By joining an anti-ACA lawsuit, Michigan panders to Tea Party extremists at the expense of the middle class. It’s no secret that Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette and Michigan Republicans detest the Affordable Care Act (ACA). They’ve done everything they can to discredit or dismantle the law known as Obamacare, out of disdain for President Obama and what they consider […]

Just a few odds and ends from the world of the Education Achievement Authority, Gov. Rick Snyder’s failed education experiment with Detroit students. First, although a vote had been predicted yesterday, various reporting suggests that Republicans in the House and Senate are still struggling to come to an agreement on what the expansion of the EAA should look like. Some […]

GOP Congressmen Walberg and Bentivolio are so busy trying to discredit the ACA, how can they have time for anything else? How many Obamacare “horror stories” have to be debunked for people to realize that the GOP spin machine is pedaling so hard it’s about ready to rotate off its axis? Better yet, let’s call it what it is: lying. […]

As faculty and students at Eastern Michigan University gather at a rally today to urge their Board of Regents to sever their educational institution’s relationship with Governor Snyder’s failed Educational Achievement Authority experiment in Detroit, lawmakers in Lansing are whipping votes to pass legislation that will expand it statewide and codify it into law. Yesterday’s bombshell news that State Superintendent […]

NOTE: There are two comments at the bottom of this interview disparaging both me and the interviewee, former EAA Teacher of the Year Kim Jurczak. One goes by the name “Lyeyname” and the other by “Mypost”. Both comments came from the same IP address meaning that they were made by the same person masquerading as different people to make it […]

I don’t normally just reprint press releases but this one is so well done and so perfect that I couldn’t really add much to it. Ellen Lipton has been a fierce, fierce warrior in the battle to save Michigan’s public schools. Along with Sen. Hopgood, she was, for far too long, a lone voice calling out the Education Achievement Authority […]

Spin, baby, spin

Yesterday, EAA Chancellor John Covington and Republican Chair of the House Education Committee Rep. Lisa Lyons appeared on the Current State program to discuss the Education Achievement Authority. In clear defensive mode, both of them sought to characterize anyone who opposes the EAA as the only solution to the intractable problems facing the Detroit Public School system as “defending the status quo” and being “outright criminal”.

The audio, excerpts, and commentary after the jump.

Pandering to the far right is bad for Michigan’s economy and our families Governor Rick Snyder refused to join the chorus who called for Michigan Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema to resign after the former member of Michigan’s House of Representatives. The party’s leadership was okay with a year of anti-gay comments but an especially vile anti-Muslim post made them […]

NOTE:There may well be a vote on the expanding the EAA statewide this week, probably tomorrow (Thursday). If you haven’t already, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR STATE HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE AND YOUR STATE SENATOR TO EXPRESS YOUR OPPOSITION TO HOUSE BILL 4369. If you need some ideas, have a look at the talking points prepared by the MEA by clicking HERE (pdf). NOTE […]

A year and a half ago, I wrote a rather lengthy piece titled “Majority white communities avoid Emergency Financial managers with help from Republicans Denby and Rogers”. In it, I told the rather convoluted story of how now-State Representatives Cindy Denby and Bill Rogers had, during their time as local government officials, gotten their municipalities and county into severe debt […]

UPDATE: I have heard that there may be a vote this week on expanding the EAA statewide with what is essentially no limit to the amount of schools that can be included in it. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR STATE HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE AND YOUR STATE SENATOR TO EXPRESS YOUR OPPOSITION TO HOUSE BILL 4369. Thank you. When Eastern Michigan University was founded […]