Governor Rick Snyder announced yet another reorganization of the Detroit schools. He declared that neither public schools nor charter schools were succeeding. He did not address the fundamental problems of Detroit, such as poverty, segregation, and de industrialization. How long will this reform last?
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This article is a very interesting account of the life and accomplishments of Paul Weertz. He saved a block in Detroit by his love of agriculture and horticulture. He is of interest to readers of this blog because he was one of the leaders of the Catherine Ferguson Academy for pregnant girls in Detroit, now defunct.
CFA was a Detroit public school that enrolled pregnant girls. According to the article, it was incredibly successful and all of its graduates went on to college. The focus of the school that differentiated it from other schools was its agriculture program, which Paul Weertz created and nurtured. The students were very invested in raising their own food, and this was a motivating factor for the girls.
But despite the school’s success, the emergency manager decided to shut it down and turn it over to a charter operator (who had political connections). At some point in this process, when it appeared the school was doomed, Rachel Maddow took an interest and reported on this situation. After a few years as a charter, the Catherine Ferguson Academy was closed permanently.
As the article tells the story:
Weertz is understandably proud of the success of his block of Farnsworth. But his other success story, his role as the teacher who helped build up the agricultural program at Catherine Ferguson Academy, ended badly. He says it had always been a struggle to justify the funding for a school that combined parent-focused teaching, day care, and an intense agricultural component, but the fact remains that all of the academy’s students went on to college, and the scholars’ children received excellent care. But instead of being imitated, it was terminated.
The beginning of the end came when a Lansing-appointed emergency manager stepped in and announced the school would be closed. This resulted in a battle that left the school open, but in the hands of a charter operator. The charter company, run by Blair Evans, brother of current Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, closed the school after running it for a few years.
“Well it’s always been ‘too much money,'” he says. “That’s why there were only five schools like that in the country. Pregnancy is the leading cause of dropout for young women. You think they’d have these at every state in the union, but it’s just a discrimination issue. You can hassle poor women or pregnant women; they’re not gonna say anything. With pregnant girls, we can somehow say, ‘It’s your fault.’
“It’s a sensitive issue to me because I’ve always felt like I donated a lot of my labor and material, so to speak, because it was the public. Blair Evans is a nice guy, but I’m not donating my time to him. I thought it was the public school. It’s like cleaning up a public park and finding out it’s a gated community. What happened there? So that’s the way it happened at Catherine Ferguson, and it was kind of a media frenzy. So many of us walked away like, ‘That wasn’t a victory,’ but that’s how the media presented it. ‘They’re saving the school and it’s OK!’ No one is doing a story now about what happened to the school. What is Detroit doing with their pregnant kids now?”
Rachel Maddow, you are needed now! Time for a follow-up story!
Curt Guyette, an investigative reporter for the ACLU of Michigan, here recounts the series of disasters associated with Governor Rick Snyder’s Education Achievement Authority.
The EAA enrolled children from the state’s lowest performing schools, all located in Detroit. It experimented with an unproven software program called BUZZ that was rife with glitches. Inexperienced teachers came and went. The governor boasted of the EAA’s successes, but enrollment dropped from 10,000 to about 7,000.
Why were these children used in an experiment?
Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder persuaded the Legislature to create the so-called Education Achievement Authority, a cluster of very low-performing schools in Detroit. The first superintendent of the EAA, some 15 schools, was John Covington, who resigned his job as superintendent in Kansas City (which soon afterwards lost its accreditation) to take over the EAA. Covington’s time in office was blighted by controversy over conditions in the schools, the over-use and misuse of technology, as well as issues concerning the use of EAA credit card for travel and other expenses. Snyder has wanted to make the EAA statewide, but thus far it has not been successful and has lost enrollment.
The board of the EAA hired Veronica Conforme, who has been the interim, leader, as superintendent at a salary of $325,000, the same as Covington’s. She pledged to give $25,000 of her salary to local charities. Most recently, Conforme was working at the College Board where she was involved in the “Access to Rigor” campaign; before that, she was chief operating officer for the New York City Department of Education during the Bloomberg administration. She began work in the headquarters of the NYC Department of Education in 2003, after serving as director of human resources at Columbia University’s Medical Center. She has degrees from Syracuse and Columbia. She has a strong administrative background, but apparently no experience as a teacher or principal.
Jack Martin, the emergency manager for Detroitpublic schools, has canceled his proposal to cut teachers’ salaries by 10% and to increase class sizes to as many as 43. This is great news for the children and teachers of Detroit!
“In place of the pay cuts, Jack Martin will ask state education officials to extend the district’s five-year deficit elimination plan to seven years, consider layoffs for non-school employees and look to revenue increases from future property sales and possible student enrollment increases.
“Facing a fierce backlash from teachers, parents and even the state school superintendent, Martin announced the reversal of the planned cuts as part of the district’s plan to eliminate its $127 million deficit.
“The district’s deficit elimination plan, submitted to the Michigan Department of Education and approved last week, was intended to make up for the loss of a projected $18.5 million in revenue from a countywide school tax that voters rejected Aug. 5.
“Detroit Public Schools’ sole focus is and must remain providing the highest quality education possible to the children of Detroit,” Martin said during a news conference.”
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140826/SCHOOLS/308260087#ixzz3BWxXkqaf
Governor Rick Snyder long ago made it clear that the state of Michigan has no intention of saving public education in Detroit or anywhere else. The city’s emergency manager announced a 10% pay cut for teachers, larger class size, and the closing of 24 schools. The schools have a deficit of $127 million. The wage concessions by teachers will save $13.3 million.
“Parents, educators and community stakeholders met Wednesday morning in front of Ludington Middle School to denounce the cuts, as well as the district’s previously announced plans to increase class sizes.
“Brian Kindle has two children beginning Head Start in the fall, and a 15-year-old at Cody High School. He said he’s worried about how pay cuts will impact his kids.
“I say hands off first responders, kids and teachers,” he said. “I’m here to support parents and their children, and to ask Gov. Snyder not to vote for the proposal.”
“Kindle said he fears additional cuts will result in further neglect of students in the classroom.
“We should have classrooms on every corner, instead of liquor stores,” he said. “That would be great, but we don’t have a society that encourages it. But I will remain on the forefront supporting our children.”
Dr. Thomas Pedroni of the Detroit Data and Democracy Project contends that the cuts to classroom instruction are NOT necessary. He shows in this analysis that the emergency manager has allowed other categories of spending to grow, while cutting the single service that matters most: classroom instruction.
Allie Gross arrived to teach in Detroit as a Teach for America recruit. Her three years in a charter school opened her eyes. She saw classrooms without supplies, children promoted who were not ready and did not get the intervention they needed, she saw feckless leadership promoted to larger roles. And she saw the growth of an industry. In this article, she describes what she learned about “the charter school profiteers.”
Here is a sample of a fascinating and disturbing portrait of what is happening in Detroit:
“In charter-heavy Detroit, permissive regulations have created an environment ripe for mismanagement.
“According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Detroit ranks number two nationally for charter enrollment. The city is right behind New Orleans, with over half of its school-aged students attending a charter school in the 2012-2013 school year. That number will no doubt rise now that Michigan has lifted its cap on charter schools. Even more pernicious, the majority of them are run by for-profit education management organizations (EMOs). According to a report by the National Education Policy Center, Michigan has the highest proportion of for-profit EMOS running their charter schools — 79 percent of the total.
“Privatization and limited oversight have conspired to produce a new figure: the education entrepreneur. In the chaos of the Detroit school system, education entrepreneurs see an opportunity for experimentation, innovation, and venture capital. And the decentralized nature of charter schools works to their advantage. With little coherence across schools, the issue of serial education entrepreneurs emerges. Those with limited track records of success are able to wedge their ways into school after school, with nobody checking up on past performance.”
When Governor Rick Snyder created the Educational Achievement Authority for the state’s lowest-performing schools, he promised bold new thinking. One of his bold plans is a kindergarten called the Brenda Scott Academy, which has a kindergarten of 100 students. It is a stretch to call it “new,” because classes of this size sometimes existed a century ago.
The lead teacher, a veteran, is 30. Her helpers are in their firstvand second years of teaching.
“The hub’s large size concerns some experts. Officials with the EAA say teachers using this system are better able to tailor their lessons to the needs of individual children.
“Research has shown smaller sizes work, but this model has pretty much in a sense, early on, has kind of proved that wrong,” said Marques Stewart, Brenda Scott’s principal…..”
“The National Association for the Education of Young Children recommends kindergartners be educated in a defined group no larger than 20 to 24 students. Within that, it says, the teacher-student ratio range should be 1:10 to 1:12.
“Particularly for younger children, you need small groups for their ability to focus and their ability to form strong relationships with the teacher and to have an effective learning experience,” said Barbara Willer, the organization’s deputy executive director.
“One of the things that’s important in terms of early childhood education is you’re focusing on all areas of children’s development. Not only academic development, but also their social development.”
“Those early relationships are especially important for at-risk children, Firestone said. At Brenda Scott, 73% of students qualify for a free lunch — a barometer of poverty — though the school gives free meals to everyone. The school is in an area with a highly transient population, school officials said.
“Firestone, Willer and Keith Myers, executive director of the Michigan Association for the Education of Young Children, all said they know of no other kindergarten set up the same way. They learned about the hub through the Free Press and have never been there.
“Denise Smith, vice president for early learning at Excellent Schools Detroit, a coalition of foundations and community leaders, was curious when she heard about the hub and observed it for 40 minutes in mid-May.
“What I think is unique and successful in this environment is that they are really using the opportunity to co-plan and co-teach, so they’re able to expand in and out of their classes, to hone in on the needs of individual children,” she said. “I think they’re making it work.”
Just remember: It’s all about the kids.
Just remember: The children are our future.
In Detroit, where they enroll thousands of children who need a great education, the state-appointed emergency manager has decided to save money by increasing class size to 43. Students will not get individual attention. Students will not get the support they need. Teachers will spend time on crowd control instead of instruction.
Governor Snyder cut corporate taxes.
It’s all about the children.
The Detroit Free Press is running a week-long series about Michigan’s charter sector. The first story was about a $1 billion industry with no accountability and poor results. Most charters in the state operate for profit.
The industry’s response? National Heritage Academies, a for-profit charter chain, bought up the advertising space around the story to tout their wares. See the screen shot.
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