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Sweeping overhaul set for ailing Michigan schools; DetNews-June 21, 2011
Topic Started: Jun 29 2011, 11:01 PM (311 Views)
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Sweeping overhaul set for ailing Michigan schools

Jennifer Chambers/ The Detroit News

Detroit — Gov. Rick Snyder has created a statewide school district aimed at reforming the worst public schools by putting them into an independent system in which money is poured directly into classrooms and control is given to principals, parents and teachers.

Detroit Public Schools, with 34 failing schools, will be its first test case starting in 2012-13.

The goal of the first phase of the sweeping plan announced Monday is to raise academic achievement at DPS' failing schools, remove central office costs and attract students back to Detroit's public school system.

The poorly performing Detroit schools will be removed from the district in 2012 and put under the state-run "system of schools" called the Education Achievement System.

Snyder and DPS Emergency Manager Roy Roberts announced the plan in Detroit on Monday. The proposal, they said, introduces more autonomy and money within the schools that will hopefully resurrect student performance that is the poorest in the country.

"This is not the same as just the continuation of regular traditional district model," Snyder said. "The idea is how do you move as much of the resources into the school — really empowering the principal, the administration, the teachers, the parents right in that school to be successful. That has been what's working across the country."

Among the biggest changes are devoting 95 percent of school funding into the classroom. DPS currently only spends 55 percent of its money at the classroom level. Much of the other money is spent on administration, debt service and maintenance.

Another change: The school principal, not the district superintendent of the school board, will hold the "ultimate power" for running the school, which includes local hiring and firing decisions.

"You assess Detroit Public Schools and what precludes the kids from being educated, and you put someone in place to fix those," Roberts said Monday.

"Today is not about giving up on DPS or its students. It is about strengthening it, supporting them."

The plan includes working with foundations and philanthropic and business groups to provide funding for all DPS graduates for at least two years of college or training school. The goal is to expand that promise to a full four-year college education.

The changes will go into effect for the 2012-13 school year, with the upcoming year used to "incubate" the program and prepare the district for the changes.

Eventually, the Education Achievement System will be broadened to include low-performing schools in other districts across Michigan. The system targets the lowest 5 percent of schools.

The new statewide district, which will be run by Roberts, will assume operation of the low-achieving schools. The system will initially operate in Detroit while Roberts sets the criteria for identifying the additional schools that will join the statewide district, state officials said.

The initial participating schools will be identified by the state Department of Education. Parent advisory councils, formed at each school, will give parents and the community a role in the process, but students will be free to move from one school to another regardless of what organization is operating the building.

'Impressive results' cited

The local effort will be modeled after other urban school districts across the country that have adopted EAS "with impressive results," state officials said.

Those districts include Louisiana Recovery School District in post-Katrina New Orleans, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina and the New York City Department of Education.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who labeled Detroit "ground zero" in education reform and joined the announcement by video conference, pointed out that Detroit students have posted the worst scores in the nation in math, reading and science, levels that shocked local and national education officials.

Duncan said those results, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress Trial Urban District Assessment, caused some to view the city as having "no viable future if the status quo is allowed to stand."

Duncan said the Obama administration is fully behind the reform effort and believes they are essential for the schools, students and the city.

He said the president was especially pleased with what he saw during a visit to Kalamazoo, where students who graduate from public schools there can have up to their entire college tuition paid by a private foundation.

"If we can get that college promise here, we would see a massive influx of families back to the city," Duncan said. "We're fighting to save the city of Detroit."

The district has been under state control since 2009, when then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm declared a state of financial emergency and installed a manager to take over the district and erase the deficit, which has grown in recent years and is now $327 million.

As part of the reform plan, DPS will refinance $200 million of its $327 million deficit by issuing new bonds, Roberts said, and will eliminate the remaining deficit in five years under a new plan it will file with the state.

State officials said while the new plan doesn't address the financial emergency in the district, the hope is that financial pressure will be reduced once the central office is streamlined.

'Announcement fatigue'

Detroit Board of Education member LaMar Lemmons questioned whether DPS would go further into debt by refinancing its deficit and pushing 20,000 children into a school district run by the state. Roberts, however, said the plan would not increase the deficit.

"How can you have a new bond on top of an existing bond and not go into further debt?" Lemmons asked. "How can you remove 20,000 students, put them into the MDE (state education) and not have further deficit?"

Lemmons said: "All these plans keep putting the district further into deficit. They use the deficit to keep taking over. The state has had control of the district for nine of the last 12 years."

Anthony Adams, Detroit school board president, said he has "announcement fatigue" from hearing so many times that the district is broken and is going to be fixed.

While the Detroit board lacks any authority under Roberts, Adams said board members who are often direct links to the community should still be involved.

Several board members heard the plan for the first time just hours before Roberts announced it publicly.

"The people who live here aren't involved in the decision-making. We've been through this play before," Adams said.

Officials said the new system is designed to empower teachers by giving them a work environment where they will have the autonomy and support to raise student achievement and have access to timely student data.

Union reacts

Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said Monday any DPS teacher working at a school moved into the new authority will now be an employee of the statewide school district — not DPS.

"The good news is that union contracts will be recognized," Johnson said. "We will have to negotiate an agreement for the recovery district."

Johnson said many of the same concepts of shared decision-making and local control over schools are already in place at DPS with its Priority Schools program, in which teacher assignment decisions are based on what's best for each individual school's needs.

The problem, Johnson said, was that the district didn't supply the support the schools needed — including school nurses, social workers and others involved in the nonacademic portion of a child's school day.

"We don't need another reform initiative with a different name. You need a sustainable program," he said.

Sharon Kelso, who has grandchildren at DPS, said the college scholarships are a wonderful idea, but she wondered whether they would actually materialize in a district beset with financial, academic and institutional challenges.

"If we turn around and say we want to attract kids and you bring all these other kids in from other districts, we can't afford to educate the ones we have. We can't go in making false promises," she said.

State Superintendent of Education Mike Flanagan said with 4,000 schools in the state, the bottom 5 percent amounts to about 200 schools that could fall under the new statewide school district.

"The question has been: take over the schools and then what? This is the what," Flanagan said.

"This time we have to get it right. We can't go another generation and look the other way."

jchambers@detnews.com

(313) 222-2269



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From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110621/SCHOOLS/106210377/Sweeping-overhaul-set-for-ailing-Michigan-schools#ixzz1Qiyvnk4W
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n73pm
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"The good news is that union contracts will be recognized,"

But the bad news is that UNION contract will be recognized!

The students will be forgotten again, put on the bottom of the list and we'll get the same results. I will NEVER support the school system while there's still UNIONS sucking the money away from the students and giving it to themselves and the teacher's pensions, healthcare, etc. Let them stand up and act like grown ups and pay a lot more toward their OWN support like the most of us have to. What does it teach the students about being self sufficient when they themselves aren't self sufficient? Practice what you preach!

NO UNIONS...PERIOD!
I support Global Warming cuz nothing grows in ice!
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