Word: detroits
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...such an atmosphere, many teachers simply walk through their jobs. Problem pupils are passed to get them out of school as quickly as possible, regardless of their lack of achievement. When Detroit children were measured this year against national achievement norms, only 5% of the fourth-graders and 6% of the sixth-graders scored above average. Some 46% of the fourth-graders and 51% of the sixth-graders were below...
...Obligation. There is no mystery about the origins of Detroit's problems. They lie in the flight to the suburbs by middle-class whites since World War II. In their wake they left the poor and the elderly who were joined by black families, most of them poor Southerners seeking jobs in the automobile plants. Today, while the city's white population averages 45 years of age, its black adults are primarily young and raising children. As a result, although half of Detroiters are black (compared with 16% in 1950), they make up 68% of the public school...
...white, aging majority still controls the political process, and many of them see no reason to vote for taxes that will benefit other people's children. Detroit's school tax of 15 mills ($1.50 in taxes for every $100 of assessed value) is one of the lowest in the state. But levies for other public services, such as police and welfare, make Detroit taxes the state's highest. They include a 2% income tax imposed in no other Michigan community...
...Detroit schools have also found it impossible to hang onto their taxes...
...established responsibility in which the people are asked to participate in the financing. We don't ask them to levy millage against themselves for highways or health services-only for schools. It's the only place people can vent their frustrations about taxes." Unless public attitudes change, Detroit schools may lose half of their remaining property tax revenues next year when a 7.5-mill tax comes up for reapproval...