Before we go on with a discussion about how we are going to fix public education, I think we need to first get down to basics and have the discussion as to what education is in the first place. From the uncontradicted point of view of many of my students, it is what you get from sitting in various boring classes, where students who have been allowed to fall years behind grade level, copy things out of books they don't understand, while being incapable to see its relevance to their lives. For attaining no mastery of any subject, teachers who are terrorized by their administrators will give these students a passing grade, so they don't have to incur the wrath of their administrator whose career also depends on revenue generating attendance and doing nothing to rock the leaky public education boat. Now add to this the insecurity of maintaining your job as a teacher or administrator in the present economic mess this country remains in and I think you can understand why all those presently involved in public education are not the people to look to in reforming it.
The president of the Detroit Public Schools (DPS), Otis Mathis, is condemned to
"waging a legal battle to steer the academic future of 90,000 children, in the nation's lowest-achieving big city district," without
himself having the basic English language skills that would make
