Monday, June 20, 2011

Film at 11:00

Failing schools won’t be in DPS

New authority to take control under changes Snyder will detail today


By DAVID JESSE, CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY and CHRIS CHRISTOFF FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
   Gov. Rick Snyder will create an authority to run several failing Detroit public schools as part of sweeping changes to be announced today for the city’s struggling school system, sources said Sunday.
   The plan would restructure the failing Detroit Public Schools, which has a $327-million deficit on an operating budget of about $1.5 billion, by moving its underperforming schools under an authority to be run by the district’s emergency manager, Roy Roberts, according to sources. Schools would qualify for the new system if they are deemed below certain academic standards by the Michigan Department of Education
   A law passed this year gives emergency managers new powers to control academics and finances, and to cancel or modify union contracts. The process of instituting new work rules at the schools could take a year, sources familiar with the discussions said.
   A southeast Michigan university, widely believed in higher education circles to be Eastern Michigan University, also would be involved, to do teacher training in the schools.
   There were no details Sunday about exactly how the new authority would work. Details were not being released by anyone in advance of a news conference scheduled for 11 a.m. today at Renaissance High School in Detroit.
   However, sources did say that the Broad Foundation and other philanthropic organizations will pump significant amounts of money into the new authority. According to sources, Snyder has had several meetings with Eli Broad, the founder of the foundation, which is dedicated to education reform and has assets of more than $2 billion.
   Broad grew up in Detroit and graduated from Michigan State University. He made a fortune in construction and insurance and has been a major MSU benefactor.
   It’s unclear exactly how 
many DPS schools would be transferred to a new authority. DPS already has a program under way that would close or convert to charter about half its schools.
   Under the plan to be announced Monday, DPS schools not labeled as underperforming would remain under the authority of Roberts, a former top executive at General Motors, in the same manner as they are today. There are no plans to dissolve the school board, sources said.
   U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is expected to take part via a live feed from Washington, D.C., in today’s announcement. State schools Superintendent Mike Flanagan will attend.
   DPS officials issued a three-line 
advisory Sunday afternoon, noting only that a news conference would be held to discuss “education reform.”
   The governor’s office said Snyder would participate in a news conference at Renaissance, joined by Roberts.
   Members of the DPS board of education, which has no authority because of the governor’s appointment of Roberts, said they were in the dark about the plan.
   School board members reached by phone Sunday said that the board secretary contacted them about 7 p.m. Friday to say that Roberts wanted to meet with them Monday. However, they were not told the subject of the meeting and were not told that there would be a news conference.
   Board member LaMar Lemmons III said, “Wow,” when told that Snyder and Duncan would participate in a news conference about DPS restructuring.
   He said he plans to attend the meeting this morning with 
Roberts and four other board members.
   “I hope we’re going to meet for them to say they’re going to eradicate the deficit created by the reform effort and the emergency financial manager, and that the district will be fully empowered so that we can refresh,” he said.
   “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
   Member Carla Scott said some board members were concerned that a meeting with the full board needed to be announced publicly or it would violate the state’s Open Meetings Act.
   As of Sunday afternoon, she said she did not plan to attend.
   “I’m not going to break the law,” Scott said.
   But Scott added: “I just hope they’re going to do something that’s going to make schools better for children.”
   Anthony Adams, the board president, could not be reached.
   • CONTACT DAVID JESSE: 313-222-8851
   OR DJESSE@FREEPRESS.COM 
PATRICIA BECK/Detroit Free Press
Gov. Rick Snyder is to hold a news conference on Detroit Public Schools at 11 a.m. today at Renaissance High School.
ANDRE J. JACKSON/Detroit Free Press
DPS emergency manager Roy Roberts is to be given the authority to make new work rules at failing schools.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is to attend the news conference on DPS today via video.




(Aligns to Our Purpose / Digital Learning)

Jeb Bush shares ideas on education reform
   Describing the 2012 presidential election as ugly, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was happy to quiet the drumbeat of some who hoped he might still run on the GOP side.
   “I intend to support whoever the party decides should be the nominee,” Bush, 58-yearold younger brother of former President George W. Bush and son of President George H.W. Bush, said during a stop in Lansing.
   Bush , who started his Foundation for Educational Excellence in Florida, ( www   .excelined.org  ), was invited by Lansing legislators to talk about reforms in his state and lessons that might translate for Michigan.
   Bush told me between meetings he was flattered by the attention and others 
drawing comparisons to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was recruited by the GOP to run decades earlier.
   “But I’m not Dwight Eisenhower who was a war hero who saved our country. It was logical for him to be called into duty,” he said.
   He also talked about his brother, who left the White House amid anemic popularity ratings.
   “He has handled the post-presidency well as a former 
president should do but don’t always,” he said.
   “History will treat him favorably,” he said. “When you hear how they took out Osama (Bin Laden) it was through techniques criticized when he was president that were used and helped identify leads that led to his killing.”
   Crossing the nation
   For now, Bush, who served as Florida governor from 1999 to 2007, seems content in his role as educational reform pied piper as he crisscrosses the nation.
   He has been a champion for reform long before he ran for public office, saying “it also translates into economic opportunities that help communities.”
   Bush had a private meeting with Gov. Rick Snyder, who 
said in April he would announce more education reforms on issues like early education.
   “A quality, cutting-edge education system that gives teachers and students the tools to succeed is critical as we enter the new Michigan,” 
Snyder said during a joint appearance with Bush. “Michigan’s future depends on our success.”
   Bush plans to issue a national report card this fall with a breakdown of states on digital learning.
   “Those states that open up 
access to digital learning will be the ones with the biggest gains,” he said.
   Bush also talked of unions and his view of them as impediments to reforms.
   “They are there to protect their members and the status quo,” he said.
   Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, took issue and said much of the reforms are about “breaking the union” and have nothing to do with improving the classroom.
   Betsy DeVos, longtime supporter of vouchers and giving more choice on schools, said Michigan made inroads on charters in the 1990s but is lagging behind other states.
   • CONTACT CAROL CAIN: 313-222-6732 OR CLCAIN@CBS.COM  . CAIN HOSTS “MICHIGAN MATTERS” AT 11 A.M. SUNDAYS ON WWJ-TV (CBS DETROIT).



STEPHANIE McCLUNG/WWJ-TV-CBS
   Gov. Rick Snyder appears with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during a stop in Lansing to discuss education reforms.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Student-Centric, Entrepreneurial, Innovative Empowerment (That's WHAT We're Talking About)

Snyder builds DPS a new model and hope
   
MACKINAC ISLAND — So, is DPS dead?


   Gov. Rick Snyder had an answer Thursday to the simple but daunting question posed in a Free Press story earlier this week.
   It was yes. And no.
   And despite the inherent tension in that reply, I think Snyder — who just appointed a second emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools — might be pushing the city toward its best possible hope for having sustainable, high-performing options in public education.
   Yes, DPS is dead in the sense that the current system is insolvent and unsustainable. The system is still hemorrhaging students and, as a result, millions of dollars. And no one could effect the kind of dramatic cuts to match falling revenues without destroying the district’s ability to deliver fundamental services to children .
   But no, Snyder also said, public education is not dead in Detroit. Far from it.
   What he hopes former GM executive Roy Roberts will do as EFM is redefine and, as a result, revitalize it outside the restrictive framework of the old-style school district.
   Encouraging innovation
   In Snyder’s ideal, all schools in Detroit would be created around sets of individual principles and ideas, by committed groups of educators, parents, community groups and whoever else wants to get involved. They’d all be “charter schools,” in the sense of being constituted around the models they chose.
   Some might be existing public schools. Some could be charters.
   They’d have remarkable freedom to implement their models, try new things, pursue innovation. But the key is that they’d be held accountable for student performance — either locally under a new school governance structure 
or by the state, if that’s where they were chartered.
   Snyder says the education reform plans that he announced last month will be tough on schools that operate under the state’s charter law, and if they don’t deliver, “they can lose their charters.”
   Focus on results
   This is what Snyder means when he talks about creating a “system of schools” to replace Detroit’s school system. He’s describing something that’s focused much more on results than on governance. It’s a system that would not look much like what the city has now.
   There are already some promising examples — the schools that were taken over by the United Way in 2008; the new public charters announced by DPS last week. But growing such models to serve all the city’s children is more than a difference of scale; it’s also a question of substance.
   There is still very little market incentive for anyone to take on responsibility for educating the city’s poorest and most isolated children.
   This plan also depends heavily on Snyder being successful in changing how the state evaluates, rewards and metes out consequences for schools. Michigan does an awful job of that right now.
   If he can work through the kinks, Snyder’s vision could offer real hope for public education in Detroit.
   And at this point, it’s the only hope I see on the horizon.
   • STEPHEN HENDERSON IS EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR FOR THE FREE PRESS. CONTACT HIM ATSHENDERSON600@FREEPRESS.COM  , OR AT 313-222-6659.





Snyder: DPS may need to split

Empower schools, he says

By CHRIS CHRISTOFF and KATHLEEN GRAY FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
   MACKINAC ISLAND — Detroit Public Schools might be better off as “a system of schools” rather than a single, large entity run by top-down management, Gov. Rick Snyder told the Free Press on Thursday.
   Snyder, who appointed retired GM executive Roy Roberts as the emergency manager for DPS, said the district needs a radical overhaul — but, he said, it’s up to Roberts to enact changes.
   “The nature of the district needs to change,” Snyder said. “Structurally, it’s a failing format.”
   Snyder spoke to Free Press 
reporters and editors during the Detroit Regional Chamber’s annual policy conference. His comments were among several at the conference that focused on how to better educate Michigan students.
   Snyder said a new format would not necessarily convert Detroit schools to charter schools, but rather have them be managed like charter schools, with more autonomy. He said the school board could focus on measuring academic results instead of dictating curriculums and school-by-school management.
   “You need to empower the schools more, rather than having a command-and-control structure of the district,” he 
said. “How do you give the administrator in that school and the teachers a team? You make it more entrepreneurial and innovative.
   “It’s like they’re a business unit, and they’re there to help their kids grow. Give them the resources to succeed, and then, how do you hold them accountable?”
   Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone, spoke at the conference and said public schools’ success rests solely with teachers, who should be fired if their students don’t go on to college.
   “If you get paid to educate a child and you cannot do it, then you should probably go into a different business,” he said.
   Harlem Children’s Zone takes a holistic approach to education, helping families in a 100-block area of Harlem so 
that children are prepared to succeed in school. More communities, like Detroit, need to adopt the model, Canada said.
   Canada said business owners should have a vested interest in helping produce better schools because eventually, they’re going to have to pick from the talent pool educated in public schools.
   In another forum Thursday, the Excellent Schools Detroit group talked about creating excellent schools and recruiting great employees. Their goal for 2020 is to graduate 90% of their students, with 90% of those students enrolling in college without remedial 
classes.
   The Michigan Future Schools Accelerator soon will open three high schools in Detroit: the Carson School of Science and Medicine, which is affiliated with the Detroit Medical Center; Detroit College Preparatory, and the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy.
   The schools, funded with $800,000 each in foundation and grant dollars, will operate with no more than 500 students per school. Teachers will be hired from an open pool, instead of from a seniority list, and each school must have a counselor and a college coach who can help students after they graduate.
   “And if the kids are off-track, it’s the educators who will have to change,” said Lou Glazer, president of the program.