A new plan presented by an array of non-profit heavy hitters is hoping to reinvent public education in Detroit.
The group, calling itself Excellent Schools Detroit, announced last week that it planned to replace failing Detroit schools with 70 new ones and make a $200-million initial investment -- a plan unprecedented in scope anywhere in the country. The group has commitments from the Gates Foundation and other national groups willing to come to Detroit, said Carol Goss, CEO and president of the Skillman Foundation, a key leader in the effort.
Along with the push to build new schools, key proposals in the plan include the elimination of the city school board and the transfer of control of the district to the mayor.
The idea of mayoral control of schools, which experts say has yielded concrete improvements in other big-city districts like New York and Washington, D.C., has been a hot-button issue in and around Detroit for years. As recently as 2004, Detroit voters shot down a proposal that would've given control of the district to then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
And while Mayor Dave Bing says he's open to the idea, it's not like he's rushing to throw himself on that potential political landmine. (Which begs the question of why you'd give control to a guy who isn't exactly clamoring for the authority.)
Still, as is often the case when it comes to schools, I've got mixed feelings about the idea. I know that the concept of locally elected school boards has a long and generally progressive history, and I respect that to the fullest. But damn it, we've got people leading the school board who can't put together a grammatically correct sentence. That is not cool.
Further, the smart progressives in education in the city, the sort of people I'd like to see on any urban school board, aren't flocking to sit on the Detroit board of ed. Meanwhile, our children continue to lag educationally.
Still, bring up the issue of mayoral control and many Detroiters shudder, which makes
Read more: http://detroit.blogs.time.com/2010/03/11/should-the-mayor-of-detroit-control-the-citys-schools/#ixzz0hz6szkCe