Remember, Detroit is the hometown of privatization czar Eli Broad.
In a series of “Letters of Agreement,” attached to the union’s contract ratified in December 2009, DFT President Keith Johnson has signed off on a host of “reforms” consistent with the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” education initiative: the unimpeded spread of charter schools, the lengthening of the school day and year, peer review and evaluations based on the narrowest of criteria, the overemphasis of standardized test scores, merit pay and other attacks on teachers.
It should be noted that at the time of the contract’s ratification, the central issue was the imposition of the so-called “Termination Incentive Plan,” consisting of a $10,000 pay cut over two years, a plan designed to compel older teachers to retire. So, while the complicity of the DFT-AFT leadership with education “reforms” being carried out by Robert Bobb was well known among teachers, the full content of the union’s capitulation contained in the “Letters of Agreement” was not discussed—if, in fact, it was even available at the time of the ratification vote.
The establishment of these “Priority Schools,” certainly in the numbers announced by Johnson, marks the beginning of the end of the DPS as a cohesive public schools system. Bobb and Johnson, at the behest of their handlers in Washington, namely the Obama administration, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and AFT President Randi Weingartner, are imposing a free market competitive business model on the public schools of Detroit.
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