The Detroit Data and Democracy Project reports that the children of Detroit have seen deteriorating results since the state takeover of their public schools in 2009.
Dr. Thomas C. Pedroni of Wayne State University reported that the manipulation of statistics has been a defining characteristic of state control of the schools:
He writes:
One year ago this month I watched in disbelief as the Emergency Manager of the moment, Roy Roberts, declared on NBC’s nationally broadcast Education Nation Detroit Summit that Detroit Public Schools had surpassed the Michigan average in 14 of 18 MEAP categories. At the time I suspected that Snyder’s appointee, a former auto executive with no education background, had simply misspoken or just didn’t quite have his facts straight. What bothered me more was that none of his carefully selected co-panelists—including EAA Chancellor John Covington and Detroit Parent Network President/CEO Sharlonda Buckman—batted as much as an eye over Roberts’ jubilant mispronouncement. A clearly impressed Chelsea Clinton declared that when the day came she would gladly enroll her own children in the public schools of Detroit.
As I dug through the MEAP results on the Michigan Department of Education’s website that day—confirming that DPS students had scored behind the state average in all 18 tested categories, typically by 20 percentage points or more—I made a discovery I had not anticipated: in most categories, children in Detroit’s public elementary and middle schools had fallen even farther behind their state peers since 2009. That year (2009) was the year that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared Detroit “ground zero” for education reform, and the State once again took away local democratic control of Detroit’s schools.
I was particularly troubled that, since 2009, the youngest children taking the test—3rd, 4th, and 5th graders—had declined the most. Although already so far behind their statewide peers, Detroit’s youngest test-takers had somehow lost even more ground.
Read what happened when he tried to publish this story in the Detroit News.
The latest release of test scores in Detroit in 2014 show that the children continue to lose ground compared to their peers in the rest of the state.
Sadly, grievously—the new MEAP data, released February 28, reveal the further deepening of a devastating pattern. In both reading and math, Detroit’s children have fallen even further behind their state peers. Somehow, in 10 of the 12 grade-level math and reading MEAP tests, Detroit’s children under state control in DPS and the EAA have lost even more ground.
Fourth graders in Detroit’s state-managed schools actually progressed marginally in reading relative to their Michigan peers, bringing the proficiency gap down by 0.8 points to 29.5 percentage points. But in every other tested grade– third, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth– they fell even further behind in reading. In math, Detroit’s sixth grade students in state-managed schools gained marginally on their Michigan peers (by 0.3 points) and are now only 27.7 percentage points behind. But they lost even more ground to their statewide peers in all the other tested grades– third, fourth, fifth, seventh, and eighth.
Pedroni says it is another lost year for the children of Detroit.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Some Michigan lawmakers are stepping up and doing their jobs, so there’s hope. I’m glad not all lawmakers have decided to “relinquish” their duties to foundations and private corporations:
“Contrary to the rosy picture Gov. Rick Snyder painted in his Mar. 6 op-ed column defending the Education Achievement Authority, 2013 Michigan Education Achievement Program data released recently by the Michigan Department of Education, and analyzed by the Detroit Data and Democracy Project, reveals that students in EAA schools failed to make even marginal progress toward proficiency.
Even worse, the data revealed that students who had demonstrated proficiency when they entered the EAA, are now no longer proficient. In math, 66 percent are no longer proficient, and in reading, 37 percent are no longer proficient.
These figures come from cohort data recently published by the Michigan Department of Education. No one would expect students from struggling schools to completely turn things around and show better scores immediately. But certainly no one expects them to fall further behind.”
I think it was irresponsible and really reckless for Chelsea Clinton to endorse the EAA approach. It was a political/marketing campaign to vastly expand the EAA. They hoped to apply the “blended learning/Buzz” model to many more schools in Michigan, and they launched a huge political push to do just that although they already had the test scores and they knew the kids had lost ground (using their own measure, which is test scores). The political campaign failed, but what if it had succeeded? They would have pushed this model into schools all over the state.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140311/OPINION01/303110001#ixzz2vfX1Ztoh
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Because we are not teaching reading and motivating our children to want to read .School is just testing, and talking about the test, We all need to walk on Washington and stop this nonsense…
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Self-styled “education reform” at work in Detroit. My hometown.
Seems that the leaders of the “new civil rights movement of our time” have taken to heart this powerful observation by Frederick Douglass:
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
Except that they are afraid of what knowledge can do, because Frederick Douglass also said:
“”I didn’t know I was a slave until until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do.“
Best to nip that “knowledge” thing in the bud. The vast majority of parents having the choice of a quality public school in their communities that actual provides the same quality teaching and learning environment that the edupreneurs and educrats and edufrauds and edubullies provide THEIR OWN CHILDREN…
Has got to go. Nip that flower of “knowledge” in the bud.
Dee Dee wrote earlier on this blog “Have they no shame?????”
Rheetorical [not a typo] question.
😎
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“A clearly impressed Chelsea Clinton declared that when the day came she would gladly enroll her own children in the public schools of Detroit.”
I’ll be holding my breath.
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You’ll be dead then, Dienne.
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Oh come now, Duane – you’re not saying that Chelsea isn’t a woman of her word, are you? Both her parents always have been!
(If I don’t post much for a while, it’s because my fingers almost cracked off typing that.)
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This made me really LOL
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I think decades of results speak for themselves. Only dedicated, highly skilled teachers make a difference and those teachers must have a seat at the table when it comes to curriculum and what goes on in the classroom when teaching takes place.
For decades, every experiment where teachers were not included in the decision making has failed and driven education backwards.
For the thirties years I taught, I saw this happen as one magic pill after another was forced on teachers even after we protested it wouldn’t work.
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It troubles me that his only metric is the same as the rheeformers’ – test scores. I understand how that shows the rheephormers aren’t succeeding even by their own metric, but we also need to look at a wide variety of factors, since we’re the ones saying test scores aren’t everything (or anything, according to some of us). How are Michigan’s kids doing as far as having access to art, music, foreign language, history, project-based work, whole-child/socio-emotional focus, etc.? What happens to kids once they graduate – are they able to get into college if they want? Are they able to find satisfying careers? What sort of understanding do they have of the world they’re stepping out into? Those are the important areas as far as I’m concerned.
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Dienne,
I understand why Pedroni used the scores. That is the sacred metric of false reformers. If they can’t succeed by their own most valued measures, say so. I get this criticism often when I point out that neither charters nor vouchers get higher scores than public schools. When they do, it is because they exclude low-scoring kids. They have no secret sauce.
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I get that, but here’s the problem. Let’s say we could take a hypothetical school, divide it randomly and assign half the kids (Group A) to an extended day of little besides test prep and the other half to a regular schedule, full curriculum (Group B). Group A comes in at 7:30, stays until 4:30 with a minimum of an hour of mandatory homework per night and Saturday sessions. They do two ninety-minute blocks of each of math and reading per day, along with a sixty-minute test prep block. Group B comes in at 8:30 and stays until 3:30 with age-appropriate homework. Their daily schedule includes math and reading, of course, but also science, social studies, foreign language, art, music, PE and recess. Let’s say that Group A “outperforms” Group B on test scores. Is that justification for using the Group A structure as a model for the whole school, let alone schools state- or nationwide?
When we give into the rheeformers’ metrics, we make it seem like test scores are the only important focus. This is what the public is being led to believe. Child development experts, of course, know that Group B is going to be a lot healthier more successful (by nearly any metric) in the long run regardless of test scores in school. But we’ve convinced many people, especially many parents, that what matters in a school, what makes one school “better” than another boils down to that test score. We really have to get away from talking about test scores as if they mean anything at all.
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I understand why Perdoni used the scores, but I also agree with Dienne that using those scores in any way lends credence to any use of those scores. The sad part is that this way of teaching, skill and drill, to raise test scores doesn’t work and harms the students who need to learn critical thinking and have a balanced curriculum the most.
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I always include a caveat when talking education and test scores. In most cases, I have testing outcomes ready and aimed to back my assertions, which most of the time include details of why public schools are better than charters, private schools, etc… But I always point out that I am not the one stressing the testing results and that I think learning outcomes ought to be measured more accurately. But I have found in most cases, that statistically speaking public schools beat most everybody, especially when looking at our middle and upper class kids. So I don’t shy away from talking test scores, I am just careful to frame the argument carefully so they know I am to ultimately not in favor of high stakes testing.
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The media will publish what they wish, with the spin they wish, with the “facts” they wish. The media is, given its special attention by our Constitution, supposed to provide us with factual information, to educate the public. Why has the media lost its credibility???? Guess!
Then, they scream at the public schools for poor education.
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In Detroit, where we have both a city emergency manager and a schools emergency manager, we say that the mainstream media are also under emergency management.
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Thank you Tom Pedroni thank you.
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Thank you Thomas Perdoni for telling us the truth. Isn’t it pathetic that NBC hosted this propaganda show? Some news organization-ha! Maybe NBC could do an in depth study of the edushysters running Detroit charters-yeah right.
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Dee Dee, the worst commentary about the Education Nation Detroit Summit and NBC was that I warned them IN ADVANCE about the fact that their panelists for that hour (and, as it turned out, their “randomly selected audience questioners”) were players on the same local corporate reformy team! The producer of the show actually called me in response to my concerns, but then realized that despite what I was telling them about, they couldn’t possibly make changes anymore. The local players are very skilled at making sure that no dissenting voices are heard.
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Yes, I’ve noticed. The local media is awful when it comes to investigating these issues.
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A devastating tragedy for the children of Detroit.
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