Freep: Public Schools Are Crap - Let's Remold It!

As if that will make a difference. Here's a piece that caught my eye over at the freep this morning: Gauntlet thrown down for better schools. Before going into details of the article, the headline itself contains an ideological problem on the left side of the isle. The libs always get stuck in a rut in thought about such problems. Their thought is "help the schools." My thought has always been "help the children." That may sound like nuance, but it is anything but and there is in fact a vast chasm between the two. Anyway, onto the article:

Nearly three dozen chronically failing schools in Michigan, including almost half of Detroit's public high schools, would be taken over by the state if they cannot make dramatic improvement under a plan set to be unveiled Tuesday.

The plan, laid out in a three-bill package from Democratic Reps. Tim Melton of Auburn Hills and Bert Johnson of Detroit, calls for the state to hire a school turnaround czar.

That person would work with an administrator at each school to put together 5-year plans for improvement with specific goals. If a school falls short at any point, the czar could take over the school and appoint someone to run it.

A few problems already. First, note the package comes from Democrats, bought and paid for by the MEA. That in and of itself should tell you that this simply won't work. Two - they're talking about the schools, not the children's education. They do not have to be linked. In fact, I pointed this out in a prior post from a Detroit News editorial:

...governance of the district is unaccountable for results. The faces may change -- new board members, new superintendents -- but the culture doesn't. It's a culture of low expectations and denial of the brutal facts of performance. There is no capacity within the district's leadership to redesign the school system to radically improve student achievement.

The Detroit News is absolutely correct about the this. Of course, the editorial falls short in one very important aspect: the solution. The Detroit News wants to "redesign" schools, wants to "innovate." Nice words, no substance. As long as the cause of the problem stays in place, the effect will be the same regardless of desire. Such is the plight of especially DPS students. Today's freep article goes on:

Near each school, the state would open a charter school with the same grade levels. The idea -- an unpopular one with teachers -- is to offer parents a choice while the original school gets back on track.

"It's a moral imperative that these kids have a chance," Melton said.

So close. SO CLOSE! You can clearly see that the MSM is fully aware of the obvious solution to the problem, but is hesitant to endorse it in full. The only solution, which the freep and the News doesn't give explicitly but does imply at times, is outright school choice in the form of vouchers or refundable tax subsidies. That would do it. I mean - it's all about educating the children, right?

Ironically, the former DetNews editorial that I noted above mentions other districts, including one that raised an eyebrow for me:

Big city school systems across the country -- Washington, D.C., New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles -- are mired in persistently poor performance.

D.C. That dilapidated school system (still a better graduation rate than DPS), which Education Secretary Arne Duncan said has “more money than God,” has tried a voucher program quite successfully. In fact, not only were the kids better educated, but the cost was 25% of what it takes for these same kids to go to failing public schools! (WaPo: Study Confirms Vouchers Superior to Public Ed Monopolies) The voucher program has been so successful that Democrats and the Obama administration want to just outright kill it. After all, they have the teachers unions to protect. The WSJ recently published an article about the shenanigans:

It's bad enough that Democrats are killing a program that parents love and is closing the achievement gap between poor minorities and whites. But as scandalous is that the Education Department almost certainly knew the results of this evaluation for months.

Voucher recipients were tested last spring. The scores were analyzed in the late summer and early fall, and in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.

Opponents of school choice for poor children have long claimed they'd support vouchers if there was evidence that they work. While running for President last year, Mr. Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that if he saw more proof that they were successful, he would "not allow my predisposition to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn . . . You do what works for the kids." Except, apparently, when what works is opposed by unions.

Mr. Duncan's office spurned our repeated calls and emails asking what and when he and his aides knew about these results. We do know the Administration prohibited anyone involved with the evaluation from discussing it publicly. You'd think we were talking about nuclear secrets, not about a taxpayer-funded pilot program. A reasonable conclusion is that Mr. Duncan's department didn't want proof of voucher success to interfere with Senator Dick Durbin's campaign to kill vouchers at the behest of the teachers unions.

The decision to let 1,700 poor kids get tossed from private schools is a moral disgrace. It also exposes the ugly politics that lies beneath union and liberal efforts across the country to undermine mayoral control, charter schools, vouchers or any reform that threatens their monopoly over public education dollars and jobs. The Sheldon Silver-Dick Durbin Democrats aren't worried that school choice doesn't work. They're worried that it does, and if Messrs. Obama and Duncan want to succeed as reformers they need to say so consistently.

Ouch. What an absolutely devastating piece. Read the whole thing as it is a very worthy read. There's more and it is equally devastating. Need we more proof of where the Democrat heart really lies on education?

Betsy Newmark has more:

I wonder how many other federally funded education programs show results like that? President Obama has said that he would be guided by results, not ideology. Horsefeathers! Here are results that show steady progress in reading by the students receiving the vouchers and the President and his party, despite their fine words about wanting to examine the evidence just don't care. Senator Durbin, the sponsor of the provision killing the program claimed to want to see the evidence that the program worked. Well, Senator. What do you say now about these results?

You know that, if this were a program that the teachers unions supported, the Democrats would be pouring billions into it and talking about expanding it across the nation instead of smothering it in the cradle. Once you realize that union opposition is the only reason why these Democrats have taken the position they have on the program, you know all you need to know about their fine rhetoric about school reform and wanting to put evidence ahead of ideology.

Andrew Coulson sums up the results. Results that I pointed out in my prior post:

The latest federal study of the D.C. voucher program finds that voucher students have pulled significantly ahead of their public school peers in reading and perform at least as well as public school students in math. It also reports that the average tuition at the voucher schools is $6,620. That is ONE QUARTER what the District of Columbia spends per pupil on education ($26,555), according to the District’s own fiscal year 2009 budget. Better results at a quarter the cost.
Previously:

And Democrats in Congress have sunset its funding and are trying to kill it. Shame on them.

Very recently, the killing of the D.C. voucher program has been accelerated by Arne Duncan, as reported by David Frum:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan came to Washington with claims to be a reformer. The destruction of the voucher program by Congress was his first test. He flunked.

Rather than stop—or at least resist—the termination of the voucher program, Duncan accelerated it. Confessing compassionate concern that students might suffer from uncertainty over the program’s future, he announced this past week that no new students will be admitted—even though the program has sufficient funds to run for another year. Two hundred applicants just received rejection letters, which arrived after the deadline for application to most District charter schools.

As for those students currently enrolled, their hopes, too, have suddenly turned dim. They will receive the program’s benefits for one more year. Then they, too, must either return to the public system or pay the full cost of escape.

It’s impossible to invent any justification for this abandonment of students struggling to overcome the already steep odds against them. But there’s no mystery as to the motive. Called upon to choose between the demands of politically active unions or the life chances of the most vulnerable citizens, the Obama Education department put the unions first. That is tragic news for those needy kids—and an ominous revelation of the new administration’s priorities.

What happened to the notion that this was all about educating the children? As usual, don't expect much of this to make it's way out of the MSM. A tight lid will be kept on this data. This will, of course, hurt the kids in the DPS, but what the heck - the unions will be grinning from ear to ear! If I could think of a stronger word for "shame" I would use it here. Such absurdity is beyond comprehension...

Previously:
Bob^2: Stay in DPS! Parents: No Way!
Bob^2: DPS The Greatest Challenge Of All
MI considers changing teacher licensing rules
Detroit News: DPS FAIL!!!
The freep Laments DPS School Closings
DPS in the News
WaPo: Study Confirms Vouchers Superior to Public Ed Monopolies
Detroit Politician Pitching School Choice - Kind Of
More on DPS - None of It Good
Obama Takes on Teacher Unions (canned laughter)
Obama on Education - huh?
Vouchers vs. D.C. public schools
Video that you will likely never see in the MSM
WaPo: Voucher Subterfuge