What is the EAA? Part 2, management and finances

The Education Achievement Authority (EAA) is a state takeover district currently running 15 Detroit schools.  As we discussed, the EAA has been controversial, it's instructional methods focus on use of a one-size-fits-all computer program in place of teacher autonomy, and it's results have been difficult to measure at best.  What is the EAA? Part 1, methods and results, Okemos Parents for Schools, December 11, 2013. The EAA has also faced management and financial challenges despite having access to revenues not available to public schools.  While the state is dissolving public schools with financial difficulties, the EAA has been propped up with special deals. 


by Detroit Free Press

The Chancellor of the EAA, John Covington, came to the EAA after heading up a public school district in Kansas City. One Michigan blogger wrote that Covington "faked a conflict with his former employer to get out of his contract" in Kansas City and "could make as much as $1.4 million in four years" at the EAA.  New Education Achievement Authority leader’s former school district loses its accreditation, Eclectablog, September 21, 2011.  Covington's tenure in Kansas City was a rocky one.  Covington oversaw closure of nearly half the schools in the Kansas City district.  Board strips Kansas City schools' accreditation, MSNBCNews.com, September 20, 2011.  As he was leaving, the district he oversaw was flailing on almost all measures of performance, "the district met only three of the 14 standards in the state's annual performance report, down from four in 2010."  Id. Less than a month after Covington left, the Missouri state board of education voted to strip the schools of its accreditation.  Id.  Recently, the EAA board "voted to hire Interactive Learning Systems LLC of Columbia, S.C., as an 'executive coach' for" Covington.  EAA collapsing, The Michigan Citizen, December 12, 2013.

Over the past year our state government has been extremely strict with public schools which have financial difficulties.  After K-12 funding was slashed in the beginning of the Snyder administration, many districts felt the financial squeeze.  Saginaw Buena Vista had trouble making its payroll and was ultimately dissolved.  Buena Vista School District is no more; students to attend Saginaw, Bridgeport-Spaulding, Frankenmuth schools, MLive.com, July 31, 2013.  Next the Inkster Public School district was dissolved.  Inkster schools first to be dissolved; students split across 4 districts, MLive.com, July 26, 2013.  Pontiac Public Schools were on the verge of being dissolved, but ended up entering into a consent agreement with the state.  In all, 50 school districts ended the year with deficits, but haven't been given special funds by the state.  50 Michigan school districts ended 2012-2013 fiscal year in deficit, MLive.com, December 12, 2013.

Conversely, from its inception the EAA has had access to multiple unconventional revenue sources, most not available to public districts.  The EAA took over buildings paid for by the public school districts they were taken from.  The EAA funneled $12 million in loans from the state through the Detroit Public School district which is itself experiencing financial difficulties.  Snyder transformation manager defends financing, mission of Education Achievement Authority, Crains, May 22, 2013. The EAA Board did not approve this massive borrowing, and in fact was not even notified.  Id. The state also outright spent $10 million on improvements to EAA schools.  Id. The EAA also has a special charitable foundation soliciting funds to run the school.  Id. The EAA won't disclose who its private donors are, or how much they give.  The EAA also requested another $2 million loan from the state.  Education Achievement Authority requests $2M advance to fix online glitches, Detroit Free Press, January 11, 2013.  Initially, the EAA claimed this was for technology upgrades, but "Emails also reveal that when DPS called in part of the loan, the EAA couldn’t pay and had to ask for an advance on state aid, which it received."  FOIA documents reveal financial troubles, loans for Education Achievement Authority, Michigan Radio, April 26, 2013.  No public school in the state has been given aid of this kind.  The EAA also pays teachers lower wages and does not contribute to the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System for current employees, and does not have any legacy costs.

Nonetheless, the EAA has continued to struggle financially, and it's prospects are dim going forward.  The EAA, like public schools in Michigan, receives the core of its funding on a per pupil basis from the state.  However, students are fleeing the EAA in droves.

Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority has lost nearly a quarter of its students in the past year, a dramatic dip in its second year of operating 15 low-performing schools in Detroit.

The EAA, a statewide district formed by Gov. Rick Snyder in 2011 to take over failing schools, enrolled 7,589 students in K-12 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 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 2013-14, based on a projected enrollment of 8,919 — 1,330 more 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. [Michigan's EAA sees 24% drop in students, Detroit News, November 23, 2013.]

As students leave, revenue leaves as well.  Contrastingly, the Detroit Public School district is seeing students surging into the district.  DPS enrollment surges after years of decline, Detroit News, November 1, 2013.

Our next post will cover the statewide opposition to the EAA.

What is the EAA? Part 1, methods and results

Of all the experiments being carried out on Michigan's public school system, the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) might be the most controversial.  The Legislature passed a bill today which will uncap and expand the EAA statewide.  Unfortunately we haven't devoted much space to the EAA.  This is a big topic, so we'll tackle it in multiple posts.  In light of today's development, it's worth taking a step back to explain exactly what the EAA is, and what goes on in an EAA school. This post will focus just on the creation of the EAA, what instruction is like in the EAA, and what the results have been.

The EAA was created in 2011 by an interlocal agreement between the Emergency Manager of the Detroit Public Schools, Roy Roberts, and Eastern Michigan University.  An "interlocal agreement" is one of the methods of creating a charter school.  See What are "charter schools?", Okemos Parents for Schools, June 28, 2013.  The EAA is essentially a charter district. Originally, the EAA was tasked with taking over 15 schools from the Detroit Public School district.  Before the EAA had even finished one year of operation its proponents were trying to expand it statewide with a measure which would allow the EAA to capture 5 percent of Michigan's public schools every year, with no mechanism to return them to local control.  Letters and Wish Lists, The Ann Arbor Chronicle, December 6, 2012. 

From its inception, the controversial methods employed in the EAA were criticized for providing poor quality education.  The EAA's tagline for it's method is "child-centered learning," which sounds pretty good.  But, it's not.

In reality, "child-centered learning" as implemented in the EAA means sitting kids down in front of a computer program called "Buzz" and letting them click through modules:

But the EAA is in love with digital child-centered learning. This seems to hinge on the “Buzz” software built on Agilix Lab’s BrainHoney platform. This is a commercial product from a private software company which doesn’t yet seem to have pulled together any case studies demonstrating the efficacy of their approach. My brief research using Archive.org indicates that they’ve been billing themselves as a “worldwide leader in distributed learning solutions” since at least 2007; you’d think they’d have collected some data over the course of half a decade . . .

Anyway, this testimony from Brooke Harris, an English teacher at Mumford High School in Detroit, describes Buzz-assisted EAA-style “child-centered” learning in action:

Buzz is composed of “one size fits all” purchased curriculum. Instead of differentiated activities and lessons being created by their teacher – a certified professional who lives and works in the city of the students, who has taken the time to get to know each of them on a personal level – the limited activities and lessons have already been mapped out without any knowledge or regard to the student’s background, culture, needs, strengths, or interests.

That doesn’t sound super “child-centered.” In fact, if you read the entire testimony – it’s just two pages, a transcript of Harris’s testimony before the House Education Committee on Nov 19, 2012 – Buzz sounds like yet another poorly designed, ill-tested, and likely overpriced software package dumped into the lucrative “education market.” [Letters and Wish Lists, The Ann Arbor Chronicle, December 6, 2012]

In one radio interview, Representative Ellen Cogen Lipton described her visit to an EAA school and her discussion with a student learning about John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." The student showed Rep. Lipton the Buzz module he was studying and how he would click through modules which would talk about the book, and video pop-ups would have talking heads discussing the book ... but the student was not actually going to read the book.  Lipton asked if he could check out the book from the school's library, and he said there were no books available through the library any more. Rep. Lipton describes another student in another interview:

"They said, 'Buzz is a joke, it's not challenging, it's demeaning.' I asked them if they liked their school better now or before and they said, 'Before.' When I asked why, one student said, 'Look around this room. Do you see any books? I really miss my books,'" Cogen Lipton said. [EAA progress report: how 15 failing Detroit schools fared this year, Michigan Radio, May 8, 2013.]

 Rep. Lipton's observations echoed the testimony of EAA teacher Brooke Harris, quoted in the Ann Arbor Chronicle story above, and further here:

Buzz is labeled  individualized, another misnomer,  least at the high school level. Buzz does not meet students Where they are; it is not tailored to their needs. All of my students are placed in 10th grade Online courses, despite that fact that many of them read far below the 10th grade reading level and the fact that the EAA’s full inclusion model places special education students in classrooms Without adequate support from an illegally overworked special education department*

Many, if not most, of my students cannot access the material on Buzz without significant scaffolding and accommodations. Scaffolding and accommodations that are not provided by “the professor” who narrates the informative Videos that predominate. the learning activities in Buzz. Instead of being taught by a real, live instructor who can gauge students’ reactions and be flexible and adaptive to their needs, students are being taught by videos on a computer screen. That is not student centered. Students are not being placed at the center of instruction, a curriculum is. [Brooke Harris testimony]

Unsurprisingly, the Buzz computer program has proved to be unsuccessful at replacing teachers.  Although conditions in the EAA have made measuring student learning difficult.  Chaotic conditions have resulted in what data there is skewed toward false indications of improvement.  When the EAA opened, the schools were universally in disarray.  Thomas Pedroni, an associate professor of curriculum studies at Wayne State University, explained in a piece in the Detroit Free Press:

First, hundreds of e-mails attest to significant disruptions during the baseline administration of the assessment, in the fall. Headsets needed for audio were not available; weak wireless signals could not accommodate the large online testing load; many students were unable to log in, and when they did log in, many were dumped from the system. [Thomas Pedroni: Education Achievement Authority has plenty of issues - transparency, trust among them, Detroit Free Press, May 2, 2013]

Because the assessments were delivered on computers, and the computers did not work, the baseline from which progress was measured was set artificially, and colossally, low.  The next time the assessment was administered, the technology had been fixed, so a score increase was built in without any learning actually occurring.  Nonetheless, as of May, "57% of students in math and 52% in reading are not on track to make expected gains."  Id.

There were more problems as well:

While 91% of students took a reading test in the fall, only 72% did so in the winter.

And while in the fall 14% of students in grades 2 through 9 took a modified reading foundations test, less than 1% did in the winter.

The modified test is intended for K-1 students and supplies non-readers with audio. Sue Newell, Scantron’s EAA consultant explained in a phone interview that the modified and regular test icons are side-by-side on the login screen. Many older students “took the foundations incorrectly” in the fall.

By the winter administration, they knew better.

Newell also explained a category of test-takers identified in the winter but not the fall — invalids. These were students whose test scores showed considerable decline since the baseline. Scantron assumes, probably correctly, that these students did not take the winter test seriously. [Id.]

There is plenty else to discuss about the EAA - lack of transparency, spike in student misconduct, student protests, protests from educators across the state - and we'll try and get all of it to you soon.

The bills to flunk third graders and change school rating system are slowing, but still moving

As we reported a month ago, a bill has been introduced in the state House which would require third graders to be held back, or flunked, if they fail to hit a benchmark on a standardized reading test. House bill would require schools to flunk third graders, Okemos Parents for Schools, November 9, 2013. We also discussed in a recent Action Alert a bill to change Michigan's school rating system to an A-F scheme. These bills have moved out of committee but their progress is apparently slowing in response to strong state-wide opposition.

HB 5111, the read or flunk bill, passed out of committee on a vote of 10-3 with Representatives David Knezek (D-Dearborn Heights), Ellen Cogen Lipton (D-Huntington Woods) and Theresa Abed (D-Grand Ledge) voting against. Provisions have been added to allow limited exceptions for third graders failing the test.  But despite adding components of the kind of decision making that now goes on a the local level, the core of the bill remains the same, removing this quintessential local decision away from those best situated to make it in favor of a state-wide law.

HB 5112, the school rating bill, passed out of committee on a vote of 11-4 with Representatives Tom McMillin (R-Rochester Hills)Tom Hooker (R-Byron Center) Ellen Cogen Lipton (D-Huntington Woods) and Theresa Abed (D-Grand Ledge) voting against. Sometime after our Action Alert we learned about a troubling new aspect of this bill - it also contains a provision to begin feeding schools into the Education Achievement Authority.

Lawmakers in the Michigan House are slowing down on plans to change the state's school accountability system and create a literacy requirement for third-grade students after opposition from teachers and administrators.  

"We listened to educators, and we have some more homework to do," House Speaker Jase Bolger (R-Marshall) said Thursday. "We want to make sure this is an 'A' grade when we're done, so we're going to continue to work on the issue."  

The House Education Committee approved revised versions of both proposals Wednesday after hearing extended testimony from teachers, parents and school administrators, some of whom expressed concerns about how the proposals would work. [3rd grade reading guarantee, school grading bills on pause in Michigan House, MLive.com, December 5, 2013.]

We brought you a Q and A with Deputy Superintendent Patricia Trelstad explaining why the read or flunk bill is quite simply terrible policy which demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of both how kids learn to read and how they are taught in Michigan schools today. Q and A: OPS Deputy Superintendent Patricia Trelstad, Okemos Parents for Schools, November 16, 2013. The strategy has been tried in other states and is failing:

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have instituted some form of read-or-flunk policy for third graders. “More and more of our governors are turning to this,” said Susan Neuman, a professor of educational studies at the University of Michigan and an expert on early literacy. “They like the get-tough policy. But it’s a terrible strategy. It’s blaming children when you should be blaming the system.”

Neuman agrees that third grade can be a turning point for students, but said that retaining kids can do more harm than good. Making children repeat third grade because of struggles with reading is treating the symptom rather than the cause, and is “an expensive intervention that leads to middle school malaise and high school dropout.” [Newly-proposed 'read-or-flunk' law for 3rd graders would have held back more than 39,000 students last year, MLive.com, December 5, 2013.]

Maybe even more troubling is the hidden provision in HB 5112 to feed schools into the Educational Achievement Authority (EAA).  As we discussed in our Action Alert, even without this provision HB 5112 was a problematic bill that ensures the majority of Michigan schools will be labeled as failing or mediocre.  A wide range of non-partisan groups which advocate for public education came out in opposition to the bill including the Michigan Department of Education, the Michigan Association of School Boards, Michigan Parents for Schools, the Michigan Association of School Administrators and the Michigan chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.  Groups supporting the bill include Michigan Association of Public School Academies, a charter school lobbying arm, the Michigan chapter of StudentsFirst, a corporate education advocacy group, and Americans for Prosperity, the anti-tax group affiliated with the Tea Party.  But, besides rating schools, the HB 5112 also contains a provision which funnels schools into the EAA:

The legislation mandates that schools with an “F” letter grade under the new system with low test scores twice in three years be placed under control of the state school reform office.

That office has the contractual power to place failing schools under the control of the EAA, a fledgling school system that operates 15 schools formerly part of Detroit Public Schools under an agreement with DPS and Eastern Michigan University.

Critics of the EAA say the letter grade legislation is a “Trojan horse” for expanding the EAA, which has seen its enrollment plummet by 24 percent after one year and faces questions about its long-term financial viability.  

The EAA’s operations have been heavily subsidized by private donations raised by supporters of Gov. Rick Snyder.

“This is a back-door way of getting schools into the EAA without passing the EAA legislation,” said state Rep. Ellen Cogen Lipton, D-Huntington Woods. [Critics rip school grading bill, Detroit News, December 6, 2013.]

We will try to take a comprehensive look at the EAA soon, but suffice it to say the takeover district has been plagued with problems. So much so that faculty at Eastern Michigan University has petitioned the university to end its relationship with the EAA. Faculty wants EMU to drop out of Education Achievement Authority state reform district, The Detroit Free Press, November 18, 2013. The EAA, as a kind of charter district, uses EMU as a "authorizer" though, as the faculty has said, the faculty has no real role in the EAA.  Additionally, public schools are beginning to boycott education students from EMU in protest of the university's involvement with the EAA. Union calls for boycott of Eastern Michigan University student teachers, cites EAA partnership, MLive.com, October 23, 2013.

We'll keep you apprised of developments with this legislation.

School Aid Fund takes another hit, boat/car/RV buyers get tax cut

Last month we wrote about how the School Aid Fund is being slashed on multiple fronts with targeted tax cuts sapping revenue from public schools.  Defunding of public schools happening on multiple fronts, Okemos Parents for Schools, October 12, 2013. The Legislature and Governor Snyder have signed into law one of these measures which will cost the School Aid Fund $200 million per year. 

The new law "will exempt the value of a trade-in from the taxable purchase price of a new car, boat or RV."  Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signs tax break for car, boat buyers with trade-in: 'They deserve it', MLive.com, November 6, 2013.   Gov. Snyder said tax payers "deserve" the tax cut, and Senate majority leader Randy Richardville (R - Monroe) said "This is one of those rare instances where we have a win, win, win," calling the bill good news for manufacturers, dealerships and customers. Id.  Okemos Parents for Schools has not independently reached Gov. Snyder or Sen. Richardville, to get their reaction on the impact of the legislation on the School Aid fund.  MLive reports the following:

The current budget includes a $20 million cushion for tax relief that will cover current-year costs, but the Senate Fiscal Agency has projected annual revenue losses could eventually top $200 million. [Id.]

Q and A: OPS Deputy Superintendent Patricia Trelstad

We're very pleased to bring you a discussion with Okemos Public Schools Deputy Superintendent Patricia Trelstad regarding HB 5111.  Deputy Superintendent Trelstad's responsibilities include curriculum, instruction and assessment.  She also oversees the administrators in the areas of special education, secondary education, technology and community education programming.  Her lengthy educational career in the mid-Michigan area has included opportunities as a resource teacher for K-12 students with disabilities, elementary reading consultant, elementary principal with the East Lansing Schools, and as a central office administrator since 2001 in both Charlotte and Okemos.

Deputy Superintendent Trelstad enjoys the extensive collaboration with other professionals, parents, and community leaders that her professional positions have afforded her.  Of particular interest is assisting teachers with curriculum consistency, integrating technology, utilizing data to assess each child’s response to instruction, and professional learning communities to improve instructional practice and student learning.   She is also deeply motivated by making certain that the uniqueness of all students is recognized and embraced so that each can reach his or her fullest potential.

We reached out to Superintendent Trelstad to get her opinion on HB 5111.  We summarized HB 5111 in a previous post:

Currently the decision of whether to promote a student is made at the local level by teachers, principles and other professionals that know a child and have an understanding of his/her abilities and the larger context his/her daily existence.  A bill under consideration in the Michigan Legislature would mandate that any student who doesn't pass a standardized reading test would fail third grade. [House Bill would require schools to flunk 3rd graders, Okemos Parents for Schools, November 9, 2013. ]

Deputy Superintendent Trelstad answered the following questions via email.

Q: What was your initial reaction when you learned about HB 5111?

A: I was surprised and then saddened that this legislation would be considered in our state given the extensive research that exists on the topic of grade retention.  It is also troubling that legislation is put forward without consulting with the educational experts that might better inform these decisions.

Q: There is some intuitive appeal to tying promotion from 3rd grade to an objective benchmark like a score on a standardized reading test.  Do you see problems with this approach?

A: Those of us who work with children on a daily basis know the limitations of utilizing one assessment measure to determine the full picture of a student’s academic skills.  Given the complexity of reading and the multiple skills that are involved in becoming a fluent reader, it is critical that we use multiple measures to assess a student’s on-going growth and development.

Q: Why would you promote a student from 3rd grade if they were not reading at a 3rd grade level?

A: As the research suggests, it is not grade retention or social promotion that make a difference for students who are lagging in reading development. The best approach to addressing the continued reading growth of students is through a multi-tiered system of support that provides targeted, consistent, and intensive interventions, specific to each child’s needs.  

Q: Strictly from the perspective of what's best for the student, what would be the ideal process for determining whether a student is promoted to fourth grade?

A: There are times when grade retention is appropriate for specific students.  This decision should be made after extensive collaboration between the student’s parents and the professional educators who know the child best and can consider all of the variables that contribute to on-going success.

Q: Do you think HB 5111 reflects an understanding of the current thinking about how children learn to read?

A: Absolutely not!  Decisions that affect the rest of a child’s life should not be based on one test, at one moment in time.  As I mentioned before, there are so many factors that go into learning to read.  

Q: Describe what Okemos Public Schools does now to monitor the progress of individual students as they learn to read?

A: We utilized a nationally-normed universal screening instrument to monitor the progress of all students in grades K-8 three times each year.  This screening instrument measure early literacy skills in K-1(phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, letter and sound fluency), and oral fluency (grades 1-8), and reading comprehension (grades 3-8). These measures are used in conjunction with other common, district assessments to place students into flexible groupings to facilitate their on-going reading development.  The students with intense needs are provided with daily, targeted interventions in addition to the core reading instruction to accelerate their growth.  The progress of students with intense needs is assessed weekly and the interventions are adjusted as necessary to promote more growth.

Q: Describe what mechanisms OPS has in place to help students who are falling behind?

A: All students receive core instruction in their classrooms with age-appropriate peers.  In addition, students who have been identified with strategic or intensive needs in reading are provided with interventions that target skill areas where their performance is below the benchmark.  Our teachers meet regularly to look at student assessments, monitor student growth, adjust groupings of students, and plan instructional strategies that may yield positive outcomes for students.  We begin this process when students are in kindergarten and follow a student’s growth throughout their school career.  

Q: If a student is struggling to read as they complete third grade, does OPS have mechanisms in place to help them catch up through 4th grade?

A: We don’t wait until students are in third grade, but rather monitor student growth in reading throughout each year.  We have systems in place to address student reading needs whenever the established benchmarks are not met on universal screeners or common assessments that are given in all of our elementary schools.

Q: If HB 5111 becomes law, what positives/negatives will OPS students experience?

A: The biggest negative is that teachers and parents will be forced to retain students who might be negatively affected in the long-term by such a decision.  There are no positives that I can see.

Q: Proponents of HB 5111 might argue it doesn't make sense to promote a student out of third grade if they haven't learned all third grade has to offer, and might worry that without a measure like HB 5111, schools will simply pass a student along without anyone being accountable for the student's progress.  How would you answer?

A: I would express, yet again, that it is not grade retention or social promotion that makes a difference for students who are not “typically developing” as readers.  It is frequent assessments, targeted and intensive interventions, adjustments to instruction, and knowledgeable educators who work in tandem with parents that can make the difference.  

Q: What is the downside to retaining a student in 3rd grade?

A: Retaining students can have a number of negative consequences that aren’t realized until children are older. The one thing that we can’t possibly anticipate is a child’s physical, social, emotional, and cognitive growth into the future.  When children are retained at a young age it may yield positive, but short-term outcomes.  As that same child reaches adolescence, they may be significantly out-of-sync with their classmates…physically, socially, emotionally and/or academically.  This may place them at greater risk during a particularly tumultuous time of their lives.    

Q: Do you think there is one policy regarding retention that makes sense for all Michigan schools (big, medium, small; rural, suburban, urban)?

A: This “one size fits all” policy, dictated by Michigan law would be inappropriate and ineffective for grade retention.  As mentioned previously, the responsibility for making decisions about grade retention should held by the parents and educators of the individual students being considered.

Q: If the Legislature asked you what it could do to help kids read satisfactorily by the end of third grade, what would you say?

A: The legislature might consider providing more funding for the things that can truly make differences…instructional coaches, staff to deliver interventions, software to track and analyze student achievement data, intervention materials, and summer programming.  They could set the expectation that each district establish a multi-tiered system of support for all students and provide adequate funding to accomplish it.

Our policy makers are ignoring the poverty in our schools, and slashing funding

The narrative behind many of the plans to radically change K-12 public education is that public schools are failing.  This is a myth.  There is nothing wrong with American public education.  The problem with troubled schools is the poverty-stricken communities they serve. 

We recently posted some graphs which show that public school performance correlates directly with the number of students receiving free or reduced lunches.  Poverty is biggest obstacle for public schools, Okemos Parents for Schools, October 27, 2013.  A recent column sums up the situation:

As I’ve reported before, we know that American public school students from wealthy districts generate some of the best test scores in the world. This proves that the education system’s problems are not universal — the crisis is isolated primarily in the parts of the system that operate in high poverty areas. It also proves that while the structure of the traditional public school system is hardly perfect, it is not the big problem in America’s K-12 education system. If it was the problem, then traditional public schools in rich neighborhoods would not perform as well as they do.

... 

So what is the problem? That brings us to the new study from the Southern Education Foundation. Cross-referencing education data, researchers found that a majority of all public school students in one-third of America’s states now come from low-income families.

How much does this have to do with educational outcomes? A lot. Social science research over the last few decades has shown that two-thirds of student achievement is a product of out-of-school factors — and among the most powerful of those is economic status. That’s hardly shocking: Kids who experience destitution and all the problems that come with it have enough trouble just surviving, much less succeeding in school. [We need a war on poverty, not teachers. Salon.com, November 7, 2013.]

The Annie E. Casey Foundation reports that Michigan has a staggering 50 percent of Michigan kids ages 0-8 live in low income families.  The First Eight Years: Giving Kids a Foundation for Lifetime Success, Annie E. Casey Foundation.  Besides the poverty that many schools in Michigan have to grapple with, they also have to deal with ever-increasing micromanagement from Lansing, but inadequate funding from Lansing.  Some schools receive as much as $12,000 per student from the state, which others receive as little as $7,000.  What kind of education do you get if you spend $12,000 per student?, State of Opportunity, November 6, 2013. Rather than addressing these problems, the current administration has imposed draconian cuts on K-12 education. And because of Proposal A, schools are prohibited from raising additional revenue fro operating expenses locally. 

House bill would require schools to flunk 3rd graders

Currently the decision of whether to promote a student is made at the local level by teachers, principles and other professionals that know a child and have an understanding of his/her abilities and the larger context his/her daily existence.  A bill under consideration in the Michigan Legislature would mandate that any student who doesn't pass a standardized reading test would fail third grade.

If this bill were in place this year, a staggering 30,000 third graders would have been failed.  Should state flunk 3rd graders who can't read?, MichiganRadio.org, November 4, 2013.

A state House panel could vote this week on a bill that would require schools to hold back 3rd graders who do not pass a state reading test.

... 

Schools would have been required to hold back more than 30,000 third graders this school year if the measure was already in place.  As the bill is currently written, it would take effect next school year.

But opponents of the measure say the decision to hold a child back should not be based on one standardized test. They say it should be up to local schools.

“This would mandate. So no matter what the situation, no matter what was going on for this child, it was mandated. That’s what’s wrong,” said Rep. Theresa Abed (D-Grand Ledge).

“And I think we keep taking away any ability of our schools to function in an independent matter.” [Id.]

State Superintendent Mike Flanagan opposes the bill. The Michigan League for Public Policy testified in opposition to the bill noting this policy would cost millions of dollars and could end up failing as many as 7 out of 10 third-graders:

While we totally support the intent of the bill to increase the numbers of third‐graders reading proficiently, we would contend the roughly $262 million that this proposal could cost could be better spent. (This amount is based on an extra year of K-12 foundation allowance of $7,500 x 35,000 students.) Furthermore, the cost could double when the state implements common core standards: Almost seven of every 10 Michigan fourth-graders do not demonstrate proficiency on reading skills on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP). More could be incurred for students retained for more than one year—the mandate is silent on this issue. [Testimony to the House Education Committee on HB 5111  Mandating Retention for Third‐Graders Based on MEAP Reading Performance, Michigan League for Public Policy, November 5, 2013.]

The MLPP pointed out that students who are retained are more likely to drop out during high school.  Further, even in states which have mandatory retention, they have added other complementary programs such as "intensive summer reading camps, tutoring, smaller classes and reading specialists." The policy also sets an arbitrary cutoff line where one marginal student will fail where another marginal student will pass by virtue of getting one more answer correct.  The policy would also disproportionately impact low income students and students of color.  The MLPP also offered constructive alternatives:

If the Michigan Legislature seeks to improve reading proficiency among third-graders, it might  consider supporting intensive, evidence‐based, well financed and guaranteed interventions that begin long before children reach the third grade. Unfortunately, funding for education has  been cut rather than expanded to address the need for supporting initiatives to promote better outcomes for students. Since 2008, Michigan has cut its education budget by 9%—deeper than  33 other states.  [Id.]

This is a troubling development we'll keep you advised of.