Parents hold solutions to education crisis

In her December 10 Detroit News column Laura Berman made a reasonable argument using offensive assumptions - today DPN responded in a letter to the editor.

While arguing that DPS financial manager Robert Bobb should be given control of the district's academics as well as finances, she made gross generalizations of the city's parents:

These parents have their own problem, from poverty to substance abuse to domestic violence. Besides, successful parenthood is a daunting challenge. In Detroit, it's made harder because many of these parents, 47 percent, are functionally illiterate, according to the Detroit Literacy Coalition.

These parents may care; they may not. Either way, many are unequipped to support and reinforce their children's schooling, when they, themselves, have grown up indifferent or detached from the transformative power of education.

She used these assumptions to call for Bobb to be made a 'dictator:

Blaming the parents won't get results. But Bobb believes in high expectations.

Pile them on him. Make him dictator and require him to deliver.

Of course this is ridiculous - there are parents in Detroit who fight hard every day to give their kids better lives, and any lasting solutions to the city's education crisis must involve them.

A full response from DPN's Sharlonda Buckman was published today:

In her Dec. 10 column ("Give Bobb power over academics"), Laura Berman generalizes Detroit parents as, at worst, uncaring degenerates and, at best, helpless victims, all in need of a benevolent dictator in state-appointed Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb to raise their kids.

While the city's parents do face tremendous challenges and many must do a better job for the sake of their children, the Detroit Parent Network knows firsthand that there are parents in this city who are working hard to give their kids a better life.

We encounter them every day through our parenting workshops and efforts to advocate for safer communities and better schools.

Bobb is doing great work, but our children can't afford for anyone to sit on the sidelines in this crisis.

The entire city needs to be working around the clock to fix this situation, especially parents, who must be leaders at home and present at the table with those crafting solutions to Detroit's problems if there is to be real, transformative change.

Sharlonda Buckman
Executive Director
Detroit Parent Network