The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that Detroit schools fail to provide an ‘adequate education’, and are “schools in name only” — bereft of proper books or teacher training, and often infested with rats. The court says — in Gary B. v. Whitmer — that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution contains a due process promise of fundamental literacy from these publicly-funded failure factories. The of Right Angle concur in part, and dissent in part.
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24 replies on “U.S. Court: Constitution Promises Detroit’s Illiterate Kids ‘Adequate Education’”
I would Agree that there is no Constitutional issue, period. The PROBLEM in my humble opinion and that opinion is supported by 15 years a High School Teacher in Special Education and time as the Dean of Students. Education is no longer about TEACHING students to learn how to engage in Critical Thinking, Reasoning and Logic. Rather Public Education, K-12 and Higher Education, Colleges and Universities have MORPHED into Centers to Indoctrinate through Propaganda that sees its Major job to manufacture Activists for THE IDEOLOGY and the “fundamental transformation of America.” Add into the scrabbled mix the LACK of Common Sense, Respect and VIRTUE that are ALL necessary to be a GOOD person and a Productive member of Society benefiting the individual and Society as a whole.
Also inflicting GREAT harm toward Students is the amount of dollars spent on each Student to EDUCATE them. That seems the ONLY Solution, INCREASE the dollars and all will run smoothly. The results are ALWAYS the same. Students continue to NOT learn and schools continue to ask for MORE dollars.
The second Problem are the UNIONS. The UNIONS are MORE about INCREASING membership, giving large dollars amounts to the NEW Democratic Socialist (OXYMORON) Party, the Party of INSANITY and looking out for their members. The PRODUCT, Education just gets WORSE. Students don’t LEARN, Teachers are protected through Tenure, Administrations don’t change and Taxpayers are asked to dole out MORE dollars to a myopic, delusional, corrupt and very destructive EducAtional System. There is no ACCOUNTABILITY nor is there any personal of Community RESPONSIBILITY.
The same old same OLD is FAILING and FAILING with dire consequences BOTH intended and unintended. Those CONSEQUENCES gravely effect Students. National Testing continually proves this FACT. Scores of PROFICIENCY and above PROFICIENT are dropping and Below Basic is INCREASING. This is the alarm bell going off BUT know one is listening BUT can ONLY hear annoying backgrounds noise.
Maybe just maybe with ALL students released from school due to the Wuhan China Virus, Parents in LARGE numbers will become aware and recognize the LEARNING INJUSTICE being done to their Students.
NOTHING absolutely NOTHING is going to change UNLESS Parents, ALL Parents become Pro-Active in securing from Public Education results that can easily Identify SUCESS. Otherwise, the FAILED system will continue to produce non-Learning which then damage those Students who Graduate believing that they have the necessary tools to master Higher Education, thereby, Attaining the valuable Knowledge and Skills NEEDED to find a Career and an income that they then will be able to attain the American Dream.
Ditto, and sad but true.
Teachers and administrators are “Mandatory Reporters”, meaning that they are required by law to report evidence of abuse or neglect. Some indicators of neglect include lack of or insufficient food, clothing, shelter, health care, hygiene, security, and rest. Yet these same “MR”s offer breakfast, lunch, & weekend take-home meals, coats and clean socks & underwear in clothing banks, after school day-care, health screenings, toothbrushes & toothpaste, as well as free school supplies including Chromebooks. I don’t deny that all these things help students meet their basic needs, but how come we enable neglect without reporting it?
I’ve been on the school board–it’s an exercise in frustration. Schools are currently geared as social service organizations. Additionally, the mentality (at least in my state) is “whatever it costs.” There is no cost-benefit analysis, ever.
One thing I think you guys overlooked in this discussion is the multi-generational quagmire in which many urban communities are stuck. There is a good chance that the young man who brought this lawsuit was raised by a single mother who was functionally illiterate herself; failed by the same public school system that failed her son. His mother may also have been raised by a single parent that was functionally illiterate, too. Who then in the house is going to sit the boy down and give him homework when the school fails? I’m paraphrasing Dr. King when I say it does no good to tell people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, when they ain’t even got boots. These communities in Detroit and other urban areas have been devastated culturally for the express purpose of destroying any ability to determine their own futures, and I don’t think they can recover without some outside help from their fellow citizens. That doesn’t mean that the US Courts have a solution for them; they don’t. Somehow we the people are going to have to work the jack boot of the state off of the necks of the people of Detroit and elsewhere.
I’m afraid Bill’s analysis is correct. I sent the video link to a cousin in the Detroit area. Here is the response I received.
“This has been a problem in Detroit for decades. Corrupt school boards, inadequate teachers, parents who don’t care and it goes on. The kids are not taught to respect property. The schools are in shambles while the elected officials drive around in nice cars. The state took it over about, maybe, eight years ago and then gave it back. Nothing has changed. Those who want a better education for their kids, send them into the suburb schools (we have school of choice in Michigan). Where my son lives, (Clawson, Michigan) They get kids from Pontiac, MI. It is really sad and until the parents get involved and vote these people out, unfortunately, it won’t change.”
Scott, it sounds like school boards are no more consequential than student government.
That was the sense I got when doing my basic research a few years ago.
Anything that must be provided by someone else is not a right.
My parents, and my grandmother who lived with us, were teachers. Everything was a teachable moment. But my parents didn’t get that mind frame from their formal education, they got it from the homes that produced them. Curiosity, drive, and personal responsibility are things that we absorb from living life WITH our parents and experiencing what their true values are. Uh-oh, parents! I agree with Ralph Kopera that education is a three-legged stool, and the parents have been denying their role for a long time. Say from oh, I don’t know, the ME generation on. Ideally parents wouldn’t drive their children to education, but would guide them in loving to learn. Bust the teachers union! Get rid of the un-teachers taking up space and sucking up benefits. Get the ones with fire in their bellies and give them free rein to teach FACTS, and let them hold students responsible for their performance. Which will require back-up from parents. Back to square one.
I worked for a fortune 500 company that,for awhile, provided computers and educational materials for schools. I would visit the inner city schools to assess the use and success of our offerings. The school who was most successful was in Newark, New Jersey. When I interviewed the principal I asked how she managed to stand out. There were two things she shared:
1) They provided breakfast for the children, kids can’t concentrate if they’re hungry and a lot of them weren’t fed much at home.
2) If a parent didn’t show up for parent/teacher meetings she would go to the home and hold a meeting there. Many times it embarrassed the parents enough that they started (somewhat) participating. Seeing that their parents were involved made a big difference.
My husband moved from Montreal to NYC and got his green card by teaching in an inner city school. The only parents that ever attended his parent/teacher meetings were from one of the islands and their son was the only one who did his homework and succeeded in class.
Don’t ever underesitmate the importance of the parents in a child’s life.
Love that principal that did the home meetings: just thought I’d come take a look at what is so much more important than your child’s future…
It’s not just Detroit. I was the communications manager for a well known nonprofit. A number of high school students applied to a paid intern position that I was given to lighten my load, and to mentor a young person. It was a disaster. My interview went like this:
Me: Spell accommodation. FAIL
Me: Fix this sentence: Their not wrong, but there positions were not persuasive. FAIL
I was so discouraged that I told my boss that I’d rather not try to re-educate these kids because I simply didn’t have the time, but I’d be happy to tutor them off the clock. Denied.
To me, language is essential. My town is swarmed with hispanic lawn-mowing men who smile and nod when I try to communicate. They have no clue what I am trying to explaIn.. So is it incumbent on me to learn Spanish, or for them to learn English?
I just noticed, to no one’s surprise, that all 3 of you guys part your hair on the right.
I agree with you, Scott. A lot of people in the Michigan State Government are tools.
I don’t read anything in Amendment XIV that comes close to addressing this situation. (??).
Parenting is the primary source of responsibility in learning. Take for example Dr. Ben Carson a ‘product’ of the Detroit Public School system. Even though his mother was functionally illiterate she insisted that her children study and learn.
Democrats don’t like facts
Personal Responsibility doesn’t jibe with the victimhood movement.
My wife was a teacher for 30+ years and she always had to explain to parents and students that this is a 3-way partnership. That the teacher and the student and the parent(s) all had a job to do. It is not the teacher’s job to educate, the student’s job to get educated or the parent’s job to foster a home where education is valued. It is all of those jobs taken together. Miss out on any one of them and the equation doesn’t work. This young man with the suit had 2 of 3 and is rightly angered at the missing one. Very frequently two are missing. There are many methods to teach and each student learns differently. The role of the teacher is to figure out the best way to teach THAT student. It doesn’t have to cost all kinds of money to do it. Just those most precious of commodities: time and effort on the part of all three groups.
The key is individual responsibility. This takes the freedom to exert individual responsibility. Government owned, operated, and funded education at ANY level eliminates the possibility of individual responsibility outside of home schooling and self education. The reason is that government MEANS coercive power and control of the individual. Thereby eliminating the freedom necessary to exert individual responsibility.
I taught high school physics, chemistry, and math ca 1963. At that time there was much talk of lack of funds and the necessity of the Federal Government providing the necessary funding. To this I replied: government funding means government control. The superintendent of schools said “oh no!”. Who was correct in that prediction?
As for funding, I had to beg for $250 to purchase necessary equipment to teach physics and chemistry. Yet for two successive years $5000 was spent building concession stands at the school’s foot ball field. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars was spent building a new gymnasium that could hold the entire population of the community. There were huge cracks in the walls and the use of the gymnasium was limited to a small fraction of the promised capacity in hopes of preventing catastrophic collapse.
At the end of that academic year, I started moving away from being a teacher in public schools and moved toward a graduate education in the medical sciences.
Just 1 point of contention. I have heard Bill use the thing about the Lincoln Navigator and a school board member a number of times. That was actually the mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick who thankfully is spending his days in prison for some of his corruption.
Bill spoke about the black community in which he is correct. I’m married to a fine lady of color who was determined not to be defined by pigmentation. She’s a nurse and a high ranking officer in our Army. She has zero tolerance for excuses for why a person cannot do something. Her take is simply that a person must WANT to rise above. In other words, if there’s a mountain in the way, move the mountain or go around it.
If you have to, tunnel through it or climb over it as necessary but don’t let it stop you. It is merely an obstacle. As long as you are alive, you can do SOMETHING to make things better.
Chris Rock had a stand-up bit talking about black people and “the other word” and which were the kind to work hard and get ahead and which were the kind to break into your house, steal your TV, then come over when the cops were there to as “I hear you got robbed?”. He also pointed out how “the media” were blamed by blacks for people being afraid but that “the media” were not why there were always shootings on MLK drive in any major city and why people did not want to be there.
The graduation rate or achievement rate or something like that split between white and black here in Wisconsin is pretty horrible. Mostly that is the result of Milwaukee schools approaching Detroit levels. We did break the back mostly of the teacher unions though we had to survive a riot to do so. Too much money siphoned out of paychecks to the Democrat party.
Forty plus years of a DemonCrat run city. If citizens are looking for a scapegoat, look in the mirror.