Update: 21st Century Schools Fund Legislation

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Editorial

21st Century Schools Fund could rescue failing districts

We liked Gov. Jennifer Granholm's 21st Century Schools Fund when she first proposed it in February. We like it even better now that a strong measure of accountability has been built in.

The proposal would provide $300 million to create small, responsive schools that will be required to graduate 80 percent of their students or lose their state funding.

The state Legislature should support the idea, with these conditions: The proposal must provide funding to innovative public charter school operators, an idea Granholm says she supports, and the accountability should have legal teeth. Legislators should build the 80 percent graduation requirement into state law and not leave enforcement to the discretion of the state school superintendent.

Lawmakers are being lobbied by the teachers union to strip charter schools of eligibility to participate in the program. That would be a serious mistake.

After all, the fund is largely modeled after charters. It's strikingly similar to Detroit's University Prep Academy, which promises to graduate 90 percent of its students. Such an outcomes-based approach is needed in Michigan schools.

Granholm's program would provide both the incentive and the funding for failing schools to transform. A bipartisan panel developed the program's guidelines. Eligible schools would have to be small, with no more than 450 students, and give principals full control of staffing decisions.

What's most noteworthy is its accountability mechanism. Only schools that graduate 80 percent of their students would be eligible to keep the $3 million grants, which could be used for breaking mammoth high schools into smaller ones or other education innovations. Schools that don't meet the graduation standard would have to pay back half of the money.

That sort of accountability is unheard of in state government.

Only schools with graduation rates of 65 percent or lower -- or academies located in such low-achieving neighborhoods -- would be eligible.

Last week the bill moved to the state Senate, where Appropriations Chairman Ron Jelinek, R-Three Oaks, is threatening to kill it, calling small schools no panacea. Jelinek seems to be missing the education crisis in Michigan, in which fewer than 75 percent of students graduate from high school and in urban districts fewer than one-third.

What we're doing now isn't working. The small schools model has shown success elsewhere and deserves a chance. So far, Jelinek hasn't offered a better idea for rescuing children who are being failed by the state's public schools.

The 21st Century Schools Fund is more than about size. Its principal-controlled schools would root out under-performing teachers. And the funding would give districts powerful leverage in seeking teacher union contract changes.

The 21st Century Schools Fund marks the sort of dramatic change Michigan needs to address the unacceptable failure of its public schools.