State Superintendent propoeses changing from district to county-wide school systems.

[brizee]

Sure buddy.

We'll see just how Michissippi this place can get.

But sure go ahead. I'd love to see just how "all in this together" we really are when it's not Detroiters being forcefed horseshit.

Could you imagine the outrage?

The true colors being exposed?

The pure uncut fuckery?

The burbs would eat themselves alive first.

[Eber Brock Ward]

i wish. too many local systems mean too many administrators being paid and not enough money going to students.

[webband1]

Schools of Choice would get rolled back and they'd put in some rule about having to go to a school within 3 miles of your home or something in Macomb/Oakland/Wayne.

[casscorridor]

This could be advantageous for the reason of more tax revenue but I don't see it solving the problem of unequal development. Look at Chicago where North side schools are great but South and West side schools have the same problems as Detroit, along with a massive wave of closings and charterizations. This means tackling the main problem with education: poverty.

[bailey]

Sure buddy.

We'll see just how Michissippi this place can get.

But sure go ahead. I'd love to see just how "all in this together" we really are when it's not Detroiters being forcefed horseshit.

Could you imagine the outrage?

The true colors being exposed?

The pure uncut fuckery?

The burbs would eat themselves alive first.

Ok, I'll bite...since you're demanding we "all be in this together". how exactly would Grosse Pointe Schools benefit from being rolled into Wayne County?

[Bham1982]

Ok, I'll bite...since you're demanding we "all be in this together". how exactly would Grosse Pointe Schools benefit from being rolled into Wayne County?

Would never happen. The Pointes would cease to exist as distinct entities.

Schools are, for families with children, the #1 factor in home buying decisions. County schools will never, ever happen, at least not in Metro Detroit. Maybe up in the UP or something.

[webband1]

This could be advantageous for the reason of more tax revenue but I don't see it solving the problem of unequal development. Look at Chicago where North side schools are great but South and West side schools have the same problems as Detroit, along with a massive wave of closings and charterizations. This means tackling the main problem with education: poverty.

Ding ding ding ding ding! We have a winner!

[Detroitnerd]

So why is this idea a political nonstarter? It has to do with ... what exactly? What is the issue at the center of this? Hmmmm ... I just can't seem to ... it's that Detroit's schools are bad and its suburbs schools are better because ... there must be some underlying issue here. Anybody want to take a wild guess what it could be?

[bailey]

So why is this idea a political nonstarter? It has to do with ... what exactly? What is the issue at the center of this? Hmmmm ... I just can't seem to ... it's that Detroit's schools are bad and its suburbs schools are better because ... there must be some underlying issue here. Anybody want to take a wild guess what it could be?

Clearly it's suburban racism. I mean it couldn't be any.other.thing. ever.

[mwilbert]

So why is this idea a political nonstarter? It has to do with ... what exactly? What is the issue at the center of this? Hmmmm ... I just can't seem to ... it's that Detroit's schools are bad and its suburbs schools are better because ... there must be some underlying issue here. Anybody want to take a wild guess what it could be?

My wild guess is that you think opposition to this is racial, or perhaps class-based. But it isn't necessarily--there is widespread opposition to consolidating school districts even when they are very similar demographically and in similar financial condition. The vast disparity among schools and their students in Michigan counties just makes it even less likely.

The unfortunate fact is that most people like their schools, even if they are quite bad, and most people don't like change very much. People also don't like their kids to have to travel far to get to school, and the bigger the district, the bigger the danger that will happen. I'm am not saying that there aren't people who don't want their kids going to school with black and/or poor people. There clearly are. But those factors aren't necessary for people to oppose a proposal of this kind.

[Jimaz]

This smells like another one of those radical ALEC schemes.

Some more background about Flanagan from an April story: Mike Flanagan, Michigan State Education Superintendent, To Head School Reform Group

[Detroitnerd]

Oh, my, yes. It couldn't be racism. Racism ended, like, a little while ago. And its effects vanished along with it.

[Eber Brock Ward]

It's about a culture that doesn't promote education and hammer home to kids that they can be something with their life, which only sinks into some kids.

Racism is a part of that, and usually external and a part of a general anti-Detroit bias.

But it also comes from within the city, and even within kids's families, where the messages and values that the kids receive can be so skewed as to basically never give the kid a chance.

[Detroitnerd]

I'm actually more surprised by the idea that this isn't based upon classism.

Good thoughts, EBW. But I think poverty is its own form of punishment, one in which the punished also punish themselves and one another. This behavior only reinforces the very same tendencies the system produces. That is to say, when the rules of society, de jure or de facto, call into existence a permanent underclass, it's kind of too much [[in my mind) to blame the underclass for reinforcing those norms within itself.

[firstandten]

There is too much duplication of services with all the school districts we have in Michigan. A county wide district would make more sense financially.

[corktownyuppie]

I'm neither for nor against consolidation. I'm definitely against waste. And the reality is that some districts are at a point where they can no longer afford to duplicate administrative duties and still pay the bills.

So people can shout, "You're delusional"..."Never gonna happen"...etc. But you know what else isn't gonna happen? Keeping things the same.

Cheers to Flannagan for an opening volley in what is sure to be a heated debate.

[Hermod]

There is too much duplication of services with all the school districts we have in Michigan. A county wide district would make more sense financially.

In theory, the larger the school district, the more you can achieve economies of scale. I have lived in Virginia and in Florida where school districts are county-wide. With those huge districts, you also breed things where the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing [[warehouses full of computers or obsolete textbooks that were never issued). In large districts, "Parkinson's Law" often eats up economies of scale.

[corktownyuppie]

Good thoughts, EBW. But I think poverty is its own form of punishment, one in which the punished also punish themselves and one another. This behavior only reinforces the very same tendencies the system produces. That is to say, when the rules of society, de jure or de facto, call into existence a permanent underclass, it's kind of too much [[in my mind) to blame the underclass for reinforcing those norms within itself.

I generally agree with the above. I believe that when our understanding mental health and emotional trauma catch up to our understanding of the physical body...we will see that much poverty reinforces itself through the generations via mental illness in the same way that children who witnessed domestic violence are never taught the skills to resolve conflict effectively and then repeat the cycle.

I don't know when or if we will ever solve poverty as an existence. However, I do believe that we can vastly improve on this notion of generational poverty where the cultural norms reinforce other destructive norms and perpetuate themselves. But the path to getting there is a better understanding of the mind and mental illness.

[Detroitnerd]

I don't know when or if we will ever solve poverty as an existence. However, I do believe that we can vastly improve on this notion of generational poverty where the cultural norms reinforce other destructive norms and perpetuate themselves. But the path to getting there is a better understanding of the mind and mental illness.

When I consider this question, I think about all the difficulties they have had in Germany bringing the former East Germans back into the fold. It hasn't been an easy project, but they seem prepared to dig in for the long haul and ensure that the next generation of people doesn't inherit the social abnormalities of a police state.

Could it work here? Who knows? The New Deal and the Great Society produced concrete gains in fighting poverty. It certainly hasn't been tried in a long time. It could work again.

[corktownyuppie]

When I consider this question, I think about all the difficulties they have had in Germany bringing the former East Germans back into the fold. It hasn't been an easy project, but they seem prepared to dig in for the long haul and ensure that the next generation of people doesn't inherit the social abnormalities of a police state.

Could it work here? Who knows? The New Deal and the Great Society produced concrete gains in fighting poverty. It certainly hasn't been tried in a long time. It could work again.

Optimistically, I think we're looking at 3+ generations to get there. And I am reluctant to say that the government [[via New Deal, Great Society....then the NEW GREAT SOCIETY!!) is the best route to get there. I wouldn't rule it out, but we have to remember that the New Deal [[which I'm very in favor of -- in retrospect) and the Great Society [[for which the jury is still out, and it isn't looking great)...both of these programs had many unintended consequences that we still have to deal with.

This is a subject for a totally different thread...but I think we will need to deal with residual problems the last few generations left for us before we can really take on anything else.

Consider this, for a moment...imagine that starting today, we fixed the social security system, made it solvent again, going out 50 years today to be conservative. But then sometime in 2033, medical advancements now push the average life expectancy to 120.

Will Social Security make it? Um, no. You can't work for for 37 years and then get paid for 60 more years in retirement. The money's not there.

But the key is to just keep advancing the debate. Advance our understanding of the problem. We keep doing that and we will progress slow but sure.

[Detroitnerd]

Will Social Security make it? Um, no. You can't work for for 37 years and then get paid for 60 more years in retirement. The money's not there.

But the key is to just keep advancing the debate. Advance our understanding of the problem. We keep doing that and we will progress slow but sure.

There is more than enough money made every year in the United States to pay for proper care and all needs of the people here, including Social Security. The problem is one of who holds political power and who pays taxes. Who buys politicians like so many cigars.

I imagine that's where we part ways, but that's the simplest and truest answer I've found in 40 years of searching.

[mwilbert]

If you people want to go big picture, in my view, the percentage of people doing labor requiring traditional education is going to drop, possibly quite rapidly, over the next few decades as a result of automation of a higher and higher percentage of production processes.

At that point, a very high portion of people are going to be poor, at least relative to the people in society who either are earning rents on capital, or who have actual skilled work. Alternatively, we are going to have restructured our economic system. It is highly unlikely that we will deal with our economic and educational inequality problems before this change is apparent, and whether we change our system or not, the reduction in the need for labor is going to require both a rethinking of the purposes of public education and what kind of contributions to society we will expect from people whose work we really don't need, but might potentially want for psychological or social reasons.

Which political subdivisions to base public school provision upon is a minor quibble compared to the fights that lie ahead over these larger issues.

[Scottathew]

I'm 100% for this.

Florida does it this way too. There's just too much waste with the way we currently do things.

[jt1]

I'm 100% for this.

Florida does it this way too. There's just too much waste with the way we currently do things.

Yep, we should certainly model our education system after Florida.

[Wesley Mouch]

My wild guess is that you think opposition to this is racial, or perhaps class-based. But it isn't necessarily--there is widespread opposition to consolidating school districts even when they are very similar demographically and in similar financial condition. The vast disparity among schools and their students in Michigan counties just makes it even less likely.

The unfortunate fact is that most people like their schools, even if they are quite bad, and most people don't like change very much. People also don't like their kids to have to travel far to get to school, and the bigger the district, the bigger the danger that will happen. I'm am not saying that there aren't people who don't want their kids going to school with black and/or poor people. There clearly are. But those factors aren't necessary for people to oppose a proposal of this kind.

People 'liking' their schools doesn't matter. Right now, their ability to pay for their schools is the question. If they tax themselves sufficiently to cover the real costs including the future pension burden, nobody would care about consolidation.

The problem is that many districts won't consolidate and won't pay for the costs themselves. In tough times, people may make choices they don't 'like'.