Essay: Our Schools, Our Selves - 12.9.09

Yesterday, we learned that Detroit Public School students had the lowest math scores that have ever been recorded. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinks we need to reexamine our priorities… fast.

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Two things happened yesterday which, taken together, ought to blow your mind, as we used to say back in the day.

First, we learned that both fourth and eighth graders in the Detroit Public Schools recorded the worst math results in the entire history of the National Assessment of Educational Progress test.

That’s a highly respected test that’s been given nationwide since the 1960s. Essentially, what the test revealed is that the Detroit schools are creating tens of thousands of dysfunctional illiterates every year. This, in a world where only well-educated kids with a set of skills have any hope of prospering in today’s high-tech economy.

Michael Casserly, executive director of the Washington-D.C. based Council of Great City Schools, told the Detroit Free Press that the test results were essentially “what one would expect by chance alone - as if the kids simply guessed at the answers.”

What these test results should say to Detroit and to Michigan and to all of us is that we have an enormous cancer in the center of our state, one that will, if not treated, destroy us.

Do you really believe this state can do well and prosper if it is home to hundreds of thousands of young adults who cannot really read, write, or do simple sums? True, this test measured only the performance of fourth and eighth graders.

But there’s no reason to think these kids are going to make a miraculous educational recovery in high school. Every statistic we have suggests their scores will get worse and worse. Many of them won’t even finish high school. For the few who do, what then?

Unemployment among black teenagers in the city is off the charts. They have no hope and no prospects, other perhaps than crime. What kind of scenario for our state’s future is that?

There are those who, openly or otherwise, would make this about racial inability to succeed, intellectually. It’s not. To quote what the schools’ Emergency Financial Manager, Robert Bobb said yesterday, “there’s nothing wrong with these children’s minds.

There’s a lot wrong with the adults that have been educating them.“

That statement is likely to set off a howl from the teachers’ union, but I don’t think he was talking just about them.

What we often forget is that the problem starts at home with the parents or primary caregivers. Mayor Dave Bing once told me his parents weren’t educated themselves, but made him sit at the table every night until they saw he had his homework done.

Unless and until this society from top to bottom embraces the value of education and realizes it is the single most important thing, we have no hope for a better future and a guarantee of a worse one.

Now, here’s the other mind-blowing thing that happened yesterday. Even as we got this news of complete educational failure, our legislature gave up on the idea of starting school before Labor Day. We can’t afford to hurt the tourism industry, our lawmakers said.

Well, that’s fine. If, that is, we are prepared to employ for life hundreds of thousands of kids who can’t add simple sums and pay them to pick up litter in state parks. We might want to ask ourselves as a people and a state whether we really have our priorities in order.

Everything I see suggests that the answer is no.

Comments

[Chibu Ozor]

Jack, I share deeply your views and comments about the value of education and the commitment of parents and other stakeholders, especially parents,valueing education with regards to recent publication of the 4th and 8th graders' math test scores. All stakeholders must resist the temptation of pointing fingers at others or blaming one another. Actually, parents as adults have been educating their children, or they should, before those children ever set their foot on school ground or sees their pre-school or kindergaten teachers. While teachers play an immeasurable role in educating children, their roles do not negate parental and school official roles. As a village, society has enormous role to play in the educating of a child. As an African, we know that it does not only take a village to raise a child, according the Igbo and Yoruba proverb, but also it takes a village to educate a child. The chief of the village, represented by the superintendent or the elders of the village, represented by the board and principals are no less important in the process than teachers and parents. While teachers are village facilitators, parents should serve as village supervisors of their own children. When they are not qualified to carry out this responsibility, they will team up with teachers and other adult villagers to instill in theyoung the value and love of learning. I hope that these test results would compel every stakeholder to come to the table with fresh plans devoid of blaming and finger pointing. I hope that the Free Press or Detroit News will publish an article I am writing to air my person views on the value and valueing education by all the stakeholders.

[Anonymous]

What law(s) should be enacted, to get better test scores out of public schoolkids in the City of Detroit?

Should more money be spent on those kids? If so, what sort of spending would solve the kinds of problems we now see?

Here are some selected Michigan school districts, and their per-pupil spending as of 2009:

Detroit - $7580
Lansing - $7835
East Grand Rapids - $7867
Berkley - $8197
Charleviox - $8424
Midland - $8904
West Iron County - $7316
Muskegon Heights - $7919
Alpena - $7316
Monroe - $7326

As you can see, Detroit per-pupil spending is not the most, nor the least.

As much as I suspect the Detroit Federation of Teachers, I do not presume that teachers in the City of Detroit are universally incompetent.

So there is something about Detroit Public Schools, besides per-pupil spending, and apart from teacher contracts and qualifications, that is profoundly dysfunctional.

So what exactly is that dysfunction, and why would anyone suppose that more laws, or more money coming from the Michigan legislature, would address that dysfunction?

Of course even if we knew what sort of a legislative "fix" might work, and even if we could fund whatever that "fix" might be within the existing state budget, can any student in Detroit, or any parent of such a student, be satisfied if someone said, "We can fix this problem, but it will take us four years to do it."

In four years' time, a student's one and only high school career comes, and goes. Students have no time for "legislative plans." They need an answer this year; "now, if not sooner," as the saying goes.

I can't think of any effective option other than to encourage, or at the very least, allow, a wholesale institution of charter schools in Detroit, for students who want to learn, and for the parents of children who earnestly want their kids to excel in school.

In a general sense, the Detroit Public Schools are a failure, and they are failing to produce functional graduates. No innocent families who wish to make education a priority ought to have to endure the Detroit Public Schools.