“A train wreck you could see coming” – A lesson from Detroit about the Darling/Kooyenga MPS takeover plan
Milwaukee public schools has been led by Dr. Darienne Driver for one year. In that time MPS has taken unprecedented steps to stabilize its finances, reform its lower performing schools and aggressively establish a child-centered teaching and learning culture. Rather than support these efforts and the MPS Superintendent, Sen. Darling and Rep. Kooyenga continue to seek a policy that will undermine these efforts and cause significant harm to school reform in MPS.
There continue to be questions about the financial impact of the Darling/Kooyenga MPS takeover plan and at this point we have yet to see the final legislative language and there are any number of questions that can’t be precisely answered. What can be shared is that where similar experiments have been tried, particularly in Detroit, the results have been financially disastrous for both the school district and now school districts across the state of Michigan.
Knowing what we know today about what happened in Detroit, why would legislators in Wisconsin want to create the same chaos in Milwaukee?
Knowing what we know today about what happened in Detroit, why would legislators in Wisconsin want to create the same chaos in Milwaukee?
As one republican legislator in Michigan stated recently about, “I think there is culpability here… we have some blood on our hands.”
Or as Detroit’s mayor recently told his colleagues, the takeover plan was “a train wreck you could see coming.”
If the people in Michigan knew this wasn’t going to work and their worst predictions have now come true, why would we go down the same path in Wisconsin?
If the people in Michigan knew this wasn’t going to work and their worst predictions have now come true, why would we go down the same path in Wisconsin?
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan made a compelling case last month that the Detroit Public Schools’ downward spiraling enrollment is partly attributable to efforts to fix its finances through emergency managers. The problem, Duggan told attendees at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference, is that massive school closings, teacher layoffs and other cuts created enough uncertainty about the system’s future that parents moved their children elsewhere.
“It was a train wreck you could see coming,” he said, because emergency managers are temporary, but parents are making long-term decisions for their children.
Kelly, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on education, also acknowledged the state bears some responsibility for DPS’ financial mess.
The state has controlled DPS for much of the last 15 years. It has been run by governor-appointed emergency managers since 2009, and was under state control from 1999 until 2005.“A train wreck you could see coming” – A lesson from Detroit about the Darling/Kooyenga MPS takeover plan | Educate All Students: Larry Miller's Blog: