AFT Leaders on the Detroit Education Bills Package

WASHINGTON— Statement from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, Detroit Federation of Teachers Interim President Ivy Bailey, and AFT Michigan President David Hecker on the recent passage and signing into law of Michigan’s Detroit education bills package.

“Nineteen Republicans in the Michigan state Senate and Gov. Rick Snyder bowed to the pressure of their billionaire funders, like the DeVos family. Rather than provide Detroit’s students, educators and communities with the resources and supports they need to succeed, they forced through a package of bills along party lines that includes ideological education experiments that are flawed and have failed wherever they’ve been tried.

“This bills package includes—for Detroit only—a test score-based "merit pay" or performance pay system that requires tying educator evaluations and standardized student test scores to teacher and administrator pay—a policy that has been discredited by respected researchers, failed in practice, and is no longer required under federal law. Rather than finding ways to attract and retain qualified and experienced teachers, this law now pretends that skill and knowledge means nothing. By allowing noncertified teachers to enter the classroom, often in schools serving some of our most disadvantaged and vulnerable students, this legislation puts the students and families of Detroit at risk.

“At the same time, it makes no effort to address the growth of poor-performing charter schools, or to hold charter schools accountable to the same standards as traditional public schools. This set of reckless ideas is more about deprofessionalizing teaching and continuing the test-, sanction- and competition-based system that the new bipartisan federal education law disavows.

“Those are some of the reasons why we believe this bills package is more about politics than helping kids. The conservative legislators in the state House and Senate who pushed it through wouldn’t accept these discredited reforms in their own children’s schools. Yet they are forcing them on Detroit’s kids—who overwhelmingly come from economically disadvantaged communities of color—because they think punishing Detroit’s most vulnerable citizens will score them political points with their donors and their base. 

“This is a shameful example of partisan politics trumping our responsibility to provide a fair opportunity for Detroit’s children and a fair shake for the educators and school support staff who dedicate their careers to serving those children. This law makes it clear that Detroit’s students and families are once again the collateral damage of far-right extremeism and the for-profit education agenda.”