The Detroit Public Schools posted the worst scores on record in the most recent test of students in large central U.S. cities.
The scores came on the Trial Urban District Assessment, a national test developed by the Governing Board, the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education and the Council of the Great City Schools.
The test for urban districts is part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress test given to school districts nationwide.
“There is no jurisdiction of any kind, at any level, at any time in the 30-year history of NAEP that has ever registered such low numbers,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council on Great City Schools, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of urban school districts.
“They are barely above what one would expect simply by chance, as if the kids simply guessed at the answers,” he said.
DPS fourth-graders scored in the 9th percentile and eight-graders were in the 12th percentile when compared with students in 17 other large, central U.S. cities.
Detroit's fourth graders received an overall score of 200 on a scale of 0-500, putting the city dead last among the other 17 large central U.S. cities grouped together in the NAEP test.
The national average of districts of all kinds was 239.
Of the roughly 1,000 fourth-grade students from a random sampling of schools in the DPS, 69 percent scored at levels below partial mastery of the fundamentals needed for grade-level proficiency, 28 percent scored at the basic level, three percent scored at the proficient level while no students scored at the advanced level.
In the eighth-grade testing group, a full 77 percent of the 1,000 students tested fell into the below-basic category, while 18 percent performed at the basic level, 4 percent scored at the proficient level and, again, zero scored at the advanced level. (For more details, see box at right.)
“Only a complete overhaul of this school system and how these students are taught ought to be permitted at this point because the results, to our minds, represent a complete breakdown and failure of the grownups who have been running the schools in this city,” Casserly said.
This is the first year the test has been given to DPS students. Scores are aggregated and not broken out by student.
“What (this test) is telling us, more than anything else, is that, frankly, this city has no viable future if this is allowed to stand,” Casserly said.
A failure in leadership
“It's been clear that the district has had a financial and operational emergency but these numbers underscore the fact that the district has an academic emergency,” Casserly said.
DPS Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb said last week that the test results were proof of failed DPS leadership.
“From where I stand there's a lot of blame to go around, but with respect to DPS specifically, it's a failure of leadership,” he said.
Bobb noted that the Detroit Board of Education had three key documents describing academic and financial shortcomings prior to his appointment by State Superintendent Mike Flanagan in March.
The district had the internal audit outlining its financial woes, an educational report written by the governor's transition team and a report from Casserly's Council of Great City Schools, which were ignored or derided by school board members.
“Largely, those reports went unnoticed or were given some tacit response,” with no or little action taken to address the district's shortcomings, Bobb said.
Casserly said a community-wide conversation is needed about how expectations for Detroit's children have disintegrated.
“You can't have results like this unless a community thinks rather poorly and expects not very much of its children, and itself in some ways,” he said.
“It warrants some soul searching about how this happened in the first place, not as a finger-pointing exercise, but as a discussion about the community's expectations of itself.”
Academic overhaul is underway
Bobb says his academic team is working on implementing an overhauled academic plan, based on NAEP standards.
“It seems to me that whatever we do, we're now aligning our curriculum to the NAEP standards,” Bobb said.
But both Bobb and Casserly acknowledge it will take more than the DPS to fix the problem.
“There's obviously lots of finger-pointing that could be done, but to my mind, everybody throughout the community bears some culpability in this situation,” Casserly said. “It's really going to require a community-wide effort that is much more intense and serious than anything this community has seen before, and it's got to be sustained for a long period of time.”
That includes the business community, which can provide expertise and involvement, in addition to money, Bobb said.
The focus needs to be on educating children, Bobb said, and not on the usual debates, such as the merits of charter schools versus public schools, that take the focus off the students.
The reading and science portions of the test are slated to be released next year.
Bobb and Casserly acknowledged that it would be easy to become paralyzed by the test results. But instead, they said the results should be a call to action.
“As heartbreaking and discouraging as these scores are, I would use these results not as a paralyzing moment…but as a galvanizing moment in the community's history to compel it pull together in a way that it's never done before,” Casserly said.
“It's going to take more than a school system to address this.”
DETROIT Free Press
Editorial
Rescue Detroit’s children Failing test scores must galvanize action
Detroit has no future, if this is allowed to stand.
Southeast Michigan has no future, if this is allowed to stand.
Test results released Tues day by the National Assess ment of Educational Progress reveal a far worse picture of Detroit Public Schools than we’ve ever been led to imagine. These results should be an alarm of desperation, no different from the poor, bat tered souls who cried out from the ravaged Superdome after Hurricane Katrina: “We need help — now!”
That’s the cry emanating from Detroit children whose schools have failed to equip them with the rudimentary skills necessary for even the most menial jobs. That cry is rising from kids who have watched as decade after de cade of educational failure has been met with excuses and the occasional assignment of blame, but never with concerted remedial action.
Detroit’s math NAEP scores are officially the worst ever in the 40-year history of the test. And there’s more bad news on the way. DPS officials expect that marks on the NAEP reading and science tests, to be released next spring, will be similarly pitiful. All of these deficiencies point to a similar problem: an epidemic of illiteracy that has plagued the district for years.
Children who don’t read can’t perform the kind of problem solving computations that appear on the NAEP math test any better than they can answer the questions on the reading component. And be cause reading skills are so low in Detroit’s schools, many of the city’s kids never really had a chance on the national tests. Think of how remarkable that makes the achievements of those who do thrive in De troit’s schools — the many who go on to college, on to lives of great success. But also think of the lost opportunity, the children whose educations have prepared them for noth ing more than lives spent in pursuit of criminal aims or sponging off the state’s safety net.
That’s why this is a region al and statewide problem, as potent to people in Bloomfield, Inkster or Ishpeming as it is in Detroit. The city is still this area’s core, and the state’s largest population center. It’s the cultural heart of South east Michigan, and one of the most important economic drivers statewide. As its schools mass-produce citizens who can’t contribute to the state’s fortunes, it will contin ue to be a drain on everyone’s resources. If Detroit, the heart of this region and state, is allowed to die, there’s no hope for the extremities that depend on its vitality.
There is no future for De troit, if this is allowed to stand.
There is no future for Southeast Michigan, if this is allowed to stand.
The scenario is alarming, but we don’t have to let it be paralyzing.
This can be a call to action, a clarion to marshal every available resource to defeat illiteracy in Detroit’s public schools, and right the wrongs that are being perpetrated against the city’s children.
Already, Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb has assembled a team of strong academic advisers to devise a plan. They’ll have a curricu lum and support structure in place by the end of the school year.
But they need help. Every one’s.
Today, this newspaper calls upon the many employ ers, professional associations, civic groups, churches and nonprofits that have long done good deeds in our city torally around this single cause.
The Free Press will commit to doing its part, including:
■ Enlisting the nation’s fore most experts on reading and literacy to help fashion a re gion- wide strategy for aiding Bobb in his efforts to ensure that every student in DPS is reading at or above grade level by 2015. Bobb has sug gested a local Reading Corps of trained volunteers, fash ioned along the lines of the Peace Corps, to fan out across the district to aid teachers in classrooms.
■ Spreading the word, sup porting and participating in any volunteer program that the district might fashion to help students read better.
Bobb has suggested a local Reading Corps of trained volunteers, built along the lines of the Peace Corps, to fan out across the district to aid teachers in classrooms.
■ Reporting on what other large cities beset by poverty and shrinking resources have done to dramatically increase literacy in their own school districts, publishing the results of that inquiry, and pressing this region’s elected leaders to emulate the best practices we discover.
■ Chronicling progress as it unfolds, and advocating strongly for the effort to maintain its focus, and fer vency, as it progresses.
We can and should agree that Detroit is ground zero in this cause.
Let our efforts begin here and now. But then let’s ask the corps to move out to where other help is needed, where other school districts struggle to produce the generations of bright minds that Michigan needs now more than ever.
Through these efforts, we can build a new base of hope in all our schools, a new stan dard of education, so that this region can be what it deserves to be, what it should be.
A place of greatness.
Test is a startling sign of DPS’s uphill fight
IF YOU CAN READ THIS,
YOU CAN HELP A call to action
WE’ LL DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN — AND OURSELVES
The news that Detroit students posted the worst-ever scores on a respected, rigorous national assess ment is a challenge to everyone who spends their time working for, and worrying about, this region’s future.
All of us — corporations, nonprof its, religious organizations, civic groups, the news media — need to marshal our resources to help beat illiteracy, the demon at the core of failure in Detroit schools.
Even if we don’t know exactly how to do that right now, we can embrace Detroit Public Schools emergency financial manager Robert Bobb’s goal as our own: By 2015, Detroit must have a public school system that teaches every child to read at grade level by the third grade.
We’ll all do that because Detroit is this region’s cultural center, the state’s most important economic driv er, the city whose success or misery is shared by all. We’ll do it because the future of city and region is knotted together.
We’ll do it for the children. It’s not their failure.
The Free Press is on board. Our efforts must start here, and now.
Getting at the heart of the matter
Experts: What’s missing on education
Remedies are found in and out of school, they say is a value
By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY and ROBIN ERB
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITERS
The devastating test scores earned by Detroit Pub lic Schools students on a nationally respected test signal a far-reaching problem stemming from a lack of value on education, educators, experts and ob servers said Tuesday.
Detroit is not the only city with low scores on the Na tional Assessment of Educational Progress test, which was given in 18 large cities in the spring. But the city is alone in the fact that the numbers coincide with ex treme job and population losses, heralding a need for regionwide problem-solving.
The results come just months after the U.S. Secre tary of Education Arne Dun can branded DPS “ground ze ro” for education and compa rable to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
“Only a complete overhaul of the school system and how students are taught should be permitted at this point because the results signal a complete failure and breakdown of the grown-ups who have run this school system,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a group of urban schools that is based in Wash ington, D.C., and asked DPS to participate in the test.
Casserly said Detroit’s solu tions must come from beyond school doors. If achievement doesn’t improve, “the city has no viable future,” he said.
Many suggest the reading crisis in DPS is likely partly to blame for the poor math test scores, because students who can’t read well, can’t answer math story problems.
“There’s nothing wrong with these children’s minds,” said Robert Bobb, the state-ap pointed emergency financial manager in DPS. “There’s a lot wrong with the adults that have been responsible for edu cating them. We have to work with kids and show them the value of education.”
DPS’s fourth- and eighth grade students earned the worst scores in the 40-year his tory of the NAEP test. Consid ered a national benchmark for assessment, the test also has been criticized for being too demanding. Tuesday’s results are part of the Nation’s Report Card: Trial Urban District As sessment Mathematics 2009 report, released by the Nation al Center for Education Statis tics, a wing of the U.S. Depart ment of Education.
As the nation suffers through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depres sion, and the state is hungry for jobs — with 29% unemploy ment in Detroit — these test results can send an economic shudder far beyond the city borders, said Carol Goss, pres ident and chief executive of the Skillman Foundation, which funds educational and social programs in the region.
“The way you bring back the city is to have people that are well-educated and that have skills for the jobs that ex ist here. If we keep going the way we’re going, we’re not go ing to have that,” she said.
Improvements planned, again
The NAEP test was taken last spring amid a storm of hard times in the city’s schools, including the third turnover in leadership in three years, a state takeover of the budget, school closures, declining en rollment and continued politi cal infighting.
As the school board and Bobb fight in court for control, both sides said Tuesday that their educational plans will push the city forward.
Teresa Gueyser, acting su perintendent for the district, said the plan adopted by the board — but not Bobb, who has hired his own academic team — includes extended day pro gramming, and early identifi cation of deficiencies and the crafting of individualized learning plans. It also man dates professional develop ment one week prior to the be ginning of the school year and during the holiday break.
Bobb said this week that his team will retool the reading program, augmenting the cur rent program — called Open Court — with a new Harcourt program. Mandatory profes sional development for teach ers, as well as extended school day programs proposed under the new teachers contract, will address the problems, he said.
The issue of accountability
In the wake of the NAEP re sults, parents blamed low aca demic expectations, and edu cators said parents need to be more accountable.
Casserly said the city needs to be on the same chord. “One of the things we learned in De troit is that accountability is not clearly articulated in a way that holds everybody responsi ble for the nature of improve ment,” he said. Benjamin Harris, an eighth grade math teacher and dean of students at Spain Elementa ry School, agreed that reading problems can hinder math re sults. But he added that chang es need to start at home with parents. “If the upbringing at home is strong, solid, support ive, there’s reading at home, that makes it a little easier for everyone.”
Veattris Edwards, who vol unteers in second-grade class rooms at Coleman Young Ele mentary, agreed that parents must do more.
“The teacher does not have the time to do individual teach ing on a regular basis,” said Ed wards, whose children graduated from Detroit public schools and attend Oakland University and Baker College. “When you have 10 different reading levels, then you need more help from parents. There should be a mandatory work shop for the parents to attend.”
More about this national test
Under the No Child Left Be hind law, each state must ad minister the NAEP, but dis tricts can do so voluntarily. Re sults were relatively un changed in most of the large cities between 2007 and 2009, though eight of the 10 districts that began participating in 2003 have made significant gains since then. Detroit was among seven districts to take it for the first time this year.
Students are selected to take the test based on demo graphic and family income in order to get a representative sample. The 1,900 DPS stu dents were selected from 106 schools.
Michigan fared well in 2009, when compared with the na tional averages indicating a wide disparity between De troit and the rest of the state. Michigan fourth-graders scored 236, compared with a national average of 239 on a scale of 0 to 500, with 78% scoring at basic levels, 35% at proficient and 5% advanced. The eighth-graders in Michi gan scored 278, compared with the national average of 282. Sixty-eight percent scored at basic levels, 31% proficient and 7% advanced.
The NAEP is considered more rigorous than the MEAP because it tests students on layers of reasoning and calcu lations, whereas the MEAP is “not as detailed or process-ori ented,” said Karen Ridgeway, executive director of the Office of Research, Evaluation, As sessment and Accountability for DPS.
A MEAP question, for ex ample, might ask for a perim eter or surface area in a room. The NAEP might ask a student to determine how much carpet and paint to buy for a room or adjacent rooms, she said.
Detroit is so far behind oth er districts on the scale, offi cials with NCES could not esti mate how many years it would take for the city to catch up.
Detroit’s scores were “just above what one would expect by chance alone — as if the kids simply guessed at the an swers,” Casserly said.
Bobb said he worried that any community outrage will be short-lived. But he said results only steel the resolve of the dis trict’s leadership: “We see it. We understand it. We’re going to do something about it. And by God, it’s for the kids in the Detroit that we’re standing up to fight for,” he said.
Reading and science NAEP scores will be released in the spring.
Bobb’s plan: Tougher curriculum, more teacher training
By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Detroit school leaders declared the need for a crisis response Tues day after revealing that fourth- and eighth-grade students in the district recorded the worst math results ev er in the 40-year history of a respect ed nationwide test.
Robert Bobb, emergency finan cial manager for the Detroit Public Schools, called the results a wake-up call for the community and outlined an action plan to boost after-school tutorials for students, toughen the curriculum and increase training for teachers and others.
In an interview with the Free Press, he pitched the idea of creating a Reading Corps of volunteers to help students improve reading skills. If Detroit students and the city are to have a viable future, he and others said, adults will have to take a real stance on ensuring change.
“There definitely has to be a cul tural change,’’ Bobb said. He said a reasonable goal would be to get all third-graders reading at grade-level by 2015.
Do something: Don’t let kids take the fall
If 85,000 children were struggling in raging waters, CNN would air the story ev ery hour. Americans would travel from across the coun try to help. Angelina Jolie, children in tow, would hold a news conference.
But in Michigan’s largest city, where children are caught up in an educational catastrophe, it’s hard to get anyone to pay attention.
That’s because, for de cades, the Detroit Public Schools hasn’t been a school system.
It has been a jobs factory.
It has been a contracts machine.
It has been a get-over mag net.
It has been run by zealots who curry favor with poli ticians instead of fight for children, zealots who, to a person, would get wrong the number of Detroit fourth- and eighth-graders scoring at the advanced level on a recent national test.
That’s because, on the National Assessment of Edu cational Progress, no fourth or eighth-graders from De troit scored at the advanced level, and more than two thirds scored below the basic level. Yes, that included stu dents at some of the city’s elite, better schools. The scores were the lowest in the test’s history. This has to stop.
The adults are failing
Joe Baker, whose twins just graduated from DPS, still volunteers because he has nieces, nephews and grand children in the district.
He gets it.
The most important thing about this latest measure of how poorly Detroit children are doing educationally is this: It is not an indictment of our children. It is an indict ment of adults who saw chil dren only as dollar signs to get state and federal monies for pet projects, private busi nesses, corporations and politicians’ meal tickets.
“One of the things that has been of concern to me is that the untapped intelligence and potential of young, urban African Americans is un derestimated,” said Baker, who is a member of the De troit Parent Network, an advocacy organization, and who learned of the results from the Free Press on Tues day morning. “I don’t want for a second to have people say that the scores are reflective of their innate ability and intelligence.”
Michigan — and its gover nor and Legislature — and Wayne County — and its executive and commission— and the city’s mayor and City Council must stop failing these children. We must stop creating a permanent un derclass that all Michiganders care for, for decades.
Detroit students have the potential to be the brightest in America, if given a chance equal to what their peers get elsewhere. Which brings us back to how grown-ups anywhere in Michigan can watch while 85,000 children are drowning.
Shut ’em down — temporarily
Here’s what Michigan— and Detroit — must do: We must shut down the school system and throw away all contracts. (If bankruptcy is the fastest way, declare it!) The district’s leaders must stop dog-paddling in a toilet bowl swirling with the excre ment of past crimes and mis demeanors and financial bag gage from years of disregard ing children. Emergency Fi nancial Manager Robert Bobb must be allowed to construct a new system that works educationally and financially.
If he— and a team that rivals the one that planned the Super Bowl — begin their work in January, this commu nity can build the new system that Detroit needs, school-by-school, department by- department, by July.
Bobb can hire employees, including strong, caring teachers of all ages who want, who really want, who truly want to teach.
In this system, the schools will be where they need to be based on population; teachers will make what they are enti tled to because they are com petent; and most important, students, when they return in September 2010, will learn what they need to learn be cause nothing less will be acceptable.
Remember the drowning children and the people in New Orleans who were ig nored while federal and state officials argued over responsi bility and priority and whose fault it was?
Can America afford that again? Can Michigan?
Of course not. And we know it.
Detroit must cut itself off from its poisonous roots and plant new roots. Detroit must accept help from wherever it comes and put children first.
“This is a 911 call,” said Terance Collier, father of three boys in the district.
“This is the last inning of the game. We have a serious problem. If it’s ‘give it to the mayor,’ if it’s turn it all over to charters, whatever it is, let’s do it.”
If we want to change the outcome, change the game.
There are no more secrets.
The only shame now is if we continue to do nothing.
While the children drown.
Legislation offers a solution
Calls for government help in school reform growing
Granholm may get more power to aid troubled districts
By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY and DAWSON BELL
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
After the announcement that Detroit students posted the worst results in the 40-year history of the National Assess ment of Educational Progress test, there was renewed sup port Tuesday for moves under way in Lansing to give the gov ernor expanded power to help failing school districts.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm supports legislation to give her the authority to appoint an emergency academic manager for a failing school district, similar to the authority she has to appoint an emergency finan cial manager for a district run ning chronic budget deficits, spokeswoman Megan Brown said.
State Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, who sponsored leg islation approved by the Sen ate last week that would give the governor such authority, said it is much needed. The House approved legislation earlier this year to expand the state superintendent of schools’ oversight of academi cally troubled districts.
Steve Wasko, spokesman for the Detroit Public Schools, said Robert Bobb, whom Gran holm appointed as the dis trict’s emergency financial manager this year, said the cri sis indicates a need to change state law to give his office more academic control.
“That would recognize the … academic emergency that our children and families face, and that it must be treated in the same manner as Mr. Bobb is dealing with the fiscal cri sis,” Wasko said.
Mayoral control and remov al of the school board should al so be discussed more urgently, he said. “We strongly encour age Mayor Bing to make the case to the community to bring the schools under the control of the mayor,” Wasko said.
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has said he would take control if asked. “While progress is be ing made on the financial side, these scores demonstrate the immediate need for an aca demic overhaul,” Bing said Tuesday. “I will continue to take an active role in fighting for schools that work. We can’t afford to lose another child.”
The DPS school board lost much of its power in March, when the governor appointed Bobb, a former deputy mayor of Washington, D.C., to dig DPS’s $1.2-billion budget out of the hole. The deficit is now $219 million. The board has sued Bobb, claiming he is illegally making academic decisions. Bobb is countersuing, claiming the board tried to make unau thorized hiring decisions.
Board members, speaking at a news conference Tuesday, said the education plan the board approved this year is su perior. They also spoke against mounting pressures for may oral control.
“We have done so much to counter those test scores that to say the board has lacked leadership, I think that’s un fair,” said board member Ty rone Winfrey, who heads the University of Michigan’s De troit admissions office. “Now is not the time for the blame game. We need to work togeth er.”
Any change to allow Bobb to have academic and budgetary control likely will be met with hostility from Detroiters who saw the state remove the school board in 1999-2005, dur ing which time a budget sur plus turned into a $230-million deficit and student achieve ment remained mostly un changed.
“We bring our kids to these schools,” said parent Chris White, a political consultant and a leader of the Coalition to Restore Hope to DPS. “We don’t need another czar that takes parents and citizens out of the process. We need com prehensive school reform.”
What scores don’t show
Schools do prepare some Detroit students for a successful future
By ROBIN ERB
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Katila Howard, 20, is jug gling two majors at the Univer sity of Michigan while working in Washington, D.C., this se mester, helping research re ports that may circulate in the hallways at Capitol Hill.
Then there’s the law school exam she’s prepping for, too.
Don’t try to tell Howard — a graduate of Detroit public schools — that the district can’t adequately prepare stu dents for the future.
“Sure, you always had the kids who were just kind of slid ing through,” said the 2007 graduate of Cass Technical High School.
But Howard credits her family and “compassionate teachers” for pushing her into clubs, prodding her toward in ternships and sending her to U-M recruiters when they visited Cass Tech.
“They saw how ambitious I was, and they got it,” she said. Despite the bleak test re sults from the National Assess ment of Education Progress— results that contained no mea surable indication of advanced math students in the Detroit Public Schools — the district produces stellar students each year.
“I’m surprised and I’m sad,” said David Bellomy, a 2008 Cass Tech graduate and soph omore at Michigan Technolog ical University in Houghton studying biomedical and me chanical engineering.
A lack of funding undercuts too many of the most promis ing programs and the most de termined students, he said. “I can recall every year before we’d start, we’d have to start late because of … some prob lem,” he said.
A lack of a support system at home can’t be underestimat ed, either, said Sher Aaron Hurt, who is to graduate from MTU this week with majors in political science and women’s studies.
“I don’t think the students see their possibilities,” she said. “All they see is their envi ronment. When they go home, the parents probably are just barely making ends meet. They don’t see someone who’s making it in college who has the same background as they have.”
Last year, Hurt, a Cass alum who often visits the school to tell students about MTU, said she stopped by her elementary school to say “hi.” In one class, she was stunned by some stu dents’ behavior. Worse, she said, some of the teachers were surprised she had been so suc cessful.
“They were taken aback that ‘Wow, you really went to college?’ ” she said.
Students pick up on those low expectations, she said.
Concerned parents react
Scores bring sighs and groans, but ‘we know the problem now’
Change must start at home, they say
By ROCHELLE RILEY
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Wilbert Riser couldn’t stop shaking his head.
Veattris Edwards let out a gasp, as if she’d just gotten news that someone had died.
Joe Baker bowed his head, took off his glasses, cleaned them, then sat in silence.
And Terance Collier groaned in disbelief. Over and over, he said, “Wow,” and “Oh my God.”
The four parents, members of the Detroit Parent Network, an organization that uses work shops and seminars to improve parental involvement in chil dren’s education, watched from a Free Press conference room the news that Detroit Public Schools students’ math scores were lower than those of students in any other compara ble city in the nation on a 2009 assessment.
Sixty-nine percent of the ci ty’s fourth-graders, for in stance, scored below the basic level on the test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The parents listened as each set of scores announced was worse than the one before. “I’m appalled,” said Riser, the adoptive parent of a 14 year-old student at King High. “I’m appalled. I’m appalled. This has to change.”
When Michael Casserly, head of the Council of Great Ci ty Schools, said on screen that not one of the Detroit fourth- or eighth-grade students who were tested had performed at the advanced level in math, Col lier groaned as if he had been hit.
But when the presentation ended, something interesting happened. He began to clap, loudly.
“I was saddened by the re sults, but I was happy at the same time to understand that we know the problem now,” said Collier, 48, father of three sons, a 16-year-old at Renais sance High and a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old, who are stu dents at Ludington Magnet Middle School. “The problem has been unmasked so we can really get down to the issues at hand.”
Collier said the solution lies with parents.
“It’s all about parenting. The teachers can’t be the parents. The police can’t be the par ents. …All children should know their real name when they go to school, know their fa ther’s and mother’s name, know their telephone number, know their colors, shapes and how to count to 10. Then you make them prepared for the educa tional prog ress.
“I’m so happy that these results are out. … be cause we know what it is. And what ever action it takes, it doesn’t matter. … I’m Terance Collier, and I’m in 100%. We have to save these children.”
Baker, whose twins graduat ed from DPS last year and are attending Central State Uni versity and Howard University this year, said the test results did not surprise him.
“I used to work for the edu cational testing service a long time ago, and the scores were low then,” he said. “My focus is not to place blame. Let’s not fo cus just on the children. That’s too limited in its scope. If you don’t help the parents, if you don’t help the neighborhood, if you don’t do a broad-based as sessment of the problem, you’re wasting your time.”
Officials’ reaction
“AS A PRODUCT OF THE DPS, I’M DISAPPOINTED BECAUSE I KNOW OUR POTENTIAL. … IT UNDER SCORES THE IMPORTANCE OF EVERYONE GET TING INVOLVED.”
CHARLES PUGH,
Detroit City Council president-elect
“BELIEVE IT OR NOT, THERE IS SOME GOOD NEWS IN THIS.
THERE IS CLEAR AND PRESENT EVIDENCE OF WHERE WE ARE AND WHAT WE MUST DO.
IT’ S NOT OPEN TO SPECULA TION OR CONJECTURE.”
KEITH JOHNSON,
president of Detroit Federation of Teachers
“WE DON’ T WANT ANYONE TO CARRY THE WEIGHT OF OUR CHILD REN. IT’ S NOT YOUR RESPON SIBILITY.”
TERANCE COLLIER , 48, father of three DPS students
“THE TEACHERS ARE THE HELPERS.
THEY’ RE NOT THERE TO DO THE WHOLE JOB.”
COLLIER’ S WIFE, REGINIA, 41
“IT IS AN ACADEMIC CATASTROPHE FOR OUR CHILDREN AND FOR OUR COMMUNITY.”
CAROL GOSS , president and chief executive of the Skillman Foundation, which aims to develop good schools and neigh borhoods for children
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