Sunday, April 13, 2008
Charting Detroit's educational future
Detroit schools running out of survival options
Sometime in the next year or so, barring a miracle no one expects, enrollment in the Detroit Public Schools will fall below 100,000, triggering a chain reaction that will have a major impact on the district's funding and future.
In the past five years, Detroit Public Schools has lost more than 50,000 students, according. Meanwhile, charter school enrollment in the city climbed 50 percent, now standing at about 45,000.
The shift is an indictment of Detroit's failure to educate its students. The failure is driving families to seek out other choices, a trend that is exacerbating the district's financial woes. Parents are giving up on the Detroit school system.
But most aren't giving up on the city itself. Two-thirds of the families who have pulled their children from the public schools remain in Detroit, but are turning to charter schools, according to a new Michigan State University Education Policy Center report.
What the shift should tell school officials and the teachers' union is that DPS is out of time. The only option remaining is to reform or die.
DPS must embrace systemic changes, particularly strategies to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. Poor schools often have low-quality teachers, and yet low-income children need top educators to help them overcome barriers such as their parents' lack of literacy skills, academic knowledge and confidence.
Compounding Detroit's woes is a recent national report that found DPS has the lowest high school graduation rate of any American big city district, graduating 25 percent of its students.
Families who have a choice are choosing to get out rather than entrust their children to a system steeped in failure.
Detroit school Superintendent Connie Calloway's recently announced reforms that are a start at a turnaround. She hopes to dismantle five schools -- including three of the worst high schools -- and replace them with smaller, more responsive schools tailored to meet the special needs of urban students. Her proposal calls for getting rid of the current administrators and creating staffs committed to reform.
Powerful factions of the Detroit Federation of Teachers responded in typical fashion, by condemning the reforms as an assault on teacher rights and vowing to block them.
Calloway must forge ahead despite the outcry from the union and from that segment of the community that has not always put the interests of school children first when making decisions about the schools.
No idea should be off the table. The reform schools should adopt teacher merit pay, signing bonuses, more flexible contracts and rewards for rising student achievement. They should be given every chance to succeed.
In addition, Calloway must at last right-size the district. Too many half-empty schools are draining district resources. She should close them and shift the funds into making the remaining schools better.
The top priority must be holding on to middle-class students. Unfortunately, the middle class has led the abandonment of Detroit Public Schools, leaving behind a much poorer student population. In the fall of 2003, the percentage of students on free or reduced cost lunch was 68.4 percent. By the 2006-07 school year, that percentage had risen to almost 80 percent.
"It is a fact that DPS is serving poorer and poorer students as a proportion of its population," says Sharif Shakrani, co-author of the MSU report. "As charter schools expand, we will see more of that poverty intensification."
Rising poverty rates in the district mean a student body made up of higher numbers of learning disabled children, non-English speakers and emotionally impaired students.
"It's a huge, huge issue for the district and the city," says Carol Goss, president of the Detroit-based Skillman Foundation. "There is more burden on schools. Hunger, family stability, high rates of mobility and parent illiteracy challenge the schools of poor children."
DPS is at a critical point. Once enrollment falls below 100,000, state appropriations bills written specifically to aid Detroit become inactive. And so do many of the laws designed to limit the growth of charters, which are alternative public schools.
That will accelerate the enrollment drop. If trends continue, the district will have less than 40,000 students in the 2014-15 school year. The remaining students will likely be the ones with the most needs and fewest resources.
Too much time and money have already been wasted. Detroit Public Schools and its employees must recognize that their survival is at stake.
"The district and board ought to see this situation as urgent," says Goss. "I'm not convinced they do. ... Often they're still operating under the premise that the district is still healthy."
It's so obviously not. And returning Detroit Public Schools to health will require everyone associated with the district to set aside their personal interests and do what's right for the children.
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