The Detroit News invited me to write a plan to revive education in Detroit.
Detroit has been a Petri dish for reformers for 25 years. Everything they tried has failed.
Here is my proposal.
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2017/12/13/charter-schools/108585724/
Diane Ravitch's blog 
great piece! I encourage all of Diane’s readers to click through to the article and leave some comments–the DeVos-funded troll patrol is already out in force, and could use some real “education reform.”
Thank you, Diane–those of us in Michigan who really care about education and children appreciate your support!
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Great point. This editorial attacks the DeVosian philosophy right in the heart of the beast (both substantively and geographically). I’m sure there will be push back.
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I concur. The comments are being controlled by defenders of the charter industry in Michigan.
So far the positive comments are coming from only a few people who are also well-informed about the failures of the charter industry.
Too many attacks are also aimed at Dr. Ravitch and broadsides against teachers, their unions, throwing money at schools, and blaming the dominant racial group in Detroit for all problems in eduction.
I would add comments, but I will not join Facebook as required.
This message is well honed and on point for almost any city and state. It also has facts pertinent only to Detroit and to Michigan,
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I’m sure the DeVos patrol is out in force. The truth hurts when you are wrong and have invested millions of dollars in failure. Do they want another 25 years to experiment on other people’s children?
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Just fantastic. And fantastic that they sought your opinion.
(I would have liked a note that funding could/should be shifted from testing to actual school help/improvement.)
But well done and thank you!
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Well done.
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Thank you for posting the link – sterling advice, would that Michiganders would take it.
On a related note, PublicCounsel sued the state of Michigan in Sept. 2016 for failing to provide basic literacy skills to students in Detroit: http://www.publiccounsel.org/stories?id=0201
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This Michigander agrees with you.
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This Michigander agrees with you also.
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Beautifully stated and an antidote to all the charter bloviating and propagandistic cheerleading. If I hear another charter cheerleader say, “Let the parents vote with their feet,” or “The entrenched bureaucracies of traditional schools,” for example, I will projectile vomit to the moon and beyond.
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Michigan’s educational misadventures are a shameful example of putting profit ahead of the needs of young people. It is an extreme example of government and private collusion resulting in inferior results, and yet refusing to acknowledge all the waste, fraud, democratic suppression and dismal results. Detroit is the worst of it. The people of the state must show up and vote against these endless market based schemes and those that have backed these reckless policies.
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“In 2003, Michigan was ranked in the middle of the pack on national tests. By 2015, Michigan had fallen to the bottom. A report by Education Trust concluded that the declines had been across the board, among all racial groups and income groups: “It’s a devastating fall. Indeed, new national assessment data suggest Michigan is witnessing systemic decline across the K-12 spectrum. White, black, brown, higher-income, low-income — it doesn’t matter who they are or where they live, Michigan students’ achievement levels in early reading and middle school math are not keeping up with the rest of the U.S., much less our international competitors.”
I actually love Michigan – despite the Ohio v Michigan competition – I spend a lot of time there and I have a group of family members there. What’s happened to public education in the state is just sad.
The worse part is how higher education institutions in the state either rubber stamped or actively encouraged all of it- partly because as “authorizers” they get a cut of every charter dollar. There are colleges that are MILES away from Detroit authorizing Detroit charters.
The same thing will happen in Wisconsin. They just don’t know it yet. It’ll stretch across the whole Great Lakes region- a kind of ed reform failure belt. One could mark it on a map and it would cross PA, IN, OH, MI, and (soon) WI.
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Is it possible for an Ed Reformer to admit failure? Isn’t that an admission of wasting literally billions of dollars and harming countless students? For a group of people who are so quick to point fingers, I don’t think we should hold our breath waiting for acknowledgement.
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Too many of our modern day school “reformers” are billionaires looking for a way in to massive public education tax money coffers: “failing” at fixing schools is not actually a problem so long as the money comes in for THEM.
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It’s heartening that, in addition to the wisdom and common sense of your proposals, a mainstream publication sought them out.
Perhaps the stranglehold that so-called reform has had on news coverage of education is beginning to weaken. If so, Diane, you are a major reason why.
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Completely agree with all points. Impossible to measure (imagine that) Diane’s contribution.
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the part of Detroit’s ed reforms that doesn’t get enough attention was the 2012 effort
The key to that, the “secret sauce”, was supposed to be “blended learning”.
Blended learning was put in district-wide in the EAA charters- they all used this program out of Utah that was sold to them by an EAA official who had a financial interest in the company.
It was a disaster. That matters because this is the same theory ed reformers are now selling all over the country. They know it was a disaster in Detroit. They don’t care. They’re pushing it out nationwide anyway.
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At one point during the creation of the EAA there was a demand and emails between the EAA officials and the Broad people were released.
The EAA officials were trying to get the “prestige” charters to come to Detroit.
They wouldn’t come. I’ve always wondered if they wouldn’t come because the per pupil stipend in Detroit is so much lower than in Boston or NYC.
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The “prestigious” Charters avoided Detroit because they knew they would fail.
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Short and on the mark. But the State of Michigan has to grow up to accept the damage done and spend the money to build fabulous public schools on the crumbling foundation of the failed charters. Before more children miss a quality education. Pray for those who lost opportunity at a young age. A crime against them.
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except that the charters have been built on the already crumbling foundation of the defunded public school system. there’s no foundation left on which to build…
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Nutrition has little to do with education. I mean I rarely ate breakfast and I ate school lunches or brought a sandwich from home. I still do not eat breakfast until I have been up 2-3 hours or so. I did very well in school and at work.
Head Start does not work long-term as I have already said here on this blog and elsewhere.
Finland does not start educating their young until age 7 and they do much better than most countries on the PISA test and way better than us.
Along these lines, a few years ago PISA test results had one country that is considered in poverty outscore the US. That tends to make one think two things. Number one poverty does not cause an inability to learn and number two is being able to teach your young has little to do with the economy at large. It is not absolute proof but it might be the beginning of a trend.
How can one not be prepared for Kindergarten? One is not supposed to know anything except basic English. Kindergarten is for the start of learning as well as 1st grade.
Insofar as 4th Grade reading scores nationwide goes, Grade 4 Reading scores show no change, for 2015 from 2013. From 2007-2015 national average at this level is 220-221.
<https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?chort=1&sub=RED&sj=AL&sfj=NP&st=MN&year=2015R3>
More specifically for Michigan, 4th grade Reading in 2015: Below Basic 37% (letter grade of F), Basic 35% (grade of C), Proficient 24% (grade of B), and Advanced 5% (grade of A). In 2013, These were 36%, 33%, 25%, and 6%. So, they had an increase of Fs (1%) and Cs (2%), and an decrease in Bs and As (1% each).
These 2015 scores are not that much different for the 2002 scores and slightly better than 1998.
As of 2015, Michigan had 37% reading below grade level. I would suspect that 25% would read below basic level based on the normal curve.
According to the NAEP <https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?chort=1&sub=RED&sj=AL&sfj=NP&st=AB&year=2015R3>. 68% Read at or above Basic level, which means that 32% nationwide read below Basic (or grade level). They categorized Michigan’s below average readers percentage of 37% as only slightly below national average.
The NAEP did say that Michigan was significantly below national average of 221 for Reading as theirs was 216. They also said that Arkansas’s & South Carolina’s 218 were also significantly lower than the national average. This is 3 points and it is significant? They also said that Texas’s score of 218 was not significantly different from the national average. How can this be? Texas, South Carolina, and Arkansas all had scores of 218 but in two of them it is significant and one is not?
Again, I question the NAEP, as I have written in the past. These discrepancies and the misuse of the “Proficient” level have caused me to question their results. Proficient level would be letter grade of B as I said above. When someone complains about only say 34% reading at the proficient level or above they do not have a leg to stand on. Most kids read at the Basic or grade of C, as they are most likely to be C students. There is nothing wrong with this. What is important the percentage of student that read below average.
FYI: The scores range limits from 0-500. New Mexico had a 207 at the lower end and Massachusetts had a 235 at the upper end. So, no state is getting even half of the available points. I wonder what that takes or what it takes to get say 450 points (perhaps 100% reading at the Advanced level for a 500). I would assume not since if that were true then having 2/3 of Basic to Advanced should average above 250 (if all were at the Basic level). Enough speculation.
My ultimate points are number one early education does little to no long-term good. And number two that Michigan’s 4th grade NAEP Reading scores are what they were in 1992 and that is in 23 years. This about 2 complete K-12 groups of kids. It has gone up and own during that time but ultimately back to where it started. I do not think that this can be blamed completely on charter schools. Whatever changes that have been made over this time has yielded a net zero gain. I would suggest that nothing will change this.
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Every one of your claims are refuted by the work of this Nobel economist whose research can be found at this website. https://heckmanequation.org
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He’s baaaaaaaack! Breakfast doesn’t matter, poverty doesn’t matter, pre school doesn’t matter, maybe breathing doesn’t matter either. Breakfast doesn’t matter based on Schiltz3’s exhaustive scientific research – his own experience as a child, that’s called anecdotal. What about lunch? What about healthcare. Finland has true universal healthcare, school lunches are free to all and education is tuition free at the university level.
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Have you ever read any Research at all about the importance of health, food, base
Ic Security? How about Research on early childhood education? It is gathered in my book “Reign of Error.” Try reading.
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Great first steps to improving test scores, however, I see additional steps are necessary. 1. Eliminate the emphasis on test scores by ignoring the state test and developing their own accountability plan. 2. Developing an IEP for all concept that takes kids from where they are to success. 3. Turn the outrageous system of failure into one where failure, as in WD-40 is a part of the learning process, not designed to destroy kids. 4. Take advantage of small class sizes by reinforcing differentiated instruction as the norm. 5. Reinvent inclusion by taking the visible labels off the foreheads of kids who have special needs, not by artificially dumping them into classes that aren’t succeeding for gen ed kids, but individualize by needs of all. All kids are different. 6. Use differentiated learning to assure kids who are advances in their learning are not held back. 7. Develop a graduation plan that allows for completion when they are ready be it sooner than 18 years of age or later.
Together we can make miracles happen.
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When I read that the Free Press had taken the right initiative and asked you to write for them, it filled me with joy and hopefulness. Momentous! Is it possible that Detroit still truly has a free press?! Apparently so.
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