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The Early Childhood Investment Corp. has awarded a $2.8 million grant to United Way for Southeastern Michigan as part of $10 million in federal pass-through funding to improve the quality of early childhood care providers in the state.
ECIC is a public entity created in 2005 by Gov. Jennifer Granholm to coordinate an early childhood system for the state that would provide better access to professional development for providers of early childhood care.
With the grant, United Way plans to expand the early childhood provider professional development programs it launched in July, 2008.
“This is allowing us to fully cover Metro Detroit and increase the number of caregivers served, and ultimately, the number of children in their care,” said
Annemarie Harris, director, early childhood initiatives at United Way.
United Way will serve as one of 10 resource centers for early childcare providers in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, providing them with ongoing training in first aid, CPR, early childhood development and other relevant topics through subcontract with a number of community agencies.
The centers will host training to help early child care providers meet state requirements, along with further professional development goals, Harrison said.
United Way currently is subcontracting professional development for providers from five community agencies: Starfish Family Services Inc., Southwest Solutions in Detroit, Detroit-based Development Centers Inc., Leaps & Bounds Family Services in Warren andOakland County Childcare Council.
United Way plans to subcontract five additional community agencies to expand its training across the region.
The new state grant builds on $1 million United Way has secured for early childhood provider training this year from a number of foundations:Ford Fund, General Motors Foundation, High Scope Educational Research Foundation, PNC Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation, Skillman Foundation and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Will Democrats and the state’s most powerful teachers union inadvertently bring school vouchers to Michigan? Could these historic protectors of Michigan public education ultimately drag it under?
Watching what is taking place in school districts across Oakland County and the state make the question quite relevant. How ironic and tragic would it be if the Michigan Education Association, Democratic lawmakers, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a dozen or so Republicans (backed by the MEA) and a busload of complacent school superintendents and school boards ultimately helped bring vouchers to Michigan’s public schools?
How could that happen? The answer is simple. Taxpayers are fed up. Michigan residents, who are experiencing the pain of disruptive and transformational change, expect high-quality education and sensible action by our governor and legislators to put teaching, learning and children ahead of power, control and politics. They also are quite aware how change is impacting them and how the system is protecting the status quo.
When I served as state superintendent of schools, I sounded the alarm in 2004 that our current system of funding schools was unsustainable in the face of the sharply rising costs of health care, pensions and the large number of small school districts.
Shortly thereafter, I was forced out of the position by Granholm, assisted by a major shove from the MEA. If action had been taken when I recommended change, Michigan schools could have saved an estimated $4.5 billion to be invested in 21st century education initiatives by now.
Now fast forward to 2009 and house Speaker Andy Dillon’s ambitious proposal to bundle all public employee health care plans into one, with the potential to save up to $1 billion per year. His bold plan prompted MEA officials to immediately “declare war” on his efforts.
Even if Dillon’s savings estimates are off by 50 percent, we are still talking about significant money that could and should be redirected to the classroom. There is a desperate need for sensible reforms in government at all levels and specifically in our schools.
The foundation on which our public infrastructure was built (the auto industry) has been eroding for two decades and has imploded in the last year.
What we once had is now gone. We have a new reality of less revenue to support what we have had in the past. Changes need to be made, and have been denied for too long, to adjust to this new reality. Our public schools cannot be, and are not, immune to these new realities.
We must control rising health care benefits and pensions, and share services and consolidate local districts.
The actions by the MEA, standing in the way of sensible reforms and browbeating and cajoling legislators, local school boards and superintendents in light of Michigan’s new economic realities, ultimately will be self defeating.
The MEA might win the battle — but it is at great risk of losing the war.
Michigan’s constitution prohibits using government tax support for private or religious schools. In 2000, a voucher initiative was put on the statewide ballot. Opponents, led by the MEA and local school boards and using the public school establishment as foot soldiers, defeated this assault by a margin of 69 to 31 percent. It was a sharp setback to pro-voucher forces, and many thought it was the final nail in its coffin. Not necessarily so.
In November 2010, Michigan voters will be asked if they wish to hold a constitutional convention and rewrite the existing state constitution. Polls show there is massive dissatisfaction and anger toward Lansing, and voters just might take the opportunity to force change.
A metro newspaper quoted Lt. Gov. John Cherry as saying, “People are not happy with the capacity of state government to solve problems right now. … I don’t think the votes are there” to enact reforms. Sadly, the lieutenant governor is right, and the taxpayers might take matters into their own hands — and that ought to concern all the special interests in the halls of the Capitol.
When the “I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore” crowd gets rolling, major change might be in store for Lansing. The public understands that education matters and is willing to invest in results.
However, when they see data from the national ACT college admission test that shows Michigan ranks 42nd among the 50 states on the composite score (49th on English, 44th on math, 49th on reading, 41st on science), they question whether the current system is taking us where we need to go to be competitive in the global economy. This, coupled with the resistance to sensible change, is a prescription for a revised voucher initiative or some other massive assault on public education.
The status quo is quickly disappearing as a sensible option.
Michigan is in stiff competition to receive an estimated $600 million from President Obama’s “Race to the Top” federal education funding initiative. It is one of the new president’s most innovative tools to spur states to overhaul the change-resistant school culture and prepare our children for a hypercompetitive economy.
Without serious structural changes that push more of Michigan’s existing resources to the classroom, our state will be hard pressed to demonstrate that it is committed to change and deserving of these new, targeted stimulus investments. Michigan has until the end of this year to submit its application to the feds. How do we stand out among the states when we are content to muddle along?
When other states are raising their innovative sails high, it appears, once again, that Michigan is content to drop anchor in the past.
Our students will confront a changing, disruptive, information-and-technologically driven global economy that requires innovation, creativity and talent. Are we investing our limited state resources in ways that will ensure that they are prepared for this future? The answer, under the current power structure in Michigan, is a resounding no!
The rest of the world is not sitting idly by waiting for us to get our act together. At a time when ideas and work can, and do, effortlessly move around the globe, the states and nations that get their system of education right will prosper in the 21st century. We are on the wrong track in Michigan.
Death spiral
Michigan is caught up in a perfect storm of losing people, businesses and the taxes they pay. Michigan gets less populated, less educated and poorer because of people and business fleeing our state. Since 2001, out-migration has cost Michigan 465,000 people, the equivalent of half the population of Detroit. The rate of exodus, one of the worst in the nation, is accelerating. Nearly 109,000 more people left Michigan last year than moved in. It is reported that our state loses a family every 12 minutes, and the families who are leaving are the people the state desperately needs to kick-start our economic rebound — young, well-educated, high-income earners. It is change-or-die time for Michigan schools.
Many school boards and administrators have been conspirators with the MEA to avoid change. As long as money could be extracted from taxpayers via local millage votes before Proposal A in 1994, and from the governor and state Legislature ever since, everyone has been content to maintain a virtual state of homeostasis.
Our state continues to lose jobs in roaring tsunamis and replace them in teardrops. Even if our economy improves dramatically, we simply cannot afford the cost structure under our current system of public education. Covering the rising cost of pensions and health care for our schools would require up to a half-billion-dollar investment per year ($300 per student times 1.7 million students) for the foreseeable future. This leaves no money for schools to invest in programs and services that will prepare our students for the future. Schools have not seen an increase of this magnitude for years; hence, superintendents and school boards have become “Pac-Man,” gobbling up or cutting other school functions to pay for escalating health care and pension costs. This is unsustainable.
The governor and Legislature should either have the political courage to adequately fund the status quo or make the necessary changes.
There have been countless studies and recommendations from distinguished organizations to address the structural funding crisis facing our schools, including: The Center For Michigan (www.thecenterformichigan.net); Business Leaders for Michigan (formerly Detroit Renaissance) (www.businessleadersformichigan.com); Citizens Research Council of Michigan (www.crcmich.org) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (www.mackinac.org).
In addition, Granholm appointed a bipartisan Emergency Financial Advisory Panel, co-chaired by former Govs. William Milliken and James Blanchard and stacked with knowledgeable Lansing insiders, that offered recommendations on how best to avoid ongoing budget crises like Michigan is experiencing now. Granholm never acted on her panel’s recommendations.
Each of these groups spells out ways for Michigan to make sensible changes while fairly supporting its teachers and public schools that are vital to our economic rebound and prosperity. The time for studies, delays, debates and talking is over. We need the governor and legislators to act.
The MEA has considerable clout in Lansing. It underwrites Democrats and Republicans alike and is calling in its chips to prevent change. As an example, newly elected state senator and former state Rep. Mike Nofs has been a longtime supporter of the MEA and was endorsed by the union in his recent successful special election Senate bid.
At a time when Michigan and the schools the taxpayers support demand adaptability, creativity, flexibility, innovation, problem-solving and versatility, what we have from the MEA and the politicians they have supported is rigidity, conformity, protectionism and standing pat for the status quo.
Those who profess to support public education should take notice: If you give people a choice … they may take it.
New three Rs
Historically, we spoke about the three Rs of education: Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic. We need the new three Rs in Michigan education: Reform, Restructure and Reinvent. There should be no agreement on the fourth new R — Revenue/taxes — until these structural changes are well under way.
Suggesting such ideas has brought the wrath of the MEA down on my head, Dillon’s and others who dare to speak truth to power. Many public schools across the state are financially wobbly today due to the strain of inadequate state funding that has not, and cannot keep pace with rising health care and pension costs, especially when combined with limited or declining enrollment coupled with the inaction to consolidate school districts.
To make matters worse, the state continues to take in less sales tax revenue than projected, so dollars for the school aid fund will be hundreds of millions short as the new year begins. To add insult to injury, the current Democratic plan to slap a Band-Aid on the current school-funding crisis by tapping the federal stimulus money set aside for next fiscal year is simply postponing the day of reckoning.
In addition, Granholm’s plan to further tax tobacco, tax bottled water and close tax loopholes is anemic, at best, and will not raise enough revenue to stop the bleeding. It is the equivalent of plugging the hole in the Titanic with a wine cork. Even if these “revenue enhancements” are enacted, school funding will remain in crisis.
While some might doubt that our system of public education could topple, it is increasingly unstable, unbalanced and ultimately unsustainable unless bold structural changes are made to alter its present course. This will require the type of real change and leadership from the governor, Legislature and state school board that has been lacking to date.
The MEA is intent on not altering course and will attack change advocates as anti-Democrat, anti-teacher and anti-labor. I am none of the above. In fact, I was a youth advocate long before becoming a Democrat. I support these changes because doing nothing will bankrupt our schools and state, and drag our children under in the process.
As the health care, pension and school district consolidation (and other) reform issues are debated in the coming months, lawmakers need to ask themselves — and be asked by taxpayers — whose side are you on? Will they stand up for the teachers’ union and the status quo or take a stand for our children and the collective future of our state?
It would be sad as well as ironic if those professing to support our public schools and children ended up destroying both. Inaction has consequences, too. If backed into a corner, voters will choose change.
Tom Watkins of Northville served as Michigan superintendent of schools from 2001 to ‘05. Read other Watkins works at www.domemagazine.com.
"We knew the downturn was coming. ... we knew we were going to run out of work by the end of the first quarter of 2009." John Holcomb, general manager of MasTech's Manistee facility, who had an idea to save the supplier. (ROMAIN BLANQUART/DFP)
BY KATHLEEN GRAY
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
John Holcomb felt the cold winds blowing through the auto industry as early as 2006. But it took him three years and a dream to come up with a survival plan in which wind would play a big part.
As general manager of the Manistee factory of Sterling Heights-based MasTech, Holcomb had made a good living for three years supervising the production of machines and assembly lines for auto manufacturers. But he saw trouble coming in September 2006, when Ford announced plans to close 16 plants, cut 44,000 jobs and revamp its product lines with an eye on becoming profitable again by 2009.
Why, Holcomb wondered, weren't the other struggling auto companies embarking on similar plans?
"I saw Ford go out and secure funding for new, more economical models, and the rest of them weren't doing that," Holcomb said. "Changes weren't being made that would make them competitive on a broad enough scale. That was my first inkling that something was going to happen to the automotive industry."
His plans began to take shape a year later -- during a dream-induced conversation with his father and grandfather, both long dead, as Holcomb lay hospitalized in critical condition with a ruptured colon.
"I asked my dad and grandpa if I could go fishing with them and they said, 'No, it's not your time,' " he recalled. "At that point, I decided I had to do something to make a difference in a positive way."
So Holcomb hit upon alternative energy as a way to make a contribution to cleaning up the environment and keep a thriving business going in Manistee.
He went to Manistee's newly formed Alliance for Economic Success and pitched his idea: It was time for the group to aggressively recruit alternative energy businesses to the Lake Michigan shoreline community as a way to stave off the devastation that would come from an implosion of the auto industry.
"We knew the downturn was coming because all of the quote requests dried up, and then all the purchase orders dried up," Holcomb said. "We knew we were going to run out of work by the end of the first quarter of 2009."
As the alliance was hunting for alternative energy companies that also needed the machining expertise available in Manistee, Mariah Power of Reno, Nev., was looking for a place to build Windspires, residential wind turbines that were smaller and more compact than traditional windmills.
In October 2008, as auto sales were plunging and the Detroit Three were shutting plants and shedding thousands of employees, MasTech's Manistee operation began transforming from an auto industry supplier into a wind turbine factory.
Last January, the plant sent out its last automotive job -- an assembly line for a BMW plant in Spartanburg, S.C.
"I've been doing automotive all my life, and there's a certain sadness in getting out of that business," Holcomb said. "But it's also been refreshing to step away from the unwritten rules and regulations of the auto industry. So often, they didn't reward innovation."
The joint venture between Mariah and MasTech shipped its first Windspire on April 20 and has since built hundreds. Optimistic initial estimates called for production of 75 to 100 units a week, but the overall economic downturn has forced Holcomb to scale back to 100 a month.
"We're trying to continue to get the American people to spend some money. And we've had a hard time getting traction for sales because of zoning issues," Holcomb said. "Right now, I'm talking to as many zoning boards as salespeople."
From a high of 43 employees, MasTech is down to 35, many of whom worked in the auto industry. That's a steady level of employment from about 40 as an auto supplier.
"I worked in the automotive industry for 15 years, and now I'm doing the complete turnaround," said Sean Jacobs, 39, a machinist from Manistee.
Adam Morris, 37, of Ludington had been working in an auto die stamping plant in Grand Rapids but jumped at the chance to move to MasTech.
"I wanted to be in a business that was more secure," he said.
The company has plans for expansion.
This fall, it began producing a Windspire that is large enough to store wind-created energy in a battery for future residential or vehicle use. MasTech expects to begin construction on another production facility in mid-2010 to meet expected demand from overseas.
"We have some really huge orders pending overseas. We thought we'd sell more domestically right off the bat," Holcomb said. "But it turns out there's more interest right now in Europe, Asia and north Africa than in Iowa."
And, thanks in part to a dream, MasTech's Manistee plant will deliver. Contact KATHLEEN GRAY: 313-223-4407 or kgray99@freepress.com
BY MAYOR DAVE BING The recent release of National Assessment of Edu cational Progress test scores revealed a long-known but largely overlooked fact: We are failing our students. Detroit public school students ranked the lowest in the country, with scores equal to what they would have been had they never stepped foot in the classroom.
Everyone has weighed in on how terrible this is, and of the broken and antiquated system the findings reflect. But the real discussion has yet to begin.
Where do we start to fix this?
To continue the discussion centered solely on finances is fruitless. While we know that funding is critical, it is not the only thing needed to ensure that our children are properly and adequately educated. We all share in the blame and in the responsibility to fix this catastrophic problem.
I am steadfastly committed to education in this city and have worked to support positive change for as much as my role allows. Supporting the return of Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, helping to pass Proposal S and creating Safe Routes to School are a few ways I have been able to participate.
Yet, the challenges of our educational system require more — from me and everyone who has a vested interest in the future of our city, its residents and students. The solution lies with being able to put performance based measures in place, with a central point of accountability.
Other cities have done away with outdated oversight models and ineffective practices, and are realizing their educational potential with academic success.
Detroiters find ourselves at the bottom of the barrel, yet we still have two choices: We can take the path of inaction, continue to place blame, discuss, plan and meet about the problems, or move forward with the difficult but necessary changes to rebuild an educational system that works for every student.
While change is never easy, it is now imperative. We cannot afford to lose another child to our ignorance, arrogance or fear of something new and better.
I can remember the book, if not the exact year, that marked the transition from my mother reading stories to me each night to me taking over the page-turning alone, often huddled in corner of my room or planted, upside down in my bed, with my feet dangling over the headboard. It was “A Wrinkle in Time,” the first in Madeleine L’ Engle’s trilogy of sci-fi novels, which tracks the interplanetary quest of a quirky band of teenage ec centrics hunting for a miss ing parent. Their guides are Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which, who transport the teens from place to place — each strange and magical in a different way — using a supernatural process that bends time and space.
I couldn’t get enough of that book. Or its characters.
Or its boundless appeal to my sense of adventure or imagination.
I read the sequels myself.
Then it was off to dozens of other novels, each of which introduced me to concepts I hadn’t considered, or to characters I still count as fantasy chums.
When I think about the thousands of Detroit children we aren’t teaching to read, as evidenced by the awful na tional test scores released last week, I think this is one of the most important things we’re stealing from them.
Reading is a skill. And yes, a task.
But isn’t it also a doorway to mystery and wonder, to thoughts, ideas and emotions that we wouldn’t have other wise experienced? It’s one of the first ways we learn about possibilities and differences, about the whole idea that there are lives to be lived that may be largely incompa rable to our own.
Think of how important that should be to children in Detroit, especially. Many live in real-life circumstances that offer very little of that healthy mystery or wonder.
The city’s deep poverty is a physical trap for so many.
As a child in Detroit in the 1970s and 1980s, I found kinship with the characters in the Great Brain series, written by John Dennis Fitz gerald, about life in the small, slow fictitious Utah town of Adenville. A biography of Abraham Lincoln convinced me that, like him, I could grow up to be president without attending school past the third grade. (Better story: My mother indulged it for a week.) I’m certainly not down playing the more grounded urgency in making sure every child learns to read.
Those who don’t, we all know, are more likely to drop out, more likely to become trapped in lives of little or no productivity, more likely to themselves bear children who won’t learn to read, either.
That was a siren that sounded last week, when test scores revealed that De troit’s children are sitting, alone, at the very bottom of a deep well of urban unde rachievement. We need to rally everyone and marshal every resource to rescue them.
I’m certain we will, but I think we also need to remember why.
It’s not just to produce self-sufficient cogs who’ll help make the machinery of our society go.
It’s to give them a gift with so much more significance.
When I was in the seventh grade at U of D Jesuit, we read “Lord of the Flies” in our reading class. (Yes, we had a distinct class, every day, focused entirely on reading novels. The Jesuits do not putter when it comes to literacy.) And how fitting was it for a class of 25 pre-teen boys in a prep school to be reading a book about a group of mostly pre-teen boys from a prep school stranded on an island after a plane crash?
We couldn’t help relating the divisions William Golding played out between his char acters to our own little class.
Who’d want to do work and keep order? Who’d want to indulge the freedom from adult oversight, and run wild? I remember it so viv idly.
This wasn’t just work.
It was fun.
Kids who never learn to read get cheated out of that fun.
It’s up to all of us to help end that swindle.
| STEPHEN HENDERSON IS EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR FOR THE FREE PRESS.
NEEDED: 100,000 HOURS OF TUTORING TO LIFT DPS STUDENTS TO LITERACY In the 1960s, images of women and children being at tacked by dogs and sprayed with fire hoses spurred the nation to real action in the civil rights movement.
Detroit children’s rock-bottom scores on a national test are as shocking a reminder of the work that needs to be done fighting illiteracy, a key civil rights issue of this era.
The scores are dismal.
But from hardship grows strength for revival. From the depths of DPS’ current state, this community can help it rise up again.
Now it’s time to act, for the children.
Today the Free Press, in concert with the Detroit Public Schools, sounds an extraordinary call to this region: Build a Reading Corps of trained tutors to deploy in city schools. Give 100,000 hours over the next year to ensure that city children read on grade-level by the third grade.
The school district will coordinate the effort. The Free Press, the Detroit Media Partnership, the Detroit News, Ilitch Hold ings, Miller Canfield and ABC Warehouse have signed on as charter members who’ll donate time and other resources to meet the goal.
Others must now join the cause. The Free Press will chron icle the efforts and every pledge made.
For now, we begin with a promise, and a plea.
We will do this. We need your help to make sure it’s a success
EDITORIAL
Reading Corps wants YOU
An appeal for tutors to help Detroit’s would-be readers
The crisis is clear in Detroit’s public schools. Now the challenge is, too.
To vanquish the illiteracy that produced worst-ever scores by Detroit students on a national test last week, emergency finan cial manager Robert Bobb needs an army — a Reading Corps composed of trained volunteers who’ll descend on city schools in the coming months to help young chil dren learn to read.
The goal: 100,000 hours of donated time, from all corners of this community, next year and every year going forward, so Detroit can be sure that ev ery child reads at grade-level by the time he or she reaches third grade.
This community can meet that goal, and will. It’s a high calling and a steep challenge, but this is a region with a history of licking tough problems with hard work. We’re also a people who understand the precious responsibility we all have for educating our children. And we know the connection it has to all of our success.
We know this isn’t just a city problem. The conse quences of Detroit’s failure to educate its children won’t be contained south of 8 Mile.
Let this 100,000-hour challenge be the rallying point for all of us to stand up, join together and beat back this threat to every part of our community.
Stepping up
Today, the Free Press is stepping forward to help coordinate Bobb’s efforts and to pledge its support as a charter member of the Read ing Corps.
The Free Press will do nate 1,000 hours of its em ployees’ time over the next year to the Reading Corps.
The Detroit Media Part nership, which oversees op erations at the Free Press and the Detroit News, will match that donation with 1,000 hours of its employees’ time. The Detroit News will also participate.
Other charter members include Ilitch Holdings, the professional services arm of the many corporations owned by Mike and Marian Ilitch, the Miller Canfield law firm and ABC Warehouse.
Ilitch and Miller Canfield have pledged 1,000 hours of service each. ABC Ware house will donate computer equipment.
The challenge now falls to the rest of the community — corporations, civic groups, churches, nonprofits and individual citizens — to fill the rest of Bobb’s request.
This won’t be wasted time. Bobb and his team of aca demic advisers plan to train volunteers in the Reading Recovery program, a system atic and highly successful one-on-one program that’s already working on a small scale in the district.
With about four hours of training, anyone can become a tutor, qualified to work with students who are learn ing to read. It’s a more effec tive boost to classroom teaching than having volun teers simply read books to children, a common, laudable way many organizations help in schools. Reading Recovery has a 30-year track record of success, in this country and around the world.
Bobb says the district should be ready to begin training tutors in January, and could begin deploying them later this winter. The tutors’ efforts will dovetail with the intense reading instruction Bobb and his academic advisers are plan ning for the district’s curriculum.
At least initially, Bobb plans to deploy Reading Corps tutors across the dis trict’s 200 pre-kindergarten classes. But eventually, with enough tutors, the program could grow to encompass grades pre-K through third grade.
Setting a target
Those are the critical years for reading instruction. After third grade, children are no longer being taught to read, but being asked to em ploy their reading skills to absorb and process other knowledge. The rate at which children fall behind with their entire education — in math, science and English — accelerates dramatically after the fourth grade if their reading skills aren’t properly developed.
This is hardly the Free Press’ first initiative to sup port K-12 education. The paper’s award-winning Newspapers in Education program provides newspa pers to 764 schools in Michi gan and publishes a mini newspaper for Detroit ele mentary students. The paper’s high school journalism program helps young jour nalists publish school newspapers. The annual Gift of Reading program has provided more than 700,000 books as gifts for needy children over the past 20 years.
And, of course, many oth er corporations and organi zations have made their own substantial contributions to schools. There are dozens of reading programs at work in Detroit’s public schools right now, representing thousands of hours of donated time by dedicated organizations and individuals.
But, as Bobb points out, the Reading Corps will be different — a focused, coor dinated program to leverage community resources against a singular problem, illiteracy among the city’s young.
It’s about this entire re gion accepting some respon sibility for the state of its largest city’s public schools and for the welfare of its most desperately needy population.
That’ll be a first around here, and a welcome one.
The crisis is real. The challenge is now spelled out.
Who will join the Free Press and other charter members in building the Reading Corps?
LET THIS 100,000-HOUR CHALLENGE BE THE RALLYING POINT TO STAND UP, JOIN TOGETHER AND BEAT BACK THIS THREAT TO EVERY PART OF OUR COMMUNITY
How to volunteer
The Detroit Public Schools Reading Corps is ready to sign up groups and individu als to pledge time or other resources toward the goal of 100,000 hours tutoring children.
Or you can call the Read ing Corps hotline at 313-870-KNOW (313-870 5669).
Waging a continuing crusade for literacy
GIFT OF READING
For over 20 years, Detroit Free Press Charities has collected new books and money to purchase books to give to children ages 0-12 around the holidays. Since we began, we’ve given over 700,000 books to at-risk children through Head Start programs, shelters, clinics, churches … anywhere there are children in need. Books can be donated to the pro gram at our office at 615 W. Lafayette, or donations can be made by check and on line. Seewww.freep.com/reading for more information.
NEWSPAPERS IN EDUCATION
Our award-winning De troit Newspapers in Educa tion program delivers Free Press print editions to 107 schools and e-Editions to 764 schools, and we deliver News print editions to 54 schools and e-editions to 240 schools across Michi gan. Related special pro grams and teacher supple ments are also provided, all aimed at improving literacy and test scores.
Third-, fourth- and fifth grade students in all Detroit public, private and charter schools receive the weekly Yaks Corner — a mini-news paper for young people focusing on local stories, people and current events — thanks to a grant from the Skillman Foundation. Digital editions of the News fea ture weekly “Breakfast Serials,” with weekly installments of two stories each school year.
Our educational website —www.dnie.com — pro vides print and video fea tures to students and edu cators, including vocabulary and geography quizzes, cartoons for the classrooms, and front page talking points.
The site also invites read ers to get involved by mak ing a financial donation to the program, connecting with one of ten featured mentoring organizations, and supporting our “Reading is Fun” events.
JOURNALISM MENTORING
Since 1985, the Free Press has been mentoring journal ism classes at 15 Detroit high schools. Each of the classes visits the newsroom several times throughout the school year to get one on- one help from a Free Press journalist. The pro gram is funded by Ford Motor Co., including news paper production and dis tribution costs, laptops and cameras for the students, an end-of-year banquet and a $24,000 scholarship to the best senior journalist.
The program is run by copy editor Erin Hill, a DPS graduate who got her start in the Free Press program and who won the Ford scholarship in 2001.
Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb said Saturday he’s poised to impose a 10% pay cut if teachers walk off the job this week.
“To those teachers who are trying to force their members back to the table: The negotiations are over,” Bobb said out side the Detroit Parent Network breakfast, addressing ru mors of a strike Monday.
Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said he opposes the 10% cut, but does not support a work stoppage.
Thousands of DFT members railed last week against a contract proposal that defers $10,000 from each of their sal aries over the next two years. The 3-year tentative deal would save DPS $62.8 million. Voting on accepting the con tract ends next week.
As parents decried the De troit Public Schools’ dismal test scores Saturday, the dis trict’s emergency financial manager called on volunteers to spend 100,000 hours teach ing students to read.
“Going forward, we have to create a situation where we create a reading revolution in the city of Detroit,” DPS Emer gency Financial Manager Rob ert Bobb told about 300 par ents at a breakfast meeting sponsored by a parents group. Bob talked to the parents about the district’s test results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, in which Detroit students ranked the lowest in the nation.
Detroit Parent Network Executive Director Sharlonda Buckman said parents should be irate that their tax dollars have had little effect on their children’s education.
“They can’t read; they can’t count!” she yelled to a standing ovation at the Westin Book Cadillac hotel. “It would not be acceptable in any other com munity! We need to get on board with changing this!”
Bobb said his attempts to rework operations at the school system should be mir rored in the community. Some of the issues contributing to the problem include children living in unsafe neighbor hoods, parents with mental health or drug abuse issues and unemployment, he said.
Celia Huerta said four of her five children attended DPS — and two didn’t get diplomas. Her fifth, age 6, is attending a Melvindale school until she sees improvement in DPS.
“They’re so organized at this other system,” said Huer ta. “I think the Detroit system could learn something at some of these other schools.”
U.S. News & World Report has placed the International Academy in Bloomfield Hills in the No. 2 spot of its top 100 Gold Medal schools across the nation.
The magazine looked at more than 21,000 public high schools in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., was named No. 1.
The Gold Medal designation was nationally based on the College Readiness Index, which included scores on Advanced Placement tests or International Baccalaureate tests.
The school is at 1020 E. Square Lake Road in Bloomfield Hills and takes students in grades nine through 12 from several Oakland County districts.
Bloomfield Hills opened the first public International Baccalaureate school in Oakland County. More recently, other districts have started their own programs at various levels. Among them are Huron Valley, Troy and Berkley districts and Notre Dame Preparatory.
Enrollment includes 60.4 percent white students, 36.4 percent Asian, 1.9 percent black and 1.3 percent Hispanic.
It was the school’s longtime principal Bert Okma who presented the case for a new high school offering the International Baccalaureate program in the 1990s.
The program is a rigorous interdisciplinary program which has the same high standards globally. Students produce a portfolio of work that is evaluated by expert assessors throughout the world.
To earn the diploma, students’ work must meet the standards of the program and they must also pass exams in each subject area. Not every student who completes four years at the school and meets the standards that earn them a high school diploma in their district will earn the IB diploma.
Throughout the world, 80 percent of students earn the diploma while at the International Academy, about 97 percent have done so — 99 percent last year, Okma said earlier this year.www.usnews.com.
Margaret Williamson is not one to say “I told you so.” But had we treated her like Paul Revere instead of Chick en Little over the past decade, Detroit might be in better shape.
Williamson, executive di rector of Pro Literacy Detroit, sounded the alarm in 2001 after a congressional survey estimated that 47% of Detroit ers 16 and older were functionally illiterate. That esti mate is now 52%.
People chided her — and me — for publicizing Detroit’s dirty little secret — and its greatest challenge. But an illiteracy problem that large permeates the very fabric of the city, especially its schools, and puts the city at risk.
And nobody thought about the children. Parents who do not or cannot read cannot prepare their children to learn. So they are sending them to school to fail. Those children, many of whom even tually drop out, grow up to become people who have a hard time finding a job, or whose job becomes breaking the law.
Declare an emergency
Nine years later, the state released a study showing that one out of three Michigan adults — 1.7 million people— lacks the basic literacy skills to get a family-sustaining job, and many were unable to participate in federally funded job-training programs be cause they could not meet a requirement to read at a sixth-grade level. Now comethe results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the news that Detroit’s fourth- and eighth graders’ scores were the low est in the test’s history.
One might think at this point that the state — and all of its counties and cities— would go into crisis mode, that Gov. Jennifer Granholm would declare a statewide emergency. One would be wrong.
Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb this week asked the state to give him authority over the district’s academic as well as financial well-being. Armed with those heartbreaking test scores, he is making the case that edu cating the district’s children is as important as balancing its books.
He has pitched the idea of a Reading Corps, which, like the Peace Corps, would recruit volunteers to make a difference in people’s lives, in this city’s life.
He and Margaret William son should get together.
Innovation and investment
Williamson was working feverishly in her office Tues day as Bobb announced the bad news. Pro Literacy, housed across the street from Comerica Park, has more clients than it can handle.
“We just signed up 180 people in the past 10 days, and 60 more are coming by Friday,” said Williamson, whose center teaches 1,200 adults a year to read. “Yesterday, we used every chair in this office, and thank God I wasn’t in here, because they used my chair in my office.”
Solving Detroit’s education crisis, she said, requires innovation and community-wide investiture.
Where do children who can’t read go? Many become adults who can’t read and have children who can’t read.
Williamson suggested establishing a citywide net work of literacy stations housed free at universities, community colleges, rec and community centers and li braries.
“You’re talking about 376,000 adults,” she said.
Can we create such a net work? We can’t afford not to.
In my head, I keep hearing Michael Casserly, president of the Council on Great City Schools, saying that the test scores were “barely above what one would expect by chance, as if the kids had never been to school at all and simply had guessed at the answers. … “It is now time,” he said, “now that we know what the results are, to focus on what this assessment has told us about how the kids in this city are doing. Otherwise, to our minds, this city really has no viable future.”
Enough talk. Now’s the time for action.
Letters
Everyone must invest in Detroit student success
The startling and sad news that Detroit students in fourth and eighth grades recorded the lowest math scores ever on nationwide tests should prompt us all to take action (“If you can read this, you can help,” Dec. 9). We, as a state, share the responsibility for their failure, and we will share the impact of their success.
This comes after the state Legislature and the governor made significant cuts to pro grams that ensure the health, safety and educational opportunities for our children. Continu ing this disinvestment in kids — especially by cutting early childhood programs that prepare kids for school — will make the situation worse.
No time should be wasted on blaming the parents, teachers and school administrators.
We all, especially our political leadership, should be ashamed for allowing this to happen.
Reading the “call to action” message signed by Paul Anger and Stephen Henderson was the best thing about Wednesday’s front page coverage. Michigan’s Children is thrilled that the Free Press has once again decided to engage in “advocacy journalism” on behalf of our vulnerable children, especially the kids in Detroit. Many positive public policy changes oc curred during your newspaper’s long-running Children First campaign of the 1990s and we need the Free Press to once again be a strong voice for children.
We can do better. We must do better. Our future depends on what we do today to help our vulnerable children succeed.
Jack Kresnak
President/CEO Michigan’s Children Lansing
Unequal resources
I have been a high school science educator with the Detroit Public Schools for 16 years. I have dedicated my life to this district and to these children, and I work extremely hard to ensure the success of my students. If you want to be a voice, be a proactive voice that helps the teachers to help the students succeed. Class sizes need to be reduced to a maximum of 25 students. Our students deserve the same resources as the Birmingham and Bloomfield school systems.
When the playing field is leveled in terms of class size, parental involvement, stu dent attendance and re sources, it is then and only then should the feet of the educators be held to the fire.
Teneshia Moore
Chesterfield Township
Generational neglect
The illiteracy has a core in the lack within the life that starts before the child enters the classroom. I see it in my neighborhood. I see the re sults of years of educational neglect passed from genera tion to generation. The “boom box before books” mentality has to change be fore progress has a chance.
DPS has failed in its core mission. If DPS wants to spend one more dime study ing the problem then count me out. If DPS want to stop playing games, is willing to accept me simply because I have raised three literate children regardless of having no college degree and get to work on the problem, then count me in.
Mark C. Durfee
Detroit
Courage to face facts
Hope, that’s what I felt when I read the article of how poorly the fourth- and eighth-grade Detroit stu dents scored on the National Assessment of Educational Progress math tests. Facing a problem head-on with cour age is the first step in fixing it. To do this, Detroit par ents, teachers and leaders need to stop thinking of edu cation as a product provided by an institution for 7 hours a day, and begin viewing it as a component as vital as oxygen to a child’s life. Oxygen breathes life into our bodies; education breathes life into our hearts and minds. Goals need to be set early on by all the adults in our children’s life. College is not an option, but a destination. This is not a time for excuses or laying blame. It’s a time for identi fying the problems, setting new and loftier goals, and creating the infrastructure both citywide and statewide for change.
We absolutely can move this ball forward. Game on, Detroit!
Denise Neville
Grosse Pointe Shores
Don’t blame teachers
No one is stating all the facts when presenting this negative data. Robert Bobb also is not alerting the media that he maintains classrooms with student limits above the contracted amount, which leaves 25-plus students in many classrooms, but he wants to blame teachers and other leaders for the stu dents’ shortcomings. I guess he is, in effect, also blaming himself now for not properly staffing the buildings so as to better educate Detroit’s children.
Stephanie Reed
Hazel Park
Reinventing the wheel
In 1994 DPS contracted with Wilson Language Train ing to implement a reading program for middle and high school students who were reading below grade level.
Over 100 teachers were giv en the year-long training.
The results after yearly test ing showed that the program was having a positive impact. District trainers gave ongo ing support to the teachers and trained new teachers every year for about five years.
When a new administra tion took over the district, the Wilson Reading System was shelved and replaced by a series of reading programs over the years. As the new test results indicate, the reading skills of DPS stu dents are not improving.
Perhaps it is time to stop reinventing the wheel just to show the power that an ad ministrator has.
LANSING — Detroit schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb urged lawmakers Wednesday to give him author ity over the troubled district’s academics, as well as its money. “It is crystal clear we have an academic emergency, in addi tion to a reading emergency and math emergency, in addi tion to a financial emergency,” Bobb told the House Education Committee.
His appearance came a day after the news that Detroit fourth- and eighth-graders had the worst scores on a nation wide test — the lowest in the United States in the 40-year history of the National Assess ment Education Progress test.
Michigan needs to adopt changes to qualify for about $400 million in federal grants. In Detroit, he said, $90 million is at stake.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Wednesday she supports giving Bobb authority over Detroit Public Schools’ academic programs.
Bobb asks for state’s help to revive DPS
Lawmakers join the discussion on how to improve academics
By CHRIS CHRISTOFF
FREE PRESS LANSING BUREAU CHIEF
LANSING — Robert Bobb stunned House Education Committee members Wednesday when he said Detroit fourth- and eighth-graders as a group scored so low on a national test that they could have done just as well not going to school and guessing the answers.
Amid remarks by commit tee members of “outrageous” and “criminal,” Bobb said Detroit Public Schools administrators had failed students, and that he needs state help to turn the district around academically.
He said 69% of the Detroit fourth-graders and 77% of eighth-graders who took the test did not attain basic proficien cy, such as subtracting a two digit number from a three dig it number.
“You have no greater exam ple of how a school district can fail than that of the Detroit Board of Education,” Bobb said. “It is critical that those responsible for failure are held accountable and that the state have the ability to act and de mand accountability.”
Bobb, appointed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm in March to repair the district’s finances, has tried to wrest control of the schools’ academic programs but was sued in court by the Detroit school board.
“It’s difficult for me to an swer how one can address the financial issues without ad dressing the academic issues,” Bobb told the House commit tee. “The academic plan drives the financial plan.”
But committee Chairman Tim Melton, D-Auburn Hills, disagrees with Bobb over how to take control of the district’s classrooms.
Melton said he favors giving that authority to a state level reform officer, who would work with the state superintendent of public instruction.
A Senate bill would allow the governor to directly ap point an emergency academic officer for a failing school dis trict. Bobb favors the Senate plan and has asked for language that would speed the process of appointing an academic overseer for Detroit and other districts under state financial control.
Afterward, Melton said de spite the Detroit district’s deep problems, “there’s a lot of hope.”
He added, “You can’t give excuses anymore that the reason kids aren’t successful is because of poverty. We need to get over that.”
The school takeover bills are among reforms the House and Senate are considering that would qualify Michigan for as much as $400 million in federal education grants, under President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top initiative.
Bobb gave full support to those reforms, including alter native certification of teachers, evaluating teachers based on the academic progress of their students on standardized tests, and opening the door to more charter schools.
Bobb also said it was criti cal to appoint strong principals and other administrators to improve schools.
Asked whether the state needs fast-track certification for professionals who want to teach — with a glut of unemployed, certified teachers in the state — Bobb said those with rich life experiences should be welcomed in class rooms.
“In a 21st-Century creative economy, this needs to be a critical level of change and reform.”
Committee member Rep. Tom Mc Millin, R-Rochester Hills, said he was brought to tears when he read about the Detroit students’ poor show ing on the National Assessment Education Progress test. McMillin said it proves the need to give Detroit families more choices, particularly charter schools.
Bobb said he would support the eventual takeover of De troit schools by Mayor Dave Bing, provided he made a strong case for it to city resi dents. He said his appoint ment as emergency financial manager created resentment in the city and that a mayor could overcome that easier than a school board.
Editorials
State must give Bobb full academic control
If you weren’t shocked to the point of horror by the news that Detroit public school students posted worst-ever scores on a national test, this might do the trick: As of right now, the district’s academic fortunes are still, technically, under the control of the Detroit Board of Education.
That’s the same board that so badly mismanaged the district’s finances that Robert Bobb had to be appointed as emergency financial manager. The same board that has run through superintendents and curriculum choices as if it were changing underwear. The same board whose meetings have often been like three-ring circuses — chaotic, confounding, clownish.
In short, the same board that helped get Detroit into this situation is still in charge of leading the school district out of the academic cellar.
It should go without saying, in the wake of Tuesday’s revelations, that just cannot stand. If the test scores don’t prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the school board is at least as incapable of managing the academic side of the dis trict as it proved unable to manage the financial side, it’s hard to imagine what would.
Bobb has argued almost since he got here in March that his financial control of the district can be leveraged to influence academics. Every decision in the district, after all, touches on money in some way. So he has hired a chief aca demic officer, and made other significant per sonnel and programmatic changes on the aca demic side.
But there’s a problem with Bobb’s approach. The school board has resisted his authority, ar guing in a lawsuit that he has overstepped his mandate. Board members have hired their own academic leader, whom Bobb has refused to pay. And now they’re all caught up in court-or dered mediation to resolve that dispute, steal ing valuable time from efforts to fix what’s wrong in the school district.
That impasse needs to be cleared soonest, if necessary by action at the state level, so every one can move on. The financial emergency that was declared in Detroit late last year is now clearly also an academic emergency, and Bobb is in a perfect position to address both simulta neously. There’s simply no time for power squabbles or other distractions.
Ideally the school board would play the grown-up here, back away from its challenge of Bobb’s authority and pledge its support for his plans to attack both the district’s financial and academic woes. That could be done without ced ing power permanently. A full-throated debate over how the district should be governed in the long term could take place at a later date, after the immediate crisis has passed.
Board members would solidify their credentials as public servants committed to solutions, rather than the aggrandize ment of their own power, by shelving their struggle for the academic reins until a later date.
But if the board doesn’t back down, it will fall to the state to intervene. One long shot possibility is legislation introduced last month as part of the federal Race to the Top legislation that would empower the state superintendent to declare academic emergencies in school districts, much the way a financial emergency was declared in Detroit’s schools this year.
It’s a good idea, and it has support already in the House. But enactment still might not launch the process fast enough to resolve the dispute between Bobb and the school board before a judge makes hash of it.
Both the Legislature and the governor should focus on giving Bobb clear authority, as soon as possible, to address Detroit’s academic prob lems. And they need to do that by whatever means exist. If the bill put forward already by State Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, won’t work, some other way must be found.
It’s unacceptable to leave Detroit’s school board in charge of academics at a time of such clear desperation. If state officials let that hap pen, the shock and horror around this state will also be directed at them.
Detroit teachers need to accept a tough but necessary contract offer
There’s not much for teachers to like in the contract that the Detroit Public Schools has of fered them.
It calls for financial sacrifice, more responsi bility and accountability for student perfor mance.
But here’s a thought: Maybe, given the enor mity of the problems the school district faces at the moment, this contract negotiation ought not to be about what teachers want or can wrangle out of the school system. Maybe this should be about what Detroit’s children need — both in fi nancial and academic terms — to claw their way from the depths of educational futility.
If enough teachers can find their way into that mental space, the contract on the table for the Detroit Federation of Teachers will pass. If they can’t (and the catcalls during a contract rally Sunday suggest an awful lot of city teachers won’t be able to), then the contract will fail, and emergency financial manager Robert Bobb will have to contend with unnecessary labor strife on top of the serious problems he faces trying to get the district back on track.
For the sake of the city, of the school district’s solvency, and of the children’s well-being, teach ers ought to accept the contract.
In many ways, it would mark the height of sad irony if the city’s teachers, who are voting build ing- by-building on the contract over the next few weeks, were to reject the deal on the heels of test scores that show Detroit at the very bottom of the troubled national pile of big-city urban school districts.
Scores on the National Assessment of Educa tional Progress were so low that the executive director of a national council of big-city school districts wondered aloud whether children who’d never been to school might score any worse.
Obviously, not all the responsibility for that falls on teachers. But certainly, if Detroit stu dents are performing as if they’d never been to school at all, a fair share of the burden must be shouldered by instructors.
The new contract attempts a few moves to ward holding more teachers accountable for their students’ performance, largely through peer review, incentive pay and increases in man dated professional development.
Really, these are baby steps, when you consid er the changes other big-city districts — some that have moved their scores on the NAEP test considerably — have embraced. But in Detroit, they’d be monumental given the union’s historic animosity toward any reforms of that kind.
Teachers seem most exercised about a provi sion of the new contract that would have them defer $5,000 in pay in each of the next two years. The money would come back to teachers when they quit or retire.
The deferment was an idea that DFT officials came up with as an alternative to outright pay cuts. And while no one wants to do with less pay in these tough times, nearly everyone in Michi gan is confronting that same reality. Detroit’s schools can’t afford to exempt teachers from that pain.
