(Intro by me)
This was originally written and published on Sherry's Facebook page as a two part series. She has given me permission to republish it here because this is a message that needs to be heard.
Sherry Gay-Dagnogo is a dedicated education reform advocate with experience in schools, civic, faith-based and non-profit sectors. She is interested in developing relationships that will advance systemic change to provide optimal learning conditions for all children.
She was a candidate for Michigan State Representative in District 8 (which includes the neighborhood I grew up in). In December 2012, Sherry was selected as the TPE Hero of the Month for her tireless efforts in public education.
“We chose Sherry because she is dedicated to helping everyday people in an everyday town become all that they are capable of, ” said Trish Brown, founder of Tipping Point Education and the TPEPost.com, “We admire her tenacity.”
Sherry is a sought after education consultant. Her cornucopia of experience and wealth of talent stems from vast experiences serving formerly as the Director of Educational Performance, for the United Way of Southeastern Michigan; leading the Early Development Instrument (EDI) pilot and project during 2010-2012, teaching Science with Detroit Public Schools for more than six years, and working for two Detroit City Council members Alberta Tinsley-Talabi and mentor the late Honorable Clyde Cleveland, collectively for more than 9 years. She attributes her vast knowledge of public service and community organizing to her tenure with the city of Detroit.
When asked why advocacy for education in Detroit? Dagnogo said, “I am Detroit”, as her twitter handle “Detroit Educator”, reminds her followers.
I used information from Sherry's candidate website and the TPE write up from December. I hope they forgive me for gently stepping on copyright toes.
Who's Influencing Education Policy in Michigan?
By: Sherry Gay-Dagnogo
Teachers across America show up to their classrooms every morning to make a difference in the lives of millions of children. Despite amazing challenges, they remain committed to realizing positive impact tapping into their students’ learning potential, guiding them to explore, to dream, and to reach their goals of becoming doctors, scientists, and even teachers. According to a study conducted by the Center for Teaching Quality on Teachers' Workdays, educators spend on average 12 hours daily to ensure adequate time for lesson planning, instruction, after school tutoring, checking papers, parent outreach, and staff meetings. Coupled with their individual family commitments, this leaves little time or interest for being directly engaged in understanding the constant changes on America’s educational landscape.
While my origins as an education advocate are deeply rooted as an AFT-DFT member, I caution teachers simply placing their fate in the hands of unions while they do what they love most, teach. Policymakers, philanthropists, and corporate special interest groups, many of which lack the pedagogical competency, or the awareness of complex social, behavioral, or learning challenges which exist in many over-crowded classrooms, are shaping our nation’s educational landscape in isolation. The disengagement of educators in this process allows the “Blame the Teacher” narrative to be perpetuated, resulting in the development of biased, unsubstantiated, punitive, anti-teacher policies which do nothing to improve academic outcomes.
In Michigan alone, numerous bills impacting teacher performance, tenure, accreditation, vouchers, the uncapping of charters, and the infamous Education Achievement Authority (EAA), with failed practices originating from Kansas, were rammed through the house and senate over the last two years. By all evidence this is the dismantling of public education brick by brick with no real reforms or recourse for taxpayers in sight. Governor Snyder sidestepped the Michigan’s State Superintendant, State Board of Education, and many of the professors, deans, and education specialists at Eastern Michigan when developing the Education Achievement Authority’s (EAA) interlocal agreement with Eastern Michigan University. That was easy to do at Michigan’s only university where members of the Board of Regents are appointed by the governor. Can you say Dictatorship?
Governor Snyder then appointed a board of eleven corporate and philanthropic leaders to the EAA, with Roy Roberts, Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager serving dual duty as EAA’s President. No systems of accountability and transparency exist for taxpayers as million dollar contracts have been doled out to EAA board members. Amidst Public Act 4 challenges, the EAA was successful in taking 15 Detroit Public School facilities, many of which built jointly by Michigan taxpayers and matching Rebuild America federal funding, valued close to half a billion dollars, under the guise of interventions for persistent low performing schools. However, their goal to expand via EAA legislation caused a tsunami of advocacy by virtually every surrounding superintendent, parent and advocacy group from Michigan’s 500 school districts halting their expansion outside of Detroit’s borders during the lame duck session.
Although the EAA’s model originally touted to be funded primarily through foundations, the a recent Detroit New article highlights their request for a $2 million bailout from the State of Michigan notes that they are strapped for cash. Their efforts to be Michigan’s premier district, the first and only to receive Race to the Top funding, were met with effective grassroots resistance. Seemingly even with free infrastructures built with 2010 Proposal S funding that they have taken from Detroit taxpayers, now burdened to pay the debt until 2039, and Detroit Public School staff used to write EAA staffing contracts, to market their registration, and student recruiting, they are now taking Michigan legislators on a bus tour Friday, January 18th, to garner support for new EAA legislation and a Michigan taxpayer bailout for their academic experiment on Detroit students.
I am confident working collaboratively we can address Michigan's educational crisis. However, not at the exclusion of community engagement and education professionals weighing in on the discussion. I hope that Michigan citizens, advocates, and legislators will defend all of Michigan’s children. Take an unplanned visit. Go talk to the students at Mumford that will not be able to graduate on time or receive a diploma. Talk to the students that take three buses and are met at the doors by staff members unwilling to understand the struggle that many of them come from. Talk to former EAA teachers who have witnessed the mayhem and lack of structure and interventions needed to improve low performing schools. Let your conscious be your guide before we so easily sacrifice Detroit’s children. Please begin calling and emailing your legislators to let them know "If it’s not good enough for your children, it’s not good enough for any of Michigan’s children."
Click here to following link to find your legislator: http://www.house.mi.gov/...
Education is a billion dollar industry and if corporations are to make the money off these cash cows they must create an economic pipeline to redirect public funding to private enterprises via destructive public education policy. Diane Ravitch, noted scholar, policy analyst and former Secretary of Education for the Bush Administration highlights frequently via her Blog that this is the agenda of corporate enterprise and special interest groups across the country. However, we’re seeing it played out in Michigan with Detroit as the laboratory for how far the 1% can go before education professionals, advocates, and labor will unite. This is not a separate fight; their agenda is calculated and designed to simultaneously dismantle public education and weaken unions.
While the clock ran out on Michigan’s 2012 lame duck legislatures’ goal of completely privatizing public education with Governor Snyder’s Education Achievement Authority (EAA) legislation, they opened the flood gate to advance anti-labor laws throughout the United States with the recent passage of Right to Work-For Less legislation (RTW). Political pundits have noted the potential domino effect for RTW development in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, California, New York and Illinois. This should be a clarion call to all ranks and organizers in labor that we cannot remain quite while the pirates of public education pillage through our cities, leaving many youth vulnerable to what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) highlights as the Pipeline to Prison.
So who’s pulling the trigger or writing the checks to advance policy seeking to privatize education? According to a study conducted by the University of Georgia and Kronley & Associates, America’s academic crisis is attracting enormous impact investments. During 2000-2008, thirty philanthropic organizations contributed a total of $500 million towards education. While these contributions can help to offset the various deficits that educational institutions face, they often come with a caveat which does not always translate into higher academic achievement. In the October 2011 Governing Magazine “Billionaires in the Classroom” article, Alan Greenblatt pointed out that while previously many philanthropic organizations made social impact investments simply as “Do-Gooders”; now many of them have a clear agendas and the funding is used to rally allies. He points out that the Gates Foundation, a relatively philanthropic newcomer, spends $400 million annually on education reform and is the primary force responsible for national common core standards. Diane Ravitch points out that the potential profits resulting from their efforts would yield multimillion dollar returns for corporate enterprise receiving contracts for implementation with no proof that it would improve academic outcomes. However, Gates successfully leveraged the enlistment of 45 states to move this policy forward.
While the majority of philanthropic investments in education are not ill intended; the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy conveys that the educational crisis persists as impact investments have not yielded a fraction of the intended return. If the agenda is to truly transform education, one must ask, why are they not making impact? Education advocates recognize that there is a dire need for policy makers and philanthropists to foster community engagement partnerships with education professionals and advocacy groups as this is not the norm. National and local education advocacy groups maintain a measure of influence towards leveraging support for research based education policy. However, in isolation, they are often outspent by philanthropic or corporate special interest groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), with misguided right-wing agendas seeking to privatize and outsource the billion dollar industry of education, under the guise of education reform.
Michigan has its share of philanthropic supporters influencing school redesign, education policy, turnaround schools and governance models. However, their flawed methodology is often met with community resistance, as “community” is the missing component in many of their campaigns. The Skillman Foundation, Excellent Schools Detroit, New Detroit, United Way of Southeastern Michigan, and Detroit Parent Network operate within a tight nucleus with an expressed goal of transforming low performing schools into great schools and providing parents with greater choices. While their stated mission is honorable, the underlying agenda is questionable. Their collective failed attempts at advancing mayoral control, close involvement with Emergency Financial Managers and Emergency Managers, Robert Bobb, and Roy Roberts, and the development of Governor Snyder’s Education Achievement Authority (EAA), and an analysis of their annual reports seems more closely aligned with an agenda for the privatization not transformation of public education. We'll have to closely watch the Oxford Foundation advancing the EAA and #OneToughNerd's Anytime, Anywhere, Any place education model. But in all honesty we have to ask, “Does their efforts translate into improving Detroit’s low performing schools?”
Education reform strategists say that they are seeking accountability; United Way of Southeastern Michigan received a historical $27 million investment by General Motors in December of 2010 for their Turnaround Schools initiative. Two years out, you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at the academic outcome data of Cody, Osborne, or Henry Ford High Schools that they have been turned around. Beyond purchased magazine space and media promos, I’m not certain that the investment has yielded the return that GM’s leadership so passionately hoped for. With state control eclipsing community, parental, and school board involvement in Detroit Public Schools for 10 of the last 13 years with E(F)M’s beginning with Gov. Jennifer Granholm, what has impeded their agenda for change?
With a new legislature, a new Emergency Manager Law (Public Act 436), effective March 27, 2013, coupled with Governor Snyder’s education agenda in stark contrast to Michigan’s citizens, we have to wonder: Who’s really guiding public education policy? DPS has lost millions under state appointed E(F)M’s with no transparency of accounting; yet the children remain trapped in a cycle of academic tug-o-war and Michigan taxpayers on the hook for greater debt. Judge Annette Barry’s awaited decision on February 20, 2013, for bifurcated authority as outlined by Judge John Murphy in August of 2012 and Judge Wendy Baxter’s decision under Public Act 72, may already be too little too late. Perhaps the recently announced federal probe of DPS by the Office of Civil Rights, during the state’s takeover will serve as a catalyst for justice, or the convening of civil rights activist in Washington on January 29, 2013 via their Title VI complaint. Maybe it will take the changing of the guards for Michigan’s Democratic Party leader during the Democratic Convention, Saturday, February 23, 2013 at Cobo Hall to ignite a demand for better. Either way, until we stand united, education advocates and all ranks of labor, we will continue to lose this battle for liberty, freedom, and the opportunity for all of Michigan’s children to receive a free and appropriate education.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.detroitnews.com/...
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(z1hq1t25eqflj2no3ckyvnb3))/mileg.aspx?page=legislators
http://www.michigan.gov/...
http://www.governing.com/...
http://www.governing.com/...