Sharpen our AIM and our URGENCY!

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Rev. Edgar Vann: Faith and policy

Stop dropouts, save students with smaller Detroit schools

Amid an ever chaotic state of affairs, we Detroiters often become anesthetized to just how critical things are. In Detroit, the drama of the body politic and crisis often frustrate transformative change in areas that really need attention, such as getting an education.

Instead, Detroit is a place where the entitlement mentality trumps wisdom and common sense.

A place where masters of deflection spin reality into self-aggrandizement. A place where the loyalists get played, and the opportunists get paid. A place where more steps seem to be taken backward than forward.

Though scandal-ridden and hope depleted, somehow we must invest heavily in the generations coming after us.

Let us never lose sight of our children and their fundamental right to receive an education that empowers them for eventual leadership and engagement in this city.

America's Promise Alliance, a group organized by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, has joined a long list of groups and studies that documented that the Detroit Public Schools is a virtual dropout factory. The new study shows the graduation rate in Detroit is less than one in four.

These rates were abysmal for years. District officials loudly disputed the rates but never could agree on their own number. Now, we are the worst in the nation.

As a parent, I am blessed to have had children who graduated from a system where more 75 percent of the students don't.

Schools that fail must be fixed or allowed to close. The stakes are too high, and failure is not an option.

A new initiative for the creation of smaller high schools needs to be embraced. It comes out of the Governor's Office and has been embraced by Detroit Superintendent Connie Calloway.

Calloway's plan for Detroit seeks to establish new high schools of about 450 students -- in line with every piece of national data available showing the size of effective schools.

We all knew this back in the days of Detroit Compact, Schools of the 21st Century, the Annenberg grant and the New Detroit educational audit.

Can we get this one right? The governor, House Democrats, Senate Republicans, Detroit school leaders, teachers and the community must move now.

How many young people will we allow to fall through the cracks because we have failed them?

The Rev. Edgar Vann is pastor of Second Ebenezer Church in Detroit.

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