Eclectablog has been posting a series of articles about Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority, where the state has clustered its lowest-performing schools. There again is that nasty reformer habit of calling things the opposite of what they really are. Because the schools are the lowest-performing, they now have the honor of joining the state’s Education Achievement Authority. The leader is John Covington, trained–so to speak–in the unaccredited Broad Academy, where closing public schools and handing them over to private corporations or authoritarian leaders is considered a mark of success.
Governor Rick Snyder, who does not like public education, created the EAA as a special place for the state’s “worst” schools, apparently because not even a for-profit entity wanted them. But that is just my guess. Maybe he will eventually turn them over to one of the for-profit charter chains that is proliferating in Michigan.
In this post, Eclectablog interviews an unusual teacher at the EAA: she is experienced. Most of the EAA teachers are first-year teachers or members of Teach for America. Like others that the blogger has interviewed, this teacher is anonymous. The reasons should be obvious. If her name were used, she would be fired.
Read her description of the culture of the EAA schools. Does it sound like a climate that will foster excellence?
In the interest of balance, I remind you that the EAA disputes all these testimonies because they are anonymous.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There is now a non-anonymous post up (yesterday) with more to come. This is far from over and the EAA’s claim that this is made up (or whatever) because they have intimidated so many teachers into anonymity is beginning to crumble.
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In life there are many frightening things, but I must say, when a teacher is hammered from every direction by people who often don’t know what they are speaking if it how to accurately evaluate a situation and then are criticized about the random behavior of a child or a score on a test, there is nothing more frightening. Being held accountable for what other people do when you can’t control the variables is enough to send your nerves into outer space. Even though my students did well, there were always one or two who didn’t give a hoot.
I had one kid who spent exactly 20 minutes on his reading test. He just sat there and smiled at me. I had another who decided to pull his hoody over his face and do very little. That was “my fault” because I should have known before hand. I wasn’t allowed to nudge or reprimand. I had to endure their decision at autonomy. For this we are judged. These are 4th graders. And these are but 2 examples. I am sure others have had worse!
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One of the things to remember about this experiment is it isn’t really an experiment. No matter what happened with the schools, ed reformers in Michigan were going to expand the reach of the EAA. Presenting this as an experiment was itself deceptive. The financial viability of the EAA actually depends on adding more and more students. It was set up that way, because it was established using private donors. It was not financially viable without adding more and more students, at 7k a pop:
“The Education Achievement Authority could add an unlimited number of failing schools across the state as early as July 2015 under legislation the Michigan Senate narrowly passed Wednesday evening.
On a 20-18 vote, the Senate approved empowering the school reform district in state law and allowing the Michigan Department of Education to add schools under the EAA’s jurisdiction.
The Senate’s amended bill includes no cap on the number of schools with persistently low test scores that can be added to the EAA, which runs 15 schools that were previously part of Detroit Public Schools.
Sen. Phil Pavlov, R-St. Clair Township, said the bill contains a “moratorium” on expanding the EAA until July 2015 to give the fledgling reform district time to prove itself.
“We did that because we have work to do,” said Pavlov, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.
The bill goes back to the House, which passed its own version in April with a 50-school cap. Critics said the Senate bill lacks a mechanism for schools to get out of the EAA after test scores and student learning improve.
Gov. Rick Snyder has been pushing the Republican-controlled Legislature to get the measure to his desk before members adjourn Thursday for the year.”
The “urgency” here isn’t about rescuing kids from “failing schools”. The urgency is about expansion before the results are in, because the thing can’t survive unless it grows, and grows fast.
This is a business plan, not an education policy.
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20131211/SCHOOLS/312110093#ixzz2se7xXDYT
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Disturbingly, neither Eclectablog nor Dr. Ravitch have chosen to write about the EAA’s failure to even attempt to follow the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Michigan Administrative Rules for Special Education (MARSE); or the chronic and systemic violations to students’ Individualized Education Programs (IEP) as documented in my three complaints filed with the MI DOE this past summer.
The MI DOE kicked back Representative Ellen Lipton’s complaint and kicked back my first complaint due to our unwillingness to name teachers. The MI DOE’s position has been that no complaint will be investigated unless it documents a student or teacher.
I filed 3 complaints that documented the name of a student and included a school year’s worth of violation-infested IEPs and evaluations. I documented systemic violations because the EAA illegally used the Intermediate School District’s (Wayne RESA) “alternate special education plan/R 340.1832e” that explodes teacher caseloads and special ed class sizes. The EAA had no occupational therapists or physical therapists the entire 2012-13 school year. They kicked students with disabilities off of special transportation when the students missed three days of school. I have a student who missed 30 school days during the 2012-13 school year because he was taken off of special transportation following 4 days in the hospital due to a severe asthma attack.
The MI DOE has identified these violations and done nothing to ensure the EAA’s compliance with the “corrective action plan.” Further, the MI DOE continues to refuse to treat these complaints as systemic and do an audit of every student’s IEP. When will Dr. Ravitch and Eclectablog decide that the children with disabilities and their besieged special ed teachers deserve recognition? The EAAs failure to follow the IDEA and MARSE is a smoking gun that can only aid those working to shut down this failure of a dictatorially-run school district.
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Marcie, you are right to be incensed about the EAA’s failure to provide a free appropriate education to students with disabilities. There has been a monumental failure to enforce the law and the rights of these Detroit families and children. They seem bent of reducing the numbers of students with IEPs and have tromped the rights of people involved. I hope they get the message from activist Helen Moore to leave the EAA schools before the next count date! I do want to compliment Chris Savage’s hard work on the Eclectablog site for exposing so many problems with the EAA, including his extensive interviews. He has been relentless and is a champion for public education.
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Hi Marcie, I want to echo Steve’s comment and also highlight that Chris Savage (Eclectablog) has been pretty much eating and sleeping his pieces on the EAA the last few weeks, and is doing so “pro-bono”. That is, this is not his day job and he is not compensated for his work. If I understand it correctly, he is even transcribing all the interviews himself– which, as I know from my own experience, is the kind of drudgery that truly reveals one’s love for one’s work.
To the degree that you might be able to find time, I would encourage you to write what you know about the EAA, particularly in relation to the issues that you raise. Knowing your work and history, I think you might be one of the best situated to do so. It’s quite possible that Diane or Chris would also carry whatever you produce– after all, Chris was kind enough to carry my piece a few months back about the heinous actions of the DPS Emergency Manager in closing Oakman Orthopedic Elementary School.
Finally, Chris Savage is going to hate me for doing this, but it’s worth it because he needs our support– if only to buy him a beer or two. Here is a link to his donations page to support his work– http://bit.ly/1gaHzPx.
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Chris has mentioned children with disabilities more than once in his extensive reporting, and he’s not finished posting all the interviews he’s done to date. He’s concerned about all the students (and teachers) in EAA schools — including those with disabilities.
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I appreciate Chris Savage’s Herculean and selfless efforts. I read Eclectablog regularly just as I read Diane Ravitch. I have seen Dr. Ravitch focus quite a few blogs on special education. I have not yet seen one on Eclectablog. Further, my comment was specific to the EAA. I believe that defeating the EAA and Governor Snyder’s plan to dismantle and destroy Public Education will take everything in our arsenal. The violations in EAA IEPs are rampant and successful written complaints have been filed with the MI Dept. of Ed. I am saddened that the intended message in my original comment has been lost.
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I’d also like to know why it is okay to test these blended learning experiments that come with huge class sizes on poor kids?
If the Buzz system is so great, and it must be, because the developer was hired by the EAA and she tells every politician who wanders in there for a photo op how great it is, why didn’t they sell it to a suburban school in Michigan and test it out there?
Why are these kids being used as test subjects?
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‘Blended learning’ is just the hot word like synergy or start up. It’s been around for a while. Maybe not in such a capacity. Common core is experimental, at one point TV carts and video were experimental. A blended classroom is just more than a teacher student and textbook pretty much.
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Right, I get that, but this is that concept taken to a new level. Arne Duncan called the EAA method “the future” -which is terrifying and truly ominous- although he’ll endorse anything as long as it’s pushed by someone wealthy or famous, so maybe the specifics don’t matter.
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Are they talking about blended learning or blended schools? This term has been used over the years. A blended classroom in my experience was used to mean that special education students were in a least restrictive environment. Then it was used to mean that technology was used to incorporate the use of technology with traditional classroom teaching/learning. Recently I have seen that “blended” is being used to speak of schools that have charter schools in a building with traditional public schools.
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EAA is a bleanded classroom. (I experienced this when I worked there). Teachers in a true blended environment there act as facilitators and the students are broken into groups. Some on the computer, some with manipulatives, and some with traditional methods. Blended learning is not Sped specific. Blended learning is being adopted to mean whatever that person wants even though its not right. Even most ‘traditional’ public schools have some blended working l element even though it may not be the focus.
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Hi, Tom- I have donated to Ecletablog and do appreciate Chris Savage’s relentless work on the EAA. I only wish that students with IEPs were recognized and highlighted (or lowlighted) for the exteme denials of a free appropriate public education. I appreciate your comments and Steve Camron’s. I had not thought about approaching Diane or Chris to write a piece on the EAA and students with IEPs. I don’t know how to reach Diane outside of her blog. I have been in contact with Chris and provided information. He has not asked me to write a blog and with today’s comments it appears that I have burned that bridge. He has taken my comments as a personal attack instead of as the criticism intended. Helen Moore is one of my heroes :-). We will all continue to fight for what we believe and with the hope that the EAA will implode. Detroit Public Schools and surrounding districts must be supported and the children must be educated. I very much believe that MI cannot survive without Detroit.
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Eclectablog has a posting today about the EAA that references the Tuskegee Experiment—
Link: http://www.eclectablog.com/2014/02/veteran-eaa-teacher-this-reminds-me-of-the-tuskegee-experiment.html
No matter how hateful, morally reprehensible, and ill-conceived the Tuskegee Experiment was—
There was at least some very very very small element of “experiment” attached to it at its inception—or so defenders would claim.
What is described by this teacher—and others—is not an experiment. The results are known in advance. It is like a high-stakes standardized test that has been expertly designed, produced, and pretested so that within a small margin of error the results are known before the actual testing begins.
For example, 70% failure rate in New York, anyone?
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/18/everything-you-need-to-know-about-common-core-ravitch/
EAA is not an experiment. It is more like what Chiara Duggan [above] describes as “a business plan, not an education policy.”
And if you want to discredit public education and public schools, it is working to perfection—or it would be, if not for this blog and many others and a growing number of concerned school staff, parents and others.
In great measure, what allowed a monstrosity like the Tuskegee Experiment to flourish was secrecy.
Let the sunshine in. The charterites/privatizers can’t stand the scrutiny.
😎
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With the details in that interview, I think the administrators could figure out who that teacher was if they wanted to play detective and put the facts together with a face.
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They approved it.
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It is amazing what they are getting away with in Detroit at taxpayers’ expense. They always pick the poor neighborhoods and the low achieving schools to abuse, most likely because the parents are trying so hard just to survive that they, hopefully, won’t notice that their kids are not getting an education. And this crap is not getting better. It’s spreading!
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Detroit is reeling from economic collapse from way back in 1980. They closed 30 plants that year. Many of our politically aware parents left town. Not to say that we can’t regroup. But it’s rough.
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Privatization…whether prisons or schools..is about profit not philanthropy.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/07/higher-profits-explain-why-there-are-more-people-of-color-in-private-prisons/
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Read and weep. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/26/1103368/-The-One-Comic-That-Explains-Just-How-Screwed-America-Is?detail=email
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