Narrows the Focus (From One of Money to Academic Performance)

Low scores not just a Detroit problem

Lost in the furor over some Detroit public schools making the lowest scores in history on a nationally recog nized math assessment was the fact that Michigan didn’t do so well either.

Fourth-graders in 30 states scored higher than Michigan fourth-graders on the Nation al Assessment of Educational Progress exam, and only eight states and the District of Columbia scored lower, ac cording to Arnold Goldstein, program director for design analysis and reporting in the assessment division at the National Center for Education Statistics. Twelve states scored at the same level as Michigan.

Eighth-graders in 32 states scored above Michigan in the 2009 test. Eight states and the District of Columbia ranked lower, while students in 10 states scored at the same level as Michigan.

It is Michigan’s academic crisis that should have the undivided attention of state leaders, including Gov. Jenni fer Granholm. They have to treat education as the equal right of every Michigan child. 

Look at the whole state

For years, the governor and Legislature, regardless of party lines, have treated the state and its largest city like neighboring countries, setting separate laws and standards for each. Relations between the state and Detroit have been at best contentious, at worst outright hostile.

But the entire state of Michigan is facing an educa tion, reading and jobs crisis that might force it to work as a unit, instead of making sep arate laws for its largest school district.

Robert Bobb, emergency financial manager of Detroit Public Schools, urged law makers last week to give him authority over DPS’s academ ics, as well as its finances, because the district also is in an academic crisis.

But since all Michigan is in an academic crisis, Lansing should consider some type of academic oversight of every failing school.

That means ending social promotion so that districts will stop graduating students who cannot read, and thus forcing colleges to spend enormous amounts of money on remedial learning.

That means raising the minimum dropout age to 18, so that 16-year-olds can stop making decisions that are costly to all taxpayers.

That means developing a plan to equalize education in 550 school districts so that no matter where a child goes to class, the level of learning is mandated.

That means creating a core curriculum and a core stan dard for every district so some students aren’t attend ing blue-ribbon, college prep schools while others go to schools without chemistry labs, gymnasiums or toilet paper.

It means, said state Rep.

Tim Melton, D-Auburn Hills, “basing teacher evaluation on student growth and perfor mance.

“If teachers aren’t rated on how the kids are learning or if the kids are learning, there’s no end game,” said Melton, sponsor of a bill that includes a provision requiring teacher evaluations to be based in part on student growth and achievement.

Imagine that.

“Now, you have some schools with 5% proficiency in something and all the teach ers rated exemplary. If I’m gong to be judged on kids learning, I’ve got a stake in these kids learning,” Melton said. 

Guard kids’ rights

Melton and Rep. Bert Johnson, D-Detroit, who have been working through a series of bills to reform Michigan education, want to place allfailing schools into a single district that could receive part of the $1 billion available in Race to the Top stimulus funds. This would mean as­signing one academic czar to save all those schools and all those children. It has been done in Louisiana and Chica go. It might work in Michigan. Legislators are meeting around the clock to pass the bills to create such a district before the holidays, because the stimulus money applica tion is due before they are back in session.

If successful, Detroit could have a superintendent with educational expertise over seeing academics the way Bobb, as financial manager, is cleaning up finances.

No, Bobb has done nothing wrong. In fact, DPS is on the right track for the first time in a long time because of the job he has done.

But he himself will tell you he is a financial manager, not an academician. DPS needs an academic leader with as much authority as Bobb.

As caring people across the state figure out how to help children, there should be one job for all leaders: ending violations of the civil, human and educational rights of children, no matter where they live.