Word: michigan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Helmer's two-car garage isn't much to look at, but the modest structure set amid the cornfields and ranch homes of exurban Freeland, Michigan, harbors a revolution. Inside the garage and spilling over into what was Helmer's living room is the Northlane Math and Science Academy, a new kind of public school. In these unconventional quarters, Helmer, a veteran teacher and school administrator, and two other teachers are attempting to guide 39 students, ages 6 to 12, toward a better understanding of their world via a very active brand of learning...
Like other Michigan public schools, Northlane Academy gets its funding -- a total of $175,500 -- from the state lottery and sales taxes. But because the school belongs to a new category of independent "charter schools" -- one of nine that have opened in Michigan this fall -- Helmer, as principal, is free to spend the money as he sees fit -- on those Macs, for example -- without interference or oversight from the local board of education. He is also free to depart from the public-school curriculum, which he regards as about a mile long and an inch deep. Northlane, he vows, will...
...public education, including the hugely influential teachers' unions. Unions also oppose provisions in many state charter laws that free these special schools from collective bargaining agreements. In California the unions are fighting attempts to expand the state's popular charter schools beyond the current cap of 100. Meanwhile, the Michigan Education Association, having spent a fortune trying to block the state's 1993 charter-school act, is making Republican Governor John Engler's advocacy of that law an issue in his current campaign for re-election...
With polls indicating voter support for congressional Democratic candidates to be at a historic low -- and the Governors aren't doing much better -- President Clinton ventured out of the White House to begin stumping for his party's revival. At a rally at a Ford assembly plant in Dearborn, Michigan, the President unfurled the aggressive political message he intends to press in the month ahead: Democrats propose "a covenant for the future" that will offer more jobs, a lower deficit and better education while Republicans would return to the "trickle-down" policies of the past. Republicans scoffed at the President...
Even to experts, the economy displays two faces, both of which are on view in Flint, Michigan. It is the site of General Motors' Buick City works, which is central to all GM auto production because it makes parts for assembly plants throughout the country. Buick City, in turn, was the scene in late September of a strike that, says Roach, "was symbolic of an issue that is really at the core of the debate right now: do workers get to reap the benefits of the improved efficiencies that they are delivering to employers...