- Detroit Federation of Teachers President Steve Conn made a promise to his members this spring. When it came to fighting pay cuts and stemming the growth of the city’s charter sector, he claimed, “Nobody is going to stand in my way.” As it turned out, nobody had to. To the relief of virtually every responsible grown-up between the Great Lakes and the Rockies, Conn was found guilty of misconduct by the DFT executive board and shown the door last week, the inevitable end to a seven-month reign of futility. Elected in January following a fiery confrontation with more conciliatory union leaders, he pledged to defend union prerogatives even if it meant taking on the mayor, the public schools manager, and the governor of Michigan. Instead, he alienated everyone outside his tiny klatch of supporters and watched the union descend into factionalism. Detroit Public Schools is one of the most financially troubled districts in the country, paying out nearly thousands of dollars every day in annuity interest. For the sake of public education in the city as well as the best interests of its members, DFT needs to be headed by a savvy, sensible president—not the Tony Montana of organized labor.
- The numbers are in, and they’re not good. Some 20 percent of eligible students in New York State were prevented by their parents from taking new Common Core-aligned tests this spring. Among those skipping the assessments, most were concentrated in white, well-to-do enclaves around the state (happily, New York City’s participation rate approached 98 percent). Fordham’s been ringing this bell for months now, but these dismal figures demand that we say it again: Parents who hold their kids back from taking these tests—even those with legitimate concerns about the abundance of state-level assessments—are stripping educators and state leaders of the information they need to build a better school system for everyone. We have to know what kids are learning and which schools aren’t measuring up. As an editorial in the Times put it, “having a large number of students opting out of the tests could hurt efforts to document and close the achievement gap between low-income and minority students and more privileged students.”
