Mitchell Robinson, Associate Professor of Music Education at Michigan State University, has compiled a handy guide to the bold idea of “achievement school districts.”
There is the Recovery School District in New Orleans; the Education Achievement Authority in Michigan; the Achievement School District in Tennessee; and more on the way in other states.
The main thing you need to know about these experimental districts is that they promise rapid improvement in the state’s lowest performing schools, and all of them have failed.
Here are the key traits of Achievement School Districts:
School Funding
Individual ASD schools are often required to pay a “kickback” or “tax” to the state ASD authority for the “privilege” of being identified as a “low performing school”. In Nevada, “ASD schools receive the same state and local per-pupil resources that they would have received as part of their original home district. This includes local, state, and federal funding. As with other charter school sponsors, the ASD will receive a small administrative fee from each school it authorizes.” (bold added)
In other words, in spite of the probability that an ASD school has been chronically underfunded for years, perhaps decades, the state will now take its own cut from whatever local, state and federal funding the school may be receiving for administrative overhead, further decreasing the actual number of dollars that are going to classrooms, teachers and children.
Local Control
Local control, long recognized as a hallmark of public education, is a dinosaur in ASDs. In Detroit, the locally-elected school board still meets, but has essentially been stripped of all power and authority. The members of the elected school board refer to themselves as being “exiled,” and the newly elected state superintendent of schools has called on the governor and state legislators to return control of the Detroit Public Schools to the local school board, saying, “I believe we ought to have a Detroit school district for the Detroit community.” Instead, Gov. Rick Snyder has proposed a radical plan to split the city’s schools into two districts: one to educate children, and the other devoted to addressing the district’s debt problem.
Transparency
Even though it is often trumpeted as an integral aspect of effective school governance, very few ASDs follow their own propaganda when it comes to transparency in reporting. Detroit’s EAA is an especially notorious offender in this respect, making claims that do not stand even the faintest amounts of scrutiny. According to Wayne State professor of education Thomas Pedroni, the EAA’s “internal data directly contradicts their MEAP data. Even Scantron, the maker of the internal assessment, would not stand behind the EAA’s growth claims. And Veronica Conforme, the current EAA Chancellor, removed all the dishonest growth claims from their advertising and their website, and told me personally she doesn’t give them credence for the purpose the EAA used them for.” For more from Dr. Pedroni on the EAA’s specious relationship with transparency, see this, and this.
Punitive vs. Educative Methods
Many ASD charters include language regarding the possible consequences if schools do not meet “adequate yearly progress” goals, such as: “Operators of ASD schools that do not demonstrate meaningful improvement will be held accountable pursuant to policies set by the ASD.” Indeed, school closings have become a prominent tool in the school reform playbook:
Washington, D.C. closed 23 buildings in 2008. Officials are currently considering another 15 closures.
New York City closed more than 140 schools since 2002; leaders recently announced plans to shutter 17 more, beginning in 2013-14.
Chicago closed 40-plus buildings in the early 2000s. The district recently released a list of 129 schools to be considered for closure.
This approach follows guidelines first established in the No Child Left Behind legislation, which stipulate draconian changes for any school that fails to meet yearly progress within five years….
This thinking represents a sea change in terms of strategy with respect to schooling and education policy. Never in our nation’s history have we taken a punitive approach rather than an educative approach when schools or children have struggled with demonstrating expected levels of progress.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And this is the road NYS is driving down with first stop Buffalo.
Where do the children go when their school is closed because the adults there “failed”? How have children been more successful academically, socially, and emotionally by closing their “failed” school?
These school districts are all about privatization and not about improving results. Making a ton of money for the bureaucrats. Why else would we continue to push something that has already been proven to be a failure? Because if has nothing to do with improving results that’s why. But the feds want it for their corporate fascist partners like Gates, Walton, Broad etc. In TN we should be fighting to shut down the ASD and repeal our Charter School law. One day parents will be very sorry they didn’t stop this take over while they could. New Orleans parents are now stuck and they know it.
In Delaware it’s Priority Schools.
As always, this is the “go to” place for outstanding thought leaders on education in general and traditional public education more specifically. Thanks for that.
Awesome, awesome article. I am curious, could advocates encourage their congressional leadership (and POTUS) to forbid any federal school funding to be used, included, paid or expended to pay these required “kickbacks” or “taxes” when a school is a “low performing” one?
Wouldn’t that help further dry up the profit incentives since now the only pots available to pay a “kickback” would be almost exclusively state and local per-pupil resources?
For more details on Michigan’s EAA, there’s a working paper MSU professor David Arsen and I wrote on its history and development:
“Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority and the Future of Public Education in Detroit: The Challenge of Aligning Policy Design and Policy Goals.”
It’s available online at http://education.msu.edu/epc/library/papers/EAAChallengeofAligningPolicyDesignandPractice.asp
I attended a school board at my school district I do not live in the district so my friend
kept telling me to be careful .The superintendent was to present her plan for the future of one of our middle schools, Hackett, which is in her “receivership” she will be responsible for the next year for hiring and of course academic achievement. The “Contract for Excellence ” This presentation was nothing more than a recycled outline from 2008. There were no specific plans for any reading programs for our very far below grade level students. The only specific plan was to hire more ENL and Remedial Reading teachers. The superintendent has hired a personal consultant at a cost of $2 million. We as a district have nothing to show for the money that has been spent. I am so angry I could burst. We have people in charge who have no imagination and really don’t care about our students.