Response and commentary concerning Michigan Governor Rick Snyder's education plan announcements and Nolan Finley in "Gov's dozer knocks down another wall" in the Detroit News on April 28, 2011.
Nerd Snyder fool-heartedly takes on the Status Quo: Snyder trades the normal and healthy, reliable services provided by your local school board opting imperiously to impose a "socialized" state-run bureaucratic system, jammed with top-down mandates of the kind long-backed and sought by anti-public school activists and opponents.
Add in Snyder's draconian cuts to school funding designed to manhandle local units. Then top that off with the Snyder's outright thief, by political trickery and manipulation, of an existing school fund surplus over $600 million and a healthy up-tick in sales tax revenue of producing another $500 million toward school funding and we have the stage for a Snyder Shortage Snafu of epic proportions.
Rick Snyder is under a grand illusion related to his personal "accomplishments": "My staff keeps trying to slow me down," Snyder says. "They joke that if I get everything done the first year, what am I going to do the next three?"
Look carefully at what Snyder labels "Reform." We've been diddled on that concept before by John M. Engler and now "reform" in many forms of disenfranchisement. is back as what Nolan gleefully calls "Bulldozer" Snyder.
Reform of education should yield in an improvement, for students, not the hatchet job Rick and old-order Engerlites in his cabal are enforcing.
Grand Rapids School Superintendent Taylor sees the Snyder education "reforms" as further imploding his already tattered district. More Charters. More profit for J.C. Huizenga? He sees more public tax money going down to "no return for community" privateers' bottomlines. As Bernard Taylor sees it use of public tax money for faux public academies is heading his Grand Rapids Public Schools to relegation as the almshouses of the very poor and the greatly disadvantaged. But the Republicans have the new formula for improvement: Just send in Mrs.Coswell and McMillin, they have special understanding and superior understanding for care of the needy...NOT!
Rick Snyder is not an expert on education and the team that he assembled was top heavy with perennial critics: "school funding raiders," pro-voucher teammates of Betsy DeVos' national crusade, anti-teacher association ideologues, and Michigan's craven insurance interests-out to harvest ever more profits via "takings" from teachers.
According to our sage Nolan Finley: Snyder "couldn't care less about political ideology. He's all about the bottom line." Right on, Nolan. You got it right! Thus, Snyder fits well with Betsy DeVos and other raiders of public funds for private profit.
One curious source of media misinformation and statistical manipulation about public schools is EAG (Education Action Group)
One weasely wise guy, MI GOP state committee member, Ryan Olson, a greenpea novice/clumsy outside-shill for the Mackinac Center (kid brother of Dr. R. Olson, previously in charge of education policy at the Mackinac) is worthy of a second look at his front EAG. Olson has a partner in his efforts, Eric Doster (Board Member of Betsy DeVos' Great Lakes Project and also a MI GOP lawyer. Olson and Doster have been "placed" to become an "outside source" for/and of wild anti-public education activism. Perhaps you recall a national news exposé; Ryan's attempt to pull an contrived and deceptive "Acorn Video Event" by lying to, and then taping a New York University professor, under false pretenses, in order to gain national attention for himself. Olson's crude activities (Thug Watch) are funded by secret backers and scooped by all-too-willing, lazy news sources looking for controversy, have uncritically used Olson's embarrassing and ambitious attempts to smear and demonize the teachers in every way he can.
So to say that there is no interest in Snyder's hard right ideological attacks on public education from Snyder is to mis-underestimate the power of this aggressive coup against public education. It's all part of a much larger, "state legislature centered" attempt to forever alter the future of your beloved and cherished neighborhood school and diminish and punish faithful teachers for the work they do mentoring your children and grandchildren.
Snyder, the Socialist; Takes takes down Local Democracy Calling it the Status Quo. Local control, an ideal and a vital system, needs to be radically "Re-invented." So sez Snyder!
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