Kids need more than teachers can give
DPS educator says most are ‘raising themselves’
By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Second of five parts
On a recent Wednesday, only 11 of the 29 stu dents enrolled in Karanji Kaduma’s second-hour environmental science class at Pershing High School in Detroit showed up. He didn’t know where the rest were, but he said some of the stories of their homelife could make a grown man cry.
“When middle school hits, parents’ hands go off. These kids in my classroom — most have no cur fews, go to bed when they want to go to bed; they don’t have any particular time to do homework. They’re raising themselves,” said Kaduma, who has lost six former students to gun violence.
Some students would be better off if they were raised in school, he said.
“I wish they would do a boarding school, grades 6 12, and make it separate sex,” he said. “I guarantee you’ll see a huge improve ment.”
Detroit Public Schools students face challenges that, arguably, are un matched in magnitude and depth when compared with those of their peers in neighboring districts: 81% of them are economically disadvantaged, and many have parents who don’t take a keen interest in their schoolwork or a vocal stand about the quality of the education they are receiving.
DPS students also learn in overcrowded classes — packed with at least 10 to 15 more students than research says is beneficial. Their textbooks often arrive months after the first day of school. And with teaching ranks having shrunk from 7,000 to 5,000 since 2006, remaining educators often are required to teach outside their area of expertise.
DPS teachers say they know these students need more than they can realistically offer.
What it’s like inside DPS
Over whelmed teachers try to overcome challenges
By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Teacher Karanji Kaduma is glad thousands of people have volunteered to tutor Detroit children through the DPS Reading Corps program. He says it’ll give them a peek at what life is like for students and teachers in the Detroit Public Schools district.
In the state’s largest school district, teaching kids is not just about academics. Teach ers are overwhelmed, trying to help students cope with the kinds of social ills affecting children in almost every urban district in the country: Abuse, violence, poverty and absentee parents top the list.
Kaduma, 33, a science teacher at Pershing High School in Detroit, said some of his students will be the first in their family to graduate from high school. He wants to see something bold happen to stop the dropout cycle in the dis trict. He suggests a boarding school for kids in grades 6-12.
“People don’t understand there’s a culture of people who have lived like that for genera tions,” he said of dropouts. “Does that mean they deserve less? Does that mean they should be judged? No. People on the outside have so many ideas of what should be done, what’s not being done. But they don’t know what the hell is going on because they haven’t been here.”
Environment holds kids back
He says he knows the board ing school concept would be expensive. “But some of our kids need to be in a boarding school to be in a situation where they can only concen trate on school.”
Some of his students agree. “Some people need those types of schools because some people have bad lives at home,” said Banicka Robinson, 17, a ju nior at Pershing.
Former Mayor Kwame Kil patrick floated the idea in 2008 of creating a public boarding school on Belle Isle, but the plan never gained enough sup port. The school would have steered students toward ca reers relating to waterways and oceanic studies.
Kilpatrick’s idea was based on the work of Carl Taylor, a Michigan State University professor, and his brother, Vir gil Taylor, who have worked with urban youths.
They envisioned a boarding school framed by military regi men and discipline. It would be isolated from the chaos of the streets. A team of teachers, counselors and even a physical education teacher could work with students on their academ ics, health and social skills.
And parents would have to stay away for a while.
“I think the problem that a lot of people don’t want to dis cuss is that a lot of kids would do better without their par ents,” Carl Taylor said.
Perhaps today, a scaled back version of the idea could transform a troubled school, Virgil Taylor said.
Certainly, the state isn’t in a position to financially support a 24-hour facility with dormito ries and a round-the-clock staff. But why, he asks, couldn’t an existing school pat tern itself after a military acad emy, demand the same aca demic and physical work and instill the same sense of com munity and self-confidence?
It could give its students what they lack, he said.
“Rigorous physical training is part of the disciplinary pro cess, sure. But it’s not so much about discipline,” he said. “It’s a question … about code of con duct and honor system.”
The nation’s only two col lege- preparatory public boarding schools are in Wash ington, D.C., and Maryland, op erated by the Washington based SEED Foundation. The nonprofit bills the schools as “a comprehensive solution to the challenges facing urban stu dents.”
It costs $20 million a year to operate both sites. But the schools have showed results since opening in 1998 and 2008, respectively — 97% of gradu ates have been accepted to col lege, and 75% of last year’s graduates were first-genera tion college students, accord ing to the foundation’s annual report.
Layoffs create instability
Regardless of whether boarding schools are in De troit’s future, Kaduma says se rious attention needs to be put on ending the revolving door through which teachers come and go because of layoffs and budget cuts.
A chemistry class on his floor has had several substi tute teachers for the last month, he said.
The inconsistency led many students to skip class, and made it improbable that the students learned much, he said. Only five students were in the class during fifth period last Wednesday.
“These are children who are going to be in control of the world someday. If you don’t plan for it, they will be the per manent underclass.”
Class sizes prevent 1-on-1 help
Detroit Public Schools offi cials are still reeling from net ting the nation’s the worst math scores in the 40-year his tory of the National Assess ment of Educational Progress (NAEP), an aptitude test backed by the U.S. Depart ment of Education.
Last year, during a visit to DPS before NAEP scores were released, U.S. Education Sec retary Arne Duncan was dis mayed by the district’s low achievement; he called it “ground zero” for public edu cation.
Teachers and other experts say the district must find ways to provide Detroit’s challenged youths with one-on-one atten tion through smaller classes. Many support uniform, high standards within the state. But they say state standards and DPS guidelines dictating the pace of lesson plans do not take into account the high number of students who need remedia tion.
“We’re seeing differences and problems that we never have before,” said Marsha Sak wa, a nationally certified teacher at the Detroit School of the Arts who was honored as a Wayne County Teacher of the Year in 2006. “There are some practical solutions to this problem that I think would lead to some serious achieve ment — if the class sizes were reduced, and you put in a sea soned, accomplished teacher. It’s common sense.”
But the district’s deficit of more than $219 million is a bar rier to hiring more teachers to reduce class sizes. Last June, 400 teachers were laid off.
In Michigan, teachers’ con tracts dictate class size. In De troit, it is supposed to be lim ited to 25 students in grades K-3, 30 in grades 4-5 and 35 in grades 6-12, but teachers com plain of classes in excess of 40. “They’re absolutely right. We’ve got to do something about class size,” said Robert Bobb, DPS’s emergency finan cial manager.
Bobb has started the pro cess by requesting state per mission to use federal money earmarked for programs for low-income students to be able to hire more teachers.
The state has granted DPS a waiver to use these funds to hire elementary school teach ers where the goal is 17 stu dents per class, based on re search proving effectiveness of smaller classes in lower grades, the Michigan Depart ment of Education said.
Rules don’t let kids catch up
The district also started a sweeping new mission this year — the DPS Reading Corps. The program has at tracted more than 4,500 volun teers who will spend at least an hour a week tutoring pre school children one-on-one in an effort to boost literacy.
That’s the kind of attention all students need, teachers say. In lieu of that, the curricu lum needs to allow teachers the flexibility to set a pace for students who need extra help — more than 8,700 of 95,000 students flunked a grade last year.
“Yes, a consistent and rigor ous curriculum and standards are key to educational suc cess,” said Nina Hawkins, a teacher at Bunche Elementary in Detroit who won the 2006 Milken Family Foundation Na tional Educator Award, a $25,000 prize given to 100 in novative teachers each year.
“Unfortunately, state stan dards assume that all children come to school on an equal playing field,” said Hawkins, who is also a nationally certi fied teacher. “This is not true, especially in our urban set ting. … Many students fall be hind from the beginning of the year.”
It would help if teachers could replace lessons that are not tied to any state standard, she said.
“I do find that in almost ev ery academic subject in the re quired curriculum, there are objectives that could be left out. … We have a plethora of requirements for every subject, and our children are not given the time to master any thing before the pacing charts demand that we move on to the next objective.”
Parents need teaching, too
Even in the toughest econo my, educators said, if students came to school prepared to learn — fed, rested, read to and motivated — half the battle is won.
So many schools find that in order to help students be learning-ready, they must help the parents.
Edrire Wilson, principal at Mason Elementary in Detroit, said that she has had to help families get food or assistance getting heat and utilities re stored. Just in the last few weeks, one of her families with five children and another with eight had utilities shut off. The parents are proud, but the chil dren, especially smaller ones, will unwittingly tell it, she said. Also, schools can and should use funding designated for programs for poor children to hire social workers or coun selors to assist students suffer ing from abuse, neglect or emotional trauma, she said. Right now, most DPS social workers float between several schools.
“You need a lot of one-on one with some children. A teacher can’t do all of that,” she said.
Wilson would like to see Saturday enrichment classes, like the ones offered at Car stens Elementary.
Carstens, on the city’s east side, is one of the state’s top performing schools among those with a large number of low-income or disadvantaged kids.
There, about 98% of kids qualify for free or reduced price lunch. School officials plan to start Saturday classes in about a month, said Abby Phelps, an education specialist at the school who also helps parents identify resources for issues such as utility shutoffs and legal representation.
In the past, the school’s Sat urday sessions have included enrichment programs such as academic games, etiquette, chess, modern dance and a kis wahili foreign language class.
“A lot of parents don’t have money to take their children anywhere on the weekend, and this is a safe place,” Phelps said. “It’s an alternative for parents who can’t let their kids stay after school during the week” for tutoring.
Carstens also has a pro gram called Parent University year-round, in which parents are taught how to advocate for children — something lacking in DPS — and how to engage elected officials, balance household budgets and help students with homework. About two dozen parents take part once a month, Phelps said. “We teach them how to be part of the change process, and it really works,” she said. “We make annual yearly progress because our parents grasp it, and our kids accelerate.”
| CONTACT CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY: 313-223-4537 OR CPRATT@FREEPRESS .COM. ROBIN ERB CONTRIBUTED TO THIS REPORT.
“STATE STANDARDS ASSUME THAT ALL CHILDREN COME TO SCHOOL ON AN EQUAL PLAYING FIELD. THIS IS NOT TRUE.”
NINA HAWKINS, an award-winning teacher at Bunche Elementary in Detroit
How 1 teacher changes lives
Old-school educator showers students with attention
By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
In 1998, math teacher Doug las Carey spoke at the funeral of one of his former students— a 17-year-old boy shot and killed in front of a party store near Hutchins Middle School on Detroit’s west side.
Days later, reflecting on the boy’s violent death, Carey asked his Hutchins students to write about their most trau matic experience. Of his 35 eighth-graders, 24 wrote of horrific tragedy — relatives who had been stabbed, shot, or imprisoned, or who were sui cidal, abusive or had died of AIDS.
One wrote of five family members being murdered.
Carey, 57, said the exercise crystallized his belief that De troit Public Schools students with rough lives need one-on one attention to help them fo cus on academics.
Carey is old-school — he has visited students’ homes to talk to their parents and has also found subtle ways to encour age them, handing out pencils with inspirational messages on them, for instance. For high school graduations, he has of fered silver dollars on silver ropes, makeshift medals of achievement.
Keenly aware of racial sus picions, the burly, white bearded Carey, a retired U.S. Army sergeant, reaches his students — nearly all of whom are African American — through their interests. He makes gestures to explore their world — such as allowing them to teach him the stanky leg, a popular dance.
“They need … the positive, loving attention of caring adults,” he said of his students. “Never have I had a more diffi cult and demanding job.”
Breaking from the program
Carey, who has also led the school’s nationally competitive chess team, is a bit of a rene gade, too. He’s outspoken about what he thinks are the keys to success for students like his.
Rather than sticking with a district program that requires teachers to teach regimented lessons on a week-by-week pacing chart, Carey said he has taught at a level where a stu dent could grasp certain con cepts before moving on to the next.
With a class in which 42% of students flunked at least one grade, it is the only method that builds competence and confidence, Carey said.
“How can you teach equa tions to a kid who can’t multi ply?”
he asked.
Carey, who has been teach ing at the school for 12 years and is now taking a medical leave of absence, said students were put at a disadvantage last fall when he became one of ma ny teachers assigned mid-se mester to teach outside of his expertise as a math teacher.
He was given two English classes this year. He also con tends that students should re main with one teacher for sev eral consecutive years for con sistency and a greater chance for one-on-one attention.
Of the 35 kids who stayed in his class for much of sixth through eighth-grades, 80% graduated high school, com pared with the district’s grad uation rate of 58%.
Going above and beyond
Former students said the attention Carey gave made them feel smart and impor tant.
Velma Jackson, 22, said that when she was 12, she already had been through several fos ter homes. She’d curse at Car ey and disrupt his class.
Until one day, when he took her aside and asked why she was so angry.
“I have to take care of six other kids, and I’m 12,” she told him. He offered her an ear. “He told me, ‘You can be a child now. When you’re in school, you’re just a child,’ ” Jackson recalled. “I love Mr. Carey be cause he took so much off me.” Mark Mc Donald, 22, who grew up without a father and traveled to Ohio with Carey as part of the school’s chess team, said Carey was a father figure: “He went so over and beyond.” Over the last decade, Carey and two longtime volunteers have raised money and taken dozens of Hutchins students around the country to compete in national chess tournaments. With Carey gone, Hutchins’ chess program is in limbo — in need of funds and volunteer support.
Nurturing wildflowers
In a four-ring binder Carey made chronicling his first three years of teaching at the school, he described his stu dents as “wildflowers” grow ing in Detroit’s tough neighborhoods.
One of this year’s wildflow ers is sixth-grader Kenneth Peoples, a 11-year-old with mild autism and a 7-year-old’s be havioral pattern. Carey taught him to play chess and gave him one-on-one math help. Ken neth, who had never earned better than a D in math, earned a B.
“There wasn’t a light there before, and when the light clicked on, then we had a dif ferent child,” said Kenneth’s mother, Dawn Ringo. “I appre ciate that more than anything a person could give me as a gift.”
| CONTACT CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY: 313-223-4537 OR CPRATT@FREEPRESS.COM
BOARDING SCHOOLS CAN HELP SOME KIDS
Students there during the week
By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
The nation’s two pub licly funded boarding schools pride themselves on having rescued hun dreds of at-risk students. The school in Wash ington, D.C., serves 332 students, and the school in Baltimore serves 160. They opened in 1998 and 2008, respectively. Students attend clas ses on campus during the week and go home on weekends. Tuition is $35,000 per student; special state laws grant the publicly funded $25,000 boarding por tion.
Supporters say it’s a small price to pay, com pared with the costs as sociated with children at risk of ending up in the penal system as juveniles and then adults. These schools will lead to cost savings long-term, said Cheye Calvo, chief ex pansion officer for the nonprofit, Washington based SEED Foundation, which operates the schools.
To enroll in the Mary land school, students must show they are at risk of failing at other schools or incarceration. A law signed in 2006 se cures annual operating funds for the school, which is open to all stu dents in the state. The school cost $50 million to build.
The Washington school is a publicly fund ed charter school and ad mission is based on a lot tery. It cost $26 million to build.
“There are some kids who don’t have the fami ly support structure to be successful,” Calvo said. “We’re trying to give them a path to change the trajectory of their lives.”
SEED is making plans to open a school in Ohio, and officials from New York City, Indianapolis, Miami, Tennessee and New Orleans have shown interest in starting boarding schools, Calvo said.
If Detroit wanted to explore the possibility of a SEED school, political and philanthropic lead ers would have to push for a new law to fund it.
“It takes people who are willing to push the envelope,” he said.
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