Does anyone really expect anything different?

This from a city that elected an illiterate to be president of the School Board.

The same man who later resigned in disgrace after being caught pleasuring himself at a public meeting (seriously, I am NOT making this up!).

A wise trucker once told me that stupidity should be painful.

Robert Bobb only has a few months left on his contract and it cannot be extended.

Once his contract is over, even though I have my differences with the man (there is no denying the good he has done), I wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.

No one who is as capable as him, who is in their right mind, will ever want to replace him.

And as I've suggested before, the best thing to do here is to let DPS implode on its own.

Gov. Snyder can direct AG Scheutte to go in and clean house.

Once people see past and present DPS Board members and officials hauled away in cuffs, tried, and rooming with Kwame and Monica, people might wise up that there are consequences for their actions. Only then will you begin to see an improvement in DPS.

I am so sick of pouring money into this  hell hole and getting nothing back except a hand asking for more.  

I would have more respect for Snyder if he told Dave Bing to shove it. Detroit is like owning a boat - a hole into which one keeps throwing money.

http://www.freep.com/article/20101123/NEWS01/11230353/Detroit-Public-Schools-to-lose-19-million

In 2002 DPS had 159,000 students.

http://www.data360.org/pub_dp_report.aspx?Data_Plot_Id=538

In the last 20 years, DPS had over 200,000 students.

These children have not disappeared, they and  their families have opted out of DPS.

The majority of Detroit's children now attend either suburban schools of choice or public charter schools.

It's time to stop pretending that DPS's student population is equivalent to the school aged children in Detroit, they're a small and shrinking minority of those children.

If we want to help Detroit's children, aid must be given to all of them in a nondiscriminatory manner, based on their needs, and not based on politics.

For example, we should not give $400M to DPS, but rather consider the alternatives:

1. allocate the money equally to each DPS student as a one time $5,479 transition fee to be split equally between the family and his/her new school and close all of DPS permanently ASAP.

2. Give all of the approximately 200,000  students who live in Detroit $2,000 each to improve their test scores as backpack funding, following them wherever they goDPS now has 73,000 students.

In 2002 DPS had 159,000 students.

http://www.data360.org/pub_dp_report.aspx?Data_Plot_Id=538

In the last 20 years, DPS had over 200,000 students.

These children have not disappeared, they and  their families have opted out of DPS.

The majority of Detroit's children now attend either suburban schools of choice or public charter schools.

It's time to stop pretending that DPS's student population is equivalent to the school aged children in Detroit, they're a small and shrinking minority of those children.

If we want to help Detroit's children, aid must be given to all of them in a nondiscriminatory manner, based on their needs, and not based on politics.

For example, we should not give $400M to DPS, but rather consider the alternatives:

1. allocate the money equally to each DPS student as a one time $5,479 transition fee to be split equally between the family and his/her new school and close all of DPS permanently ASAP.

2. Give all of the approximately 200,000  students who live in Detroit $2,000 each to improve their test scores as backpack funding, following them wherever they go

3. setup a $400M fund to provide a partial college scholarship to all students residing in Detroit who graduate with a "B" or better, making college more affordable to them.  (Similar to the Kalamazoo Promise Scholarship)

If the state were to implement KG One's solution, you would have tens of thousands of Detroit schoolkids flooding the inner-ring suburb's schools. I can tell you that this is something that the suburban parents would be none too pleased with.

Traditionally when a school district opens it's doors as an open district, the school gets overwhelmed with former Detroit schoolkids. These kids aren't used to being in a stable learning environment, and it leads to disciplinary and other problems. Also, the academic standards would plummet as these students aren't accustomed to a more rigorous curriculum. This happened when Redford opened up it's district to outsiders about 10 years ago, and there has been a mass exodus of residents ever since.

The programs in Chicago and Denver were set up utilizing Hillsdale College as a model.

Students, who come from backgrounds that give every prediction they cannot and will not succeed, are exceeding all expectations.  The higher they set the standards, the higher the students continue to rise.  The students are far surpassing their public school counterparts.

Here's the kicker.  Charter schools operate with far less money per pupil than public schools.  They also operate with far less 'administration' than public schools.  There's also no union, as they are all 'at will' employees.  Therefore, they draw teachers who are confident in their own abilities and who do not need to be propped up by a union.

The students in the charter schools, at least in Denver, Chicago, Atlanta and Harlem come from horrible situations (i.e., crack-addict mothers, the foster care system, transient lifestyles, etc.).  These are definitely not middle class, two-parent households.

By all accounts, these children should fail based upon their environments and lack of parenting.

However, they are succeeding and exceeding.

I, too, believe in PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, and I truly wish everyone on the planet did, too.  Unfortunately, that is not realistic.  People are producing children that they have no intention of caring for.  The ONLY way to change that cycle is to educate those children, so they can become productive members of society.

Otherwise, we might as well be prepared to pay even more in taxes because the welfare rolls are steadily increasing.  Additionally, we'll need to start building more prisons because that's where so many of the uneducated end up.

I believe in Personal Responsibility, but I also believe that EVERY child deserves a quality education.  They didn't get to choose their parent(s) or the situation they were born into.

We expect these children to go it alone and then, by some miracle, become productive members of society.

However, to claim that Charter schools serve anything more than a band-aid instead of addressing the cultural lifestyle that needs to be addressed is preposterously naive.  We have wasted trillions of dollars on enabling generations of their ways only to be rewarded with more of the same.

The same is obvious with our enabling immigration policy.