School closures will hurt students
So Michigan has 38 schools on its closure list. The law, passed by the Republican legislature, ostensibly in response to the president’s “Race To the Top” initiative, requires all public schools in Michigan be tested and graded on their performance, and the bottom 5 percent will be subject to closure.
Other states focus more funding and efforts on improving their poor schools. In Michigan, we just shut ’em down.
Of those 38 schools, 25 are in Detroit. Most of the remaining schools in Detroit are already at maximum capacity. Students may be re-assigned to schools many miles from their homes, and how are they to get there? How will the influx of failing students affect those already in those schools? I’m not a teacher, but even I could see this is designed to punish children, not open up opportunities to them.
At first I thought this law was silly and ill-considered; now I suspect it may have been carefully considered. Think about it. We’ll take public funding away from public schools and give it to private and for-profit “schools.” Some are home-schools and some are online, requiring no buildings and only one-time teachers who upload a session once and the company can use it over and over. There are no buses to pay for, no handicapped facilities, no remedial classes, no psychologists, no lunch-room workers, no cafeterias. NO elected school boards. Private and parochial schools can cherry-pick the most promising students and the best athletes, while being required to do nothing at all for the average kid or those with special needs.
Best of all, there are no unions to advocate for teachers’ and students’ rights. Meanwhile, as overcrowded public schools, bereft of necessary funding, continue to founder, we just shut ’em down, 5 percent per year.
This may well be what was intended all along. Universal public education falls by the wayside. It’s genius. Downright diabolical. Well played, Betsy.