Detroit’s vicious cycle: Why national education groups aren’t coming to help some of the country’s most troubled schools

Erin Einhorn:

been a struggle for sure,” said Dan Varner, the CEO of Excellent Schools Detroit, who says he’s approached “dozens” of deep-pocketed philanthropies like the Gates Foundation, prominent education organizations that boost schools around the country, and charter networks that run successful schools in other cities.

“We were looking for real substantive help and all of them have poked around and have done their homework and have decided not to [come].”

Plenty of Detroiters say that’s a good thing. They point to SWAT teams of education “reformers” who’ve promised to fix urban schools, only to be accused of trampling democracy — as happened recently in Newark when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg poured $100 million into schools and angered many locals in the process.

One thought on “Detroit’s vicious cycle: Why national education groups aren’t coming to help some of the country’s most troubled schools”

  1. It is extremely troubling that public schools in places like Detroit are unable to adequately educate students with only current public resources available. With Billionaire dollars has come Billionaire decision-making much of which has not been based on intelligently applying relevant data. Much of current “supposed research” and advocacy is largely constructed to meet with Billionaire whims. It is astonishing how many non-sense decisions are turned out and often praised despite lousy results.
    Education “Research” often shows what the researcher needs to show to get the next grant.

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