Arithmetic

It is a matter of arithmetic.  This is how it works if you are the dictator-like appointed Emergency Manager a/k/a Emergency financial Manager of the Detroit Public Schools.  You take the bottom 5% of schools and create a new school district.  You take the best of equipment, including computers, etc., away from what is left of the remaining school district and move those assets over to the new school district.  You run ads on radio telling parents that they should enroll their kids in the new school district because of the ‘educational’ advantages they will have.  Now here comes the arithmetic part.  By lulling better students into inferior schools, the average test scores of these schools will be higher than before. Brilliant.  Why didn’t anybody think of this before?  A shell game, you say?  Am I making this up?  No, this is what is happening in the Detroit Public Schools  trying to function alongside the newly created EEA school district (run by the same man, Roy Roberts).  Voters will be asked to approve this shell game on November 6, 2012.  It is like robbing Peter to pay Paul.  Throuigh the hard work on more than 300,000 volunteers in Michigan, the voters are fortunate that they will have the opportunity to reject this shell game that is being perpetrated at the expense of providing real educational opportunities for the kids of the DPS.