Unreal. School Board President of Failing Detroit Schools Can't Write
Posted by Jim Hoft on Friday, March 5, 2010, 10:57 PM
The School Board President from Detroit can’t write.
The Blog Prof reported this unbelievable news.
It’s bad enough that Detroit Public Schools (DPS) graduates a pathetic 1 in 4 students, the worst in the nation. That obscene graduation rate is only that high because DPS commits ‘social promotion’ – the practice of passing students onto the next grade who are not ready, a practice that DPS emergency financial manager Robert Bobb has just ended (Detroit Public Schools Finally Ends “Social Promotion” – Passing Students That Can’t Read Their Diplomas). That same Robert Bobb has been fighting with the teachers union and with the Detroit school board for academic control of the district. The school board is led by Otis Mathis, who wrote a mass email last August:
Do DPS control the Foundation or outside group? If an outside group control the foundation, then what is DPS Board row with selection of is director? Our we mixing DPS and None DPS row’s, and who is the watch dog?And here’s the beginning of an email to supporters a few days ago that started with this:
If you saw Sunday’s Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason’s he gave for closing school to many empty seats.
Pathetic.
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Published May 24, 2012 at 8:46 pm - 77 Comments
C-Christian Soldier commented:
and to think that Detroit used to be known as the ‘Parlor City’ with a very highly esteemed education system…what 70+ years of corruption will do!!!
C-CS
Freddy commented:
Was this School Board President an honor student from that same system?
Major Kong commented:
Oh, it’s all coming together baby for the perfect storm.
Teachers who cannot and will not teach. Bloated bureaucracies. Teachers unions that give a rat’s ass about students. Property tax payers taxed up the wazoo. Obamacare being set into motion resulting in millions of deaths of senior citizens, long-term ill, and tax payer funded abortions. Amnesty for illegal aliens. Catastrophic debt crippling economy. Commercial real estate crisis. What will be the ignition source for this bomb? Will we go out with a whimper? It’s a helluva long time until November.
olm commented:
I think you’re right Major and I think there will be a fight.
But back to Detroit. I’ll bet you that he is not the only one. I’ll also submit to you that this is affirmative action in action.
I do not think this is anything but extremely sad. This guy is only the beginning of a very very long line of graduates from inner city schools.
The man confused our and are for Pete’s sake. That’s a new one on me.
rumcrook commented:
if this had been an e-mail to me, my answer would have been,
ummmm,…… what?!!!
really, what?!!!! what the ****** are trying to say!!!!
rumcrook commented:
that should have had a “you” in there…
uh oh his shtooopid rubbed off on me
Major Kong commented:
Olm @ #5
I’m sure you are correct that he is far from being the only one who is barely literate in the system. In an actual private sector business he would be unemployable unless he were to be considered an affirmative action quota hire. Then he’d be given a do-nothing job—something akin to say, “community organizer.” This is a hot-button issue with me as I and everyone else with a functioning brain stem can see that the kids victimized by systems such as Detroit’s will NEVER get out of these hell holes and all that awaits them is generational despair. I hope their is an especially hot spot in Hell for the people who have doomed these children.
The Elector of Saxony commented:
Is this really a new development? For decades we have pumped more and more money into public schools that graduate more and more students who cannot read and write. Did we imagine that none of the illiterati would scale the affirmative action ladder and find themselves back in charge of the very schools that failed to educate them in the first place? Do we think our political classes are unaware of the state of education in Detroit or Philadelphia or Los Angeles? They are aware and they endorse it. Urban schools have been nothing more than giant honey-pots of graft, corruption, and political payoffs for more than a generation.
Here’s a teaser for you. How do you save a civilization in decline, if its educational system is failing at an even faster rate? 2000 years of creation, being destroyed in the blink of an eye.
MVH commented:
Seriously, when will the other shoe drop? Rotten education for their kids doesn’t move parents to rise up against teachers and their thugish unions.
What’s it gonna take?
Richard Romano commented:
I have students who write in a similar vein and expect to receive As. It’s the effort that counts, they claim; nope, it’s competence that counts.
School boards perpetuate the nonsense of self-esteem first. It’s little wonder many can’t read or write well.
Andreas K. commented:
Doesn’t surprise me. I see this stuff pretty much every day.
The ones who still learn proper English are the non-native speakers.
befuddled commented:
this article seems to be just another long list of the dire consequences of liberal idealogy. “social promotion” seems to be another failed case of “social justice” right alongside affirmative action.
what i am afraid of is that these failed liberal policies will spread like a plague to the rest of the states. what happens when social security and medicare runs out. what happens when fuel goes to $10 a gallon. what happens when healthcare becomes unaffordable. what happens when we are so heavily in debt that we cant find a lender and our taxes go up to 60% across the board.
i won’t vilify the president of the school board for not being able to write effectively. i will vilify the union members for electing him. i will vilify the citizens of detroit for bankrupting their city.
i will vilify anyone that supports liberalism. take a look around, wars, famine, pestilence, begins with failed states and spreads like a cancer.
blackelkspeaks commented:
What always goes unsaid in discussing anything about the city of Detroit with most people is the fact that the city is over 95% black. And yes, that is a real number. You can look it up. The city was totally destroyed because of poisonous race baiting politics; the kind of “hate whitey” BS spouted by Hussein’s spiritual master (Wright).
Detroit was the fifth largest city in the US in the 1950s and a very decent place to live. Since then, Democrat racial politics (1967 riots, forced bussing, real estate blockbusting, affirmative action, and on and on) resulted in “white flight” that drove most of the population into the surrounding suburbs. Today, Detroit has dropped out of the top ten and is now an absolute jungle and cesspool. No sane person with any other option would choose to live there, or even go there for any reason. Its that bad.
Detroit is lost. Totally. There is no way that a city so mired in Democrat politics (racial spoils, union thuggery, welfare statism, and so on) with its mindblown population of blacks will ever recover. Not ever. The really scary thing to see, though, is how Democrat politics, like a cancerous chancre, has polluted the entire state of Michigan to such a degree that the once-might auto industry has been crushed. Think of it, an entire state (and nation) laid low by Democrat politics.
And that situation is coming to a neighborhood near you, delivered by a Democrat party that has been in political dominance in this country for over 8o years. Duly elected and enabled by your friends and neighbors.
What more evidence do you need to prove that there is, indeed, “Original Sin”.
Peter Warner commented:
This is just as sad as it is infuriating. And all of it was foretold 45 years ago, when Rudolph Flesch published Why Johnny Can’t Read. Others such as Blumenfeld and Chall did the same, and the truth they have presented has only been ignored or refused.
The education establishment, dominated by progressivists such as Dewey and Edmund Huey, were intent on transforming American education, and Whole Word (now Whole Language) was/is part of that effort. Progressivism is a disease, and driving the engine of government education, has destroyed several generations. It is now beyond redemption.
This is the education system that has produced today’s ‘journalists’, whose wire services occasionally publish articles only marginally more coherent then Mr. Otis Mathis’s work above. That goes a long way in explaining the incompetence of today’s main stream media.
‘A republic, if you can keep it.’ Well, we are quickly losing it. If government is the problem, cutting government (50% for starters?) and abandoning government education is part of the solution. May G-d bless America.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
Peter Warner commented:
Perhaps post #12 is being sarcastic. ‘befuddled’ wrote:
‘this article seems to be just another long list of the dire consequences of liberal idealogy. “social promotion” seems to be another failed case of “social justice” right alongside affirmative action.
what i am afraid of is that these failed liberal policies will spread like a plague to the rest of the states. what happens when social security and medicare runs out. what happens when fuel goes to $10 a gallon. what happens when healthcare becomes unaffordable. what happens when we are so heavily in debt that we cant find a lender and our taxes go up to 60% across the board.
i won’t vilify the president of the school board for not being able to write effectively. i will vilify the union members for electing him. i will vilify the citizens of detroit for bankrupting their city.’
If you seriously wish to condemn loose or non-traditional standards, and seek to promote a higher (and more traditional) standard, your position would have more credibility if you exhibited those attributes in your own writing. The punctuation in those three paragraphs is worse than that seen in the selections from Otis Mathis.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
Dell commented:
Really sad…and like most here, I don’t blame or speak poorly of the man involved, but the system that failed him. He was there – in school – and obviously had a serious problem. Rather than address the problem, he was “passed along” to the point of receiving a college degree! How he even got IN to college is a mystery unto itself. How he got OUT of high school with a diplomas is just as mysterious.
His case reminds me of about 75% of pro football players in the NFL. If they write the way they speak, they’re illiterate….passed along through high school, treated to four year scholarships at major colleges and universities, all because they could run fast or knock somebody’s head off.
We have become a country of terribly wrong priorities.
tnxplant commented:
In the mid 1990′s my son was a student at an academic magnet school. The principal was an AA woman who had been fired but reinstated due to a lawsuit claiming racial discrimination. She wore house shoes to work and refused to meet with parents. Neither she nor her staff possessed basic writing skills. Thanks to a few genuinely good teachers and his own innate intelligence and hard work, my son survived high school, successfully completed college, and went on to pursue a good career.
This problem is not new and in my opinion is a direct result of our society pretending that people have skills in order to meet artificial hiring quotas. No one, including those like Mr. Mathis who have jobs for which they are unskilled, is helped by this approach to employment.
Male Silverback commented:
You are right about the misguided priorities Dell. Add to that the collapse of the black family and you get children who act like animals. The only basic skills they believe they need to learn are those that keep them alive amongst a gang banger infused culture.
They are ALL Obama voters. They are the future if we don’t change things.
Richard Bagg commented:
Well don’t complain about the spelling and wording. It’s just typical African American dialect.
Dell commented:
Male Silverback, I see it as a complete breakdown of the family unit. And I lived through it – starting in the “make love not war” era of the 60′s. Raising a family with two parents is a full time job. Raising even one child as a single parent is next to impossible. Throw in the fact that many of those single parents have an entitlement attitude and it’s easy to see how it’s going to Hell in a hurry.
That’s why it’s so easy to enlist young people in the Liberal/Socialist agenda mindset. They simply assume “rights” they don’t have, nor will they ever have, and expect those they consider rich to willingly support them at every turn. We have a country-full of those folks right now. It will take at least three or four generations to turn this ship around.
Corporal Vere commented:
Has anybody seen anything written by Obama?
CDR M commented:
I think one thing you have to factor in is that we are in the texting generation now and I believe that is a factor in the degrading writing skills that are now showing up across the board. Obviously, one who is educated would know the difference between sending a quick text message and an email/official correspondence.
Dell commented:
And it’s a little OT, but if you read as many news and opinion pieces as I, you get a much better understanding of the “whys” involved in this breakdown of what USED to be the American “way”.
All you need is a well-funded, totally left-wing education at a place like UC Berkley and then use your talent to rewrite the MoveOn.org list of talking points and you come up with published garbage such as this:
http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/opinion-its-still-george-bushs-world/19379019
I believe this author (whose credentials are mysteriously not listed) to be the holder of a PhD…and he might be 30 years of age. What he wants to be when he grows up remains an unknown.
My point is, thousands of young, easily influenced people read articles such as this and take it as gospel truth and settled political science. It’s not…and far from it, but they don’t know that. All they really know is “he writes nice stuff” and uses big words. He has a PhD so he must know what he’s talking about.
Such writers become instant recruiters for the next batch of far-left Moonbats and the vicious cycle continues. And it’s not just blacks or Hispanics who take the bait. Anyone, of any race, looking for the easy way out…the free ride, as it were, is prone to become an Alinsky soldier in the war to convert America to a Socialist State.
I’ve wandered waaaay OT here and for that I apologize, but I had to say what was on my mind.
Peter Warner commented:
Richard Bagg @ 19:
‘Well don’t complain about the spelling and wording. It’s just typical African American dialect.’
You may wish to call it that, Sir, but I will call it for what it is: incoherent. You cannot possibly read those passages and understand what he is trying to say.
Honestly, I have fifteen year old Japanese students that converse and write (in English) more coherently. This man should resign.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
czekmark commented:
Ignorance breeds more ignorance. Is there anyone in the Detroit school district that can write lucidly?
Karen commented:
Oh boy. I hate to say I’m not surprised but I’m not. “Social promotion” is ongoing in public schools and I dare say our president was elected due to the social promotion program as well where you don’t have to be qualified, you just have to make someone else feel good while elevating them above where they should not be.
This is why we get basic illiterates in college, too–where if you have a certain color skin you get to have a GPA that is way lower than everyone else. It’s insane. Then those people get to be a high paid president of a school.
Our future will be very, very bleak if we continue on this path. Most kids today are so dumbed down and brainwashed they think Mao is a hero!
Dell commented:
Peter Warner
March 6th, 2010 | 8:26 am | #24
Totally agree, Peter. The inability to effectively communicate immediately disqualifies the man from any leadership position.
Robb76 commented:
I wunder wy he wood rite that way.
shibumi commented:
They addressed this on the local tv news in Detroit last night.
The guy is (get ready for it….) disabled. And how DARE you suggest that someone who is disabled cannot and should not be in a leadership position?
He
Is
A
Victim!
Yeah, they played the “victim” card. What a shocker.
Detroit will only get worse, until the majority decides to flee and ruin another city- hopefully one out of state.
Nahanni commented:
blackelkspeaks,
Everything in your post is correct.
The Blogprof is a great blogger who has been documenting the societal and economic hell hole that Michigan and Detroit in particular have become.
Detroit is the poster child for what happens when you allow Corruptocrats and their union and race warrior allies “run” a government.
Nahanni commented:
Detroit will only get worse, until the majority decides to flee and ruin another city- hopefully one out of state.
The “majority” has already fled the state, the most productive people in Michigan started leaving in droves in the late 1970′s.
Only the union, race warrior and “entitlement” leeches who have sucked Michigan dry are still clinging to the corpse.
DomesticGoddess commented:
Heze is obvoslee a produk of da deetroyt publik skoolz.
Palinfan commented:
This is what 50 years of Liberal control of a city will produce: a dead city full of idiots.
It should bring tears to your eyes to know that THIS MANY people are coming out of that school system with virtually no ability to do much more than deal drugs and make babies.
DocScience commented:
Thank heavens we have not installed a strategically important industry in Detroit… like automobiles or something.
oh wait…
justdont commented:
There are no words to express…
Jerry Magliano commented:
Why is anyone surprised? The only qualification to run for and be elected to a school board is that you have a pulse, are not under 18 years old (I’m not even sure about that), and that you live in the district. The elected school board governance model is one of the major reasons our education system is going down the drain regardless of how much money is thrown at it. As a community college professor, I get to witness every semester the product of our public education system and frequently what I see isn’t pretty.
Old One commented:
As a recently retired classroom senior high school teacher for forty years I witnessed the death of public education in America. In the mid-1990s with thirty years of classroom experience I and my experienced colleagues were lucratively paid to on Saturdays go to UCLA and sit through “inservice sessions” (better labeled traning to dumb down our teaching and abandon all academic standards). We old teachers were
“instructed” by twenty nothings who were themselves minimally literate in employing the left’s much loved “peer review” technique for “teaching” writing.
Using the “peer review” method we were told to let a committee of students who were in fact incapable of stringing together more than two words together to form a sentence to correct, evaluate, and improve each others writing skills.
With such idiocy as the peeer review method of teaching writing that has been forced upon high school English and social science teachers it should be NO surprise most students come out of public schools incapable of writing coherently and verbally able to effectively use little more than vulgarities, grunts, and moans.
Listen up commented:
He is a Poster child for social promotion if you axed me.
Francesca commented:
# 7: THERE is an especially . . .
not THEIR is an . . .
# 11: The ESL teachers (I am one) teach and insist on standard (correct) English from non-native speakers. It does students no service to accept less.
S. Wolf commented:
olm #4
Affirmative action all the way all the time.
Detroit’s socialist nightmare is America’s future
“I find it perplexing that only 20 years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the West continues to implement laws that mimic all of the failed policies of our former “communist” foes. In fact, our current president won the election by promising to “spread the wealth around.” But… truth be told… we don’t have to look to Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union to find a society destroyed by coercion, socialism, and the overreaching power of the State. We could just look at Detroit…”
…
“Every single mayor of Detroit since 1961 has been a Democrat. Every single mayor of Detroit since 1974 has been black. Detroit has been a major recipient of every major social program since the early 1960s and has received hundreds of billions of dollars in government grants, loans, and programs. We now have a black, Democrat president, who is promising to do to America as a whole what his political mentors have done to Detroit.”
…
“The likelihood America will become a giant Detroit is growing – rapidly. Politicians now control the banking sector, most of the manufacturing sector (including autos), a large amount of media, and are threatening to take over health care and the production of electricity (via cap and trade rules). These are the biggest threats to wealth in the history of our country. And these threats are causing the world’s most accomplished and wealthy investors to actively short sell the United States – something that is unprecedented in my experience.”
Norman commented:
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100304/OPINION03/3040437/1409/Does-DPS-leader-s-writing-send-wrong-message?
The original Detroit News article.
Taqiyyotomist commented:
#19 Dickbagg
I’m going to go off the Christian reservation here for a moment, just to tell you to go and f*** yourself.
edsoren commented:
Most of my students in Jiangxi Province, China write very well in their second language, English, and much better than the Detroit school board president. I feel sorry for the children in these failing American schools (like the ones in Detroit.) I expect, many of these students, will eventually find themselves working like slaves someday for their new Chinese masters.
dallasdan commented:
His schools are graduating “gangstas,” not students.
JD commented:
Saw him on Fox. He’s a math whiz and speaks quite well. His problem appeared to be a disconnect in his writing ability. Howsomever, his msg was for the kids to not make excuses even if they had problems. Work around/over/under the problems if you can’t go thru. Do some research. He APPEARED to be a really good roll model.
ang commented:
Without sounding too much like a loser liberal, my only comment would be that a man in that position should at least be smart enough to hire someone to do his written communication for him. Not everyone can be good at everything, but surely he has someone around him that could fill the gap so to speak?
ang commented:
Just one more thought, can anyone name a successful Dem, Liberal city? A city that has a surplus, low crime rate, low unemployment, high graduation rate, etc. ? I dare anyone to name one.
oceanguy commented:
This is yet another example of the left’s disregard for actual performance. For the people who put Mr. Mathis into such a position, it is the intent that matters… the intent to be racially equitable, the intent to showcase a story of obstacles overcome, with absolutely no regard for the Mr. Mathis’ predictable failure, and even less consideration for the actual performance of the school system.
Performance standards are so right wing!
Detroiter commented:
What about Detroitiscrap.com? What do you think about how this be racis?