Word: detroit
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...reforms came abruptly, grabbing attention like fingernails scratching a chalkboard. As Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer stepped into his new role as czar of the city's public schools last week, he began the dirty work of dismantling one of the nation's most ineffectual public bureaucracies. Armed with a new state law giving him authority over the city's 265 public schools, Archer swiftly demoted the city's elected school-board members to unpaid advisers and stripped them of such perks as corporate credit cards, cell phones, pagers and even office keys. He suspended all new employment contracts...
...former state supreme court justice, Archer is known for long deliberation before he acts. Not much studying was required here: only half of Detroit's high school students graduate, most basic supplies--from textbooks to toilet paper--somehow have trouble making it into schools, and teachers routinely walk out on strike. While Archer has succeeded in reducing crime and luring Big Business since taking over as mayor in 1994, he says the city's decades-long flight of middle-class residents can't be reversed unless the city's schools get better. "Any mayor in the country will tell...
...Detroit's Archer, who is already facing a recall campaign by critics who claim he is awarding the city's most valuable business contracts to whites, remaking Detroit's schools is a potential land mine. In a city that is 76% black and where a majority of voters are Democrats, even a reluctant alliance with a white Republican Governor and majority-white legislature has made Archer's motives suspect. Some critics consider the takeover a violation of the rights of voters, who elected the school-board members Archer is stripping of their power and their pagers...
...under the school-board system overthrown in Detroit, board members were elected in geographic districts, and no elected official was accountable for getting results citywide. Now that's changed. Archer is the man. And he knows that failing to clean up Detroit's schools would cripple his larger revitalization plan for the city and perhaps his political future overall...
...teachers have the textbooks they've requested and anything that needs to be replaced, repainted or repaired inside our schools before teachers and students return in September." These may seem modest initial goals. But perhaps, as in Chicago four years ago, any progress at all will be welcomed by Detroit's students and parents alike...