Michigan Board Of Education

Guest commentary: Let students' interests guide the details of reform of city ...

Tinkering with the edges of our education system does little to help our most vulnerable young students, who have been failed by that system for decades. Challenges of this magnitude and duration require bold and innovative action to radically improve student achievement.

The Education Achievement System (EAS), part of the plan recently unveiled by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts, will effectively operate as its own district for the lowest performing schools in the state. It is definitely a bold idea.

Part of its appeal is its prioritization of student outcomes over governance. Roberts has indicated that the EAS will place more resources and much greater power for running each school in the hands of those closest to the students: the principals, teachers and staff. Educators will determine what's best based on student needs and ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent on teaching and learning, instead of a bloated administration.

In addition to the resources provided through a leaner administrative structure, the schools in the EAS will obtain additional support from organizations like Excellent Schools Detroit, which is creating new ways for the public to hold our educators accountable for high performance, creating excellent new schools of all types, and recruiting and developing strong school leaders.

Excellent Schools Detroit pledges that by 2020, Detroit will be the first major U.S. city in which 100% of students are in an excellent school, and 90% of students graduate from high school.

Critics have suggested that students will be stigmatized if their school is a part of the EAS, and that the EAS is simply another form of "state takeover." As a former public defender, I saw firsthand the long-term consequences of failing schools. Better to suffer the short-term stigma associated with attending a rapidly improving school than to be sentenced to a lifelong struggle with poverty or time in prison because of a poor education.

While the EAS will be a state-administered system, it is remarkably different from anything else tried by this state and most others. More important, this argument is sometimes advanced from the perspective that the civil rights of voters or the collective-bargaining rights of organized employees are being violated.

There is a painful truth to be acknowledged here. When those rights, as important as they are, come into conflict with the right of our young people to a high-quality public education -- which, regrettably, they sometimes do -- they clearly must give way.

Adventures at the Michigan State Board of Education Meeting

Timing, it turns out, is everything.  Wendy Heckman, a mother who had worked for 4 years to convince her school district to offer a Personal Curriculum for her daughter, joined me just before the public comment time.  She brought "visual aids": her daughter's senior picture, a picture of her daughter holding her diploma, and the diploma along with a wonderful (and short) public comment about what implementation of the Personal Curriculum means for students like her daughter.  The catch in Wendy's voice, full of the emotion she had experienced when she knew for certain that her daughter would be graduating with a diploma, was palpable.  Members of the board were visibly affected by Wendy's words; and the "visual aids" she brought put a face on the story.  When she finished, all those at the meeting clapped.  Here is my introduction of Wendy, followed by her comments: This board’s support of a Personal Curriculum for students with IEPs is why I’m here.  The word has still not spread and the result is a return to the “wait to fail” model of support for students with disabilities.  If general education is for all students, we need to educate districts that the Michigan Merit Curriculum can be achieved in many ways. grade school year.  As of her last evaluation in March 2011 with the KTEA-11 she scored a 5.2 grade equivalent in Math Concepts and Applications and a 4.9 grade equivalent in Math Computation.  She struggles with short-term memory loss and with math problems containing multiple steps.  Riley is 18 years old.  Two weeks ago Riley was a senior struggling through her two toughest classes that semester, Algebra 11 and Chemistry A (which she was completing on Plato) and which she was failing in both classes. For three years I had asked for a Personal Curriculum in math for Riley and each time was turned down with excuses like:  “No, Personal Curriculums were only for students who were accelerating in the MMC” or “The State of Michigan frowns on the use of Personal Curriculums” or “Personal Curriculums are very hard to get and very rare” I would like to say in November 2010 Riley was the first student in her school district to receive a Personal Curriculum (which was for Algebra II) and in January 2011 she received a Personal Curriculum in Chemistry.

Michigan reports, cases decided in the Supreme Court of Michigan

Biennial report of the State Board of Education of the State of Michigan from ... to ...

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Michigan School board journal

Public and local acts of the Legislature of the State of Michigan