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These Bills Won’t Fix Detroit's School Crisis

The series of bills passed last week by Republicans in the Michigan House are not intended to address the serious problems facing the Detroit Public Schools or to find ways to give students the opportunity to succeed. Instead, they are an attempt to silence teachers and punish them for their determination to advocate on behalf of students and classrooms.

Teachers would be stripped of their collective bargaining rights. House Republicans want to tie new hire pay to standardized test scores, lower the bar for teacher certification and establish harsh penalties for any public employee who goes on strike.

This so-called plan is riddled with failed education experiments that other jurisdictions already have rejected. On top of it all, the House plan does not does not provide enough money for the school district to pay down debt while continuing to operate, and it does not contain a provision to return control of the schools to a locally elected school board.

Lawmakers are exploiting this community crisis for their own political games, instead of working for a real solution. In the words of the Detroit Free Press, the bills are "ideological malice," are "designed to fail" and have "nothing to do with helping children."

A separate bipartisan plan passed by the Michigan Senate incorporated input from local and education leaders over the course of 15 months. In contrast, the House rushed through its legislation in just 15 hours.

We're joining the AFT in calling on Gov. Rick Snyder to veto these bills. 

Sign the petition today to urge Gov. Snyder to veto the House Detroit education bills.