In Ipswich, Massachusetts, a group of sixth graders, led by their teacher, had a novel idea: send a bill to the corporation who used them as guinea pigs to test their newest standardized test. Two sixth grade math classes lost an entire week’s worth of instruction taking a trial run of a new test and now they want payment for […]

Efforts by the Koch brothers front group Americans for Prosperity to scuttle the Detroit bankruptcy settlement were shot down in flames as the state legislature overwhelmingly voted yesterday to contribute $194.8 million toward the deal. This was the amount needed to ensure that the deal did not collapse and which saves the Detroit Institute of Arts’ priceless art collection while […]

Detroit Bulk Storage has been denied a permit by the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to store petcoke on the banks of the Detroit River. As you may recall, they were storing giant piles of the toxic byproduct of tar sands oil refining by Koch Carbon, an energy company owned by the billionaire Koch brothers. Last year, the piles were […]

In a shocking development that surprises absolutely nobody, we learn that the Koch brothers, through their front group Americans for Prosperity, is working overtime to sabotage the “grand bargain” settlement that would bring the city of Detroit out of bankruptcy, save the Detroit Institute of Arts’ priceless art collection, and keep innocent retired pensioners from being thrown into abject poverty […]

Because how could Detroit voters’ views be relevant to what happens to their city?

The Detroit Journalism Cooperative published a poll this week investigating views of the proposed “grand bargain” to pull Detroit out of bankruptcy. The good news is that the study finds strong support for the state pitching in with funding to help preserve workers’ pensions and the DIA. As Kevyn Orr tries to persuade Lansing Republicans to sign off on the deal, it’s good to know that he has voters behind him.

But here’s the thing: the poll only sampled voters who live outside the city of Detroit. 600 interviews, none of them within the city. This was intentional, not an oversight. Mlive offers the rationale that:

“Because the poll is intended to measure Michigan voters’ attitudes toward Detroit, the survey does not include interviews with Detroit voters.”

Correcting one more bad decision on top of so, so many others Bowing to public outrage, officials at the Education Achievement Authority — Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s failed education experiment with Detroit students — have reinstated fired teacher Tiffani Eaton. Eaton was fired for breaking up an exceedingly violent fight in her classroom by whacking one of the kids on […]

NOTE: this story has been updated HERE. When Tiffani Eaton stopped a violent classroom fight between two strapping high school boys by whacking one of them with a broom, she was fired by the Education Achievement Authority that runs Pershing High School in Detroit. EAA administrators defended her firing saying that she violated state corporal punishment laws; that it amounted […]

The Detroit News has a report out today that is both shocking and unsurprising. In it, they reveal that, since its inception in the fall of 2012, the Education Achievement Authority has spent nearly a quarter million dollars in travel, gas, a chauffeur for Chancellor John Covington, on furniture and other miscellaneous, non-education-related items. And they put it all on […]

Last week, a vicious fight broke out between two students at the Education Achievement Authority’s Pershing High School. With a non-functional walkie-talkie and no other adults around to help, teacher Tiffani Eaton had to act fast as the two brawling boys thrashed around the room, punching each other, and knocking over desks. She grabbed a broom handle and whacked one […]

Don’t miss it! The Netroots Nation conference is, as you likely already know, in Detroit this summer (July 17-20 at Cobo Hall). This morning, they announced the panel line-up and it’s astonishing. I was privileged to be part of the panel selection process which was nothing short of excruciating. We had to take a list of nearly 400 excellent submissions […]

Hung out to dry with no alternatives and no union to help protect her A teacher at the Education Achievement Authority’s Pershing High School found herself with no way to communicate with security and no tools to disarm an exceedingly violent fight in her classroom. School rules prevented her from leaving the room and the walkie talkie she carried to […]