Allie Gross of Detroit Metro Times reports that the state released its list of the schools that are in the bottom 5%. Most are in Detroit, which has been controlled by the state since 2009. Almost every one of the schools in the state-created Educational Achievement Authority schools are on the “failing” list.
Gross asks: “Can We Finally Say a State Takeover Doesn’t Work?”
She writes:
“Of the 15 schools in the Education Achievement Authority — a state-run district that was created based off the 2011 Top to Bottom List — 13 of them are listed as failing once again, and one — Phoenix Elementary-Middle School — is listed as being closed.
That means that schools that were taken out of Detroit Public Schools in the 2012-13 school year (i.e. taking funds away from the traditional school district), and placed in a state-controlled district under the auspices of a “turn around” (that DPS couldn’t do it itself) are still — four years later — on the list of worst performers. Ninety-three percent of the schools in the EAA are still considered, at least based on test scores, as under-performing schools.
“Snyder, who came into office promising voters relentless positive action, has instead disenfranchised local electorates while delivering relentlessly negative — even catastrophic — results,” Wayne State University School of Education associate professor Thomas Pedroni tells MT, referring to the EAA — which Snyder orchestrated in the spring of 2011 — as well as the Flint water crisis, and the governor’s creation of PA436.
While it is likely that the EAA will cease to exist in the coming years — Eastern Michigan University, which helps authorize the district, voted in February to withdraw their support in June 2017 — the continued failure of the district raises questions about experimentation and state takeovers.
As former MT investigative reporter Curt Guyette exposed — via a bevy of Freedom of Information Act requests — in September 2014: Much of the curriculum used in this “recovery district” has never been tested before, and was rather a beta program created by for-profit tech company Agilix Labs, who essentially used the EAA — with the permission of its appointed board — to test a new learning management system that it hoped to then market to other districts.
“The companies needed the EAA’s students to do well in order to prove the effectiveness of their products when making sales pitches to other schools and districts,” wrote Guyette, who found a number of back-and-forth emails between EAA officals, Agilix, and a company called the School Improvement Network [SINET] indicating that the software was riddled with bugs and a headache for teachers and students.”
With the EAA in shambles, Governor Snyder’s next plan is to close schools that are in the bottom 5% for three years in a row.
That’ll help. What then for the children? Will he bus them to Grosse Pointe? Ha. Believe it when it happens.
