Abandoned by The State: DPS pt. 2

In the first post of this series, I called attention to the perennially low standardized test-scores of DPS students. This pattern of low achievement is the result of myriad factors that all affect the lives of Detroit Citizens and students of DPS. Factors that seemingly bear little relation to the quality of education pupils in any district should be receiving have a huge impact on Detroit – particularly because of Michigan’s system of school funding, where districts are funded in-part by local property taxes and per-pupil aid from the state.

“Poverty is at the heart of so many of these issues, certainly as far as the economic context for DPS, and frankly, just about anything we’re looking at and trying to understand in Detroit,” said Craig Regester, associate director of the Semester in Detroit program and adjunct lecturer in the Residential College at the University of Michigan. “Poverty and structural unemployment, I would say, are two huge challenges that interfere with and affect every system in Detroit, including DPS.”

A declining population means declining revenues for DPS. The result is a school district victimized by population changes and a stagnant local economy. There is no foundation of economic power that Detroit’s citizens or students could hope to benefit from. The systems in Detroit have failed to educate its students and there are no resources available that might provide some hope for the future. Indeed, without state emergency aid, DPS would not have been able to pay its teachers through the end of the school year.

Throughout Michigan, local municipalities have control of a democratically elected schoolboard, but also receive funding from the state. However, DPS students are receiving an education that is far below the quality that students at other districts in Michigan are receiving in public schools.

I asked Craig Regester, with the dire economic state of Detroit and DPS, whose responsibility is it to worry about DPS pupils, and to make sure that students in Detroit receive a legitimate education, not just today but in years to come?

“I believe that I have a vested interest in how Detroit Public School kids are educated,” said Regester. “I believe I have a vested interest in how kids in Birmingham are educated, or kids in Grand Rapids, or anywhere in the state frankly; anywhere in the country; Anywhere in the world! Right? At a human level everybody’s responsible.”

Mr. Regester’s statement touches on an important concept. What we, as a society, should do or could do to ensure better lives for our fellow citizens isn’t always directly addressed in politics. How things ought to be has more often been the focus of philosophers and political theorists, like Jean Jacques Rousseau.

In Rousseau’s view, social contract theory is the foundation for how citizens and their government should interact. “Since no individual has natural authority over his fellow man, since force creates no rights. Agreements remain the basis of all legitimate authority amongst men (sic),” (Rousseau, 88).

Undoubtedly, Rousseau would agree that education of the citizenry is in the common interest of our society. But this doesn’t tell us who should be responsible for ensuring this education. However, there are few places to look that detail the agreements made between man and government more directly than The Constitution, or in the case of a state issue, that respective state’s constitution. The process of ratifying a constitution is a series of votes or agreements. The constitution in question gains its legitimacy by these same votes.

With this in mind, I reviewed the State of Michigan’s constitution, where there is clearly stated an article on the states’ duties in regards to education. It says,

“Leadership and general supervision over all public education, including adult education and instructional programs in state institutions, except as to institutions of higher education granting baccalaureate degrees, is vested in a state board of education. It shall serve as the general planning and coordinating body for all public education, including higher education, and shall advise the legislature as to the financial requirements in connection therewith,”

(State of Michigan Constitution, Article 8, sec. 3 paragraph 1).

Clearly, the sate constitution  is a reflection of agreements made by the citizens of Michigan about the form and function of their government. If we are to take the state at  its word, than the fate of DPS, and its current near-defunct state, are the product of the State Board of Educations leadership.

Than this is a clear failure of Democracy. Detroiters can get a better education, simply  by moving to the suburbs and switching schools. If the state has taken on the duty of "general supervision" over all public education, than the fact that two districts in Michigan, DPS and any other, exist in starkly different realities. A student in Royal  Oak should receive the same benefits from public education that a student in Detroit would. However this  is not the case. However this contradiction provides at last a clear specific picture of how the state has failed to meet it's obligations to the Detroit's citizens, and DPS. And until the quality of an education a DPS student can receive mirrors that of a student from the state's best district this democratic failure is active and ongoing.