: A few months ago a new superintendent got ousted, and he says it's because he tried to expose thieving.