Detroit Public Schools

[Coldjensens]

Charter Schools can do what public schools cannot. They can admit selectively.

[Nearborn]

The problem is how do you break the chain of parents who do not care gnerating children who become parents who do not care? I have no ideas on that.

If you keep putting bowls of milk on your front porch, you're going to have a cat problem.

[doctorofenglish]

This is from an outsider whose cousins graduated from Redford and Denby High Schools in the late 50's and early 60's. When you have board members who are more interested in their positions than the schools, when they hire people for the superintendency that have credentials but lack the experience to run a large school district, school administrators that aren't competent, a school board that didn't close schools even when the student population was falling and spending money on school updates then close them 2-3 years later (see Redford High's new football field and track), what would you expect? It is time to hire the best person to run this district regardless of race or sex and let them do what they have to do to fix or at least begin to make this district better. For the past 30 years the school boards have shown that they have no clue on what to do to improve this district.

[scolls]

I like how everybody blames the district. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the students. I'm sure that it has nothing to do with students from single parent families whose single parent is a prostitute or drug dealer and has 6 siblings and said parent is never there to set guidelines for the student. Teachers can only do so much. I went to Detroit public schools as recently as the 90's. The quality of the teachers and education was on par with *Gasp* Roscommon where I went to high school. The difference is Detroit schools were really unsafe. My neighborhood of Detroit was safe and full of stable families and relatively crime free. The kids in my neighborhood had no problems in school. The kids who did were the ones from the crime ridden neighborhoods. When a student doesn't want to learn and the parents do nothing to encourage the student to learn, what the hell do you expect the school to do? The problem is Detroit is broken.

[Tricia819]

Originally Posted by scolls

I like how everybody blames the district. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the students. I'm sure that it has nothing to do with students from single parent families whose single parent is a prostitute or drug dealer and has 6 siblings and said parent is never there to set guidelines for the student. Teachers can only do so much. I went to Detroit public schools as recently as the 90's. The quality of the teachers and education was on par with *Gasp* Roscommon where I went to high school. The difference is Detroit schools were really unsafe. My neighborhood of Detroit was safe and full of stable families and relatively crime free. The kids in my neighborhood had no problems in school. The kids who did were the ones from the crime ridden neighborhoods. When a student doesn't want to learn and the parents do nothing to encourage the student to learn, what the hell do you expect the school to do? The problem is Detroit is broken.

A teacher has a student for, maybe, six hours a day for one year. Even an extremely skilled psychiatrist cannot "fix" a lifetime of neglect in that short period of time. A teachers job is to teach, not serve as a family therapist.

[doctorofenglish]

This district has lost over 100,000 students since 2000. The DPS failed the public by dragging their feet on closing underutilized schools, not addressing administration problems and squandering large sums of money with no accountability. I am not fond of the EFM for the schools but there was no alternative. For more than 35 years this school district has been poor managed and as the district moved from majority majority to minority majority, it decided that only a minority would be able to lead them. Please wake up Detroit; you will never be a world class city with that kind of thinking. It doesn't matter what color a person's skin is, but if he/she is competent to lead these schools into the next decade.