"Bottom of the barrel"

Michigan officials announced a plan Monday to overhaul Detroit’s struggling schools by moving the worst ones into a new system in the fall of 2012. The system will not have a school board or a central administration. Principals will be in charge of hiring teachers, and they and their staffs will handle day to day operations.

Oversight will come from a public-private authority with an executive committee led by the Detroit district’s state-appointed financial manager. With less management, Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, says he expects more money to flow directly into the schools.

The changes are meant to address problems in a debt-plagued district where nearly one in five students drops out.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said that Detroit’s schools are “the bottom of the barrel” and that something must be done to save its children.