Paul Kersey and Michael Van Beek, Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2009
{snip} Facing violence, a shrinking student body, and graduating just one out of every four students who enter the ninth grade on time, the city’s schools have been stumbling for years. Now they face a seemingly insurmountable deficit and are expected to file for bankruptcy protection at about the time that students should be settling down in a new school year.
{snip}
Detroit is like many urban school districts—large, unwieldy and bureaucratic, with a powerful union that makes the system unable to adapt to changing circumstances and that until very recently had an indulgent political class that insulated it from reform. That insulation came in two forms. The first was neglect. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick spent several years distracted by a scandal stemming from his affair with a staffer. He resigned last year, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, and was sentenced to four months in jail. {snip}
{snip} In 1993, Michigan’s legislature made it difficult to create new charters in Detroit by declaring that only community colleges could authorize charters for primary and secondary schools in “First-Class Districts”—defined as those with more than 100,000 students. Detroit was the only First-Class District. In 2003 the state, under pressure from the Detroit Federation of Teachers, turned down a gift of $200 million from philanthropist Robert Thompson that would have established 15 charter schools in the city. Those charters are needed today.
The net result has been a school system that’s been coming apart as the teachers union has dug in its heels. In 2006, the union illegally went on strike, killing a plan to force teachers to take a pay cut to balance the system’s books.
In June, seven students were wounded in a shooting near Cody Ninth Grade Academy just two weeks after 16-year-old Tenecia Walter was shot in the chest shortly after leaving class at Denby High School. Earlier this year a gunfight broke out in Detroit’s Central High School and last year a student was shot and killed walking home from Henry Ford High School. All of this has forced school officials to step up security measures, including increasing the number of police patrols.
Meanwhile, only 16.2% of the city’s 11th graders scored proficient in math this year on the state’s standardized Merit Examination, compared to 49.3% statewide. Detroit reading and science scores are just as bleak. And this in schools that spend $1,700 more per student than the state average.
The school system also has been rocked by corruption. A few years ago, an audit revealed that Detroit’s school system misused more than $46 million on insurance and other contracts and was forced to sue venders to get some of its money back. Two of the system’s employees were recently indicted for allegedly embezzling $400,000 from the school system over the past couple of years.
To clean up the mess, the state took control of the district earlier this year and brought in Robert Bobb as an “emergency financial manager.” In June, to stem pay-check fraud he required that employees pick up their paychecks in person. Paychecks for 257 suspected “ghost” employees—people who had improperly been getting checks—went unclaimed.
{snip}
The Detroit Board of Education has gone along with many of these changes. But it is now seeking a court injunction to block private companies from running district high schools. The board says Mr. Bobb exceeded his authority in hiring the companies. But a court fight will only bog things down at a time when the district still faces a $260 million deficit.
{snip}
What the city needs is a multitude of charter schools and other school-choice provisions that would give students a means to escape. It also needs to break free of collective-bargaining agreements. Collective bargaining for government employees is not a constitutional right; it is a special privilege, and one that has been abused. Michigan’s education laws could be amended to allow school districts to suspend collective-bargaining agreements when that district fails to meet minimal academic standards, is pushed to the brink of bankruptcy, or when the union goes out on an illegal strike.
{snip}
{snip} Walling off Detroit from the rest of the state may have some appeal and was once the politically easy thing to do, but it’s only given Michigan a larger mess to clean up.
Original article
(Posted on July 29, 2009)
Comments
Where ever Africans congregate, be it in Africa, Haiti, London, East St. Louis, or Detroit, the results are the same: poverty, crime, and regression of civilization. This is because of their low average IQ, which is a genetic trait.
For 50 years we have spent Billions and Billions of Dollars trying to lift up these people, with little success. It is time that we faced the uncomfortable truth — NOTHING WE CAN DO CAN EVER CHANGE THESE PEOPLE, AND THE MORE WE TRY, THE MORE BITTER THESE PEOPLE BECOME. It is time to set Africans free. Let them go their own way in their own lands, governed by their own people as they see fit. It is neither our duty nor in our capability to “cure” or “transform” Africans. They need to do it themselves.
There was a liberal talk radio host in St. Louis named Mark Kasen that said something I agreed with. It was only one thing, but I still agreed with it. He said that if you transvert the St. Louis City Public School system, administrators, staff, buildings, Board of Education, etc. to the suburbs, (he mentioned Chesterfield in particular, white upper middle class, where he lived, conveniently far away from the diversity he loves so much), you would have a very good school district. Likewise, if you took the suburban school district that served Chesterfield, ibid. to St. Louis City, you would have a crummy district. Kasen was too dense to understand why that was true, and that is racial differences in IQ.
Unions are just as strong and bureaucratic in the white suburbs as they are in the black cities. So why is it only a problem in Detroit? The answer is that unions or no unions, bureaucracy or no bureaucracy, red tape or no red tape, it doesn’t matter: The pupils’ racial composition is the key.
What the city needs is a multitude of charter schools and other school-choice provisions that would give students a means to escape.
In June, seven students were wounded in a shooting near Cody Ninth Grade Academy just two weeks after 16-year-old Tenecia Walter was shot in the chest shortly after leaving class at Denby High School. Earlier this year a gunfight broke out in Detroit’s Central High School…
Reading these quotes side by side, I have to ask: are the students supposed to escape themselves? As incompetent as the teachers no doubt are, the students sound far worse. I doubt the murders and gunfights can be pinned on the lack of charter schools. And by this point, I would expect any family that cares at all about their children’s welfare to have long since abandoned the city and its school system.
They have everything they always say they need to produce excellence only they never can.
Time to bus them to the suburbs where the white folk are hording the magic juju.
Exactly buffalonative. The enraging part is,the white liberals who know it but wont call it what it is and figure that continuing to reach into the darkness, something good will eventually be found. Meanwhile another white woman is raped at the once safe mall. Another white kid is beaten at scholl in what the black community thinks is a “school yard brawl”. Another library is renamed for a acid tongued black. Another home development run down by diversities end result. When will all become fair game. By comparing stats for whites to blacks we gaurantee that the future is pulled down by a people who cannot be critiqued and God forbid ignored. What are we so afraid of. Hasnt this hung-over generation had enough. Havent they hit rock bottom. How many more girls raped does it take for a generation to stand up? Are you just the tired children of great men. Maybe it will be observed that it was deserved. We know white liberal feel that.
For 50 years we have spent Billions and Billions of Dollars trying to lift up these people, with little success.
RIGHT! we would have better luck raising the Titanic rather than blacks, and we would have a better National Geo program too!
“Where ever Africans congregate, be it in Africa, Haiti, London, East St. Louis, or Detroit, the results are the same: poverty, crime, and regression of civilization. This is because of their low average IQ, which is a genetic trait.”
I don’t necessarily believe the diversity folks, the establishment, that this is all the fault of white racism, but reading your post I’m forced to think the diversitiods are more correct than you and your explanation that it is all ‘genetics’.
The diveristy folks and the racists should be locked in a room together. Preferably one with no gun control features. That would make this ‘race realist’ happy.
white wrote at 9:55 PM on July 29:
This will only end when liberals have no where else to run, or votings laws are made more elite thereby depriving liberals of their power-base.
Don’t hold your breath though.
For 50 years we have spent Billions and Billions of Dollars trying to lift up these people, with little success. It is time that we faced the uncomfortable truth
You are wrong about the above statement…. The White world has been doing it for 500 years…. Just look at South Africa, the English, French and Dutch went there and took a barren waste land and over the centuries made it into a productive country, where the blacks did not even build any thing and could not even feed themselves and then they want it back and it has reverted to the same barren thing it was before…
it isnt just IQ. Blacks are designed for mass reproduction, hit testosterone, agression, early fertility. It is one strategy for species survival. It is however, very incompatible with the modern world. Higher agression levels from higher testosterone levels seems like a winning solution. But it also produces lack of attention, rejection of higher values, impatience, short term thinking, the give it to me now syndrome. Black women lack testosterone but suffer their own ills of rampant value rejection of white culture, sleeping around at age 14, 15 and having babies, no sense of careers. by middle age many can be put in low level government clerical make work posts but the males can never be they are too agressive and impatient. The careers the blacks choose are rap (i can rhyme go with “go” and slow) nba stars, etc. the easy money route to life.
On another note, why on earth to whites support blackball (football), black hoop ball (basketball), or hispanicball (baseball). Isn’t it a bit ludicrous to feel part of and identify with and financially support teams of nearly all black atheletes? I sure wouldnt enjoy seeing it, everytime I see a NBA game I literally feel grossed out. I guess they keep enough token whites playing so that whites still pay. The only reason blacks dominate basketball is because they changed the rules, allowing liberal traveling, ball hogging, agressive one man styles to be legal. In the 1950s rules, only teamwork would prevail, and there of course, you had nearly all white teams. We have to stop changing the rules for blacks.
And this in schools that spend $1,700 more per student than the state average.
But wait a second! I thought the problem with black-majority public schools was that evil whitey DIDN’T spend as much on them as he does majority-white schools?
Also, I thought a black mayor, a black city council, black teachers, etc, were better qualified to teach black students and preside over black citizens?
Rest assured, somehow, someway, racism is responsible for this travesty.
First, the myth that black or low income schools are underfunded and thus their miserable record, is bunk. Detroit spends 1700 bucks more per student than the rest of Michigan. Washington DC is another place where the dollars are endless as is the pathetic failure of its black student population to score anywhere near proficient in math or science.
Second, the public school model doesn’t work for blacks. A few black students, think Jamaican Colin Powell, will do as well as white students. It’s cheaper to send such kids to good private schools far from the wretched neighborhoods full of losers where the gifted few live.
Hell, it’s cheaper to move the family to a nice middle class white neighborhood or to transport them to a good private school than to finance a whole public school system of loser dumb blacks.
Repeal the compulsory attendance laws.
Detroit is a complete mess. In every way possible. Blacks can’t even efficiently run one single city (and this in a first world nation)! And people wonder why Africa, Jamaica and Haiti are a total disaster. The problem with blacks is genetic and can’t be fixed no matter how much money is thrown at it. It is a losing cause. If you’ve travelled extensively around the world its the same tale of woe, poverty, sloth and backwardness for all black countries everywhere. Does anyone seriously believe that Detroit would be the way it is if its population was 100% White? Japanese or Korean?
While not as bad as Detroit, the Indianapolis Public Schools are a model of inefficiency, corruption, and incompetence. In 1967, IPS had about 110,000 students. Now there are about 35,000 and may soon be surpassed by the main school district in Fort Wayne as the largest in Indiana. There is a black superintendent, majority black administration, and probably 70 - 80% minority population. Let’s not forget “Little Mexico” on West Washington street. Every year there is considerable consternation over closed schools and the unending drumbeat of the need for the state or surrounding districts need to help out. Sure, just like the diabetic 400 lb. man needs his ice cream and cake fix.
In the late 1960’s, the city of Indianapolis was about 1/3 of its current size. Richard Lugar was elected as mayor and set about to consolidate a number of governmental functions by expanding the borders to the edge of Marion County. To get Unigov to pass, he had to promise to leave the township schools alone (among other things). This is why Indianapolis has 11 separate school districts for a 400 sq. mile county. The borders of IPS were frozen with the creation of Unigov.
Thanks to Judge Dillon mandating busing back in the 1970’s; people flooded first into the townships around the old inner city, then to the surrounding counties. The judge tried redistricting for 2 - 3 years only to see that a district that was 30% white was not going to meet standards. Then he ordered busing out to the suburban (read: white) districts. Millikin vs. Bradley is the only thing that keeps Carmel, Zionsville, Fishers, Noblesville, and other “Doughnut Cities” safe (for now). To its credit, there is a very extensive private school system, but you are going to pay twice for it.
For some reason, the former Mayor, Bart Peterson, championed charter schools, must to the dismay of the teachers unions. Some have been successful while others have failed. I’m basically in agreement with feller #12. Allow the motivated and intelligent minority kids to go to a functional private school and leave the dregs (white and black) behind.
On the radio here there is a talk show host named Abdul Hakim-Shabazz. A black muslim libertarian attorney. Just before the election that removed Bart Peterson, he stated something that seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Whoever is elected mayor needs to get a handle on all of the 9 school districts which fall under the city limits of Indianapolis. (Beech Grove and Speedway kept their independent city status after Unigov and are not subject to busing). If the schools don’t improve, Indianapolis will go the way of Detroit.
“Second, the public school model doesn’t work for blacks. A few black students, think Jamaican Colin Powell, will do as well as white students. It’s cheaper to send such kids to good private schools far from the wretched neighborhoods full of losers where the gifted few live.
Hell, it’s cheaper to move the family to a nice middle class white neighborhood or to transport them to a good private school than to finance a whole public school system of loser dumb blacks.”
How do you know Colin Powell could keep up with his White peers? Did you go to school with him? Powell is nothing more than a media hyped affirmative action government employee. I’m of the opinion that the so-called talented tenth in the
“For 50 years we have spent Billions and Billions of Dollars trying to lift up these people, with little success.” - try TRILLIONS in welfare, public housing, AA, hiring quotas, etc. And they still want reparations.
I say give the Southwest to Hispanics, the Southeast to blacks, a portion for the rest of the haters of white America and let the rest of us decent people live in the rest. Maybe we could then merge with the conservative people in Canada and have a real country again.
“On the radio here there is a talk show host named Abdul Hakim-Shabazz. A black muslim libertarian attorney.” - sounds like a
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How do YOU know that Colin Powell could NOT keep up with his White peers? Did YOU go to school with him. I know many Black professionals (most retired) who obtained their degrees in the 1940s and 1950s (before Civil rights Movement, Affirm Action, welfare, and anything that has been slightly beneficial to Blacks that many of you feel has damned Whites) and did very well in their professions. My grandmother was one. She graduated college in 1952 cum laude and had a long and pleasant career as a public schoolteacher. She taught in Georgia, Kentucky, and Florida before and after integration. Her sister graduated college and then law school in 1960 and had a promising career before her early death. My point is both women stated they worked very hard and did well in academics. There was no free ride for people of color. My great-aunt worked as a hotel maid during the summers to help pay for university. I had the pleasure of spending summers with my grandparents and met many of their friends (all Black) who were dentists, lawyers, educators, and businessmen. My grandma was born in 1929 and all her friends were around her age so most would have had to finish college before 1960 & all obtained degrees and employment before these so-called handouts.
Primavera wrote at 11:37 PM on July 31:
My experience with “people of color” comes from working in the private sector and seeing with my own eyes black dysfunction. Most of the people I came in contact with were in some capacity associated with the government, namely because everyone knows they have lower standards than corporate America. Many of them had so-called professional degrees from schools like Princeton but they could barely read, write or speak standard English. I got the impression that their knowledge of their profession was limited and they had to rely on other people to do their work for them while worked in a supervisory capacity. Any questions of a technical nature would be referred to one of their aides. In short, they’re nothing more than token figure heads drawing a salary for breathing the air. I believe what I’ve observed is pretty much standard operating procedure throughout the country.
Primavera, Powell is an avid supporter of affirmative action. Now why do you suppose someone like him who has achieved a level of success in this country would support such a thing if he actually made it on his own?
