Free Republic

Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts concerning the challenging state of education in Detroit. Since its inception the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has advocated policy solutions that expand freedom to help improve the quality of life for all Michigan residents. In this case, the residents are thousands of Detroit Public Schools students, who are receiving an inferior education that will not prepare them adequately for life and career. Many are crying out for something better. They need to see hope. There are challenges and constraints within the political process, not to mention the other obstacles that...

To accommodate the perceived wishes of a very small number of people, the federal government and many states are placing women and girls at risk of rape and assault in restrooms. There are about a mere 700,000 transgender individuals in the U.S., or 0.3% of the adult population. As John Hinderaker correctly notes -- that makes them almost as rare as unicorns. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that allowing men who decide they really want to be women to use women’s restrooms is a dangerous idea: not to the wise men of Charlotte, North Carolina who passed an...

Beaumont police say a teacher was arrested Friday after video on Twitter showed her slapping a student on the head. [Snip] Hastings was arrested and charged with assault. She has been released on bail at this time. Ozen High School has placed Hastings on administrative leave, and the school district has released this statement:

The Michigan Senate passed a package of bills that would rescue Detroit Public Schools financially. Among other things, it includes $48.7 million to keep the insolvent district afloat until the end of the current school year, which is considered a down payment on a larger bailout that includes $515 million in debt forgiveness and another $202 million for transition costs. The debt forgiveness is not the most controversial part of the package; the state is already on the hook for this money and the district has no way to repay it. A more contentious part of the rescue plan is...

The Michigan Department of Education’s refusal to incorporate students’ economic backgrounds into how it ranks school districts plays a role in a controversial discussion about a rise in the percentage of minority students in a western Michigan school district. The Holland Sentinel recently did a story that said that giving parents the freedom to choose where to send their children has “fragmented” Holland Public Schools in terms of the racial makeup of its students. The story quotes Superintendent Brian Davis as saying his district is like an urban district in a suburban community. The article cites population data that shows...

Homosexuality became an issue early in my teaching career with the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, which coincided with my return to the classroom from an administrative position in 1979. The outbreak was a major news story and I covered it in the current events portion of my classes. We had only one nurse for six schools in our Fryeburg, Maine district and she asked if she could come into my social studies classes so we could teach sex education together. She believed my presence would make it easier on the boys. She was a conservative, Catholic woman and...

Aside from defrauding American taxpayers, the Gülen organization has an even more ominous objective in the United States. The organization is one of the country’s largest recipients of H1-B “specialty occupation” visas, which it uses to import Turkish teachers into its charter schools, supposedly because local U.S. talent is not available to fill math and science teaching positions in its charter schools. The Gülen organization illegally threatens to revoke these visas unless the Turkish teachers agree to kick back part of their salary to the organization. More importantly, the Turkish teachers in Gülen organization charter schools are evaluated not on...

A secretive Islamic movement is trying to infiltrate the U.S. military by establishing and operating publicly-funded charter schools targeted toward children of American service personnel. That charge may sound like a conspiracy theory from the lunatic fringe, but it is real and it is happening right now. The most immediate threat is in Nevada, where Coral Academy of Science Las Vegas (CASLV) is currently negotiating with the United States Air Force to locate a charter school at Nellis Air Force Base, with classes starting this fall. What is not widely known is that CASLV is part of a nationwide organization...

Legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Michigan Senate made this past Tuesday “a bad day” for school choice in the city of Detroit, according to one education insider. By a 21-16 vote, the body passed Senate Bill 710, part of a Detroit schools bailout and governance package that among other things gave the insolvent district a $300 million line of credit with the state. That was not controversial, but provisions establishing the nature of public education in Detroit are, especially their consequences for future school choice efforts in the city. “This was a bad day for parents and students, as we...

Michigan Education Association President Steve Cook recently chimed in with the union’s views on what to do with the insolvent and academically failing Detroit Public Schools. Detroit teachers are actually represented by a different union, but the MEA is still the state’s largest and most influential teachers union. Some of Cook’s claims deserve a closer look: The state is to blame for all of the DPS debt Cook wrote: “A state House plan seeks to pay the DPS debt incurred under state control.” In November 2005, voters elected a new Detroit school board to replace a committee the Legislature had...

Bishar Hassan spends his days navigating the halls and classrooms of Talahi Elementary School, working to embrace and empower the dozens of Somali students who have arrived since the start of the year. Across town, his brother, Ahmed Hassan, fills a similar role at Discovery Community School, another campus that has experienced a recent surge in enrollment of Somali students. The Hassan brothers are part of a growing community of Somali residents in this central Minnesota city of 65,000. The recent influx of immigrant students is nothing new in the St. Cloud school district, where English-language-learner enrollment has spiked by...

A new national report further undercuts the case for creating a politically appointed commission to dictate school enrollment decisions across the Motor City. The Detroit Education Commission has been touted as part of the solution to rescue a failing education system. Proponents want to give the commission jurisdiction over all public schools within the city, including the ability to close charters it deems unsuccessful. In effect, the new governmental body would be empowered to take away options parents believe to be safer or otherwise better for their children. On March 7, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan pitched the idea of a...

The current school year marks only the second time that there has been no increase in the number of charter schools in Michigan since the state enacted its law governing charter schools 22 years ago. The Legislature removed an artificial cap on the number of charters in 2011. A brief surge in charter schools followed, with 298 operating by the 2013-14 school year. But since then, there has only been a net gain of four charter schools, bringing the total to the current figure of 302. The growth process has been more dynamic than the raw numbers suggest, however, because...

Last year, no fifth-graders at Detroit’s Gardner Elementary School scored proficient on a statewide math test. No fifth-graders scored proficient in social studies, and no fourth-grade student was proficient in science. Those dismal testing results were nothing new for the troubled elementary school. Since 2010, Gardner, a conventional district school, has been ranked by the state in the bottom five percent of all Michigan public schools. This record of ongoing failure is not unique, but it does put a spotlight on one disconnect in the current critique of charter schools in this state. The public school establishment and the media...

On a Sunday news show in 2010, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan caused a minor controversy by calling Hurricane Katrina the “best thing” to happen to New Orleans public schools. "This is a tough thing to say, but let me be really honest,” Duncan said. ”I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that 'We have to do better.' " After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans transformed its public education into an all-charter school...

Central Park School for Children in Durham, North Carolina has enrolled grade-school students in a “Black Lives March and Rally” scheduled for March 17, 2016. The teachers can opt-in or opt-out their classes, but parents have not been given a choice.Stef Bernal-Martinez, a teacher of 6-year-old children, signed up all the children in her class for a “Black Lives March and Rally” to take place during the school day, at the city’s downtown Central Park and Farmer’s Market. Ms. Bernal-Martinez describes herself as a “Radical Queer Progressive Educator” and “white-passing Xicana.” The event, like the Black Lives Matter movement itself,...

A gay Central Michigan University professor has pleaded guilty for falsely claiming that a random guy at a Toby Keith concert called her a “cross-dressing fag,” punched her in the face and spat on her. Advertisement The professor, Mari Poindexter, had alleged that the man approached her at the Aug. 19 concert at the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Mount Pleasant, Mich., reports The Morning Sun, a local newspaper. Advertisement The man began hurling a rich tapestry of obscene slurs at Poindexter, she told police. Advertisement Later that night, the professor said, the same man ambushed her in the...

The National Cherry Festival in Traverse City is more than four months away, but when it comes to the record of charter schools, Education Trust-Midwest has started picking early. Ed Trust tried to stake a claim in the debate about Michigan's lackluster educational performance by aiming squarely at a small sector of public education: charter schools. It's appropriate to have a discussion about what more charter schools could do to help drive improvements. And reasonable observers can express frustration that charters haven't raised the bar high enough. But to argue that Michigan charters are doing worse than other public schools...

Chcago Public Schools officials told principals on Wednesday that the district is "short of the necessary cash for the remainder of the school year" partly because of a pension payment of nearly $700 million due this summer. ... Last month, principals had to absorb $26 million in midyear budget cuts to district-operated schools. Principals tapped internal accounts, cut planned technology and textbook purchases and didn't fill vacant positions to avert layoffs. On Wednesday, principals were told to hold off on $45 million budgeted for "non-personnel" expenses. The district said it wants to save another $10 million through a limit on...

Teachers in Farmington Public Schools are paid more than $83,000 per year on average, giving the metro Detroit district the state’s highest paid educators, according to an annual report from the Michigan Department of Education. The top 10 districts with the highest teacher salaries are: Farmington: $83,903 Walled Lake: $80,058 Warren Consolidated: $78,866 Livonia: $78,183 Wyandotte: $78,044 Utica: $77,435 Centerline: $77,118 Allen Park: $76,531 Birmingham: $75,846 Grosse Pointe: $74,824 The list comes with a footnote, however: In analyzing this state's compilation of school district pay in recent years, Michigan Capitol Confidential has found a number of errors. For example, Flint...