The city of Detroit’s plan to shut down dozens of schools will have devastating consequences for communities and thousands of working class youth. It is part of moves, backed by the Obama administration, to dismantle public education in the city, expand charter schools and shut off services in the most impoverished areas.
The aim is to more directly subordinate education to the profit interests of the corporate elite that controls Detroit. On Tuesday, Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb said that his new proposal “has a very strong market-driven component to it.”
On Wednesday, the Detroit Public Schools released a plan to close 45 facilities by June, bringing the number of schools closed in the city to more than 100 since 2006. This amounts to nearly half of the total number of public schools. Another 13 schools would be closed by 2012.
The plan was drawn up by Bobb, who was appointed by Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm. Included in Bobb’s list of schools to be shut down are many well-known fixtures of communities, including Cooley, Osborn, Kettering, Northwestern and Southwestern High Schools. Dozens of elementary and middle schools in surrounding areas will also be closed.
And Bobb, a Broadie, has plenty of people in cahoots with him:
A group of foundations, which include the Skillman Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the MacGregor Fund, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, have signed on for a plan to completely reorganize Detroit’s schools.
Their plan includes the closing of virtually every high school in the city, and their subsequent reopening as smaller institutions. The stated aim is to create 70 new schools, 35 of them high schools enrolling a maximum of 500 students, and having a baseline graduation rate of 85 percent. Detroit schools have the lowest graduation rate in the country.
The proposal compliments, though is formally separate, from a plan announced by Bobb to close 45 schools by June and another 13 by 2012. The shutting down of public schools opens the way for the expansion of charter schools. (See “Detroit—a model for nationwide assault on public education”)
These foundations, in reality repositories for vast personal fortunes, will supply seed money to an array of organizations and individuals, all claiming to be able to provide a quality education to Detroit’s youth (while, no doubt, lining their own pockets in the process).
1 comment:
What we have here is a large laboratory for putting all of Arne Duncan/Obama's proposals into action, with little involvement of ordinary citizens, or parents, and none at all from teachers, who are Very Bad. The lack of transparency in this process is stunning. Wave upon wave of consultants are brought in, with massive teacher layoffs not far behind. One of the goals is to bring in the Best Teachers in America: Teach for America volunteers, to take the place of thousands of displaced teachers. Charter schools will abound, stripping funds away from classrooms. And similar improvements.
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