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“Busted is what you see . . ." — Kwame Kilpatrick
It appears that the academic shell game that Gov. Rick Snyder has been trying to run on Detroit schoolchildren — misleadingly named the Michigan Educational Achievement Authority— is being found out.
From The Detroit News:
The EAA, a statewide district formed by Gov. Rick Snyder in 2011 to take over failing schools, enrolled 7,589 students in K12 at its 15 schools — 2,369 fewer than last fall, when it had 9,958 students across 12 direct-run schools and three charter schools. That’s a drop of 23.6 percent.The biggest decline came at the district’s 12 direct-run schools, where 2,103 students left. At its charter schools, 266 fewer students enrolled. The enrollment decline, documented in figures released this week by the Michigan Department of Education, is expected to seriously impact the bottom line of the state’s first recovery district. The EAA, which is supposed to turn around Michigan’s lowest-performing schools, has been heavily criticized by Democratic lawmakers but is a signature project of the governor.The state gives the EAA $7,246 for each student, which means the district is expected to get about $17 million less in state aid than it did a year ago.In June, the district adopted a $92.3 million budget for 201314, based on a projected enrollment of 8,919 — 1,330 fewer students than it enrolled this fall, according to the state. The EAA said it had 9,521 students at the end of the past school year.The loss of students raises questions about the EAA’s future. The district was designed to take over dozens of failing schools statewide, but has not gone outside the buildings it took over from Detroit Public Schools. Several lawmakers have concerns about the EAA, how it educates children and what they call a lack of transparency with public tax dollars.
This is what happens when you craft education policy whose central focus isn’t about education but rather far right ideology and anti-union agendas.
The EAA was supposed to be Rick Snyder’s grand, conservative rebuke to the notion of traditional public education in Detroit. He would do what a cash-strapped, dysfunctional DPS could not or would not — mold bad schools into models of academic success using experimental curriculum, unproven teaching techniques, novice educators and halfass funding methods. As much a political statement as an academic program, the EAA was meant to show us just how far Snyder’s ideology could take even the worst schools once they were freed from old liberal albatrosses.
And so, with Detroit as his guniea pig, Snyder and his cronies began arrogantly slapping together a “turnaround” school district with barely any forethought to which way they were going to turn. In a city that has already been scarred by goofballs like Otis Mathis and Reverend David Murray, Snyder brought in hacks who were at least as bad if not worse
(e.g., failed Kansas City schools chief John Covington). The district began relying on a questionable and unfamiliar yardstick —the Performance Series— to bolster hasty claims of improbable academic progress. And the EAA used a broke DPS as a middleman for
numerous loans that it then tried to hide from public view.
Still, in Detroit, parents wanted to believe. Despite the state’s solid record of academic failure (remember, it was the state that took over DPS from 1999 to 2006 and left it with a $200 million debt), desperate moms and dads ignored whatever misgivings they had and tried to give the EAA a chance.
Their faith, predictably, has not been rewarded. While the EAA claims it students have seen improvement—no big surprise there—the district has yet to produce any credible evidence. (Damn the Performance Series. Holler at us when those MEAP scores come out, guv.) Further, there have been numerous concerns raised about everything from
safety at EAA schools to the district’s work with special needs students.
And then there are transparency issues. The EAA has snubbed several attempts to get a closer look at its operations, compelling some observers to wonder just what it is the district has to hide. The district even ignored a Freedom of Information Act request by
state Sen. HoonYung Hopgood in August after the legislator sought to find out more about EAA performance in areas such as safety, attendance and student discipline.
But try as the EAA might to hide its issues from the public, the parents whose children populate these schools are waking up to the reality that Snyder knows no more about educating their kids than some bumbling minister or auto executive manqué.
Don’t get it twisted: Nobody will ever confuse the current DPS for a beacon of educational progress. But a growing number of parents apparently are deciding that they’d rather take their chances with the dysfunctional district they know over the one that continues to hide
its face from them.
Used to be, cynical Detroit parents thought education here couldn’t get any worst than DPS. Apparently, Rick Snyder and the EAA are proving them wrong.
