[nfbmi-talk] Interview with State Representative

[Terry D. Eagle]

Dear Fellow Federationists,



What an interesting and informative article and interview of the state
representative.  If you did not take the time to go to the link Joe posted,
I encourage you to read on in the entirety of my post.  I have pasted the
article and interview.  Unfortunately, the referenced and linked referenced
documents were image-based, and unable to be read by the screen reader
program.  Despite that flaw, that does not take away from the content, and
the entire article and interview is very revealing regarding the sad state
of education, especially for Michigan special education students, such as
blind students.  Moreover, it speaks to this current state governor and
legislature’s actions to block and end run the democratic system process,
ignore federal law and state promulgated administrative rules, ignore and
deny, by outright rejection of valid, legally recognized complaints and
grievances, lack of oversight and accountability, lack of transparency and
difficulty in obtaining public documents and records, because state
officials ignore Freedom of Information and accessibility laws, and of corse
follow the money conflict-of-interest and political and civil service
friends, family, and bedfellow relationship payoffs.



For the reader who routinely inquires what does this all have to do with
blindness, I submit that all that is raised in the article and interview,
are exactly that which we as individuals and as an organization all face and
must contend with each and every day, as we attempt to navigate along a path
to equality and independence in our community and society, whether as a
blind student, a parent or family member with a school-age child, or an
aging parent, spouse, or relative, or as an unemployed individual seeking
work opportunity or services from a governmental agency or official , or as
an advocate for ourself or others similarily situated, each barrier and
challenge outlined in the article and article points to what is drastically
wrong with our democratic system and self-serving state officials and their
well positioned political cronies, and that which we must face as realistic
challenges, as we move ahead as individuals and an organized movement in
society and with such a governmental system in which to operate.



Imagine, if an elected state official, such as a state representative or
state senator, cannot get state officials to act and respond in a manner
consistent with laws and regulations, can be charged $2600 for 1700 pages of
documents, have official inquiries and complaints ignored and outright
rejected, while attempting to obtain transparency, oversight, and
accountability from state agencies and officials, then we as citizens and
consumers also face such barriers and corruption, and we must be informed
and prepared for that which is sadly reality in our government system.  As
the article and interview clearly points out, the environment in which we
find ourselves and must operate, is as important as the issue of how and
whether something simply is related to blindness.  To ignore or outright
dismiss something as unrelated to blindness is to narrowly view the world in
which we operate,  with tunnel vision or with blinders (no pun intended), or
to bury our head in the sand, believing it is not reality and will vanish
somehow.



Again, if you have not taken the opportunity to read the article and
interview through the link Joe ppreviously posted, I highly encourage you to
read on for a very informative and instructive article and interview, as a
commentary on our governmental system, and how it directly relates to our
organizational mission for changing what it means to be blind in Michigan,
and that which we face as systematic governmental barriers and challenges.



Terry Eagle





INTERVIEW: Rep. Ellen Cogen Lipton on exposing violations of federal law by
the Education Achievement Authority & how it’s failing our kids

By

Eclectablog

on

September 25, 2013

“Why have to work through all of the messiness of this thing called
‘democracy’?”

I have written extensively about Michigan’s “Education Achievement
Authority”. It was formed in September of 2012 as an interlocal agreement
with Eastern Michigan  University as a school district comprised of
Michigan’s most failing schools. Originally it had 15 of Detroit’s worst
schools. New legislation,

House Bill 4369, introduced in the spring of this year by Republican Lisa
Lyons, chair of the House Education Committee, would codify the EAA into
state statute and it would contain the lowest-performing 5% of schools
statewide.

Based on grant applications filed by Dr. John Covington, the chancellor of
the EAA, there would be as many as 60 schools in this “district for wayward
schools” if the law passes.



The idea behind the EAA, of course, is that the state could do a better job
of solving

the problems of our worst-performing schools than the school districts that
they

are in have done and can do.  The state of Michigan website

waxes eloquently about the EAA

:

There are a number of features that make EAA schools unique:

Students have more time to learn. The EAA has a 7.5 hour school day - an
hour longer

than the traditional school day - and 210 days per school year - more than
30 additional

days compared to most Michigan public schools. This means nearly 1,600 hours
of instruction annually, some 50 percent more than Michigan’s requirement
of just 1,098 hours. This expanded learning period puts EAA students on par
with students in countries such as Japan, China and Singapore, enabling them
to achieve on a level with their international competitors.  This grandiose
language notwithstanding, not surprisingly, Dr. Covington quickly learned
that he couldn’t run these schools at the level of funding that had been
receiving from the state, either, and had to go outside for millions of
dollars in

federal and private grants.



Since it was formed, several Democrats in the legislature have been
scrutinizing

the EAA to ensure that, since they took over these schools, they were
meeting the

standards that are required by law for educating our kids. What has become
increasingly

apparent is that the administration of the EAA is in complete disarray. They
have

incredible discipline issues, special education kids are being summarily
removed

from the program in violation of state and federal law, and they appear to
be manipulating testing to both make their outcomes look better than they
are and also to justify taking over schools. Instead of being a model for
educating kids, classroom instruction is being handled by inadequately
trained graduates from the Teach for America program, which gives
“teachers” five weeks of training before sending them into the classroom.



Text books and other teaching methods appear to have been tossed aside in
favor of

software programs where the student interacts with a laptop computer rather
than

a teacher.



On the forefront of this effort to hold the EAA accountable and to make sure
they

are actually achieving the results they say they are before we take the
system statewide

is Representative Ellen Cogen Lipton, (D-Huntington Woods).  She has been
repeatedly rebuffed by the administration of the EAA as well as the
Department of Education, forcing her to pay several thousands of dollars out
of her own pocket for Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) data that should
have been provided to a three-time elected state legislator for the asking.



She and Senator Hoon-Yung Hopgood (D-Taylor) have, through their FOIA
requests, been given over 2,000 pages of information in what amounts to a
data dump intended to

overwhelm them with so much documentation that they couldn’t find the
information

that they are looking for. They have, however, begun the process of
organizing the

documents and have them on a searchable website called

InsideTheEAA.com.



I sat down with Representative Lipton on Monday to talk about her efforts to
expose

the failures of the EAA.



Thanks for sitting down with me, Representative. Could we start with a bit
of a timeline

of how we got to where we are today with regard to the Education Achievement
Authority and your involvement? I know that Lisa Lyons introduced House Bill
4369 in March, and there were FOIA requests and other things since then.

Sure and, yes, it’s an interesting timeline. Actually, you need to go back
a bit

further to the lame duck session of the state legislature last fall. The
legislation

that would codify the EAA sprang from that. There were a lot of things
happening

during the lame duck and I think the thought was “we’ll just slide this in
there

and no one will notice.” Well, people

DID

 notice and many of the people who had lead the fights back in the 90s
against vouchers,

those groups had never stopped being around, they were just “mothballed”.
They collectively,

in a phenomenal and rapid period of time, got activated, they brought in new
people,

and they were extremely instrumental in organizing, attending hearings, and
creating

a very specific public outcry against this thing called the EAA. It was not
something

that people were even following.

Well, they succeeded. We got through lame duck and the bill never passed out
of committee.

It was a great grassroots effort but, like a lot of grassroots efforts, you
have

to stay aware and vigilant. Of course, what happened, now we get to this
session,

the bill gets reintroduced with very few changes. Fundamentally it is to
codify this

state-run school district. The only difference, really, was the make-up of
the majority

party on the House Education Committee. Every person the Ed Committee from
the majority

party that had some reservations during the lame duck was suddenly not on
the Ed

Committee.

So, the bill is re-introduced and…

It gets a favorable reception.

Right.

I assume this was House Speaker Jase Bolger intentionally choosing different
people

for the committee who were favorable?

Absolutely. Absolutely. The Chair, Lisa Lyons, held two hearings. One was
EAA Chancellor

John Covington. He came and talked about how “Oh, we have to do something
for the

kids” and “At least we’re doing something”.

As the minority vice-chair, I asked a series of questions like, “Okay, if
the EAA,

at least in these 15 schools, is doing what you say they are doing, could
you please

show us the evidence? Because it doesn’t seem to be jiving with what we’re
hearing.”

This is, after all, a “metrics driven” administration…

Right. They’re saying students are getting X amount of growth. Well, what
we’re hearing

from psychometricians from Wayne State University who have actually reviewed
the

test data, they’re telling us that that’s not possible because the same
cohort of

students that took the test in February were not those that took the test in
October.

There were too many structural deficiencies in the testing that made the
data completely

unusable. So why are you coming here telling us that this.

The message was, at least from my standpoint, that if you have discovered
the “magic

bullet” and you have found out how to build the better mousetrap, then you
should

at least be able to articulate what it is you have done.

That isn’t the case and the Democrats on the committee became very
frustrated because

the response from Dr. Covington was, “Just trust me. I’m telling you that
this is

what we’re going to do and this is the solution. And, not only do you have
to trust

me, but you now have to embed it in state statute.”

And this is a man whose Kansas City school district where he was the
superintendent

lost its accreditation

 just after he left to come to Michigan.

That is correct.

So he’s not exactly a man with a lot of veracity.

That’s absolutely correct.

So, this decision was just flying through the committee, although it had a
bit more

difficulty on the House floor where there were some arm twisting that had to
take

place. But, ultimately, it did pass the House. My thought was that I could
either

just say

c’est la vie

 or I could at least start using the tools that were available to me to
assemble

the information that we were not able to get in the House - it was denied to
us -

and start sending it to the Senate.

That’s when I decided that if I’m asking for the information and he’s
going to just

say “trust me”, I don’t have to. So I used the Freedom of Information
Act. I sent

them a pretty extensive FOIA request. People have said since then, “Why
should a

state Representative have to use FOIA to get this sort of information…?”

Even some Republicans are saying that.

That is a very legitimate question. But there was a time sensitivity to that
so I

had to use the tools that I had available.  I am a trial attorney by
background so

I looked at it  in terms of “I want to look at the document. I don’t want
to hear

someone else’s rendition of the documents. I want to

see the documents.”

So, I sent a fairly extensive FOIA request. After that I got the typical
foot dragging.

The “We don’t know what you want” and up and back. At one point I got on
the phone

with the FOIA coordinator over there and said, “Look, you can put up
whatever hurdles

you want - and you already have - okay? You charge me? No problem. I sent
you $2,600.

Personally. Now you’re saying you don’t know what I want and you’re
having your attorneys

look at it. You’re already in violation of the time limit.”

I got a call back saying, “You’ll get it in two days.”

It appears that what they did was to just do a data dump of information. I
started

going through and quickly realized that, wow, this is an organization that
is a complete

mess. On every front you could imagine. Financially. In terms of student
safety.

In terms of governance. It was just so apparent that they sort of went into
this

thinking they would just figure it out as they went along and no one will
know.

I began going through the documents, and there were just so many of them,
and there

were so many people that wanted to see them that I decided to put it all up
on my

website. Then people complained that it was difficult to search. What I
really wanted

was eyes. That to me was the goal, to get as many people looking at it as I
could,

people with more experience, more knowledge than I have, to go through it.
So we

put it up on a second website

InsideTheEAA.com

 and interfaced with a program so that people can keyword search the
information

and what have you.

Interestingly enough, during that process, there were a number of senators
from both

parties that approached me and said, “We’re going to take a close look at
this, we’re

not going to just rush it through like you guys did over in the House”
which was

a really, really welcome outcome.

In the meantime, you had the administration… I was at an event in
Farmington Hills

where the governor’s education person, Dennis Muchmore, said, “The Senate

must

 get the EAA done!” And I’m thinking, “Wait a second. Get the EAA done? I
mean you

haven’t convinced anyone that it knows what it’s supposed to be doing!”
You had this

sort of strange dichotomy. On one hand administration was saying, “We have
to codify

the EAA! We have to codify the EAA!” On the other hand, you have the Senate
saying,

“We need to proceed with caution” which I think is probably the better way
to go.

And Senator Hopgood filed a FOIA request as well, one that was separate from
yours.

How did that come about?

The bill was already over in the Senate and he’s my counterpart there. I
told him,

“This is the FOIA that I sent out” and I was already having a lot of
problems with

them. I suggested to him that there were some things that I felt I hadn’t
covered.

I thought that it would be a good idea if he picked up where I had left off.
Which

he did. He got really good information with regard to some of the
disciplinary issues.

Because the bill was already over there, I thought it would be a good idea
to have

a spokesperson on the Senate side.

He seems to have really picked that ball up.

Yes and we’ve been sharing information in terms of the documents I got,
just so we

weren’t asking for duplicative things.

He got something like 880 documents in mid-August. How many did you get, you
got

more than that, right?

Yeah, I got about 1,700 pages.

It’s like drinking from a fire hose. I was on your site and it’s clear
what they’ve

done: they want to make it so that it’s impossible to analyze it,
basically.

Yeah, that’s sort of the game plan. But there are certain threads that you
can definitely

glean from the documents. One thread that is abundantly clear is that the
Broad Foundation,

and specifically Eli Broad, was and still is intimately involved in the
creation

as well as the carrying out of the EAA.

How are they doing this?

The Broad Foundation, before the EAA opened, contributed something like $25
million

and I believe they’ve made a subsequent grant to the EAA. It appears that
he was

instrumental in, if not the hiring of John Covington, he was certainly…

Who was a Broad Fellow, correct?

That’s right, a graduate of the Broad Superintendent’s Academy. There are
some emails

that suggest that the Broad Foundation put his name forward and there
doesn’t seem

to be any other names that you can find. There doesn’t seem to be this sort
of extensive

interview process. Some of the emails from that time are sort of, “This is
the person

that it’s going to be”.

What’s interesting is that, when you look at this in a broader context, in
terms

of what the Broad Foundation and the Gates Foundation and the Walton
Foundation,

to name a few, have done in other states, there are similarities. The money
that

they spend, it sort of follows a very interesting trend line. They will go
into states

with opportunities for state take over districts or where there is mayoral
control.

So, you’ll see the Broad Foundation in the Louisiana Recovery District, for
example.

Challenged places, in other words.

Mmm hmm. In Philadelphia, places like that. Instead of - and, again, this is
my opinion

- instead of using their money to fund initiatives that we know work, you
have them

spending an enormous amount of money to create an infrastructure like an EAA
- in

Louisiana you have the Louisiana Recovery District - that aggregates control
in a

single person.

You begin to wonder, “Why is that?” and then you begin to look at the
broader context

of corporate reform in education, you see that that seems to be the M.O. Why
have

to work through all of the messiness of this thing called ‘democracy’? Oh,
my heavens!

School boards can be so insufferable! I mean, we actually have to work with
our community!

You have this sense of this sort of disdain for the democratic process.
Because,

think about the local school board. That defines democracy for a lot of
people, right?

I mean, people will say to me, “I’m not political. I couldn’t care less
about politics.”

And I’ll ask them, “Do you care about your schools?” and they’ll say,
“Why heavens

yes, my children are in school.” “Do you go to school board meetings?”
“Absolutely!”

So they are involved.

Absolutely. And the concept that these corporate “reformers” loathe is
that very

concept. So, how do you get around that? Well, first of all, you convince
people

that the current system is rotten. And you spend a lot of money to do that.
And they

can, right? These are organizations…

That are super-wealthy.

Super-wealthy is right. This is a level of money that has not been seen
before in

this country. So, they start spending a lot of money to buy the
conversation. “Schools

are failing.” It began with [President Ronald Reagan's National Commission
on Excellence

in Education report]

“A Nation at Risk”

 and it hasn’t stopped since.

“Schools are failing. We’re in crisis. We’re losing our edge.” Whatever
it is. But,

when you actually look at the data, you realize, well, yeah, if you fudge
the data

and if you massage it, maybe it will come out that way. But, actually that’
s not

the case at all.

Now you have people in a panic. You couple that with some of the uglier
parts of

human nature like “white flight” and other things. You create all of these
alternatives

like charter schools, you uncap charters, and now you have systematically
dismantled

public education. And you can now come in and say, “Well, they can’t help
themselves

so we’re going to take over.” And that’s happened in Detroit.

It’s the “Shock Doctrine”, Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” where you
freak people

out and then take advantage of the crisis.

Right! And they’ve done it in Philadelphia. They’ve done it in Louisiana.
You see

it in Los Angeles. We are just one domino. What’s really interesting,
Chris, is that,

if you look outside of the state, there’s sort of an awakening of this
sleeping giant,

if you will, where bloggers and activists are starting to start to waken
from this

slumber. It’s amazing. The internet has been an amazing factor. You’ve got
the “United

Opt-Out” movement where parents are opting their kids out of standardize
testing.

Because remember: standardized tests have been a major component of the
global corporate

education reform movement, right? You create a single point. You’re able to
manipulate

and cut scores and, suddenly, you’ve got schools in New York where all of a
sudden

the entire state is failing.

So, in any event, I’m nervous for the future but I’m also hopeful that
people are

going to say, “Not on my watch.”

So, let’s talk about what you found in all of this myriad of over 2,000
pages of

data dump. I found it interesting that they are giving different tests
before and

after to show  that things are bad. That’s interesting.

Yup, yup. When you talk about testing, you have to first ask yourself what
it is

you’re testing. You have to have a good idea about what you’re trying to
assess.

Then, if you are trying to show a comparison over time, like student growth,
you

have to first make sure the test will, in fact show that. You don’t
necessarily have

to assess every student to get a snapshot. So, that’s the first thing.

Then, if you are going to show student growth, you have to be very certain
that you

use a consistent pretest and then have a very clear notion of what you’re
teaching

them. And then you have to have a post-test that is identical to the
pretest. Otherwise,

your data is garbage.

You almost don’t have to say it’s so obvious, right?! You don’t have to
be a social

scientist or an educator to figure that out!

But then you realize … have you talked to Dr. Tom Pedroni?

Yes, we have talked and he has published on my website. He’s been a very
fierce advocate.

A fierce advocate. He went and interviewed the company Scantron and they
stated that

it’s their opinion that the testing conditions were inappropriate. There
were rampant

computer failures. There’s no way of knowing if the teachers were answering
the questions

for the students. They have no way of know if even the same cohort of
students were

being tested. Because that’s another thing: if you’ve got one group of
students taking

the pre-test and you’ve got a different group of students taking the
post-test, you

may have an identical post- and pre-test, but if you have different kids,
again,

the test data is garbage. So you’ve got all of that going on…

But they are using that data to justify the takeover of the schools by the
EAA.

Exactly. You’re reading it and you’re thinking, “This can’t be possible.
This cannot

possibly be going on” and then you read a press release and it’s like they
either

never took the time to look at their own results or they just sprinkled
fairy dust

over it and say, “We say things are getting better so, therefore, things
are getting

better.” At that point you begin to realize that this isn’t about
educating students.

This is about some sort of massive PR machine or something.

Then I started looking at the handling of special education students and
that created,

for me… You know, it’s an assessment about where you stand as a society,
how you

handle your most vulnerable population. What I began learning turns your
blood cold.

It’s heartbreaking.

It IS heartbreaking. At first you think, “This can’t possibly be what’s
happening”

and then you go down there and you talk to students and parents. You start
hearing

from them because they read about it in news reports and things like that
and you

realize that it IS happening. So, that became another avenue of exploration.

It’s very disturbing. I don’t think they’re doing at all what they are
supposed to

be doing. I think they are breaking the law. But when they are confronted or
the

Department of Education is confronted, they say there is nothing they can do
about

it.

You actually filed a complaint recently, right?

Right. So, in terms of the timeline, we have all of this documentation from
the FOIAs

and we started going through what Senator Hopgood’s documents showed and
some other

people, I invited them in and I said, hey, this has got to be a group
effort. Through

this, there was one data point that was inexplicable to me and it was that,
when

you compare the number of special education students that had Individual
Education

Plans (IEPs) while they were in Detroit Public Schools and then look at the
schools

that were taken over, there is a drop off of several hundred students with
IEPs.

This was one of the questions I asked in committee. I said, “How do you
account for

that?” I mean, there’s got to be some reason for it. And the answer was,
“We retested

them”. And they went on to say that it was their opinion that, number one,
Detroit

schools were over counting their special ed students when all of our data
shows us

that, in fact, they are UNDER counting or that the special ed population is
even

higher

 than what is being reported. And, number two, they suggested their way of
teaching

kids, this ‘student-centered learning’, somehow makes it so these kids
don’t need

special education services or some strange explanation like that. “Well, we
have

a different way of teaching kids.”

None of which is legal. I read the federal statute, the

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

. You can, if there’s a child with an IEP, there’s a set way of modifying
the IEP

or changing the IEP. It’s fairly labor intensive.

I would assume it involves parental involvement…

Parental involvement. You have to convene what’s called an IEP committee
and the

IEP committee must have the parents, it must have a teacher, and it also has
to have

someone who is like a school psychologist or social worker. It’s fairly
involved.

Which is what you would hope for.

Right. And that’s what the law says. One of the things I asked in the FOIA
request

was, you say your retested the kids. Okay, I’m not aware of that being a
reason for

rewriting an IEP. But at least show me the documentation that you formed IEP
committees

for each of these students because it was a LOT of students, hundreds. And
all of

the people in this field that I have spoken to tell me that there’s no way
that that

could have been done in just a few months.

I got no documents. So either you’re not going to give them to me or they
don’t exist

because you didn’t form the IEP committees. So, on that basis (and others),
I filed

a systemic complaint (pdf)

. Because, under the statute, anyone has the ability to do that. Any citizen
who

believes that the federal and state law has been systemically violated is
able to

file a complaint. So I did.

Who do you file that with? Is that the State Board of Education?

Under federal and state law you must file it with what’s called the
“SEA”, the state

education agency which in Michigan is the Department of Education. Now,
what’s really

interesting, what’s REALLY interesting… is that - have you seen a copy of
the systemic

complaint?

Yes, I have it right here, actually.

So, I filled out the form, I mean they give…

They spell it out.

They spell it out under MARs, the Michigan Administrative Rules governing
education.

You have to say what it is you are alleging and why and all of that. And
then I get

a response (pdf)

 back from the Department of Education saying that they are refusing to
accept the

complaint.

>From a state legislator.

Yes! I said, “Look, you can dismiss a complaint. You can deny a complaint.
But there

is NO mechanism for you to refuse to accept a complaint. It doesn’t exist
in law.

It’s not like it’s a hot potato where you can simply say, “Oh, I’m not
going to touch

this!”

Who was it that denied it, which group?

It was through the Department of Education. First I got

an email (pdf)

 back from Deputy Superintendent for Education Services Venessa Keesler and
it was

cc’ed to State Superintendent Michael Flanagan and Wendy Larvick. She said,
“We’re

working with you on your complaint”. Well, I didn’t really need any help
with my

complaint, it was already filed. The rest of the email said:

Outside of that formal complaint process, however, we want to assure you
that we

are reaching out to the EAA to help provide additional training and
information to

improve their processes in this area, ideally before the start of this next
school

year. The director of our Office of Special Education, Eleanor White, has
been meeting

with the individual hired by the EAA to work with special education
throughout the

year, and has recommended that we extend/expand our meetings to include
building-level

administrators to make sure all of those individuals are fully briefed on
process,

protocol and expectations regarding services for students with disabilities.
Ensuring

that the EAA has the support they need in order to provide high‐ quality
special

education services is important to MDE. We believe that working through
multiple

channels will help them improve their special education delivery and support
strong

outcomes for students with disabilities.

Keep in mind, this is in late July now. This came the day after I got the
letter

back saying they were not accepting my complaint. I

wrote back (pdf)

 basically saying, you know, I submitted a state complaint and, as far as
I’m concerned,

you have an obligation under the statute to conduct your investigation and
the time

clock is ticking, people!

[NOTE: please read

Rep. Lipton's response (pdf)

 to the Department of Education. It. Is. Epic.]

Basically, they then contact me and say, “Let’s have a meeting.” So, I
said, okay,

that’s fine. So, they bring in Harvalee Santos who is the assistant
director for

compliance, Teri Johnson who is the ISD liaison, and Cheryl Diamond who is
the Supervisor

of Program Accountability in the Office of Special Education. She’s Special
Education

Director Eleanor White’s aide, and then the legislative liaison.

I basically said to them, as far I’m concerned, you have an obligation to
investigate.

That’s what the law says. And their response was, you know, “How do we
know you’re

telling the truth?” These are the words she used. She’s like, “You could
be some

crackpot.

They said this to a member of the state House of Representatives?

Yeah. “How do we know that you’re telling the truth?”

And I said, well, number one, it requires the complainant to sign it. You
can’t file

these anonymously. And you then have an obligation to investigate. There is
no requirement

under the statute that a systemic complainant [someone who is filing a
complaint

about a systemic problem affecting multiple individuals] must prove their
case. You

allege what’s happening and, if there’s sufficient evidence, then you must
appoint

an investigator.

Then

 you can decide whether it has merit or what have you. And they just
refused, they

said no. They said you have to tell us how you know what you know. I said,
well,

you know, it’s in the FOIA documents.

Then she says to me, “We don’t have to do your work for you.” And I said,
“Well,

I guess there’s nothing more to say here at this point.”

My intention is to look at filing a lawsuit because the statute affords me
that opportunity

if the state education agency (SEA) will not investigate and will not comply
with

the law.

So you have to SUE the Department of Education?

That seems to be where we’re at.

Wow. That’s profound.

They were saying, “You have to tell us how you know what you know.” Well,
it’s set

forth in the documents and I’ve also had conversations with parents and
teachers

and so forth.

“Well you have to give me names.” Well, no, the law doesn’t require that.
There are

many parents who are scared. There are teachers who are petrified. I’ve
promised

that I will not disclose their names. So, I kept saying to them you have to
show

me where in the law it requires me to prove my case at the point of the
complaint.

And they kept saying, well, that’s our position.

So, that defines and agency working in an arbitrary and capricious way. That
is the

definition of arbitrary and capricious. I basically said to them, “You know
what

my rights are and if I believe that you’re acting in an arbitrary and
capricious

manner…” and they said, “Well, are you threatening to sue us?”

I was, like, I’m not threatening anything it’s just that you have to
investigate!

One thing I learned was really unbelievable. Once I realized that I wasn’t
getting

anywhere on the systemic complaint, I went through this email with them and
I wanted

to know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and what have
you. What

they told me was that, when the EAA opened it’s doors, the EAA contracted
with Michigan

Futures, which you can see in the documents, to hire special ed teachers and
paraprofessionals.

What these women in the Department of Education told me was that they
believed that,

since Michigan Futures had been hired, nothing else had to be done.

Wow. No oversight required, I guess?

Right? Or a plan! The state and federal statutes require each district to
participate

in a plan. You actually have to have, every Intermediate School District
(ISD) has

a plan. So, she says to me, “Well, the EAA isn’t an ISD.” I said, I don’
t care what

they are. I don’t care what you call them. They are this “thing”. It’s
just semantics.

Just because you call it, I mean you could call it a banana but the law
still requires

that this “thing”, this banana has to have a plan for special education. I
said,

“You just washed your hands of it”. You’re telling me that because
Michigan Futures

was hired to hire special ed teachers, that that constituted the plan? And
she said,

“Well, we realized that maybe we thought that they could do more than they
really

could do so now we’re helping them write a plan.”

NOW you’re writing the plan? You’re a year into it and NOW you’re working
with them

to write a plan?

So, now let’s talk about what we learned about discipline because they’re
all integrally

connected. You see this all over the country, particularly with charters,
where they

will have a “zero tolerance” policy. Sounds good. “We don’t tolerate
anything. Zero

tolerance.”

Well, let’s see how it works in actuality. At the EAA, you now have all
these students

that were getting services when they were in the Detroit Public Schools
(DPS), and

now they’re in the EAA, their school has been taken over, and now they’re
not getting

services. We don’t know why but we know that they’re not getting services.

Now, the law says that if there is a disciplinary situation - a child bursts
out,

what have you - and that disciplinary event is a manifestation of their
special needs,

the discipline you give them has to take in to account their Individual
Education

Plan (IEP).

In other words, that’s why they are in special in the first place, because
they’re

having that particular problem.

That’s right. So, even if there’s an issue with violence or what have you,
if it’s

a manifestation of their disability, the law says that discipline must be
coordinated

with the IEP.

Now you have a child that was getting services when they were at DPS and now
they’re

not getting services. They still have special needs and now they have an
event, a

behavioral event. If their IEP has been rewritten, if they have been denied
their

IEP, they now fall under the “zero tolerance” policy.

So they get expelled.

And they get expelled. And we found that you have students, I spoke to a
number of

parents where they were told to come pick up their child and they put them
out onto

the street. For 180 days or more. And the parents asked, “What am I
supposed to do?

What am I supposed to do?” And this happened over and over and over again.

Convenient don’t you think?

Absolutely. It’s much easier when you don’t have to deal with the hard
cases.

They have this way of saying, and charters are notorious at this, “We
welcome

everyone

! We welcome everyone.” Well, actually, no we really don’t. Read the fine
print.

If you have special education needs maybe we tell you that this isn’t the
right place

for you. Or, if you actually end up coming, we’ll figure out a way to move
you out.

You see these inordinately high numbers of disciplinary situations. There
were 5,000

events. We’re talking about a district of roughly 10,000 students. That’s
very, very

high. Something is not right in the state of Denmark.

Which they are supposed to be fixing with their non-plan.

If you read the brochures, they’ve got it all figured out. Just don’t look
at the

man behind the curtain.

One of the other things that I wanted to ask you about is about your
website. I mean

your website literally is like drinking from a fire hose and it’s not a
website where

anyone can just go and learn by just looking at it. I mean you really have
to know

what you’re looking at and dig into it. What are you hoping to accomplish
with that

and what types of folks could potentially assist in what you’re doing and
how could

they do that?

If I had more time, I would like to make it more accessible. In the
meantime, I’ve

been trying to get as much of the documentation up there as I could and in a
way

that people could search. One of the things that I’m hoping to do, at least
on the

systemic complaint front, is, now that I know that the Department is not
going to

investigate, I think my next step is to file a lawsuit. And, hopefully,
through the

discovery process, put more information up.

But, in terms of assistance, I sort of envision sort of an open source type
of environment.

Sort of a crowdsharing scenario.

Right. Where people that know about specific issues can say “This is what
this means”

or “Did you see that this is what happened and that it has this effect?”

The problem, I have to say, is that the traditional media has been very
reluctant.

And when I say the traditional media I’m not talking about bloggers but
what I would

call traditional newspapers and journalists… it doesn’t really seem to
exist in Michigan.

People say, “They’ll be interested in that story”. But then, when I send
them the

information, it’s like crickets.

You’ve done all of the research in a lot of ways for them. You’ve actually
said,

“Hey, here ya go. Knock yourself out!” They don’t even have to file the
FOIA. You’ve

already done it for them!

That’s very curious. Then I’ll see a story about, oh, they’re giving away
free backpacks

at the EAA and I’m thinking…

THAT’S the story? That’s the easy story. It came from a press release.

Well, you know, in other states, what’s interesting is that, if you look at
other

situations that are analogous to the EAA in other states, there are
investigative

journalists who are following the money, if you will. That’s what
uncovered, for

example, the cheating scandal in Georgia. I have yet to find that person who
is willing

to… Maybe they’re out there, I don’t know. Maybe they’re looking at the
data.

It’s the kind of thing I would be doing if I didn’t have a full time job.

Exactly. But, I have to say, bloggers like yourself have done an amazing job
of at

least getting the word out to those who are interested so I continue to put
out information.

I believe that people who act with that type of arrogance, the people in
charge of

the EAA, unless it’s unilateral takeover, they’re not satisfied. My hope
is that

they’ll overreach.

To the point where people really do start to push back and holding them
accountable?

Right.

How about the State Board of Education? They seem to have taken a hands off
approach

to this.

You know, it’s interesting. They actually invited Covington to come and
answer some

of their questions over the summer and he refused to show up! He told them,
you’re

not…

You’re not the boss of me?!

Yeah, basically. You’re not the boss of me. You don’t supervise me. I
answer to the

governor. So, he cancelled the first time when they wanted to talk about
special

education and he didn’t show up. More recently, I think it was a few weeks
ago, they

invited him to again to answer some questions which, this time, he did. But,
even

then, he made it clear that he was doing it, sort of as a favor, not because
he believed

he had to because, again, he didn’t acknowledge them as being, basically,
his employer.

So he rebuffed the State Board of Education just like he and the Department
of Education

rebuffed you?

Exactly.

So, one last question. I have heard that you paid the legal bills for Brooke
Harris

who was

fired by the EAA

 for what appears to be retaliation for speaking out against some of what
they are

doing or not doing when it comes to educating kids. Is that true?

Well, yes. I just wanted to be sure that she had proper legal representation
when

she went to her pre-termination meeting so I helped her out with that.

Fantastic. Thanks so much.

 After our interview, I walked across the street from her office with Rep.
Lipton

and her staff where she held a press conference in the state Capitol with
other Democrats

on the Michigan House Democrats’ School Reform Task Force. On the way over,
she told

me that it’s not enough for her and other Democrats to simply criticize
what the

administration is doing with regard education reform in the Michigan,
including the

EAA. They must have answers of their own. That was the intent of the Task
Force’s

work over the past year and their education plan, released at the press
conference,

is a sharp contrast to the approach taken by the Snyder administration. You
can read





Source:

http://www.eclectablog.com/2013/09/interview-rep-ellen-cogen-lipton-on-expos
ing-violations-of-federal-law-by-the-education-achievement-authority-failing
-our-kids.html