Michigan's Education Assistance Authority

In 2012 the state of Michigan formed the Education Assistance Authority to take over the operation of schools that were in the lowest 5 percentile regarding student achievement. They are presently operating 15 schools in Detroit and potentially will be operating another 40-50 schools in Michigan over the next few years. Below are some observations.

1. It is too early to expand the EAA beyond the existing 15 schools. A track record needs to be established before doing so. For the sake of the children, time is of the essence and hopefully an informed decision can be made over the next 12 to 24 months.
2. Some individuals are calling the EAA a failed experiment. It is an experiment in progress and the old way was not working. The status quo always resist change. It makes sense to seek a better alternative.
3. The concept of John Covington, Chancellor of the EAA is "to implement the education platform where we use time as the variable, learning is the constant...." is a good one. At the end of the day, it is what you learned, not how long it took to learn, that is important. 
4. That same concept should be applied to improving our school system to meet the needs of our young citizens. We should not rush to judgement.
5. Disclosure is important so citizens become comfortable with what is being done. State Representative Ellen Cogen Lipton request for information is not unreasonable. Here is her website with the documents she received from the EAA so far.
6. Group decision making and critical thinking skills are difficult to teach with a computer program. The EAA needs to further develop and implement a plan to instill these skills in the children.

The Governor is doing what he believes to be in the best interest of the state and its citizens. Sometimes the nerd lacks tact. He needs to understand that democracy works slowly, but so far no one has been able to come up with a better alternative to replace it.

Detroit Needs Consolidation

A long term plan for the city of Detroit must include recognizing the city has far too much housing and vacant lots to expect all will be filled by future new residents. This large of an influx will not happen for decades if ever. A good illustration of this problem is comparing Detroit to the combined areas of San Francisco, Boston and Manhattan.

This graphic below was created by Mapping Solutions and is based on the population numbers for the year 2009. Detroit's population in 2009 was 845,000 with an area of 139 square miles.The population per square mile was 6,079. At its peak, Detroit had a population of approximately 14,388 per square mile.

In the long term plan created during the Bing Administration called Detroit Future City they say, 

"Detroit is not too big, its economy is too small."

I disagree. It is going to take too long to grow the economy to the point where it will attract enough residents to double its size.

The combined population in 2009 for San Francisco, Boston and Manhattan totaled 3,076,660 with a combined area of 117 square miles. The population per square mile was 26,296.  This is a population density of 4.3 times greater than Detroit.

This highlights the need to congregate population in certain areas of the city and free up the remainder of the land for commercial use including retail, manufacturing, warehouse and entertainment. Perhaps the land made available for commerce should be primarily around the outskirts of the cities borders, therefore competing with the suburbs, with areas sprinkled in to meet the commercial needs of neighborhoods.

Benghazi Revisited

Here are the issues related to Benghazi.

Something that is not discussed enough is our election process, which effectively means every politician in Washington is given a 10 to 12 month paid sabbatical to look for another job. Their reelection, contributed to the breakdown of security in Benghazi.. This must change so our enemies don't take advantage of us again.

The U.S. should have had better security for its Embassy in Libya and we need to be determined how much was caused by congressional budget cuts.

The question is who is at fault and does it reasonable to put much of the blame on Clinton or Obama. This is not so clear. Per the organization chart of the Department of State the SOS has seventeen individuals reporting directly to her. These individuals must have the ability to work without much supervision. If they cannot, they do not belong in their position. The SOS is a diplomat and lacks sufficient time to manage this number of subordinates. Clinton cannot be blamed for this lapse and she took disciplinary action against those that were responsible.

The administration mishandled how they communicated the attack and that was definitely affected by the Presidential election. Obama deserves to be blamed for this.

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