Last week’s teacher sickout in Detroit shut down its public school

system for three days and put the national spotlight once again on the

beleaguered city’s budget woes. The teachers’ action came after they

were told that their salaries could not be guaranteed beyond June 30, when emergency funds allocated by the state would run out.

Detroit’s

schools long have been the poster child for the many ills that plague

the nation’s public schools, especially in high-density, predominantly

people-of-color urban areas across America. Now, the city and just about

everything associated with it are widely viewed as being beyond fixing.

Detroit’s

school system didn’t just develop “problems;” it was targeted for

oblivion long before the rest of the city, says Dr. Thomas Pedroni, an

associate professor of curriculum studies and policy sociology at Wayne

State University and Director of the Detroit Data and Democracy

Project. Raced-based policies engineered the

demise of the city to make way for a “re-imagined” Detroit, he says, and

key to hastening that transition was a wholesale attack on its public

schools. Further, Dr. Pedroni says, the model is being replicated all

across “urban” America.