“Achievement School Districts” are a recent phenomenon in the corporate education reform movement. These “school districts” are designed to guarantee “rapid improvement in the state’s low performing schools”, although specific methods, techniques and strategies to accomplish this goal are rarely mentioned. ASDs have sprung up all across the nation, under various names and guises, from the “Education Achievement Authority” in […]

Elizabeth Green, the founder of “Chalkbeat,” an online education site, is out with a fawning, sycophantic puff piece on Eva Moskowitz, the leader of the Success Academy network of charter schools in New York City. Some of my favorite edubloggers have already responded with their thoughts (Peter Greene, aka Curmudgication; Mercedes Schneider here), so I’ll make my comments on this […]

Back in 2002, Governor John Engler, one of the co-founders of the Koch brothers-funded, corporatist front group Mackinac Center for Public Policy, recommended doing away with the Michigan Board of Education and make it a group appointed by the governor rather than the elected body it was then and still is today: Viewing the State Board of Education as an […]

NOTE: This post has been updated below. Disgraced former Education Achievement Authority Chancellor John Covington is still trying to find a way to cash in on his time at Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s failed experiment on Detroit school children. Recall that he bailed out on Kansas City schools which lost their accreditation the month after he abruptly quit. Then he […]

John Covington bailed on his position as the Chancellor of the Education Achievement Authority, Gov. Rick Snyder’s failed experiment on Detroit school kids, in June of 2014. He cashed out with a hefty severance package and then went job hunting. He was passed over for a superintendent position with the Richland One School District in South Carolina. Then he was […]

Bowing to immense pressure from faculty, students, employees, education activists, as well as the general public, the Eastern Michigan University Board of Regents finally gave notice that it is ending its intralocal agreement with Gov. Snyder’s failed experiment on Detroit school children known as the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) this afternoon. The move came after what can only be described […]

Over the past couple of months, multiple Colleges in the Eastern Michigan University system have passed resolutions of “No Confidence” in the EMU Board of Regents. These groups include the Colleges of Education, Arts & Science, Technology, and Health & Human Services. Yesterday, the entire Faculty Senate did the same. You can read their resolution HERE. In their resolution of […]

In comments here at Eclectablog and in many other media spaces around the globe, people are clamoring for the resignation of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. For Michigan residents, that call has been ringing in the halls of this great state almost from the moment he was sworn into office for his first term. If we get into the “Way Back […]

For the past couple of weeks, I have been trying to ensure that the utter and tragic failure of Gov. Snyder’s experiment on Detroit school children – the Education Achievement Authority – does not go down the memory hole. I told the story in 127 Eclectablog headlines and reminded people that these failures have been stacking up for four years […]

NOTE: This post has been updated. On December 11th, the faculty of the Eastern Michigan University Department of Teacher Education, part of EMU’s College of Education, passed a unanimous vote of no confidence in the “leadership” of the EMU Board of Regents in response to their decision to remain in their partnership with Gov. Rick Snyder’s failed experiment on Detroit […]

Last week, the Board of Regents of Eastern Michigan University revisited their interlocal agreement with Gov. Rick Snyder’s failed experiment on Detroit school kids known as the Education Achievement Authority. They had agreed a year prior to reevaluate their participation in the partnership with the EAA based on their progress on four specific items: A stronger partnership is forged between […]