Hold the Drumroll.......and prepare for the Cymbal Crescendo! (These guy's are even bad-actors at theater-Film at Noon)

POSTED: 6:50 P.M. DEC. 18, 2009 | UPDATED: 4:29 A.M. TODAY

Legislature works past midnight, but no decision

BY DAWSON BELL
FREE PRESS LANSING BUREAU

The Michigan Legislation departed the Capitol after midnight for the second straight day early Saturday, unable to complete work on school reforms aimed at qualifying Michigan for up to $400 million in federal stimulus funds.

Leaders from both the House and Senatepledged to be back at their desks this morning. But tempers flared near the end of Friday's session as Senate leaders accused House negotiators of trying to insert last minute changes into an agreement reached 24 hours earlier.

"They're starting to ask for changes," saidSenate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, "We're not going to re-negotiate the whole deal."

Rep. Tim Melton, D-Auburn Hills, denied those charges, describing modifications being made to the legislation as "tweaks."

"We still have a deal," he said.

Lawmakers arrived at the Capitol Friday evening, after having departed about 1 a.m., ostensibly to begin voting on so-called Race to the Top bills. Instead, they spent their time listlessly waiting, chatting and sleeping, in part because the actual legislation had yet to be printed.

The content of the bills - to expand charter schools, address chronically struggling schools and inject greater accountability for teachers and staff - had been agreed to in concept by House and Senate negotiators early Friday.

In theory, it would allow for the creation of about 30 new charters in areas where existing schools have under-performed, tie teacher evaluations, pay and job security to student performance and create the framework for state-appointed officials to takeover management of failing schools.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Friday afternoon that she endorsed the conceptual agreement and would sign it if it reached her desk.

That remained an open question early Saturday.

The complexity of the legislation, coupled with a myriad of side issues (such as raising the high school dropout age to 18 from 16 without parental consent), kept a small army of lobbyists at work along with the lawmakers and their staffs.

Bishop said Democratic House leaders "just got to tell us. Do you want to do it or not? We don't want to blow it up."

Melton, who said he had had three hours of sleep in the last 48, said not to worry. "We're going to get it done. This is about 20 years of reform packed into one year. But we're going to get there."

Contact DAWSON BELL: 517-372-8661 or dbell@freepress.com

Turning the Page (From the Money Conversation to a Fresh, Insighful, Introspective Message of Hope by merely DOING the RIGHT THING) A SEA CHANGE to SEE CHANGE!

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN DETROIT’ S KIDS

One of the biggest problems facing the Detroit Public Schools is the lack of faith that some of its employees have in the children.

That is the word from Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the district’s chief academic and accountability auditor, who has spent months completing an extensive and not-yet-released analysis of how the district educates students.

There is nothing wrong with the city’s children or parents that cannot be remediated, she said. But there must be a sea change in the way district employees — from top to bottom — deal with their clients.

“Sometimes people revel in the despair,” she said in an interview where she gave a sneak preview of her findings. They include: 

■ Children in the same grade with vastly different and defi cient curricula.

■ A lack of progress reports to parents.

■ A total failure to evaluate and improve the performance of struggling teachers.

But the saddest thing Byrd Bennett discovered in conversa tions with hundreds of students, teachers, parents and principals? Some people just don’t believe in the kids.

“There has got to be a suspension of their disbelief that children can achieve,” she said.

What kids need: A dream and a chance

Barbara Byrd-Bennett recalls being a 19-year-old volunteer teaching reading to inmates with life sentences at the prison on Alcatraz off the coast of California.

“They were in there for life, and I could still see the hunger in their eyes,” she said. “They wanted to learn.”

Byrd-Bennett, chief academic and accountability auditor for the Detroit Public Schools, said she has seen that same hunger in the eyes of some DPS students. She also heard directly from ded icated teachers, heroes who work their butts off and still want to be even better, to reach kids more.

“You can’t move a district until you … change the culture of a district, and the culture doesn’t change until people begin to change,” she said.

For months, Byrd-Bennett has quietly guided the finan cial decisions of DPS emer gency financial manager Rob ert Bobb while examining all aspects of academics and teaching across the district.

Her extensive, not-yet-re leased audit shows that decades of poor administration, little communication with parents and inattention to students have left standing a district that is a monument to chaos, a district that will take years of innovation and a sea change in attitude to fix.

“There has got to be a suspension of their disbelief” in these children. “If you can get a group of people to believe in the children and their parents, you can change things.”

Where are the standards?

Among the problems Byrd Bennett outlines in her audit:

■ The district does not use the uniform, core curriculum system that was designed to keep all students on the same pace.

Students at one school learn more — and more effectively — than kids in the same grade at another school.

“As a parent, as a kid, I should know that in ninth grade, here are the core requirements. In order to move from freshman to sophomore, I need to complete this num ber of classes. And there’s something deeply wrong when you think foreign lan guage is an add-on.”

■ There is little regular communication between teachers and parents, and few progress reports on how students are doing.


■ There are no standard, uniform evaluation tools for teachers or principals.

“I don’t know any job that where you’re never evaluated, assessed or helped and supported,” she said. “That is obscene.”

■ Many teaching methods used in the district are out dated, some from the 1970s.

The good news, Byrd-Bennett said, is that “as I went into schools and talked with teachers, I found that people are hungry for the support.

People want to know how to do a good job. People want to know how to get out of the frozen ’60s and ’70s teaching methods.”

■ There is a belief among many employees that DPS children are inferior students. Rampant social promotion, a statewide problem, places students in classes where they are ill-equipped to learn and mainly mark time until they drop out. Teachers must deal with students who are years behind in reading and math, who have behavioral problems or, in the case of a teacher I recently reported about, had a class of 28 stu dents who were on 10 different reading levels. And I get heartbreaking e-mails from teachers who have to adapt their teaching plans to the arrival of students at different academic levels all through out the year.

“What I’ve learned is that the academics have been subordinate to finances here for longer than anyone could have imagined,” Byrd-Bennett said.

There is nothing wrong with the children or their parents that cannot be remediated, she said. But there must be a sea change in the way district employees — top to bottom — deal with their clients.

“Sometimes people revel in the despair,” she said in an exclusive interview. “I’ve said this over and over. There has got to be a suspension of their disbelief that children can achieve.”

Core course requirements should be the same at every high school, but students should have the chance to try different career paths without affecting their college prep.

“But people push back and say these kids won’t do that.

They don’t believe in these kids.” 

The gift of a dream

Byrd-Bennett has found what’s wrong. When she releases the final academic audit, we better pay attention. This time.

“Sometimes a superintendent, an associate sup has to stand for the kids. All the adults have their representation. We are the union for the kids. I’m the union rep,” she said. “Every kid I’ve met wants to learn. I’m the kid from the low-income projects of Harlem. The difference was: There was a group of significant adults who believed that I could be some thing better. … “Nobody has suspended their disbelief.”

I remember those dreams.

Every adult on my street in Tarboro, N.C., had that dream for me. They lived it.

They made me live it. I always saw beyond that street.

Now we must give that gift to Detroit kids.

■ CONTACT ROCHELLE RILEY: RRILEY99@FREEPRESS.COM 

“IF YOU CAN GET A GROUP OF PEOPLE TO BELIEVE IN THE CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS, YOU CAN CHANGE THINGS.” 

BARBARA BYRD-BENNETT, chief academic and accountability auditor for the Detroit Public Schools 

Drumroll Please! Political Grandstanding 101 (Cue-up "Hail to the Victors" Film at 11)

Statewide

School reform talks to resume this afternoon

Gov. Jennifer Granholm and legislative leaders will resume negotiations this afternoon on school reform measures aimed at qualifying Michigan schools for up to $400 million in federal stimulus funding.

Progress on some issues, which negotiators for all sides declined to identify, was announced just after midnight. Still at issue are what kind of limits to place on the creation of new charter schools, differences over teacher tenure protection and how to deal with schools or districts in crisis, such as Detroit.

The Legislature had been scheduled to adjourn for the year Thursday night.

He said, She said: "A Case for the Criminally Inane"

---

December 17, 2009

http://detnews.com/article/20091217/POLITICS02/912170439

Education talks resume after showy press conference in Lansing

KAREN BOUFFARD
Detroit News Lansing Bureau


Lansing --Finger-pointing gave way to theatrics this afternoon in the turbulent battles under way in Lansing over education reforms needed to qualify for $400 million or more in federal Race to the Top funding.

About 40 House Democrats flanked Speaker Andy Dillon, D-Redford Township, and Education Committee Chair Tim Melton, D-Auburn Hills, at a lunchtime press conference called to shame Republicans back to the negotiating table. Republicans stormed out of talks about 8 p.m. Wednesday night, led by Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, after negotiation stumbled over the issue of charter schools.

Asked if the Democrats had picked up a phone to ask Kuipers back to the table, Melton said, "As far as they know, we're still down in the conference room. We didn't walk out on them; they walked out on us."

After further prodding from reporters, Dillon whipped out his cell and dialed Kuipers directly: "We want you to come back to the table and negotiate," Dillon said. "I'll be in my office right now."

Dillon announced about an hour later that talks had resumed. "We're back in business," Dillon said.
Kuipers, in an interview with The Detroit News this morning, charged that the House and Gov. Jennifer Granholm's administration aren't fully committed to winning the money -- and presented as evidence problems Michigan had meeting last week's deadline to file an optional letter of intent to apply for Race to the Top funding.

Jan Ellis, spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said the problems were not on the state's end. When they tried to send the letter to Washington expressing their intent to apply for the money, the computers were down at the U.S. Department of Education, so the letter never was sent.

Melton said Kuipers' criticism of the Department of Education is meant to divert attention from Republicans' lack of cooperation.

"The department is fully engaged in this -- (State School Superintendent) Mike Flanagan has had his staff working around the clock on this," Melton said. "The real (issue) is the Senate walking away from negotiations.

"It's an optional letter, and the House and the governor are fully committed to this."

The letter was optional and won't jeopardize Michigan's chances of winning the money, Ellis said.

She said the purpose of the form was help the U.S. Department of Education prepare for an onslaught of state applications expected by the Jan. 19 deadline for the first wave of funding.

"This was not an application -- it was a letter of intent that was optional, and that we tried to file at least three times, and their system was down," Ellis said, referring to the U.S. Department of Education's computer system.

"There was no requirement and they know we are going to apply" for the money.
Ellis said the department has since sent in the letter.

Because Michigan's notice was not received by the U.S. Department of Education by the deadline, the state was not listed among states planning to apply for the first round of funding. Applications for Phase I funding are due by Jan. 19; states not ready to apply by then will have another opportunity later in 2010.

Senate Republicans walked out on negotiations on education reform legislation late Wednesday, bringing a halt -- for the moment -- to talks about education reforms linking teacher pay to student test scores, opening more charter schools and other measure the Obama administration has outlined as requirement for Race to the Top cash.

Conference committee meetings slated for 9 a.m. this morning were swiftly recessed since there were no deals for members to debate.

Melton said this morning that Republicans, led by Kuipers, walked out after House Democrats wouldn't budge on the Senate's plan to open 100 or more additional charter schools in the state.

"The Senate just wants to get a wish list to do as many charters as they want, and that's not what Race to the Top is all about," Melton said.

Kuipers said talks failed over a number of issues, not just charter schools.

"We have a number of outstanding issues, and we weren't making progress on any of them," Kuipers said. "I just said, 'We've been talking for six hours. We're not making progress. When you're willing to get serious, let us know.' "

Criminal Insanity: Something we know Something about (Dysfunctional Knee-Knocking to Head-Knocking)

Editorial

Detroiters can set a new DPS path

Two bills are sitting in conference between the House and Senate in Lansing that would stop a near-criminal insanity: the fact that Detroit Public Schools emergency fi­nancial manager Robert Bobb is not formally in control of the district’s academics.

The bills are stuck, even as legislators gather today, perhaps for the last time this year, apparently because the old saws about Lansing’s interference in Detroit business have been raised. Legislators have reportedly gotten cold feet about giving Bobb more con trol, for fear that it will inspire a backlash from Detroiters who’ll see it as a move to strip them of power over their schools.

So non-Detroit legislators — including bill sponsors Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, and Rep. Tim Melton, D-Au burn Hills — can’t get the votes to work out the differences between their two bills. And the Detroit delegation has yet to step forward to demand the changes that would help Bobb get control of the district’s mismanaged academics, much as he is working to rein in its financial problems.

Detroiters themselves can help resolve this knee-knocking trepidation. By contacting their legislators (whose phone numbers appear here) they can make it clear what they want. Should the school board remain in control of academics? Or should Bobb get a chance?

Here’s a bet on what they might say: Go for it with Bobb. Bobb’s work has been popular, as at least partially evidenced by the backing voters gave his bond proposal (a fairly risky financial proposition) in November. His arrival was greeted with cheers, not the anger that you still see direct ed at the school board during meetings. And his swift action has won him many allies among parents and other stakeholders.

This also isn’t just about De troit. The legislation at issue would give the state superintendent more power to inter vene in every struggling dis trict. And, by the way, that’s a key component of what the federal government will be looking for when it awards Race to the Top money (which could mean hundreds of mil lions to Michigan). How silly to let an old argument over “control” of Detroit’s schools interfere.

Moreover, conceding that Bobb needs emergency power over all the district’s activities doesn’t preclude the more se rious and much needed de bate over the district’s long term governance structure. This isn’t a takeover; it’s an in tervention to fix a serious problem.

What a shame it would be if legislators let a few empty threats keep them from delivering urgent help to the city’s children.

GAMBLING with our Student's Futures (Unwise at Any Odd's and a Fool's Game)

Editorials 

Governor’s reprieve for schools likely to be short

Certainly it’s embarrassing for Gov. Jennifer Granholm that she announced an emergency school aid cut in October and then rescinded it before it took effect. Critics got plenty of am munition to say she was gaming the numbers solely to press for a tax increase that lawmakers would not entertain.

So, yes, her timing was and is suspect. The overall trend — dwindling tax support for schools — is not.

Even if Michigan manages to limp by with only its already enacted cuts for the current school year, districts will almost surely take a bigger hit next year than the one Granholm backed away from last week. Smart districts, if they found any palatable cuts while under the gun, may want to proceed with them anyway.

The numbers look like this: Gran holm had called for an emergency cut of $127 per pupil, starting with this month’s state aid payment, because of continuing tax shortfalls. Meanwhile, the most optimistic pro jection for next year’s budget starts with a $200-per-pupil cut. That comes on top of the $165-per-pupil cut made by the Legislature for the current year.

Where has the improvement come since Oct. 22? There is a bit more money than expected left over from last year in the school aid fund, for one thing. More significant is the smaller than- expected decline in taxes due on non homestead property — generally businesses and vacation homes. State forecasters aren’t certain why commercial property tax rolls remain relatively healthy, but the likeliest ex planation is simply that they have yet to show the full impact of the recession. So policymak ers would be wise to regard this as a short re prieve, rather than a rebound.

The fiscal outlook for the next school year is not pretty: Besides de clining taxes, federal stimulus money will taper off and job losses are expect ed to continue until at least late 2011.

But just as school districts would be smart to start making deeper cuts now, legislators could mitigate the damage by making urgently needed changes in Michigan’s tax structure sooner rather than later. Unfortunate ly, Granholm’s decision to postpone cuts relieves some immediate pres sure for reform.

The governor did not play her cards well. But her clumsiness should not become an excuse to ignore the bigger problem: Without more funding, the education that Michigan offers its children will inevitably deteriorate. And those students, in turn, will be even less well prepared to deal with the chal lenges that await Michigan in the decades to come.

JUST DO the RIGHT THING!

Kids can’t read? Hundreds want to help 

Metro residents ready to aid DPS

By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY

FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER

Detroit Public Schools put out a call to the region Sunday to recruit volunteers to do 100,000 service hours to help teach children to read and re tired mechanic Mark Durfee, 55, of Detroit didn’t hesitate.

The self-published poet read an article about the new DPS Reading Corps online at 2 a.m. He clicked on the link and became the first of more than 700 people to volunteer within 36 hours. An additional 140 people signed up by phone.

The volunteers include men and women from throughout the tri-county area from com munities such as Grosse Pointe and Grosse Ile to Southfield and Sterling Heights.

“I have to have faith that the coming generation can make Detroit, Michigan, the nation and the world a better place than the one we are leaving be hind,” Durfee said. “If the com ing generation of kids cannot read, they will fail in bringing that change. That is why I vol unteered.”

The DPS Reading Corps is being organized in the wake of last week’s release of the Na tional Assessment of Educa tional Progress math test. De troit’s fourth- and eighth-grad ers scored worse than any U.S. city in the 40-year history of the test.

Educators said students who had problems with read ing had trouble with the test. The math test is full of story problems and about 40% of it can include open-ended ques tions, according to the Nation al Center for Education Statis tics, which administers the test.

“Literacy is the fundamen tal key to all content areas,” Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the chief academic and account ability auditor for DPS, said at Monday’s news conference to kick off the Reading Corps.

Volunteers must get a back ground check, attend an orien tation and four to six hours of training on the district’s read ing recovery program that will be used in the tutoring ses sions.

Training for tutors is ex pected to begin in January. Tu tors will be asked to help a min imum of two students for 30 minutes a week each.

Durfee, author of “Stink: Poetry and Prose of Detroit 2005-2009,” said he wants the children of Detroit “know they are not forgotten, and they are thought about and cared for.”

To volunteer, go to www.detroitk12.org. 

WHY it is NOT ABOUT the MONEY!

School grants spur state lawmakers to action 

Big changes needed to secure millions

By DAWSON BELL

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has called the Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative “education reform’s moon shot,” the larg est pot of discretionary school funding — $4 billion or so — in the nation’s history.

But the scramble set off to qualify for the federal govern ment’s competitive grants has been very much Earth-bound.

In Michigan and other states, legislators and educa tion officials have engaged in a frenzy of deal-making to win Race to the Top funding.

Whether the end result is real classroom change — especially in the chronically troubled schools that are the main target for reform — won’t be known for years.

In the meantime, the enor mous, green federal carrot is generating movement on long stalled measures aimed at at tracting better teachers, open ing more good schools, reward ing results and punishing fail ure. Detroit Public Schools, for instance, would qualify for as much as $70.5 million of a pool of cash up to $400 million.

Final action on Race to the Top could come this week on legislation in three major areas:

■ Expanding the teacher pool. So-called alternative cer tification for teachers, permit ting those trained in areas such as engineering or math to teach without formal training in edu cation, has been a top agenda item for would-be education re formers for decades.

In some states, the pipeline for teachers has been expanded significantly to include mid-ca reer professionals and college graduates with little or no edu cation experience. Michigan hasn’t changed but will have to in order to qualify for Race to the Top money.

State Rep. Tim Melton, D Auburn Hills, a key negotiator, said he expects a deal that would allow college grads with a grade point average of at least 3.0 to work in middle and high schools without a teaching cer tificate. The legislation would require non-traditionally trained teachers to work to ward formal certification after they are hired.

■ Teacher and principal eval uation.

Race to the Top re quires schools to collect data that will allow them to track students’ performance under specific teachers and princi pals. In theory, doing so will al low schools to reward educa tors whose students make mea surable progress and address the shortcomings of others.

Ariela Rozman, chief execu tive of the New Teacher Project in Brooklyn, said efforts to im prove teacher effectiveness are a high priority in Race to the Top and an important factor in snaring the grants. But there are no precise ways to achieve that goal, she said.

Rozman’s group scored Michigan as being only some what competitive overall for Race to the Top funding in an initial assessment this summer and found the state’s data sys tem and methods for identify ing successful teachers and leaders seriously lacking.

The state House and Senate have approved merit-pay legis lation. But significant sticking points remain, including a fun damental disagreement over whether ineffective teachers should be protected from firing by the state’s teacher tenure law. The House version would keep that protection for ten ured teachers. The Senate ver sion wouldn’t.

■ Failing or struggling schools. States are required to have clear guidelines to deal with the worst performing 5% of schools to qualify for Race to the Top funding. Options in clude replacing staff, hiring a management company or clos ing.

Again, the devil is in the de tails. And they are endless.

In Michigan, lawmakers ha ven’t agreed on whether the takeover of a failing school or district should be handled by the state superintendent or a local manager — someone like Robert Bobb, the Detroit schools’ emergency financial manager. Last week, he asked for authority over academics, as well.

Relaxing the cap on more charter schools — often cited as a key objective of Race to the Top — also is unfinished busi ness for the Legislature. Teach ers unions and local school offi cials have long opposed efforts to permit more charters.

Jeanne Allen, at the Center for Education Reform, based in Washington, D.C., said both the federal program and the states likely will fall short of what is needed to address failing schools — a way to quickly shut one down and provide students with a good alternative.

Allen said initial promises from Duncan that schools would be encouraged to re move barriers to charter schools were a smaller part of the final standards than prom ised.

“A lot of these reforms are good and nice; they’re not path breaking,” Allen said.

Making bigger change re quires taking on too many insti tutional interests, especially unions, she said.

Teachers unions, which have traditionally opposed charters, have been less ada mant in the Race to the Top de bate, in part because they say the new rules will create more oversight of charter schools, as well as of traditional schools.

Still, Michigan’s lawmakers and school leaders are eager to land the possible $400-million prize to ease the pain from de clining state revenue and local property tax collections. 

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

Low scores not just a Detroit problem

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

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

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

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

Look at the whole state

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It means, said state Rep.

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

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

Imagine that.

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

Guard kids’ rights

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

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

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

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

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

Race On to Get the Money (How about the Race to Capture the Student's Imagination, Creativity and Innovation?)

Rules on teachers, schools could change to snare aid

By DAWSON BELL

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER 

Determined not to leave up to $400 million in federal funds on the table, state lawmakers appear determined this week to resolve differences in House and Senate bills that mandate significant changes in public schools.

To qualify for the Race to the Top federal stimulus mon ey, Michigan would have to make changes to allow merit pay for teachers, lessen re­strictions on opening charter schools, plan for sanctions for underperforming schools and make it easier for people to be come teachers. Teachers unions and local school offi cials have fought the ideas in the past.

Rep. Tim Melton, D-Auburn Hills, said state and federal ini tiatives will produce “a sea change” in the way troubled schools operate and kids learn. “It’s a huge deal,” he said.

And it’s a lot of money for a state with big money prob lems. The Democrat-con trolled House and Republican controlled Senate have ap proved different versions of legislation that must be re solved before Gov. Jennifer Granholm can sign it.

Michigan’s Race to the Top application is due Jan. 19, with the first round of funding to be announced in April. 

Early Childhood Initiative

Early Childhood Investment Corp. gives $2.8 million to United Way

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 12:50 PM PST

By Sherri Begin Welch

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.

LOCK the Barn Door (The Cows are in the Lower Forty)

Oakland Press

Fix public schools or else

Sunday, December 13, 2009

By TOM WATKINS
Special to The Oakland Press

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.

Read, Write and SCREENED All-OVER! (A 21st Century "Transformative Green" Scenario)

Auto supplier turns trouble to triumph by venturing into turbines

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"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

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Mayor Bing CHANGES the educational discussion from one of conversation to an Actualized Imperative!

COMMENTARY 

Changing Detroit schools imperative

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.

Dave Bing is the mayor of Detroit.

READING: The Gift that Just Keeps on Giving!

Reading is a thrill, not just a skill or task

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.

Stories might be the only entrée to potential or un derstanding for lots of city children.

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.

CONTACT HIM AT SHENDERSON600@FREEPRESS.COM, OR AT 313-222-6659. 

SURE, LITERACY IS FUNDAMENTAL. BUT TEACHING KIDS TO READ ISN’ T JUST ABOUT PRODUCING SELF-SUFFICIENT COGS THAT MAKE THE MACHINERY OF OUR SOCIETY GO.