Much homework still to do on DPS
There is a lot to like in the skeletal outline of Gov. Rick Snyder’s plan to create a turnaround district for low-performing schools, starting in Detroit, ground zero for bad schools. Michigan lags other states in this kind of directed effort to eliminate endemic failure. And Snyder, by moving with purpose to treat these schools differently, is assuming a premier level of responsibility. Pass or fail, this will be on him. But details matter, and there weren’t many in last week’s announcement. Snyder’s proposal is particularly lacking in three critical areas: money, talent and accountability. Arranging such specifics is presumably why the governor won’t get the district going until fall of 2012. But that’s also why there needs to be immediate focus on filling in the blanks in his plan. Let’s deal with each area in turn. Money I was floored that Snyder and Roy Roberts, the emergency manager for Detroit Public Schools, announced the new turnaround district last week without any commitments for new money. In New Orleans, where a similar district was started after Hurricane Katrina, it was announced with $500 million on the table from foundations around the country and the federal government. A similar capital commitment will be required for such a plan to have a prayer of working in Michigan, especially Detroit, where the new district could take in 40-45 schools and 30,000 or more students. It takes money to train and recruit staff, to build the infrastructure to measure and reward progress, and to generate the community-based support that Snyder and Roberts say they want to be part of every school. There were reports last week that Eli Broad, a native Detroiter whose foundation has funded reform initiatives in many other cities, is planning to help. But there was no announcement about it. Neither was there word that the Gates Foundation or other big national drivers of educational reform were prepared to back Snyder’s plan. And while federal Education Secretary Arne Duncan joined Snyder’s announcement via video hook-up, he didn’t commit any cash from Washington. One of Snyder’s first tasks has to be securing the money to make this work. The governor also needs to do a better job explaining how the new turnaround district will affect the remaining public schools in Detroit, those that are already doing OK. DPS will lose the state per-pupil allocations for students who go to the new district, but apparently will retain financial responsibility for the buildings that house those students. That will put added pressure on DPS’ efforts to retire its deficit and right-size. Snyder and Roberts must better explain how that will work without forcing unwise sacrifice on some of the district’s best-performing students. Talent Snyder was right to focus the turnaround effort on principals and their staffs. They are the key to turning failing schools into successful ones, and the governor intends to give them unprecedented leeway to do so. Detroit actually has a head start on this front, too. After Race to the Top legislation passed in Lansing about two years ago, the district replaced principals in most of the lowest-performing schools, got state-approved improvement plans in place in all of them, and assigned those schools to work with independent partners who specialize in school turnaround. That’s fabulous groundwork for Snyder’s plans. But you still need a significant talent upgrade at both the principal and the teacher level in these schools. For years, Detroit has struggled to attract and retain the best teachers, and its principal ranks are thin when it comes to the kinds of leaders needed for turnaround. Snyder and Roberts need to focus intently on boosting the district’s stable of high-performing teachers and principals, or their entire effort could wind up as a yet another showy reorganization with little substance. This gets back to money. Investments from some of the big national reform players — such as nonprofit foundations and school operators who specialize in helping urban districts — are essential. Those organizations can help train the principals in the new district (many of whom were in high-performing schools, will need help transitioning to turnaround), and could also help recruit new leaders to Detroit. One opportunity for the new district would be to engage Teach for America, which brings high-achieving college graduates to urban school systems. The TFA members do as well as, if not better than, other teachers, and in other cities have become the foundation for a creative class of educational innovators that Detroit just doesn’t have right now. Culturally, the city is still pretty hostile to the idea of real reform. TFA has been in Detroit for a year, and by fall 2011 will have 200 teachers in the city, some in public schools, others in charters. But why not staff schools in the new turnaround district with far more TFA innovators? Snyder and Roberts should at least consider it. Accountability Snyder and Roberts said a lot about how the new turnaround district would hold schools (and principals, in particular) accountable for performance. But in truth, they’re promising more than what the state has been able to deliver for any schools to date. The state’s annual testing exercise, the Michigan Educational Assessment Program, is a joke — calibrated so that even kids who get a majority of the questions wrong are graded as satisfactory. And there has been little follow-up. Schools aren’t really held accountable for their performance, whether they’re doing well or poorly, despite the fact that even the decade-old No Child Left Behind legislation allowed states to take action when schools fail. Snyder is in the middle of changing some of that, and has bills pending in the Legislature that would hold teachers more accountable. But he will also need formidable changes in the way the Michigan Department of Education behaves to create a genuine system of accountability statewide, and especially for a turnaround district. The state needs a consistent, reliable measure of how schools — whether public or charter — perform, and needs to have concrete steps in place to make changes before failure becomes chronic. Otherwise, the talk about accountability is just that, and won’t make a lick of difference in some of the state’s worst educational environments. It’s too early to get too excited — in favor or against — Snyder’s idea for a turnaround district. It could work. Or it could flop — all depending on how he fills in the details. If he focuses on money, talent and accountability, the chances of success go way up — for Snyder, Roberts and thousands of children. • STEPHEN HENDERSON IS EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR FOR THE FREE PRESS AND THE HOST OF "AMERICAN BLACK JOURNAL," WHICH AIRS AT 2 P.M. ON SUNDAYS ON WTVS (CHANNEL 56) IN DETROIT. CONTACT HENDERSON AT SHENDERSON600@FREEPRESS.COM , OR AT 313-222-6659.PAUL SANCYA/Associated Press Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts and Gov. Rick Snyder announced an ambitious education reform plan to save failing schools Monday.
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