DFER Michigan Blog
REPUBLICAN FY 2013 BUDGET PROPOSAL
March 29, 2012
REPUBLICAN FY 2013 BUDGET PROPOSAL
DRAMATIC AND RECKLESS CUTS TO EDUCATION SPENDING
Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives began debate on its budget proposal for FY 2013, the upcoming fiscal year that begins October 1st. The debate resumes on the House floor today.
In Michigan:
• Almost 10,000 children will be eliminated from the Head Start program;
• Nearly 54,000 students with disabilities' costs will shift to states and districts as part of cuts to IDEA; and,
• Approximately 150,000 students from historically disadvantaged groups will have reduced or eliminated services due to Title I cuts.
Read more here.
It's The Teacher!
January 6, 2012
By Harrison Blackmond, DFER Michigan State Director
My views about education are, like many others, informed by my own experiences. Born the son of a black sharecropper in rural Alabama near the end of WWII, I attended segregated schools for most of my early years of education, including the first three. And, my teachers in Alabama were all black, all female. The remainder of my primary and secondary schooling was in low income, mostly black communities in Cincinnati, Ohio. All of my teachers in Cincinnati were white and mostly female. I had both good and bad educational experiences in Alabama and Ohio. The one thing these experiences had in common was that those experiences, both good and bad, were determined by the quality of teachers I had. No surprise there.
What is surprising is that the good teachers I had overcame all the "social and economic disabilities" a student like me brought to class with him. My parents were typical of most black families: uneducated or under-educated. My father had no education and could not read or write. My mother had a fifth or sixth grade education. So she could read and write, but knew little about how urban education systems worked. We were very poor, living on the largess of the landowners where we lived in Alabama and on welfare most of the time in Cincinnati. I worked at school and after school from seventh grade on. My experience was not atypical. Most of my classmates had similar stories. Some of us succeeded against great odds. The ones who did succeed educationally did so because there were teachers along the way who encouraged, inspired, and demanded our best.
Not only did the good teachers know their pedagogy and subject matter, it was clear they cared about whether we learned or not. Our social and economic circumstances did not matter. They expected us to learn in spite of our circumstances. No parental involvement, no problem; students on welfare, no problem. Good, dedicated, and highly qualified professional teachers can successfully educate children regardless of their circumstances. I've seen it happen first hand. The problem is, good, dedicated, and highly qualified professional teachers are few and far between. But that need not be. We can identify teachers and future teachers with those qualities and provide incentives for them to teach in schools in distressed communities. (See DFER's Ticket to Teach proposal.)
Charter school expansion must include quality requirements
December 12, 2011
(From The Grand Rapids Press, December 10th, 2011)
By Harrison Blackmond and Amber Arellano
As the Michigan Legislature prepares to vote on sweeping education legislation that will remake public education in Michigan -- especially in its poor neighborhoods -- we call on our state leaders to make one central question their guiding light in their vote: What is best for our students, especially our disadvantaged students?
That question is at the heart of our organizations. It also should be the driving question in policymakers' decision-making on whether to support lifting Michigan's charter school cap without the addition of thoughtful language that will ensure any expansion of schools would be an expansion of quality charter schools.
Our organizations are agnostic about school governance. Indeed, we strongly support the expansion of high-quality school choices for Michigan students, especially African-American, Latino and poor children. Too many of them are tragically underserved by both charter schools and traditional public schools.
In fact, research shows overall, Michigan's charter school and traditional public school achievement mirror one another: some schools are terrific; many more are mediocre to bad; and some are abysmal. After 17 years of state policy that has given little consideration to quality, it's clear charter school expansion alone will not improve our state's education system -- or close our achievement gap. We need quality charter expansion.
Some charter school advocates say this legislation is a civil rights issue. We agree. As a state, Michigan has failed consistently to provide high-performing schools to our poor students and children of color. That's our fault, the adults of Michigan, not the fault of students. Other states demonstrate that low-income children can and do perform at dramatically higher levels when adults educate them at dramatically higher levels.
With Our Kids' Futures at Stake, ALL Michigan Public Schools Should be Held to High Standards
December 2, 2011
