This post has been updated below. Last month, Governor Snyder announced that he was forming a 31-person coalition to present alternatives for education reform in Detroit. The coalition, called the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren, is a made up of representatives from public schools, the school reform community (many who are actively working to undermine traditional public schools), […]

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that our team has great love for public education and public school educators. There are few groups in Michigan who are so unfairly maligned and held responsible for the failings of others – parents, administrators, and lawmakers, for example – than public school teachers. This heartbreaking situation propels me to write about their […]

For the past four years, Michigan Republicans, taking their cues from the anti-teacher group Mackinac Center, have defunded education, gone after teacher pay and benefits, and done just about everything they could to put public education and public educators out of business. Their model is to make teaching so unattractive that the professionals abandon it as a career, leaving the […]

Now that the election is over, you don’t hear much about the massive cuts Republicans have made to public schools in Michigan. Without someone like Mark Schauer to constantly put it out into the mediasphere, it’s simply no longer being discussed. Well, except by bloggers like me whose “intellectual content” Gov. Snyder gives “a very low number” on a scale […]

Dr. Stephen Wellinski has been on the forefront of the battle to end the interlocal agreement between Eastern Michigan University and the Education Achievement Authority (EAA). EMU’s connection to Gov. Snyder’s failed experiment with Detroit students is a stain on an otherwise well-earned reputation as a university that teaches teachers and Dr. Wellinski’s leadership on this issue is an important […]

Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger wants you to believe that he’s found a magical way to fund road repairs without raising your taxes! While it’s true that your gas taxes and sales taxes won’t increase, the entire scheme is based on taking nearly a billion dollars more from schools each year. Local municipalities will take a huge hit, too. How […]

The table was set, the supporters were there and prepared, and the Eastern Michigan University Board of Regents in Ypsilanti were set to act on a resolution to end their contractual relationship with the increasingly controversial and toxic Educational Achievement Authority (EAA). Though it currently involves only a dozen Detroit schools now, Republicans want to take this state takeover district […]

Back in 2011, a man named Pasquale “Pat” Battaglia posted a blog entry on the website of the Lapeer County Tea Party Patriots titled “The God and Country Education Project”. In it, he introduces something he calls “American Christian Academies” and denounces the “progressive” movement who he says have taken “less than 3 generations to completely obliterate our schools”. Fast […]

Last month I shared Prof. Stephen Wellinski’s letter encouraging public school advocates to contact the Eastern Michigan University Board of Regents to demand that they end EMU’s partnership with Michigan’s failed experiment on Detroit children known as the Education Achievement Authority (EAA). You can sign Prof. Wellinski’s petition HERE. The Board of Regents meets this Friday, December 5th to consider/reconsider […]

Public Education is a partnership and has been for many decades now. That partnership includes our local communities, the school board, our cities, the state, and the federal government, to simplify this part of my message. For many years Public Education was working well. It educated us all, kept to constitutional promises, improved over time. It was a natural or […]

Since the post-election apocalypse, I have noticed a definitive shift in in the way people are communicating, talking, and thinking. There is a deeper and more pronounced urgency for some, an urgency that I find both impactful and also curious. I have been here before; I have been at this place after a sound beating down where people find themselves […]