By PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Detroit’s education reforms went national this morning when Detroit Public School’s Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb told the nation there are good things going on in Detroit.
Bobb appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press program, talking about school reform along with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, chancellor of Washington DC schools and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. Teachers in both DC and Detroit are represented by AFT locals.
“In Detroit, overall there are great strides,” Bobb told the Free Press immediately after the program. “It’s not to put a lid over the challenges that are before the community. But I just don’t think that our story about what’s happening in the city, as well as in the school district, is getting the attention it needs, it deserves.”
The Sunday talk show focused on teachers, and in particular what to do with bad teachers. It generated a mild debate between Rhee, who recently fired dozens of DC teachers for ineffectiveness and Weingarten, who pointed out that while the union, too, wants to get rid of bad teachers, the union also wants districts to invest in developing teachers to their fu