Piece throat cutting in public education

If BHSD parents want to see Governor Snyder and Richard McClellan's "piecemeal" attack on public education called "school reform" in action they would be well served to start following the coming dissolution of neighboring Pontiac School District.

Warning: watching will be a lot like watching your own throat get cut one millimeter at a time. As this has been going on for some time now, though, you might as well take a look -- no matter how excruciating.

Yesterday the Pontiac School Board voted to enter into a "consent agreement" with the Governor to avoid an Emergency Manager. With the consent agreement the Pontiac Board is allowed the illusion that they will have some choice over the EM. They "consent," in other words, to something they have no choice over. As their attorney told them, the consent agreement is a kind of an emergency manager.

Options, choices, options, choices -- welcome to the whacky world of school reform.

I am reminded of the end of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice when the Jew Shylock consents to become a Christian when the Christian Venetian court rules against him. "I am content," he says, because he can't say anything else.

Pontiac Schools will open, then, in September. And BHSD parents will get freakishly busy, as will their kids taking tests that are now set to make them look dumber and do them absolutely no good (click on link at end of post if you really want a scary look at the national picture).

By Thanksgiving, though, having the illusion they are in a consent agreement the Pontiac school board will run afoul of the allegedly pragmatic Governor who will say "I gave them every chance..." before appointing the EM for full dissolution. At which point even Sen. Pappageorge can't stop the redistribution of 5,000 kids in need of education mid year.

"You elitist racists, you," will be the insurmountable charge from the right, rather than the left.

Parents need to know one thing in this whole complicated mess: The Governor and Mr. McClellan want Districts gone because they are the sole obstacle to school reform and privatization. But they can't kill Districts easily. They are, for one, in the state constitution (a small obstacle of Snyder, although some courts are noting a problem) and, two, people tend to get very fond of their own districts (particularly where they help maintain economic value of property). The Governor is  prepared, then, to work like Shakespeare's Iago on the Moor Othello in "dilatory time." Public education is not prepared for this kind of corporate methodical takeover. It wasn't designed to compete in that market.

For example: Next week, academic achiever par excellence Phil Pavlov (the Senate Education Committee Chair) will introduce a set of bills that will infuriate educators and their increasingly pathetic lobbying forces. The package basically does a way with teaching certification to "open" the profession to just about anyone. It won't go far -- mainly because Michigan lacks a skilled labor force. But it doesn't have to; it is purely a diversion to take political attention away from the ongoing process of District dissolution.

Piecemeal. Gov. Snyder is good, very good at this kind of slow destruction.

So: take a close look at Pontiac. The knife being slowly drawn across their throats is slicing in to your own.

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/