The Perennial Underclass - The Perennial Underclass

Category: Top News Published on Friday, 21 August 2009 14:16 Written by Bankole Thompson, Chronicle Senior Editor

He offered key points that DPS should revisit thoroughly. The first prescription is human capital. That is the role of teachers in our school system.

“Who is actually teaching the children on a day-to-day basis? Teachers are the bedrock of our school system,” Fryer said, adding that performing teachers should be rewarded and failing ones ought to go.

DPS can no longer afford to have underperforming teachers in classrooms doing a disservice to students. Yes, with teachers comes the complexity of labor bargaining agreements. I understand that. But the bottom line is that DPS should not settle for teachers who cannot adapt to global education or fail to have an inkling of where the world is headed as a global village. Empty teachers belong outside, not inside the classrooms.

Closing the racial achievement gap, perhaps the most talked about subject in public education, needs to be addressed not only with the support of our communities but also with the requisite investment of the government.

“We are not only losing the achievement gap in our inner cities, but if you look around what’s happening in the world, the U.S., we are slipping,” Fryer said.

Fryer suggested “time on task” where students are preoccupied with information and data that allows them to utilize their skills in arriving at decisions. Children can be assessed periodically based on their skill level through efficient after-school programs that keep them engaged academically.

He also called for inculcating “culture and expectation” in children to motivate them to perform well in school because that is what his grandmother did. That is why the importance of parents in stabilizing DPS cannot be ovestated. Parents are among the biggest stakeholders in the educational process and every step taken should involve them.

On Monday afternoon, DPS hosted a public safety forum with Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy. Initially the information that was coming out of the district indicated that this forum would allow students and parents to testify.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be grandstanding
moments for a long list of elected officials
in the city to parade themselves and talk about their “grand vision” to address crime in DPS. This was ridiculous. Parents and students were placed last on the list to speak when most people in the room were tired and some media had already left.

The forum would have provided a monumental moment if parents and students were allowed to speak first about the crime they see firsthand in our schools and in the neighborhoods.  This forum should have been a listening moment for our elected officials to take stock and hear what those who are been affected by the madness of violence are saying. Then our leaders could come back to us with a report based on testimony from parents and students.

That would have been an incentive to address crime. Let parents and students feel they have the ear of their leaders.

We have to change the mindset approach to education, just as Fryer is challenging us to do. We don’t have to agree with his method.

“How can we give short-term incentives for kids to do what is in their long-term best interest?” Fryer asked the audience at the museum.  We can all ask, what kind of incentive can we provide our children to obtain a meaningful education?

But at DPS the incentive currently is a disheartening political circus where board members are taking the district’s emergency financial manager, Robert Bobb, to court over control and power.

Granted, Bobb cannot and must not see himself as a dictator. He must engage the community at every level of the process.

The fact is, Bobb was given a responsibility to carry out. A lot of people don’t like what he’s doing because he came in like a tornado and started flushing out some of the district’s longstanding problems. An impotent board that was dominated by certain forces and interests emphasizing huge contracts rather than a curriculum to set the pace was the rule of law.

Calls in this community for a forensic audit of the district by past administrations always fell on deaf ears.

We either change or continue to build this mass underclass of young people.

Senior Editor Bankole Thompson is a radio and television analyst, sought after moderator and public lecturer. His latest book is “A Matter of Black Transformation.” E-mail him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .