FORECAST: Nuclear Winter in the Education World

When Rick Snyder and Mike Flanagan finish wiping out public education as we know it, will the barren landscape of privatized, virtual schooling leave any glimmer of life remaining for comprehensive, all inclusive education to re-emerge in MI in a future lifetime?  
Will public education, long the keystone of representative democracy, be able to produce well rounded, creative, healthy, cooperative, motivated, disciplined and informed future citizens who will find rewarding jobs and professions in a world that values collaboration and teamwork as they serve others and preserve basic American freedoms?
Or will public schools be relegated to generic area centers of learning for all the special needs kids who are totally ignored by the charters, the private academies and the virtual programs taught in the isolation of a student and his computer screen?  
Public schools becoming an educational version of failed public housing is a likely scenario, creating class warfare to the nth degree, as those who can afford to send their kids to the Country Day Schools of the world will do so,  those who formerly could choose to live in an excellent local school district will now have to be content with the hodgepodge of "any time, any place" classrooms within various venues of a county, and those whose kids need intervention and special services will be stuck with what is left in unbundled and underfunded "government" schools.
The vast devastation of the nuclear winter will remove all memory of what it once meant to have comprehensive education in a school district which served all the needs of every child.  
The traditional high school experience, so essential to turning out well rounded students who not only excel in "academic" areas, but also have opportunities to nurture their creative minds by participating in  and studying music and art and theater, as well as to promote healthy bodies through athletics, will all be forgotten. 
 Long gone will be the important role of socialization, collaboration, feelings of loyalty to a cause greater than your own that being a student in a traditional high school brings through participation in school activities.  The opportunities that good school districts provide for social awareness and acceptance in diverse student bodies will be thwarted by the isolation that "any place, any time" presents.  These, too, are important forms of learning as young adults are nurtured along their journeys to productive and rewarding lives.
The rights  of citizens to live in a community where they can exercise local control in determining the kinds of educational opportunities they want to provide for all their children will be lost forever...unless...
...Unless the nuclear assault on our public schools can be stopped before it gets to the point of no return.  The old saying of "giving an inch but taking a mile" is descriptive of what is happening in MI as we speak.   A little less money here, a few more unfunded mandates there, a little more state interference here, a little more regulation there, and voila! Where did our district go?  
You live in a "yellow" district?  Really?  What does that mean?   It means some educrats have too much time on their hands while they invent inconsistent, meaningless ways to confuse the unaware and often uninformed public in to thinking that what they have always recognized as an outstanding comprehensive educational program suddenly isn't, because some individual segments (sub groups) have been isolated and assigned values that they really don't have, or worse, don't matter.  It is all a game to continue the drumbeat that pounds home the idea that your local public schools are broken.  If your school district looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and swims like a duck, it must be a duck regardless of whether some metric decides it doesn't measure up to duck status because one wing is slightly shorter than another, or the quack is too loud.  Check out:    ED-MATTERS.BLOGSPOT.COM:   Education Matters: Report Cards that Offer Zero Useful Information.
It is past time for our elected representatives in the state and in our local communities to rise up and say "enough, already."  Our educators and administrators know far more about our educational successes and shortcomings than Lansing politicos and ivory tower educrats. Our outstanding school districts didn't get that way by accident;  their highly qualified, experienced teachers and staff are always working to assess learning gaps and remedy problems in order to do the best they can for every single student.  
The attempt to destroy these districts in the name of reform from Lansing is a nuclear option.  It must be stopped before it gets any further into the coming winter, and comprehensive public education is lost to future generations.