Chalkbeat

Detroit schools are enrolling more migrant students. Can the district meet their needs?

2024-02-26T19:29:50+00:00

As an influx of school-aged migrant and refugee children have resettled with their families in Detroit in recent weeks, schools are working to quickly adapt to meet their needs.

Some are more prepared than others.

Detroit Public Schools Community District campuses on the southwest side of the city have long served diverse student groups and have many Spanish-speaking teachers and administrators who can easily communicate with parents. But a large number of students who have recently migrated to the U.S. are being placed in available shelter beds on the city’s east side, where schools have historically served children with different needs.

“It’s no fault of the schools,” said Elizabeth Orozco-Vasquez, CEO of Freedom House Detroit, a nonprofit that supports asylum seekers and refugees. “It’s just that they’ve never had to prepare for that before. Meeting the needs of a new population of kids is a big ask to put on an already tasked school system.”

Translation services in those schools are often limited. Additionally, transportation for kids to attend schools in southwest Detroit can be difficult to arrange, advocates say. The district is required by the federal McKinney-Vento Homelessness Assistance Act to help students without a fixed address maintain school stability.

“We are seeing a lot of school-aged children come in, primarily in schools outside of southwest Detroit that aren’t necessarily prepared for children coming from other countries who don’t speak English,” said Orozco-Vasquez. “It’s a resource that has to be built.”

About 70 families who recently arrived from Venezuela enrolled their children in DPSCD, according to the district, and the number continues to grow. Administrators say they are providing language interpretation and translation, and training staff to understand new students’ unique needs. In the long term, the district is considering establishing newcomer programs, which would centralize students at specific schools to streamline services for migrant and refugee children.

Detroit hasn’t seen the large numbers of migrants and refugees arriving that large cities like Chicago and New York have in recent months. But some of the families arriving in Detroit are coming from those cities because shelters and humanitarian organizations there are overwhelmed.

DPSCD is working to meet students’ needs

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said in an email all schools in the district are now receiving support as they adapt to meet the needs of migrant students. Staff are being trained to use translation tools, to identify curricular resources to help students learn English, and to address the trauma the kids may have experienced.

The district has formed a small team of teacher training and support coordinators specializing in English language learning to deploy to schools with newcomer students, he said. DPSCD is also continuing to collaborate with community members through its Bilingual Parent Advisory Council as well as the Office of Family and Community Engagement to meet the families’ needs.

Staff can request a live interpreter and document translations, said Vitti. The district also offers over-the-phone and remote video interpreters, and students and staff are able to use Microsoft Translate.

“The district is working with all school leaders and teachers to make sure that they are fully aware of these resources and use them consistently to communicate with families who need language services,” said Vitti.

Part of the challenge, said Orozco-Vasquez, is that the newly arrived students are speaking many languages. In addition to Spanish-speakers, some speak Portuguese or French.

Some nonprofit organizations work with school districts to fill gaps in providing language support to refugee students. Samaritas, a faith-based statewide nonprofit, works with DPSCD.

“If there is no comprehensive ELL program in place, we work with the school on providing that,” Rawan Alramahi, supervisor of Samaritas’ school impact program.

Funding from a $94.4 million settlement – from a 2016 lawsuit that alleged Michigan failed to teach Detroit students to read and described inadequate education for English language learners – will likely allow the school system to hire more academic interventionists to work with English language learners, the superintendent said. A task force formed to identify how DPSCD should spend the settlement recently recommended the district do so.

The settlement funding will also be used to help the district determine whether there is a need for more newcomer programs to be developed at schools in DPSCD to “better serve first- and second-year immigrants,” Vitti said. There is one existing program at Western International High School that provides academic and social support to newcomer families.

“Through this strategy, newly arrived students with limited English skills would be assigned to these schools so we can concentrate resources for support, such as ELL teachers and [academic interventionists],” said Vitti.

The planned Health Hub at Western International, which will provide medical, dental, and mental health care, will also have a resource center with services for newly arrived families, said Vitti. Other Health Hubs, which will expand over the next three years at schools across the district, may also have the same focus, depending on need, according to the superintendent.

For migrant students who experience homelessness or are housed in shelters, the district will provide all the services guaranteed by the McKinney-Vento Act, which mandates that unhoused students be allowed to quickly enroll in schools, stay in the same school even if they move outside of enrollment boundaries, and receive transportation to their schools regardless of the distance, among other protections.

Overall, the district’s system for identifying students who need services through the act has improved, said Vitti. The need for transportation services with that funding has increased in the community across the board and is not unique to newcomer or refugee students.

“Newcomer and refugee students are not always homeless, but when they are, we are committed to providing transportation services,” said Vitti.

In the past, there were concerns about DPSCD’s ability to educate English language learners, who graduate from high school at lower rates compared to their English-speaking peers. Parents expressed a need for more language access in the district, and felt their concerns were ignored.

Inequities for ELL students is not unique to DPSCD. Michigan ranks among the lowest in the nation for funding for students who are not native English speakers, according to an analysis by The Education Trust-Midwest.

Last year, the state passed a historic school budget that provided $1.3 million more in funding for ELL students.

Some migrant families arrive from Chicago, New York, Texas

Most of Detroit’s migrant students have come from Venezuela, according to the school district.

Others are coming from Columbia, Angola, Senegal, Haiti, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Orozco-Vasquez said there is a mix of families coming from larger cities like New York and Chicago as well as various cities in Texas, where officials have struggled to keep up with the growing need for services for migrants, as well as people coming directly from their countries of origin.

Samaritas is currently serving more than 250 school-age children, and has recently seen more families coming from Venezuela and Cuba, along with families from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine.

Both Freedom House and Samaritas said most of the newly arrived school-age children they serve have enrolled in DPSCD, and some are attending charter schools in Wayne County.

The increase in the number of families migrating to Michigan isn’t expected to slow anytime soon – officials expect to see a 40% increase in refugees settling in the state this year, which would amount to more than 3,600 people. As demand for temporary housing grows, the Office of Global Michigan this week asked residents to open their homes as part of a refugee support program.

Michigan has long been a destination for refugees and asylum seekers. Though the recent influx of migrants is sizable, it’s not the largest the state has experienced.

In 2013, more than 3,400 Iraqi refugees resettled in Michigan. And after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, more than 2,000 refugees came to live in the state.

DPSCD has also previously seen influxes of migrants. More than 40 refugees from Afghanistan enrolled in the district in May 2022.

Navigating a foreign school system

Ivan Nakonechngi, 13, works on his computer at home on Wed., Feb., 21, 2024 in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

In addition to DPSCD and other schools in Wayne County, refugees are also being placed and enrolling in schools in Macomb, Oakland, and Genesee Counties.

One mother, Svitlana Nakonechna, 33, arrived in the U.S. three years ago after fleeing the war in Ukraine with her son, Ivan Nakonechngi, now 13.

Nakonechna is still learning English, and she communicates with Ivan’s teachers at South Hills Middle School in Bloomfield Hills Schools through an online translator application in email and on video calls. The mother tries to keep up with Ivan’s grades and when his work is due.

“Usually, I keep track of that since she’s not really good with English,” said Ivan, who began learning English in school in Ukraine.

Ivan Nakonechngi, 13, left, poses for a portrait with his mother, Svitlana Nakonechna, 33, in their home on Wed., Feb., 21, 2024 in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Nakonechna said through an interpreter that she doesn’t know much about the curriculum Ivan is being taught, but she trusts he’s learning because she sees he’s engaged in his school work.

Though her sponsors and Samaritas have been helpful in enrolling her son in school and navigating the system, Nakonechna worries what may happen if she has to move out of the housing she receives through her employer to another school district.

“If we move from this place to another city and I need to find a new school, I still will need help because I don’t know how to handle it by myself,” she said.

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan’s high school graduation rate increases for the second year in a row

2024-02-23T23:19:03+00:00

Michigan’s high school graduation rate was 81.77% in 2023, the second year in a row the rates have increased and a promising sign that students are continuing to recover from the disruptive pandemic.

Last year’s graduation rate was 81.01%.

The dropout rate declined slightly to 8.13%, from 8.19% in 2022.

The four-year graduation rate represents the portion of students who entered high school in 2019 and graduated in 2023. The state released the data Friday.

The state also calculates five- and six-year rates, recognizing that some students are enrolled in early middle college programs in which they earn a high school diploma and an associate degree or other advanced certificate. Those rates also reflect students who need more time to graduate from traditional programs.

Students are counted as dropouts if they leave school permanently at any time in high school.

The state noted in a news release that graduation rates rose in all 17 categories, including for Black and Hispanic students, students from low-income homes, youth experiencing homelessness, and those in foster care.

The rising rates “are a welcome sign that student achievement is rebounding and a tribute to the hard work of Michigan students, educators, support staff, and communities,” State Superintendent Michael Rice said in a statement.

Despite the increases, stubborn and wide gaps continue to exist. The graduation rate for white students was 85%, and for Asian American students, it was 93.5%. For Black students, though, the rate was 71.3% and for Hispanic students, it was 76.8%.

The rates were dramatically lower for some of the most vulnerable students in the state. The rate was 59.6% for students with disabilities, 44% for students in foster care, and 58.3% for students experiencing homelessness.

Rice acknowledged that more work must be done to address the gaps.

Lansing district ‘overwhelmingly impressed’

Improving graduation rates has been a key goal in the Lansing School District, and the work to increase the numbers appears to be paying off. The graduation rate for 2023 was 76.37%, a 14 percentage point increase from 2021, when the rate was 62.10%. The 2023 rate is the highest the district has ever seen, Superintendent Ben Shuldiner said.

“We are overwhelmingly impressed by the hard work and dedication of our educators, our students, and our families,” Shuldiner said.

Among the initiatives that have led to the improvement, he said, is the hiring of graduation specialists at the high school and district levels. Their goal is to ensure that every student graduates.

“They’re checking in with students every day, making sure they’re coming to school and passing classes. They’re doing everything they can to make sure students are getting the support they need,” Shuldiner said.

That could mean ensuring they have tutoring, after-school help, a math class required for graduation, or a roof over their head.

Many other districts also saw gains. At Ypsilanti Community Schools, the four-year rate was 78.33% compared to 73.79% in 2022. In 2019, the rate was 68.53%.

Superintendent Alena Zachery-Ross said the district has improved its rate because of gains at the districts’ alternative high schools.

Students at these high schools were typically behind in course credits.

“That team really focused last year on academic tutoring, after-school and acceleration during the Grizzly Learning Camp,” Zachery-Ross said. “And we really saw that those two differences and what’s happening in the classroom really made a difference.”

The district’s summer camp includes college visits, connecting students to community resources, and project-based learning.

Here’s what the rates looked like in several other Michigan districts:

Detroit Public Schools Community District’s four-year graduation rate was 74.26% compared to 71.06% in 2022. The district had a 75.84% rate in 2019.
Ann Arbor Public Schools’ four-year rate was 90.57%, which is up slightly from 89.23% in 2022 and 89.46% in 2019.
Grand Rapids Public Schools’ four-year rate was 82.39% in 2023, up from 80.53% in 2022 and 76.2% in 2019.

Traverse City Area Public Schools’ 2023 rate was lower than the previous year. The four-year graduation rate was 84.04% in 2023, down from 86.47% in 2022 and 84.97% in 2019. The district had a 90.51% rate in 2020.

Superintendent John VanWagoner said the four-year rate is misleading because the district has two high schools where some students are enrolled in early middle college, and they graduate in five years with both a diploma and associate degree or technical certificate.

Plus, the district has a large alternative high school, where many students take an extra year or two to complete their high school diploma.

For example, the five-year graduation rate at one of the high schools with an early middle college program, Traverse City Central High School, was 96.36%.

Still, VanWagoner said he wants to see graduation rates improve.

“Having one kid not graduate is too many; we want to make sure that every kid that is in our schools, that we set them up for the future, and a high school diploma is a must these days.”

Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org

Isabel Lohman is a reporter for Bridge Michigan. You can reach her at ilohman@bridgemi.com.

Mentoring program provides Detroit kids with a forever ‘friend’

2024-02-22T20:19:47+00:00

On a warm, sunny day last July, Autumn Palmer and Peighton made their way to the playground at City Centre Park in Southfield.

Peighton hopped on a friendship swing. Palmer, 28, gave her a couple of pushes.

“Do you want to go higher?” Palmer asked. Peighton nodded.

After a few minutes, the 10-year-old wanted to try the zip line. “Ready?” Palmer said. Peighton held on tight to the cord and smiled as she slid to the other side.

At first glance, the two look like they could be mother and daughter. But their special bond began only three years ago thanks to an unique mentorship program.

Palmer and Peighton are part of the Detroit chapter of Friends of the Children, where children ages 4-6 are paired with a professional member called a “Friend” for 12 years or longer. The mentor is there for all of the child’s ups and downs –helping them learn how to read and write, navigating their relationships with friends and family, exploring their interests, and preparing them for college or a career.

BridgeDetroit has been following Palmer and Peighton for seven months, seeing their interactions and getting updates on Peighton’s progress. BridgeDetroit is identifying Peighton by only her first name to protect her privacy.

The organization has 36 locations across the country, including New York, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles. The Detroit chapter launched in 2020.

Friends of the Children works with kids who have adverse childhood experiences or ACEs, said Detroit Executive Director Derschaun Brown. These include experiencing violence, abuse or neglect, having a parent who is addicted to drugs or alcohol or being placed in the foster care system.

Brown, who joined the organization in 2022, said one thing that attracted her to the job is that Friends are not volunteers but paid, full-time mentors. Friends work with eight to 10 children each, spending three to four hours every week with each of them.

As someone who has worked in education for 25 years, Brown had never seen a model like Friends of the Children.

“I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” she said. “I’ve been mentoring for 30 years and I’ve never received a dime. And, once I looked at the data around the organization, I said, ‘I’ve got to be part of this.’”

Autumn Palmer pushed her mentee Peighton on a swing at City Centre Park in Southfield last July. The two are part of the Detroit chapter of Friends of the Children.

Counted out of society

Friends of the Children was founded in Portland, Oregon, in 1993 by entrepreneur Duncan Campbell and his wife Cindy Campbell. Duncan grew up in an impoverished neighborhood with alcoholic parents and wanted to help kids who came from similar backgrounds.

The first chapter opened in Portland with three professional mentors serving 24 children and eventually spread to other cities like Seattle, New York, and Boston.

Today, the organization serves 3,000 children. In its 31 years, Friends of the Children has seen outcomes such as 83% of youth receiving their high school diploma or GED, 92% going on to enroll in postsecondary education, enlist in the military, or enter the workforce with a living wage job, and 93% staying out of the juvenile justice system.

The Detroit chapter currently has eight Friends and serves 64 children and is expecting to enroll two more Friends and 16 kids next month, Brown said. Mentors must have an associate degree or higher, experience working with youth, and a passion for working with children.

“Many of our mentors come from education,” Brown said. “They were former teachers, former counselors, those who have trauma-informed practice experience and so, they come to us with a wealth of knowledge and experience, as well as love. Those are the three critical components that they must bring in order to be a part of Friends of the Children Detroit.”

Children are referred to the organization from four sources – Detroit Public Schools Community District, River Rouge School District, child welfare agency Orchard Children’s Services, and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Brown said Friends of the Children focuses on kids ages 4-6 because that’s when they’re at the beginning of their education journey.

“They (the referral sources) do an assessment on each of the children,” she said. “It could be that they’re threatening to be a part of foster care, they’re in foster care, or that they’re having some challenges in school. Once they do the assessment and determine, ‘Oh yeah, this kid has two ACEs,’ then they qualify to be a part of our program.”

Kids who face systemic and circumstantial barriers are often counted out of society, Brown said.

She was one of them.

Brown’s parents divorced and her father was absent from her life. Brown eventually gained a stepfather, but he died from a drug overdose. That left her mom a single parent raising Brown and her two siblings.

Brown said she didn’t have a mentor growing up and had to come to terms with her childhood trauma on her own.

“That’s why we’re fighting so hard for them (the children) because there is a chance for them to experience optimal success. There’s an opportunity for them and their families to thrive and not just survive,” she said.

Autumn Palmer and Peighton worked on a puzzle together at City Centre Park last July. The two often go on outings to the park or the library.

‘It takes a village…’

Peighton has also faced traumatic experiences in her young life. Her father is out of the picture and her mother is incarcerated. The fourth grader and her two siblings live with their grandmother, Tori Scheday-Walton, in northwest Detroit. In addition, Peighton has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, which can make it challenging to focus in school.

Scheday-Walton said she was referred to Friends of the Children by Sonya Lewis, the principal at Peighton’s school, Detroit Leadership Academy. They joined the organization in June 2020.

“I just felt like Peighton needed an extra buddy or a person in her life,” Scheday-Walton said. “It takes a village to raise children and you can never have too many helpers in a child’s life.”

Since Peighton started Friends of the Children at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, her first meetings with Palmer were virtual. But as restrictions began to ease, the two would go to places like the park or the library. During the school year, Palmer spends four hours a week with Peighton; two hours in school and two hours outside of school.

And Palmer assists Peighton with her growing interest in gardening. She has grown tomatoes, celery, onions, carrots and more, her grandmother said.

“She’s an excellent gardener,” Palmer said.

When it comes to schoolwork, Palmer is there to help Peighton with reading and math. The mentor also worked with Scheday-Walton to get school officials to offer Peighton an individualized education program, or an IEP.

“Autumn definitely advocated for me to make sure I knew what to say and do so they could get that in place,” Scheday-Walton said.

She has seen her granddaughter’s confidence grow with Palmer.

“She encourages Peighton a lot. It’s like having a big sister/co-mom for me,” Scheday-Walton said. “And Peighton depends on Autumn and looks forward to seeing her. It’s not often that a child looks forward to spending time with another adult that’s not a family member.”

“I like everything about her,” Peighton added about her Friend.

Last month, Palmer and Peighton participated in the Friends of the Children’s Mentor Day event at the organization’s headquarters inside Durfee Innovation Society. Along with several other kids and mentors, the two conducted science experiments from a kit, like making putty and perfumes.

Since meeting almost four years ago, Peighton has become a stronger reader and more confident in herself, Palmer said. Together, they’re working on goals like limiting screen time, eating healthier, and memorizing times tables.

“And I feel like she’s found the things that she really enjoys to do and advocates to do those things more often,” Palmer said.

Time will tell how Peighton will continue to grow. The pair have eight more years together, and possibly a lifetime, to go.

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit. You can reach her at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

Here’s what it would cost in Michigan for free preschool, community college, and school meals

2024-02-07T21:14:32+00:00

At a time when academic recovery from the pandemic has been slow, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced a plan Wednesday to increase spending on Michigan’s most vulnerable students.

In her budget proposal, Whitmer also said she wants to invest more in preschool, provide child care workers with payments to enroll their own children in the kinds of programs in which they work, and expands the state’s scholarship program to ensure all high school graduates can enroll in community college, for free, if they choose.

The new investments in the $80.7 billion state budget amount to hundreds of millions of dollars of additional funding for education initiatives at a time when research shows Michigan students overall are still far behind where they were academically before the pandemic. It also comes as school districts across the state face the loss later this year of the federal COVID relief money that has helped boost tutoring and mental health services students have sorely needed.

And it’s possible, Whitmer said, because the state paid off billions in debt in the Michigan Public School Employees’ Retirement System. Those debt payments, she said, freed up $670 million.

“We have the resources to invest in our people,” said Whitmer, who first outlined her proposals during her State of the State address last month.

Negotiations will now begin. Democrats hold the majority in the Senate, but until elections can be held in April for two open seats, the House is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. Those two seats are in heavily Democratic districts.

Republican leaders were critical of the governor’s budget proposal.

“Last year, Democrats blew through a $9.2 billion surplus and fought for a $700 million income tax hike,” Sen. Jon Bumstead, a Republican from North Muskegon, said in a statement. Bumstead is the minority vice chair of the Senate Appropriations committee. “Now they are presenting an unsustainable budget that spends more money, bloats the size of government, and offers crumbs for average Michigan families still coping with higher costs on virtually everything.”

Here’s what Whitmer is proposing for schools, students, and families:

Increase in per-pupil aid for schools, including for the neediest students

The minimum amount school districts would receive per pupil would be $9,849, an 2.5% increase of $241 per student over this year’s level.

Meanwhile, Whitmer proposed continuing a practice she started several years ago of weighting funding for districts based on the needs of some students. That means schools receive additional money for students who are “academically at risk,” English language learners, career and technical education students, and rural students.

The budget calls for increasing funding by $125 million for those groups of students, which amounts to a 5% increase over the $118 million spent this year.

Community college guarantee for high school graduates

Whitmer’s budget calls for a $30 million increase in funding for the Michigan Achievement Scholarship, which would allow the program to expand to ensure every high school graduate in the state could receive an associate degree or skilled certificate at a community college for free.

With the community college proposal, more than 18,000 students would each save up to $4,820 on tuition each year, according to the budget proposal.

In her remarks to lawmakers Wednesday, Whitmer said the community college proposal would also help the state move closer to a goal to have 60% of the state’s working-age residents have a postsecondary certificate or college degree by 2030. When Whitmer took office in 2018, just 45% had achieved a certificate or college degree. That percentage is now at 51%.

“This would be a transformational opportunity for our students,” she said.

“Investments in community college are key to Michigan’s overall prosperity, as these degrees and certifications bolster the workforce across the state and help meet emerging talent needs of employers,” Brandy Johnson, president of the Michigan Community College Association, said in a statement.

Expanding free preschool for all

Whitmer’s budget includes making the state’s free preschool available to all 4-year-olds regardless of family income – two years ahead of schedule. She had previously proposed phasing in the expansion.

The expansion would cost an additional $159 million, including $63.5 million to allow the Great Start Readiness Program to enroll an additional 6,800 children. The rest of the increased cost would cover increasing the per-student allocation, opening new classrooms in underserved areas, and to help pay for the cost of transportation.

Child care workers would get free care for their children

Whitmer also plans to invest more in the child care sector.

The state would spend $60 million to create a pilot program to provide these workers with benefits to pay for child care for their own children. Budget documents say the median child care worker pay is $13.71 an hour.

“The average cost for child care for one child is $10,600 annually, which means the average child care worker would need to dedicate over 37% of their gross salary to child care costs if they want their child to receive the same care they provide for other children on a daily basis,” the document says.

Expansion of free school meals

Public school students across the state would continue to receive free school meals with $200 million Whitmer proposes including in the budget. Lawmakers included money in the current budget to ensure that each of the state’s 1.4 million children would have access to a free breakfast and lunch.

She said the free meals save families $850 a year on grocery bills and eliminates the struggle of ensuring children get out the door in the mornings with their lunch.

“Knowing that your child will eat no matter what is a huge relief,” Whitmer said.

The free meals have been criticized by Republicans because it is only for public school students, not for children enrolled in private schools or children being home-schooled.

“Why are they left hungry?” Sarah Lightner, a Republican from Springport, asked during the budget presentation.

Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.

Advocates for Michigan foster youth hope education reforms will pass this year

2024-01-18T16:30:00+00:00

When Christian Goode transferred from a traditional high school to Lakeside Academy, a state-licensed residential foster care facility near Kalamazoo, some of his academic records never made it over.

As a result, he had to repeat an entire year of classes, and redo school work he had already completed.

“At times, I didn’t want to do it, because I had already done it,” Goode said of the work. “It felt like I was forgotten and no one cared.”

Goode is now 21 — years past high school and living in Van Buren Township. But the holes in Michigan’s foster care system that disrupted his education persist today, and they continue to create turmoil for thousands of students in foster care.

As reported by NBC in 2022, many students describe having to repeat years of school due to lost academic records. Some say they were placed in residential facilities that failed to give them an education that met state graduation requirements. Others said they missed weeks or months of school while waiting to be enrolled after moving to a foster-care facility.

Their experiences are now inspiring efforts in the Michigan Legislature to ensure that students in foster care get more of the education they deserve.

“These are young people who have already been dealt a lot of trauma,” said State Rep. Stephanie Young, a Democrat from Detroit. “The very minimum we can do is ensure they get the best education they can.”

Three bills introduced last year by Young passed the Michigan House in November. Young said she is pushing for the legislation to move quickly through a hearing in the Senate Housing and Human Services Committee and for a vote in the Senate. She says the bills have bipartisan support.

One of the bills would require that residential facilities enroll students in school within five days of placement, and that they provide an education that meets the state’s graduation requirements. Another bill would give the Michigan Department of Education responsibility for overseeing the facilities’ educational programs and enforcing compliance.

The third bill would require the MDE and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to keep better records on the number of children in foster care, where they are, and how they’re progressing in their education.

The state has an estimated 10,000 kids in foster care, but the total number is unknown because many go uncounted in the current system, advocates say. For example, people ages 18 to 23 who are still eligible to receive state services are not included in that count.

Michigan foster youth have a high school graduation rate of about 40% – lagging about 40 percentage points behind the state’s overall graduation rate. That figure doesn’t give a clear picture either, because it doesn’t include youth who drop out or complete high school in residential facilities.

“This problem has existed for years, and we’ve finally decided to come up with a solution,” said Young. “I don’t foresee any major obstacles in moving this thing forward.”

A group of foster youth and advocates spoke at the Dec. 12 Michigan State Board of Education meeting to ask the board to support a package of bills that would reform the way the state oversees education for kids in foster care.

Inadequate record-keeping adds to challenges for youth in foster care

Christian Randle entered the foster care system at age 11, when he said he was abandoned by his mother. He thought he was excelling in his school work for years, and worked hard to fulfill the promise he made to himself that he would graduate high school.

But when he left a residential facility and tried to enroll in a traditional community high school two years ago, he found out there was no record of him attending nearly three years of high school. In fact, Michigan has no centralized electronic system to track foster youth and their educational records.

“Through all that stress and trauma going on inside of that foster care facility, the one thing I was happy about coming out of it was my schooling,” Randle, now an 18-year-old senior at an online school, said in January. “And that was taken away from me.”

“I felt defeated and like I had to restart everything,” he said through tears. “To me, it felt like my life was over.”

The inability to access records also makes it impossible for traditional public schools to identify students who are in foster care, which can deprive those children of resources they need or their rights under federal education law.

For example, schools can’t fulfill the federal Title I requirement to engage with students’ families if they can’t identify who holds a foster youth’s parental rights. Neither can they comply with the federal 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act’s assurance of transportation for foster youth if they can’t identify which students are in foster care.

“They are invisible in schools,” said Saba Gebrai, program director at Park West, a Michigan nonprofit that supports foster youth. “Under the federal law, they have all these protections, but we can’t protect and serve them if we don’t know who they are.”

Because schools can’t see the youths’ case files, administrators can’t identify who has their parental rights. Biological parents, caregivers, and students old enough to hold their own parental rights are routinely denied access to the educational records they are legally entitled to.

Carlos Correa, a former foster youth who spoke about his experience to the Michigan State Board of Education in December, said he regularly struggled to get absences excused when he was in high school.

“They kept insisting that I get permission from my parents to attend my doctors appointments,” he said.

Education for foster youth lacks consistency

Beyond the record-keeping, it’s the quality of education that concerns many advocates for foster youth.

When kids move from one facility to another, often in the middle of a school year, there is no continuity in their curriculum, said Gebrai. The assessments they take to determine what classes or grade levels they should be in vary from facility to facility.

Residential facilities, many operated by private companies, can decide on their own what students are taught.

“Graduation and high school diplomas are not mentioned in the contracts that these facilities have,” said Gebrai. “Each facility is creating its own idea of what school is and what assessments to give, and they are not in communication with each other.”

Many youth who live in the facilities describe being placed in classrooms packed with kids of all ages and grade levels. They say there is often only one instructor or facility staff member overseeing large numbers of students. Some say they are instructed entirely online, and others say they are assigned packets to complete as lessons without instruction from a teacher.

“I was in a place for like one month without receiving education because of constant fights,” said Correa of a residential facility he was placed in.

Existing state laws require parents or facilities only to provide youth with “timely” enrollment in school. That vague language often leads to weeks of missed school for kids moving around in the system, advocates say.

Young said the explicit five-day deadline in the legislation she introduced would clear that up.

Gebrai and other advocates argued for the bill to mandate “immediate” placement, but Young argued for some flexibility. “Kids might be dealing with the trauma of being removed from their house and the only school they knew,” said Young. “Going to a new school the very next day, that’s traumatic. I get that there needs to be some wiggle room.”

According to a fiscal impact analysis of the bills, the laws would cost the state around $600,000 to hire three full-time staff members in the MDE to implement the proposed new requirements.

The residential facilities may contract with public schools to provide curriculum, the analysis says. The school aid budget already allocates $10.5 million to reimburse districts for on-site education for youth.

Foster youth see an opportunity for change

Goode, the former Lakeside Academy student, ultimately got his high school diploma there, and plans to go back to the University of Michigan-Flint in the fall. But he feels he missed out on a “normal” high school experience and childhood.

“I’ve never been to a homecoming dance or prom,” he said. “I’ve never experienced a high school science fair. A lot of things I grew up without and I sat on the outside of it. I can’t change that now.”

But he and Randle see Young’s bills as hope that things can change for other youth in foster care.

Randle, who lives on his own in Southfield and works several jobs to support himself and his cat, hopes to complete high school this year. His dream is to be the first in his family to attend college and to eventually have a career helping foster youth.

He says the changes in the law are long overdue.

“It’s the bare minimum that they can do, because they haven’t been doing anything for years,” said Randle. “It shouldn’t even have taken this long to pass the bills. Just the fact that it’s had to take this long shows a lot about how kids in foster care are treated.”

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit district gets better at identifying homeless students, but study points to big undercount

2023-06-21T21:49:00+00:00

Recent efforts by the Detroit school district are helping officials identify more homeless students who would otherwise miss out on crucial support services guaranteed under federal law, a new research study found.

Roughly 5% of the district’s students were identified as homeless last school year, compared with around 1% nearly a decade ago.

But the researchers, from Wayne State University’s Detroit Partnership for Education Equity & Research, found that schools in Detroit continue to significantly undercount the number of students experiencing homelessness, as well as other forms of housing instability. Their conclusions are based on data from the Detroit Public Schools Community District and charter schools in the city, as well as interviews with families experiencing housing instability.

The researchers estimated that as many as 16% of the roughly 100,000 K-12 students in Detroit experienced homelessness or housing instability during the 2021-22 school year, with roughly three-fourths of those students not being identified as homeless by their school during that time frame.

That gap is critical, because it points to potential underutilization of support services available to those students. Under the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, homeless students are entitled to several services and protections, including transportation to and from school, academic support, the right to remain in the school they attended at the time they lost their permanent housing, and the right to enroll in a school even if they lack proper documents.

Homeless students are more likely to be chronically absent, drop out of school, and be suspended or expelled from school. So ensuring students can get access to McKinney-Vento services can have long-term effects on their academic wellbeing, experts say.

Federal law defines homelessness narrowly

Detroit had about 10,000 homeless people before the pandemic, according to a report from the Homeless Action Network of Detroit, with roughly 20% identified as children under the age of 18.

This month, Detroit city officials launched a new office to help residents facing displacement find housing options, part of a $203 million affordable housing plan announced last year by Mayor Mike Duggan’ administration.

Nationally, the identification of homeless students declined during the pandemic as school district liaisons found it harder to reach and provide resources to homeless students.

The Wayne State study outlines several barriers students experiencing homelessness may face, including lack of awareness about available resources, parents’ reluctance to discuss housing challenges with school staff, and a lack of follow-through when parents do disclose their housing status.

The federal definition of homelessness also complicates the task of getting support to students. To qualify for services under McKinney-Vento, students must meet certain criteria that distinguish homeless students from those who are housing insecure. Homeless students are defined by the statute as “individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence,” whereas the housing insecure category can be broadly defined and include those who may have been evicted at some point before shortly finding housing.

The Wayne State report notes that while 16% of students in Detroit may have experienced housing insecurity or homelessness in 2021-22, only about 11% may have qualified for services under McKinney-Vento.

To increase the identification of students facing housing instability, the researchers recommend that Detroit schools strengthen relationships with parents and improve communication about the availability of services.

DPSCD expands its efforts, but runs into hurdles

DPSCD, for its part, has increased its efforts to identify homeless students in recent years by adding full-time staff to its homeless student office, adding a residency questionnaire with its student enrollment form, and publicizing information about available services through designated staff and resource rooms at individual schools.

These efforts are likely the reason DPSCD has been able to identify a greater share of its homeless students than Detroit’s charter schools, the study said. DPSCD identified about 29% of its students who experienced housing difficulties, the researchers estimated, compared with only 16% for the charter schools.

This school year, DPSCD identified over 2,200 students as homeless, compared with 765 in 2018-19, according to Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.

“We’ve definitely increased our numbers (of homeless students), because we’ve done a better job of engaging families and creating more awareness about the opportunity to be identified as homeless,” Vitti said at a school board committee meeting this spring. “But it’s natural to know that there’s a stigma that comes with that, and some parents are not comfortable.”

“We have done a better job over the years of identifying, but I would agree it’s still undercounted,” he said.

Vitti also pointed to the added hurdles families may face: A student or family member has to apply for McKinney-Vento services and be reviewed by a DPSCD staff member to be identified as homeless before they can qualify for support.

Those hurdles are compounded by a student’s “willingness to admit to homelessness,” Vitti said, as well as the limited resources available.

Despite recent budget cuts that have affected many of the district’s central office employees, Vitti said DPSCD will continue to staff its districtwide Office of Homeless and Foster Care by using grant dollars to hire contracted staff, as well as emphasize “relationship building, awareness and additional training for staff” and school liaisons.

Principals annually select a school staff member to identify and provide support services to students facing housing insecurity. Those staff will continue to receive monthly training on the inner workings of McKinney-Vento, mandated reporting, and available resources.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

A guide to finding school transportation for your child in Detroit

2023-03-22T17:48:24+00:00

Getting students to school in Detroit can be tough. Transportation options are limited, and they vary depending on where your family lives and which school your child attends.

The lack of transportation resources helps explain why so many Detroit students frequently miss class and lose out on learning opportunities.

Here are answers to some of the common questions parents ask about school transportation in Detroit, and resources to help families get their students to school.

Why don’t most Detroit schools provide buses?

Part of the reason is that they don’t have to. Most students in Michigan don’t have a legal right to transportation to and from school. Only children with certain disabilities or some who are experiencing homelessness have a right to school transportation.

Buses, drivers and fuel are costly, so Detroit and other districts that have financial constraints limit the amount of busing they provide.

Citywide, around 20% of students this year get to school on a yellow bus.

What transportation options are available to Detroit families?

Walking or biking may be an option, though some families report safety concerns. Some kids living in Detroit do have access to free yellow buses (more on that below). DPSCD pays for transit passes for students who want or need to use city buses. The passes can be picked up at each school’s office. Some families rely on commercial ride share companies, such as Uber and Lyft, though students technically must be 18 to use those services.

Which options are available to my child?

The answer depends on where your child attends school.

Charter schools

Nearly half of Detroit charter schools offer some form of transportation, though options may be limited. For instance, the Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences runs buses from a handful of stops across the city, but stops may not be within walking distance of each student’s home.

The Detroit Schools Guide provides a list of charters that offer some transportation, but the guide hasn’t been updated since 2020.

Before enrolling, call the school or visit its website to learn more about transportation options.

Detroit Public Schools Community District

DPSCD recommends that parents and guardians use PowerSchool, the district’s online information center, to find transportation options. Once you verify your address and contact information, you should be able to see your child’s scheduled transportation route. Parents can also call their child’s school directly, or the district’s Transportation Call Center at 313-945-8600.

DPSCD parents can access bus route information through Powerschool using the student reports tab, as this screenshot shows.

No matter where your child attends school, they are eligible for yellow bus service if it’s guaranteed through their individualized education program or the McKinney Vento Act for kids who are experiencing homelessness.

K-8 neighborhood public school: You qualify for yellow bus service if you attend your neighborhood school and live at least three-quarters of a mile from the school. Find your neighborhood school by entering your address on this district webpage.

If you move into a new neighborhood and the neighborhood school is full, DPSCD provides transportation to the next closest school.

High school: High schoolers are guaranteed a free pass to ride the city bus. They can pick up the passes at their school office. High schools in areas with limited DDOT service provide door-to-door buses or shuttles to school.
Application school: Children who go to these schools do not qualify for yellow bus service.

Schools of choice (districts outside the city)

Many of these districts do not provide transportation to Detroit students. Here are transportation policies for the handful of districts outside the city that enroll the largest numbers of Detroiters.

Oak Park Public Schools offers busing to Detroit students, though they must re-register each year. Parents should fill out a transportation request form or call 248-336-7601.
River Rouge School District operates bus routes across Detroit. See this map for bus stops. For more information or to select a stop, call 313-203-1497 or email transportation@rrsd.me.
Hazel Park Schools does not offer any transportation to general education students.
Ferndale Public Schools and Redford Union Schools do not offer transportation to students who enroll from outside the district.

Preschool

Some centers in the Great Start Readiness Program, Michigan’s state-funded preschool, are eligible for free transportation, but there are strict rules about parents signing children in and out of preschool. Some schools allow an older sibling attending the school to accompany the preschooler. See this list of preschool programs in Wayne County that offer transportation.

What if my child has a disability?

If your child’s individualized education program specifies that they need transportation, they are entitled to that transportation no matter what public school they attend. A little more than 2,000 kids attending DPSCD schools get this curb-to-curb service.

What if my family is homeless?

If your family doesn’t have stable housing and you want your child to continue at the school they attended before you lost your housing, they can have access to transportation under a federal law called the McKinney-Vento Act. Families who are staying in a shelter, temporarily staying in someone else’s home, or otherwise lacking stable housing should call their district (DPSCD: 313-748-6383).

High schoolers covered under this law get DDOT bus passes, unless they wouldn’t be able to get to and from school this way. In these cases the district may also offer shuttles or gas cards.

I’m having a school transportation problem. Whom can I call?

The DPSCD transportation help hotline is 313-945-8600.

DPSCD bus service for general education students is provided by the following contractors:

ABC Transportation: 313-835-2700
Trinity Transportation: 313-228-4522
DHT Transportation: 313 895-1300

DPSCD bus service for students with disabilities and homeless students is provided by the following contractors:

City Cab Company: 313-576-6344
New Detroit Cab Company: 313-633-5646
Checker Cab: 313-963-5000
Trinity Transportation: 313-228-4522
Regency Transportation: 313-615-0504

The Detroit Department of Transportation customer service phone number is 313-933-1300.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

Sarah Alvarez is the editor-in-chief of Outlier Media.

Michigan education leaders join push to help youth in foster care graduate on time

2022-12-16T22:01:36+00:00

Christian Randle expected to spend his senior year in a dual enrollment program that allows Michigan students to receive college credit while still in high school.

Instead, he’s working toward just a high school equivalency certificate.

He told the State Board of Education on Tuesday that he’s frustrated and feels like he’s starting high school over at age 17, because he’s been unable to get credit for schoolwork he did over the last five years while living in a series of foster homes and residential facilities.

Christian, who now lives in a group home in Farmington, addressed the board at its December meeting along with several other teenagers and young adults who were removed from their homes because of abuse and neglect. They’re asking the board to help ensure that others like them can graduate on time and with a solid education.

More than 10,000 children are in foster care in Michigan, according to the Children’s Defense Fund. About 40% of Michigan students in foster care graduate high school in four years, compared with 80% of all students.

That has to improve, State Board of Education members said Tuesday after hearing from the students and representatives of the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services.

“We want systemic change,” said board member Tiffany Tilley, a Democrat, who introduced a resolution asking the Legislature “to amend laws that will guarantee that vulnerable youth receive credit-bearing educational programming that will keep them on target to receive high school diplomas and allow them to access post-secondary opportunities.”

Board members unanimously approved the resolution but did not specify what legislative changes they want to see.

Foster youth and their advocates have a lot of ideas.

Above all, they want a law ensuring that foster children have access to accredited education programs.

Because of a shortage of traditional foster families, abused and neglected children are sometimes placed in group homes or in large residential facilities alongside children with mental health issues, drug addiction, or histories of juvenile delinquency, said Saba Gebrai, director of the Park West Foundation, which advocates for foster children. Students in these settings have restricted freedoms and often aren’t allowed to leave even for school, she said.

Instead, the facilities run classes themselves, and the programs might not be accredited, attorney Judith New of the Michigan Children’s Law Center said in a telephone interview. “These kids could be spending years of time in residential placement and then coming back to a regular school and having that school say, ‘You have no transferable credits at all. You have to start over in ninth grade.’”

Current law requires residential facilities to provide education services but does not require that the programs be accredited, which means their courses may not count toward state graduation requirements.

The Department of Health and Services, which contracts with residential facilities, did not immediately respond to questions about the lack of accreditation requirements.

Consequences for students can be dire

Tilley, the board of education member, learned about the systemic academic struggles of foster youth over the summer when she met a group of teenagers at a meeting convened by the Park West Foundation, which works with young people as they age out of the foster care system. Several believed they were earning high school credits during stays in residential care or juvenile justice facilities but left the programs years behind their peers, she said.

“My heart really went out to them,” Tilley said.

She wanted the rest of the state board to hear what she did, so she invited advocates and clients of Park West Foundation to December’s board meeting and introduced the resolution.

Consequences can be dire for children who are moved from place to place without consideration of their educational progress and continuity, Gebrai said in a telephone interview. Many drop out of school in frustration and live out their lives in poverty, because they don’t qualify for jobs that pay enough to support themselves, she said.

“They’ve already experienced so much trauma in separating from their families and from having experienced abuse, and this is another trauma of the same kind,” Gebrai said. “This is one more thing that’s going to exclude them from society.”

Gebrai wants courts and social workers to think about each child’s education plan before moving them to new foster homes or residential facilities. It’s not just about academics, she said.

“It’s having the same friends,” she said. “There’s dances, activities, sports, building memories and connectedness to a community.”

The Park West Foundation advocates only for foster care children — those removed from their homes for their own protection — but those placed in residential facilities for other reasons also would benefit from the changes advocates are requesting, Gebrai said.

NBC News previously reported on the state’s failure to provide a quality education to children in residential facilities.

How a student scrambled to make up credits

Bryanna Cook, now 21, was never in a residential facility, but she, too, fell behind her peers as she was raised in a series of foster homes starting at the age of 5. During high school alone, she changed schools more than 10 times, sometimes moving in the middle of a semester — too early to take final exams, but too late to receive credit in the new school, she said.

“It’s hard to get a footing anywhere or get the proper help or even know what school is about when you’re constantly moving,” she said in a phone interview Thursday.

As she entered senior year, Cook knew she wouldn’t have enough credits to graduate, so she enrolled in an online program on top of her regular classes at Lincoln High School in Warren. She took eight classes a day in person and five online to make up credits.

“My counselor told me she didn’t think it would be a good idea, that it would be too much, but I decided to do it anyway,” Cook said.

She remembers juggling “The Outsiders” for a 10th-grade English course while reading “Lord of the Flies” for 11th-grade English and practicing persuasive writing techniques for 12th-grade English.

“It was a lot,” she said.

That was three years ago, but the memory of that stressful time was fresh, she said, as she testified before the state school board.

“All foster children and youth in Michigan must have the same access and opportunities as everyone else to prepare for high school graduation, earn post-secondary credentials, and reach their full potential,” testified Cook, now a student at Macomb Community College.

Foster youth advocacy group outlines its proposals

Cook and other current and former foster youth presented a slate of legislative proposals they developed as members of Empowering Foster Youth Through Technology, an advocacy group supported by the Park West Foundation.

Among their proposals are laws that would:

Ensure that youth in residential placement have easy access to accurate transcripts.
Require foster parents to enroll foster children in school within one day of placement. (Current law allows five days.)
Ensure student transportation to school.
Require judicial oversight of student transfers between schools.
Increase stipends for foster parents to promote placement with families instead of residential facilities.
Provide support for children in foster care who are behind academically.

“A lot of that needs to happen,” Tilley said after the presentation.

State Superintendent Michael Rice agreed.

“First thing we need to do is get into the Legislature and make sure there’s no such thing as a non-credit-bearing course in Michigan public education, not for anybody,” he said. “Not acceptable.”

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

Bipartisan dyslexia reforms fail again in Michigan Legislature. What’s next?

2022-12-13T22:34:12+00:00

Letters seem to move around on the page for Evan Kaganov, but thanks to assistive technology and extra support at school and at home, he now reads well enough to manage all A’s and B’s in eighth grade at Bach Elementary School in Ann Arbor.

Among students with dyslexia in Michigan, Evan is lucky. Many don’t get the same support. That’s one reason why the state’s fourth grade reading scores are among the worst nationwide — and why a bipartisan group of state lawmakers supported a package of bills this year to support students with dyslexia.

But the legislation failed to make it into law, dashing optimism among advocates for students with dyslexia that this was their year.

Now that lawmakers have adjourned the 2021-22 legislative session, it’s back to square one. Democrats could breathe new life into the bill when they take control of the Legislature in January, but the path forward may be complicated by other legislative priorities.

Dyslexia is a common learning disability that affects between 5% and 20% of all people.

Students with dyslexia often struggle to make the connection between letters and sounds, which is a fundamental component of reading. But with high-quality instruction, these students can learn to read effectively, research shows.

Most states have some system in place to promptly identify and support dyslexic students, but Michigan law hardly mentions dyslexia.

The effort to write a comprehensive state policy on dyslexia has moved in fits and starts over the last two years. In May, the bills passed the Senate nearly unanimously in a rare demonstration of broad bipartisanship. The House had seven months to follow suit, but the Education Committee never brought the bills forward.

As the end of the legislative session approached, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer negotiated with GOP leaders over what, if anything, the Legislature would pass during the lame duck session, but little came of it.

The dyslexia package wasn’t a priority in those talks, effectively ensuring that the bills didn’t have a chance to become law, said Rep. Pamela Hornberger, R-Chesterfield Township, chair of the House Education Committee.

“I don’t think it was ever high on anyone’s radar,” she said. “It’s unfortunate. Hopefully it will pass in the next session.”

Proponents of the legislation say Hornberger was distracted by a tight race for state Senate, which she ultimately lost to Democrat Kevin Hertel. Hornberger said House leaders could have simply submitted it to a vote of the full chamber if they thought it had a chance of becoming law.

Advocates frustrated by stalled bills

Democratic state Sen. Jeff Irwin of Ann Arbor and Republican state Rep. Jim Runestad of White Lake — two sponsors of the bills — weren’t ready to give up on their legislation until the legislative session ended last week.

“I’m intensely frustrated that it’s sitting right on the precipice of passing and it isn’t getting done,” Irwin told the Ann Arbor Parent Advisory Council during a Zoom meeting last week.

Susan Schmidt, a retired special education teacher who now tutors children with dyslexia, is frustrated, too. She worked with Irwin and other stakeholders to draft the bill package.

“I’m extremely sad it didn’t pass, because there should be a sense of urgency in this state that we aren’t doing what we need to do to help kids learn to read,” said Schmidt, who recently was elected to the Ann Arbor Board of Education.

Schmidt sees the bills as a means to address more than dyslexia. They would change how reading is taught to all students, she said.

The bills spring out of fierce debates over the best way to teach children to read. In recent years, a consensus has developed among researchers and educators that phonics is an essential component of early literacy instruction, and that some curriculums and teacher training programs have given it short shrift.

Phonetic instruction systematically introduces children to letter sounds. It teaches them to recognize letter patterns, sound out words, and learn general rules such as: In many words ending with E — such as “make” or “pile” — usually the first vowel sound is long and the ending E is silent.

These concepts are particularly helpful to students with dyslexia, though advocates note that they are a fundamental component of literacy and helpful to all early readers.

There is no research on how much Michigan schools focus on phonics in literacy instruction, or what reading curriculums they use.

While many districts use effective curriculums that focus on phonics — notably the Detroit Public Schools Community District, which overhauled its literacy curriculum over the last five years — advocates say some districts are still using what’s called a “balanced literacy” approach.

That approach, which is also called “whole language,” relies on word repetition, teaches children to memorize “sight words,” and encourages them to figure out words based on context and images.

It didn’t work for Evan, said his mother, Caroline Kaganov.

“We shouldn’t be teaching kids how to guess. We should be teaching them how to use the English language, look at syllables, break down syllables … and figure out how vowels work together,” she said.

Schmidt also wants schools to return to phonics-based reading instruction.

“By teaching children how the English language is linguistically put together, you’re giving them the framework,” Schmidt said. “Forty percent, we know, are going to learn to read no matter what. For the 60% that need to … learn the code to read, this is very important to them.”

That’s especially true for children with dyslexia, Schmidt said.

Still some teachers are resistant, she said.

“Imagine you’ve done it one way for 20 years, and somebody comes along and says do something different,” she said. But, she said, “There’s also a whole lot of teachers that are like, ‘Oh, you have some ideas. I have some kids I don’t know how to reach,’ and they’re totally geeked.”

Dyslexia support: How interventions help readers

Evan was diagnosed with severe dyslexia in first grade, but only after his mother argued with district administrators, contacted a lawyer, and arranged for an independent evaluation so he could qualify for extra help. Now he gets a head start at home on in-class reading assignments, uses a computer program that reads along with him while highlighting words as it goes, and writes papers using a voice-to-text program.

Evan still reads much slower than his peers — 114 words per minute compared with the average of 153 for his grade level. But he now has the accommodations he needs to keep up in class.

Evan’s dyslexia was so severe that it was bound to be identified sooner or later, but children with less obvious signs of the condition might miss out on extra help they need, Kaganov said.

“My kid is severely dyslexic and I had to fight for intervention,” she said. “What about those kids who are just slightly dyslexic? They should have a right to attain literacy, too. I’m worried about those kids.”

Universal screening would ensure all children get the help they need, she said.

Here are key components of the legislation:

Requires districts to screen all K-3 students for dyslexia. Many would be able to use tests students already take.
Requires districts to provide specialized instruction to children who show signs of dyslexia.
Mandates training on dyslexia education for teachers working with young readers.
Requires teacher preparation programs to offer instruction specific to dyslexia. (Several programs previously told Chalkbeat they already meet this requirement.)

Some experts, including Rachael Gabriel, an education professor at the University of Connecticut, have cautioned that tests that screen for dyslexia aren’t reliable and that similar legislation in other states has been less effective than advocates hoped.

Other experts testified in favor of the bills, including Detroit Superintendent Nikolai Vitti and David Winters, head of the department of special education and communications sciences and disorders at Eastern Michigan University.

The bills could lead to higher costs for Michigan schools if they result in more students being identified for special education services. Schools are required to support students with disabilities, and financial analysts noted that the measures could save money in the long run if they decrease the number of people who need extra help in school and beyond because they struggle to read.

Bills face an uncertain path forward

After bipartisan shows of support for the bills, advocates believe they can pass a Legislature reconfigured by big wins for Democrats in November.

But while many Democrats support the dyslexia bills, they are more focused on a different reading reform. They want to repeal a portion of Michigan’s third grade reading law that requires districts to hold back third graders who are more than one grade level behind in reading.

While most struggling readers have been exempted from retention under the law, Black students are twice as likely to be retained. Democrats, including Whitmer, have made repealing it a priority.

Attaching the dyslexia bills to third grade reading reforms might help move the bills quickly through the legislature, or it might add a layer of complexity to already knotty debates over retention and literacy.

“Complication often leads to delay,” Irwin said. “I was hoping we could get (the dyslexia bills) moving and then have a separate discussion about how to right-size the Read by Grade 3 law.”

Despite bipartisan support for the dyslexia bills, some administrators have reservations. Notably, leaders of teachers colleges have argued that they already cover the basics of dyslexia with future teachers, and say they don’t need another mandate from Lansing.

Still, teachers unions — a key part of the Democratic coalition — support the bills.

“We think it would be great to have more training to recognize dyslexia in students so they can get the help they need,” said Thomas Morgan, spokesman for the Michigan Education Association.

Unions would like to see changes to the bills to ensure teachers are given the time to meet the demands of learning new teaching methods and providing extra support to poor readers.

“We’re already pretty overstretched,” said Janell Mansfield, political and legislative coordinator for the Michigan branch of the American Federation of Teachers.

But she added that a lot of teachers see phonics as an answer to Michigan’s sinking test scores.

“I definitely don’t think it’s too burdensome to ask teachers to do continuing education to learn how to support students with dyslexia,” she said.

Tracie Mauriello writes about state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

How should Michigan fund school transportation? A new report offers a blueprint.

2022-12-08T22:12:30+00:00

Rudyard Area Schools, a district in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, has just one school building to serve its entire K-12 enrollment of 627 students. And that building is about a 23-mile bus ride away from Trout Lake, a town of 330 people on the other side of the district.

Those daily school bus trips require a lot of fuel. Low student density across the district’s 400 square miles helps explain why Rudyard spends more money on transportation per student than all but a handful of Michigan districts — about $1,000, or 7% of its total budget.

But despite its outsize transportation costs, Rudyard receives little extra funding help to get students to school. And many other districts, especially in sparsely populated areas, also face the burden of busing costs that eat into funds for instruction and facilities.

A new report offers a way to change that, drawing on transportation funding models from other states to propose a fix for what education leaders say is a longstanding hole in Michigan’s school funding system.

Carrying out the proposal wouldn’t be cheap, and it would have to find space in the new Democratic majority’s already crowded legislative agenda.

But advocates say it could have a powerful impact on education by improving attendance and freeing up operating funds for instruction and other priorities.

As it stands, districts with higher transportation costs — particularly in sparsely populated rural areas — wind up diverting money from the classroom to cover those costs. The state has no funding stream dedicated to the costs of school transportation, and its school funding system doesn’t account for transportation cost differences among districts, says Wanda Cook-Robinson, superintendent of Oakland Schools, a county educational service agency in metropolitan Detroit, who is part of the group that issued the report.

School funding study lacked focus on transportation

The report came from the School Finance Research Collaborative, a nonpartisan education research group that commissioned a detailed assessment of the actual costs of providing a high quality education to Michigan students. That study was released in 2018 and updated last year.

The SFRC assessment has become a sort of blueprint for policymakers seeking to increase education funding in Michigan. It emphasizes providing additional funding for students who are most expensive to educate, such as English learners.

But until now, the study lacked any discussion of how to fund transportation, which accounted for about 3% of school spending last year.

“I’m hopeful that (the new report is) a step in the right direction,” said Tom McKee, superintendent of Rudyard Area Schools. “It’s one of the things we wish came out of the report originally.”

Transportation costs are among the most pressing concerns of Michigan’s rural superintendents, according to a recent report from Michigan State University.

Funding formula would group districts by density

The SFRC transportation report was put together by an education consulting group, Augenblick, Palaich, and Associates. To develop their recommendations, researchers reviewed transportation funding policies from every U.S. state, narrowing the list down to models they felt would work best in Michigan.

Their final recommendation centers on districts’ student density, as measured by bus riders per square mile. Districts would be grouped by density. Then, to encourage efficient spending, they would receive funding equal to the average transportation spending for districts in their group.

Here’s an example provided by the SFRC: Say a district that currently spends $848 per rider on busing is in a density group with districts that spend an average of $927 per rider. That district would receive full reimbursement of its current transportation costs. Meanwhile, a district in the same density group that spends $2,774 per rider would be reimbursed up to the group average: $927 per rider.

Implementing the plan would be costly: The consulting group hired to conduct the study pegged the cost at $402 million per year, which would amount to a 2% increase in the overall schools budget.

But the added spending could pay off in the classroom by, for example, helping to address the high rates of chronic absenteeism that have set off alarm bells for state and local leaders this year.

A study of school transportation systems in 50 large Michigan districts this year found that attendance rates increased by as much as 1 percentage point when economically disadvantaged families had access to a school bus.

Even if districts didn’t use the added funding to expand their transportation offerings, “providing funding for transportation will allow districts to spend the money they would otherwise spend on school transportation in the classroom or on other interventions that could increase attendance or test scores,” said study author Danielle Edwards, an education researcher at Brown University.

As Democrats take full control of the levers of power in Lansing for the first time in decades, they will likely look to the SFRC to guide their education spending proposals.

State Sen. Rosemary Bayer, D-Beverly Hills, said the new leadership’s priorities are still being negotiated. But she thinks transportation funding is important.

“It’s such a direct and obvious way to deal with our attendance problem,” she said. “Just pick the kids up and take them to school.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s budget recommendation, viewed as a key signal of the Democrats’ education spending plans, is slated for a February release.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

Correction: Dec. 9, 2022: A previous version of this story said that Danielle Edwards’ transportation study is about Detroit; in fact, the Detroit Public Schools Community District is excluded from her analysis of attendance rates.

Yes, commute times matter in Michigan school choice

2022-11-03T20:15:47+00:00

Test scores aren’t the only factor that parents consider when they take advantage of Michigan’s school choice policies. They also want to live near their children’s schools.

That’s a finding of new research on school choice in Michigan. While seemingly obvious, the conclusion adds evidence to a long-running policy debate in Michigan, which has robust school choice policies but few rules to ensure that students have school options in their own neighborhoods.

Researchers Danielle Sanderson Edwards and Joshua Cowen used six years of student address data from 2012-13, tracking residential moves for every student in the state who either attended a charter school or a school outside their own district via Michigan’s “schools of choice” policy. The study was funded by the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education.

More than one-fifth of Michigan’s 1.4 million students choose to attend a public school not assigned to them.

Michigan allows students to enroll in a school district even if they don’t live within that district’s boundaries, provided that the receiving district agrees to accept students through the state’s interdistrict choice program.

Students can also pass on their local school and enroll in charter schools, publicly funded schools that, in Michigan, are typically run by for-profit management companies and aren’t controlled by an elected school board.

Among the study’s key findings:

Half of families who left schools of choice programs in Michigan did so because they had moved into the district they were already attending.
Families that had longer commutes to their chosen school were more likely to exit school choice programs compared with those whose school choices did not lead to longer commutes.
Students who moved residences were more likely to exit school choice programs and attend their local school district instead.

“Guess what, parents want their kids to go to school near where they live,” said Cowen, a professor at Michigan State. “Next to a school’s academics, distance is by far the biggest thing for parents. The longer your commute time, the less likely you are to stay in that school.”

Advocates of school choice have long framed Michigan policies as a way to help students whose neighborhood schools are struggling.

“All the work I’ve done has been to help kids for whom the schools they’re assigned don’t work,” said former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in 2017. In 2016, DeVos led a successful push to block legislation that would have given the city of Detroit more control over where schools were located in the city, a change that advocates hoped would, among other things, reduce commute times for families.

Cowen said the data shows that narrow, choice-focused policymaking ignores families’ broader needs, such as proximity to school.

The data “is taking issue with this general sense that school choice is the cure-all,” Cowen said.

Indeed, educators have argued for years that school choice policies destabilize schools by encouraging families to frequently change districts.

“We have created a culture where a parent gets angry at a school or doesn’t like what we do, they take their child and they go to another school which is absolutely detrimental to children,” said Christina Gibson, superintendent of Eastpointe Community Schools, during a panel discussion last week. About 25% of students in her district are enrolled through schools of choice.

But the data suggests that schools of choice may also be a pathway to stability for families. Cowen said that findings indicate that families use schools of choice to enroll their children and secure a place in a district where they can’t yet afford housing, then move into that district later on.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

As mask battles fade, Michigan school boards face a new wave of culture war debates

2022-10-12T12:00:00+00:00

Two years ago, while COVID was raging through Michigan, so were the battles at local school board meetings. Across the state, volunteer board members who typically pored over budgets and contracts struggled to contend with a vocal public sharply divided over mask mandates and online learning.

Those particular battles have subsided, but the political passions they ignited haven’t. On the contrary, the groups that rallied community support around defending or fighting COVID health precautions are now gearing up to engage their local school boards on a broader range of contentious culture war issues, such as history curriculum, book bans and the rights of transgender students.

Just Monday, the Dearborn fire marshal shut down a school board meeting there after hundreds of protesters showed up to demonstrate against LGBTQ books. The meeting devolved into chaos and was adjourned before members got through the agenda that included approving contracts for classroom projectors, adult education services, high school security guards, and asbestos removal. The board had also expected to have approved 43 new hires, discussed cell phone policies, and voted on the superintendent’s annual goals. The board is scheduled to reconvene on Thursday at Fordson High School, which can accommodate a larger crowd.

With elections weeks away, some experts are worried that Michigan school boards could become paralyzed if they again become stages for a fractious national discourse driven by partisan or ideological politics.

Already, these contests are attracting a new, more activist wave of candidates pledging to govern school districts in the name of parents’ rights. They’ve found a champion in GOP gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, a conservative TV commentator who has put cultural issues at the center of her education agenda. They’ve been met, in turn, by slates of activist candidates on the progressive side.

Meanwhile, some board members are walking away from their positions or choosing not to run for reelection, saying they’re frustrated by political disputes diverting them from the job they thought they signed up for: helping children learn.

That job has become significantly more urgent. After two years of disruptions due to the pandemic, school boards must contend with falling test scores, student mental-health issues, teacher burnout and the task of allocating billions of dollars of relief money from the federal government to deal with those problems. But protracted gridlock over social issues could make it harder for them to address the urgent challenges facing Michigan’s 1.4 million public schoolchildren.

Don Wotruba, executive director of the Michigan Association of School Boards, warns that an “arms race” between progressives and conservatives in school board elections would mean “nothing gets done.”

“When we have agenda-focused individuals, it does disrupt the progress of the school board, because they spend an inordinate amount of time” on issues unrelated to student achievement, Wotruba said. “While they’re doing that, it’s not a productive, high-functioning school board.”

PAC endorses candidates advocating ‘parental choice’

Where some see the potential for gridlock, others see a mark of democratic vitality in Michigan.

“These organizations are spontaneous grass-roots organizations that self-organize and push for a change, and that’s the beauty of American democracy,” said Jeff Shaeper, who is running for school board in the Troy School District with the support of the conservative Get Kids Back to School PAC. The PAC’s mission has grown from fighting school mask and vaccine mandates to opposing what it calls “the erosion of traditional curriculum” and “wokeness.” It’s now helping dozens of candidates across Michigan run for school board on a platform of “parental choice.”

Schaeper, who questions the well-established efficacy of the COVID vaccine in reducing the severity of illness, said he would “break the groupthink” on the Troy school board while supporting civil discourse.

“I can disagree, but I can keep it cordial,” he said. “You know, I don’t call them scum-sucking bottom feeders, which I’ve been called. I keep calm.”

Matthew Wilk, who runs the Get Kids Back to School PAC, is a former Northville school board member and a veteran of the fiery debates over COVID that dominated board discussions in the first year of the pandemic. After he wrote in a social media post that COVID “only exists in falsified statistics,” the school board voted to remove him as president.

Wilk said his PAC is not donating money to candidates, but he has shown candidates how to file paperwork and helped them craft their messages.

Wilk says he wants his candidates to move away from political hot-button issues and push districts to improve student achievement.

“Now that we’ve seen the erosion of test scores, I’d like to see the discussion turn almost exclusively to that topic,” he said.

Yet platforms published by some of the candidates his PAC endorsed show that they are largely focused on ideological education battles over mask mandates and critical race theory, which is generally not even part of K-12 education. Dixon, whose campaign has focused on these issues, spoke at an event hosted by the PAC last month.

Wilk’s group alienated even some candidates who were pushing for reopening school buildings amid the pandemic. After Wilk endorsed four candidates for the Bloomfield Hills school board, three of them asked to have their names removed from the PAC’s website.

“I interpreted certain things (on the PAC website) as being part of one party,” said Paul Kolin, a Bloomfield Hills school board member who is running for reelection. Kolin, who pushed for in-person instruction in his district, was also removed as president of the board last year after he called the police about a list of anti-mask parents that was circulating among district families.

“School boards have become very political, but hopefully when we come out of (the pandemic), this is a nonpartisan position.”

Pandemic focused spotlight on school boards

Traditionally, school board candidates are drawn from PTOs and athletic booster clubs, said Michael Montgomery, a political scientist and education consultant who lectures at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. They usually bring positive and pragmatic agendas to their board service, he said.

“The growing importance of culture war issues to America’s right, however, has brought out large numbers of a different kind of parent activist across the entire country – people who are against this or that and will take every opportunity, every public comment period, every local election, to push their agenda,” Montgomery said.

Bree Moeggenberg, a local education activist in Isabella County, now runs the local branch of Moms for Liberty, a self-described parents’ rights group that started in Florida last year and since has spread quickly throughout the country.

Such groups grew in response to school board decisions during the pandemic — about online learning, mask requirements, vaccines and other health precautions — that suddenly became extremely disruptive for parents. At the same time, online classrooms gave many families an unusually intimate look at their children’s learning process.

As attention to board meetings increased, so did acrimony. In some cases, the divisiveness led to confrontations, threats, lawsuits, and even physical assaults. It also led to school board resignations in Grand Haven, Rice Lake, and elsewhere in Michigan and across the country.

Moeggenberg was a force behind an effort last year to recall Mount Pleasant school board members who had supported masks and vaccines as a precaution against the spread of COVID, and teaching children about the effects of systemic racism.

The recall effort was unsuccessful, but one of the targeted members later resigned. Twelve people now are vying for that seat. Because of the timing of the vacancy it will be filled by board appointment rather than general election.

Six other candidates are running in November for two full-term seats on the board.

The Michigan Secretary of State does not track numbers of candidates or vacancies in school board races, but both appear to have ticked up in some pockets across Michigan, particularly Republican leaning districts.

In Lowell Area Schools in Kent County, for example, eight candidates are running for three seats. Last election cycle, five people ran for four seats.

Ten candidates are running for three seats for full six-year terms on the Huron Valley Board of Education in Oakland County. Another two candidates are running to fill an unexpired vacancy. In 2020, a more typical school board election year, six candidates ran for five seats.

Meanwhile, frustrated board members in some districts are finishing out their terms but choosing not to run for reelection.

“I was disillusioned by how much time my school board service was spent not talking about student achievement,” said one board member from Oakland County who is stepping down when her term ends in December. She asked not to be identified because she was not authorized to speak with the media about her board service as required by the board’s policies.

“Every minute we’re spending responding to angry constituent emails about masks is a minute we’re not spending on students’ academic and emotional well-being,” she said.

State Rep. Darrin Camilleri, the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee who is now running for state Senate, decries the political climate that focused vitriol on school board members. “Think about the example that our students are seeing from adults who are creating chaos at their local school district,” he said.

Conservatives say they’re focused on education

That characterization is unfair to parents who attended board meetings to express concerns — in a civil way — about district mask policies, said state Sen. Jim Runestad, a Republican on the Education Committee who is running for reelection. He said conservative parents have every right to raise concerns about schools’ instruction on social issues, and he applauded those who are running for office after feeling that their perspectives weren’t being taken into account.

“It’s a battle between the ‘educrats’ who say we need more social engineering and the parents who say, ‘No, let us do that, you need to focus on the basics of education to make sure that kids are learning the arithmetic and reading that they need to know,’” he said.

Moeggenberg and other members of her Moms for Liberty chapter have been knocking on doors and distributing yard signs to support conservatives in Isabella County school board races.

Candidates she’s talked to are motivated by the sense that schools are leaving parents out of important decisions about their children’s education and exposing students to controversial ideologies.

“So many people are passionate about what’s taking place,” Moeggenberg said. “It’s about making sure that before topics are discussed about sexuality, gender, and critical race theory, that we’re made aware. I would like to be alerted so I can discuss that with my child and help them walk through that.”

Culture war issues resonate with voters because they make for great campaign talking points, said Ronald Rapoport, a political scientist and professor emeritus at the College of William and Mary. The real policy work of school board members is more complicated to communicate, so it’s harder to get voters interested in them, he said.

“One is the easy issue of, ‘I don’t want Drag Queen Story Hour,’” because it’s easy to imagine even if it isn’t actually occurring, said Rapoport. “If you want to solve the problems of school absenteeism and teachers leaving, that’s much harder.”

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

‘We all know what we need’: Detroit youth work to boost mental well-being

2022-10-03T21:47:09+00:00

Across Detroit, young people responded to an ambitious pitch this spring: Come up with a strong idea for a program that would address the emotional and mental well-being of their peers, and possibly earn thousands of dollars to pull it off.

The result was scores of ideas that were as diverse as the young people themselves: A wellness room with Zen and calming activities. A spa day for male youth with incarcerated parents. A kitchen renovation so youth can come together for dinner and fellowship. A safe haven for LGBTQ students.

Those are just a few of the 40 ideas, proposed by people ages 9 to 23, that have received a piece of a $544,000 pot of money provided by the Skillman Foundation (a Chalkbeat funder), part of a new grant program aimed at addressing mental health and wellness. The awardees received between $5,000 and $20,000 to develop their plans.

The one thread through all of these concepts is that even though there are adult allies helping, the students were in charge. They came up with the ideas, they decide how the money is spent, and they decide how to turn their ideas into reality.

“We all know what we want. We all know what we need,” said Charles Patterson, 16, a junior at Davis Aerospace Technical High School.

What they need, Charles said, is connection with one another.

Charles is part of a youth group at the Eastside Community Network whose grant will go in part toward renovating a kitchen at the center and turning it into a place where young people can go to cook, eat meals, and spend time together.

Young people like Charles “are ready and capable leaders,” who are “enriched with lots of ideas,” said Lindsey Barrett, an associate program officer at Skillman who led the effort.

Charles said the pandemic left him feeling isolated, and turned him into an introvert because he spent so much time learning remotely. Things are better for students now that they’re learning in person, he said, but not all young people have re-engaged.

“You have to consider that maybe certain students went through something over the pandemic, maybe they had a family member pass away,” Charles said. “For me, three of my family members passed away during the pandemic and it was hard for my family, and for me personally.”

Report after report has highlighted the heightened mental health and emotional needs of students due to the pandemic. Long stretches of remote learning left students feeling isolated and disconnected from school and their classmates. Educators are trying to address that by investing COVID relief money into mental health, but staffing challenges have hampered efforts.

In Detroit, young people have been telling officials at Skillman that they need safe spaces to connect with their peers and the community. They also said they wanted to use physical activity, the arts, and creative expression to create these safe spaces, Barrett said.

“We know that these bright young people are really prioritizing their wellness, and they’re doing it by leading their own solutions,” Barrett said

On a recent Saturday, dozens of the grantees gathered in a room at the Northwest Activities Center in Detroit to receive training on project planning that was facilitated by the Neutral Zone, an Ann Arbor youth-led organization. They spread out on the floor, working in groups as they plotted their goals and the steps they need to take to accomplish those goals.

The young men from Developing Despite Distance, a program for males ages 10-24 who have a parent who is incarcerated, already knew one of their signature ideas was to take the group out for a spa day. Their adult leader, Tiffany Brown, guided them through the steps they would need to take to get there, like finding a spa and booking it in advance.

“We passed one coming up here,” Michael Glenn said as the group tossed around spa ideas. Michael, 16, is a junior at the School at Marygrove, and he’s looking forward to the spa day to help him nurse an old back injury from football.

Getting young people involved in addressing their mental health needs is important, Michael said, because many of them would otherwise stay silent about their struggles.

“Young adults don’t really express themselves,” he said. “It’s not that we’re afraid to. I guess it feels uncomfortable or unnatural. We don’t want to be a burden to others. So … this really helps out.”

Developing Despite Distance provides group counseling to the young men. The organization also works with them to connect with their incarcerated parents and helps them with visits.

The grant program “is a blessing,” said Brown. Not only will it allow for the spa day, but it will also pay for fitness training, more counseling, and a stipend for the young men for participating in Saturday counseling sessions. It’s the first time the participants will receive pay.

“When we have money in our pockets, we feel better, and that is really a form of self care,” Brown said.

Brown has often talked to the youth about her own self-care practices, which include getting massages. It gave the students the idea to do the same for themselves. Society, Brown said, doesn’t always give Black boys and men “the space to act like their wellness matters.”

“They’re often just putting on this mask like they’re OK. And so places where we can intentionally make them pause and really identify how they’re feeling in a safe, non-judgmental way, and provide support so that they can refill and recharge — that’s the root of what we do.”

Having an incarcerated parent means these young men have challenges that go beyond the pandemic.

“My biggest challenge is that they’re in schools, community centers, on our sports teams, and we’re not acknowledging that they even exist as a community … as a system. So the biggest challenge is that they are often suffering silently,” Brown said.

Over at the Eastside Community Network, cooking was the most popular program before the pandemic. Students would come together, cook, and then dine together.

“The students have said that … builds community,” said Tanya Aho, the adult leader for the group. But the kitchen was in need of a remodel, so the cooking sessions ended.

“This is completely student-led,” Aho said of the kitchen remodel. “They did the budget, they did all the research of the cabinets and the stove. They’ve done the design. They did the demo. They’ll be painting the cabinets.”

Charles, who has relied on sports and drawing to stay connected, wasn’t there for the demolition. But he’s involved in all of the planning and helping choose the finish on the cabinets, the color of the floors, and the type of countertops. He said bringing back the cooking program will be good, in particular, for students who feel disconnected.

“It brings a family atmosphere to our youth group,” he said.

LGBT training video for Michigan teachers rankles Republicans

2022-09-20T22:40:32+00:00

Bryce was 14 when he came out to his father. He was 12 when he came out to his mother. But he was just 10 when he came out in elementary school.

“In school, being trans is very awful,” said Bryce, now 19. “It is horrible.”

But for him, he said, it would have been worse at home.

When he finally did come out, he said, his parents ridiculed him. His father refused to call him “son,” he said, and his stepmother locked him outside in a rage.

“They were very aggressive and immature and emotionally abusive,” said Bryce, who lives in a rural area in the Lower Peninsula. He asked Chalkbeat to withhold his last name and town out of fear for his safety.

Bryce said being able to be himself at school saved him. He would bind his chest with an Ace bandage every morning in the middle school locker room to hide the shape of his body beneath a loose hoodie.

“I don’t think I’d even be alive now, to be honest,” he said. “I’m very lucky to be here today.”

Now he worries about other trans schoolchildren in light of a controversy that erupted last week over teacher training around the care of LGBTQ+ students. The training, from the Michigan Department of Education, exposed a gap between teachers’ obligation to inform parents about potential mental health issues and their responsibility to shield children from potential harm.

The controversy emerged last Wednesday after conservative activist Christopher Rufo tweeted a 43-second video clip excerpted from a nine-hour professional development series offered by the MDE.

In the clip, which was later criticized by both Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and her Republican opponent, Tudor Dixon, a trainer suggests that teachers can talk with parents about a student expressing suicidal thoughts, without having to reveal that gender identity or sexual orientation is a cause of their distress.

Rufo tweeted that the clip proves MDE instructed teachers how to “facilitate” transgender students’ transitions and keep their chosen names and pronouns “secret from parents, even if the child is suicidal.” (Rufo is also one of the activists behind the conservative outcry over the teaching of critical race theory in America’s K-12 schools.)

The video, Rufo told Fox News last week, is an example of a way schools nationwide are radicalizing children, and he warned that parents need to be on guard.

MDE calls those accusations “patently false” and said the training helps schools create inclusive environments for vulnerable students who are more likely than classmates to be bullied and to attempt suicide. State superintendent Michael Rice has defended the training as important for teachers to better understand vulnerable students and help them feel safe and accepted in school.

Dixon, who has staked out conservative positions on a range of LGBTQ issues in schools, seized on the video Tuesday to call for Rice’s resignation. “Someone who has such contempt for parents as to instruct staff to hide information from them about their struggling child is unfit to oversee our education system,” she said at a press conference in Lansing, during which she criticized Whitmer for not taking a stronger stand.

Whitmer’s administration has itself raised concerns about the training. On Friday, the state’s chief operating officer, Tricia Foster, sent Rice a letter saying the training video goes outside the scope of his department’s responsibilities and asked him to ensure that trainings “comply with all applicable regulations, maintain department guidelines, and are reflective of best practices.”

Foster’s letter did not specify which regulations, guidelines, and practices she meant, and the governor’s office did not respond to questions.

The guidance in the video is consistent with MDE policy that has been in place since 2016, when the state board adopted guidance for schools around LGBTQ issues.

“The unique needs and concerns of each student should be addressed on a case-by-case basis, with a student-centered approach that includes the ongoing engagement” of the student, relevant school personnel, and parents “except in situations where educators are aware parental knowledge might threaten the student’s safety and/or welfare,” the policy says.

Whitmer campaign spokeswoman Maeve Coyle said that the governor “knows parents are crucial and should be involved in decisions about their children’s education” and that’s why she created the Michigan Parents Council to advise her.

Along with Dixon, the GOP-controlled Michigan Senate also condemned the professional development program in a resolution that passed on party lines. The resolution reaffirms “the fundamental right of parents to direct the education of their children.”

On Friday, the two Republicans on the eight-member state Board of Education also called for Rice’s resignation. Nikki Snyder of Dexter called the videos a “fundamental betrayal” and Tom McMillin of Oakland Township said they were evidence that “the assault on parents and parental rights has ramped up.”

Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, said the training could have been better but that conservatives are making political hay out of almost nothing.

“There is a silliness to this outrage by the right,” he said. “Some of this is just about scaring parents into thinking they have no agency or oversight of their children. We don’t live in that world.”

But he said MDE made missteps when it provided this training directly to teachers instead of guiding school districts to set up their own policies, ideally calling for consultations with trained mental health providers.

“My experience with MDE is that professional development they develop isn’t entirely based on evidence or rigor,” he said.

Rufo did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

For Bryce, school was the safest place to come out as transgender, and he wouldn’t have done so if he thought his teachers were obligated to tell his parents he had started using a different name and pronouns at school.

He wants it to be safe for other young people to be themselves at school, too.

“There are reasons why people don’t come out to parents, whether it’s safety or their parents aren’t going to accept them,” Bryce said. “I lost my family. That’s why I waited so long.”

He said he understands the view among conservatives like Rufo and Dixon that parents should direct their children’s education and that they need information to do that.

“We aren’t trying to silence the voices of our parents,” he said. “We just want to be in a safe and loving environment while we learn and grow as human beings.”

Siblings Cloud and Seassun Rosenfeld, who have a supportive family, said they didn’t have those kinds of worries for themselves when they came out — but they have friends who are frightened to tell parents they are struggling with gender identity issues.

“If there’s a policy that teachers have to or should tell parents, then kids who live in fear of their parents knowing wouldn’t tell anyone,” said Cloud, a seventh-grader in Ann Arbor who identifies as gender queer.

Cloud put their concerns bluntly: “If a teacher is obligated to tell that a child’s suicidal thoughts are around gender issues, that could result in the child actually committing suicide.”

Their father, Dave Rosenfeld, shares the concern.

“Not all LGBT kids, trans kids, get the support they need at home. That makes it even more important that they get the support they need at school,” he said. “LGBT kids who are not supported, who do not get the support they need, are at a massive risk of bad outcomes” such as running away, homelessness, drug addiction, suicide, and dropping out of school.

As a father, he understands the need for parents to be informed, but he said schools’ first obligation is to protect children from harm.

It’s a tough line for educators to walk, he acknowledged.

“Schools should work together with parents to educate the child, but if there’s any potential danger to the child, you have to respect the child’s choices,” he said. “Have some faith in the competence of children to know if it’s something they’re ready for their parents to know about.”

The uproar over the training videos demonstrates the need for more training around LGBT issues, not less, he said.

“The backlash against that type of professional development is born out of religious fanaticism,” he said. “I find it disgusting, because what they are advocating for … will really cause harm to kids who haven’t done anything wrong at all. All they want to do is get an education like all the other kids.”

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

New report spotlights unique needs of rural schools in Michigan

2022-09-19T20:31:46+00:00

Tom McKee was an 11th grader in rural Michigan when a “grow your own” teacher training program sold him on a career in education.

Even so, McKee might have not imagined that he would one day go on to work as a superintendent, athletic director, and bus driver in rural Michigan — much less that he would hold those jobs simultaneously, as he did in his former job at Whitefish Township Community Schools.

McKee, now superintendent of Rudyard Area Schools in the Upper Peninsula, says he loves rural education for the tight-knit schools and the chance to make an impact on kids in his own community. But he says districts like his face challenges that haven’t been taken seriously enough by the state.

“Wearing those multiple hats is not appropriate,” he said. “But we do that in our rural communities because we have to to survive.”

Dozens of rural superintendents echoed that sentiment in recent years in interviews with researchers at Michigan State University. Rural schools face a unique set of challenges linked to their geography, district leaders told the authors of a new report, titled “Educational Opportunities and Community Development in Rural Michigan: A Roadmap for State Policy.”

The research team studied districts that the National Center for Education Statistics defines as “rural” or “town.” These districts cover most of Michigan’s land area, but they are sparsely populated: There are 8 students per square mile in the average rural district, compared with 137 per square mile in nonrural districts.

Large, sparsely populated districts make for long, expensive bus routes. Attracting teachers to isolated locales can be difficult. Access to medical services, mental health providers, and high-speed internet can be hard to come by.

Meeting those challenges come with a price tag. But Michigan spends only a small amount to specifically support isolated rural schools through a $9 million program that the report calls “a very low, poorly calibrated, and inadequate recognition of the cost disadvantages experienced by rural schools.”

“There’s nothing approximating a rural policy agenda in this state, and that’s going to have to change,” said lead researcher David Arsen, professor of education policy and K-12 administration. “The whole policy debate has been heavily urban focused,” he added.

State officials tout the latest education budget, which included funding increases for all schools and specific boosts for student mental health and for isolated districts. A federal infrastructure bill passed in 2021 will send at least $100 million to Michigan to connect 398,000 residents to the internet, about a quarter of those estimated to be without a connection.

The new state budget includes funding to help school districts consolidate, which some say would help reduce costs for small, rural districts in particular. Some communities view school consolidations as a threat to local identity.

Despite the new investments, many superintendents said they need more funds in particular for transportation, especially given the current price of fuel, which is down from its peak in June, but well above last year’s prices.

Rural districts spend on average $200 more per pupil on transportation than nonrural districts, and the 25 rural districts with the highest transportation spending averaged $2,170 per pupil, or nearly a quarter of their base funding.

Rural districts in Michigan are generally represented by Republican lawmakers, many of whom have fought for additional funding for their schools. Still, the Michigan GOP, which has controlled the legislature for a decade, has largely focused its education agenda on school choice policies that mostly affect urban areas.

“I think school choice is good,” Arsen said. “It’s not particularly effective in areas where you have a low density of schools like rural Michigan.”

Steve Yoder, the GOP chairman for Michigan’s first congressional district, which covers the Upper Peninsula and the northern Lower Peninsula, said his party ought to put more emphasis on supporting rural education.

“Typically a lot of Republicans like to be on the conservative side and be fiscally responsible, but in a lot of these underserved communities, Republicans need to get the message out that we are here to put money into those communities to recruit teachers and get those grades up,” he said. “That’s something that we need to work on.”

Growing up in several school districts in rural Maine, Jessica Drescher, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University who studies rural educational opportunity, saw firsthand the constraints facing isolated districts.

In a national study of rural districts, Drescher found that rural students overall performed slightly below their nonrural counterparts on standardized tests. But she found that the differences were much more stark when she made comparisons within racial groups: Rural white students fared significantly worse than nonrural white students, and so on within most racial categories.

Rural students experience poverty at similar rates to urban students in Michigan, putting them at a significant disadvantage compared with their suburban peers. Poverty is correlated with various negative academic outcomes.

Policymakers have to look more narrowly at the needs of rural areas if they want to make a difference for students there, the report argues.

Allen Pratt, executive director of the National Rural Education Association, agrees.

“You don’t want a cookie cutter that’s designed for Brooklyn when you work in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan,” he said.

Arsen and his team of four researchers spent four years interviewing 25 rural superintendents. Their districts cover 88% of Michigan’s total land area but enroll fewer than a third of the state’s students. Their schools are smaller, their staffs are harder to recruit, and their students are more spread out. While some rural districts share resources through countywide partnerships, many superintendents told researchers that they struggle to offer specialized programs, such as AP courses, because of the high cost of running a classroom with only a handful of students.

Despite their low enrollments, rural schools are inextricably linked to their communities, the report found. They are key drivers of local economies and often serve as central gathering places and sometimes even locations for funeral services, according to the report.

“If the power went out, we had our school open, because we had a generator, and people came and slept,” McKee said of his former district in Whitefish Township, which enrolls 53 students.

His current employer, Rudyard Area Schools, is larger, with roughly 650 students, and is a critical resource for the surrounding community. The district hosts dental clinics and is one of only a few districts in the Upper Peninsula with a school-based health center, which offers routine checkups and mental health care.

McKee often finds himself doing double-duty because attracting and retaining staff is so difficult. The district’s average teacher salary is $41,000, in the bottom third of the state. Paying teachers more is hard, he said, given the district’s transportation spending of roughly $1,000 per pupil, which is in the top 3% statewide. And it’s tough to persuade prospective employees to move to a remote area. McKee says more than two-thirds of his employees graduated from Rudyard or a district nearby.

Arsen said lawmakers can help by prioritizing equity, efficiency, and local control when making policy decisions.

Among the report’s recommendations to the Legislature are to:

Pay for a study of the costs of isolated education, then cover those costs.
Encourage cooperation among rural communities to pool resources needed to bring broadband to the region and make it more affordable and accessible to rural residents.
Enact place-based education policies that specifically address the needs of rural communities.
Ensure education policies are integrated with broader community development strategies.

“These rural schools are the heart of communities,” he said. “They are places where people really care for the kids. We were impressed by that, but we were also impressed that it’s tough, and they need additional help to serve the kids well. … With changes in policy that are within reach, we could make a lot of progress.”

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan school board hears prayers and explicit passages as book wars flare

2022-09-16T18:27:05+00:00

Part prayer service, part sexually explicit read-aloud.

That’s what Michigan Board of Education meetings sound like lately as they’ve become a battlefield for the latest culture war issue: restricting student access to books with sexual content.

Parents have been bringing their concerns to the board during public comment sessions that sometimes last more than two hours. Their pleas are passionate, but they’re also misplaced.

The state Board of Education has no jurisdiction over local school libraries and no power to legislate. That hasn’t stopped parents and conservative activists from queuing up online and in person to have their say at the board’s monthly meetings in Lansing.

“Local superintendents and local school boards look up to the state board to see what their recommendations are, so if the state Board of Education can just affirm what we feel,” that would be helpful, said Bree Moeggenberg, a mother of three and chair of the Isabella County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a conservative nonprofit that has fought school mask mandates and lessons about LGBT rights and critical race theory.

Activists also have been taking their concerns to local school boards, where they’ve met some success, and to public libraries, seeking to defund them over objections to materials in their collections. Just this week, Dearborn Public Schools responded to parent complaints by removing seven library books that depict homosexuality, abuse, and rape.

Advocates for free expression worry that complaints about sexually explicit material might be just the start for conservatives who may ultimately try to restrict access to other kinds of content that they deem objectionable.

Book banning has a long history. In the 17th century, Puritans were burning copies of William Pynchon’s “The Meritorious Price of our Redemption.” Classics like “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Catcher in the Rye” often appear on banned-book lists because of racial slurs, foul language, violence, and references to drug use.

But banning activity has surged in recent months amid a growing conservative movement to control students’ exposure to lessons about racism, sexism, sexual orientation, and other sensitive topics in public schools. Data collected by PEN America, a group that advocates for free expression in literature, show that school districts across the country banned 1,145 books just between July 2021 and April 2022 — numbers not seen in decades.

In Michigan, growing numbers of parents and activists are showing up to state Board of Education meetings to advocate for stricter regulation of books. Some pray before their testimony. Others warn board members they will go to hell for not working to ban what they see as objectionable books from school libraries. Many dive right in, reading as quickly as they can from the most sexually explicit passages they’ve found in school library books before their three minutes run out and state board Executive Marilyn Schneider cuts them off.

“Dear Lord, I come to you this afternoon to ask you to protect these parents that speak today and are trying to protect their children against the devil that is hard at work,” one caller from Wayne County began on Tuesday. Twelve seconds later the caller, who identified herself only as Billie from Wayne County, read aloud an explicit passage about oral sex from “On the Bright Side, I’m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God,” which Publishers Weekly classifies as a children’s book.

Board members listened to her and more than 30 other speakers Tuesday but did not respond. They typically refrain from responding during public comment sessions.

Lately, most public comment sessions have been dominated by callers like Billie, but at Tuesday’s meeting, several people offered an alternative perspective. They said many of the books being challenged help readers see themselves in stories so they feel less alone in the world.

“They contain important messages,” Kat Draeger of Fenton, a fifth-year student at Michigan State University, testified on Tuesday. “They help people look at the world through a different lens.”

Reading about bullying, sexuality, and suicide, for example, can help students cope with circumstances they may find themselves in, she said.

She mentioned “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson and “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe — both among the books conservative activists are targeting because of their depictions of sexual assault and gender dysphoria.

“Young people need to learn social skills to understand the world around them and how they fit into it,” Draeger said. “Developing good citizens and healthy people is the job of both Michigan educators and this board. Taking away the ability of young people to better understand the world and themselves should not be this board’s right or responsibility.”

Parents like Moeggenberg say it’s up to parents, not schools, to decide what books are appropriate for their children.

“Some of these books might benefit some students,” she said in a telephone interview Thursday. “Who am I to say what works for somebody else? I would be a hypocrite if I said you had to do what I want and not what works for you.”

Moeggenberg said she would be satisfied if schools were required to notify parents before their children try to access books with sexually explicit content.

Other activists want to keep objectionable books out of schools entirely, though they still bristle at the word “ban.”

“No one is asking for books to be banned,” Jayme McElvany of Monroe told board members at Tuesday’s meeting. “That’s simply a way for you to ignore the fact that you are pushing sexually explicit material on children,” she said before reading book excerpts about anal sex, rape, and incest.

Lisa Querijero, a parent in Ann Arbor, says she trusts a school’s trained librarians to decide what books are appropriate for students.

“I’m here to counter and call out the small vocal minority that are attempting to compromise the integrity of our public schools and our democracy,” Querijero testified in Lansing on Tuesday. “Singling out and censoring books and curriculum is detrimental to creating critical thinkers. It is detrimental to teacher morale and the morale of the state of our public schools in general.”

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan’s ‘partnership’ school turnaround program eased pandemic’s impact, researchers say

2022-09-07T14:36:00+00:00

Michigan’s lowest performing schools struggled last school year, even as pandemic-related challenges such as quarantines lessened, but their problems might have been worse without the extra resources and support provided under a state turnaround program.

Those were among the findings of Michigan State University researchers studying the efficacy of the partnership model, the state program developed to help improve schools with the lowest test scores, attendance, and graduation rates.

In a report released Wednesday, researchers from MSU’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative found that the program may have mitigated some of the pandemic’s effects on student learning.

The report comes as the Michigan Department of Education prepares to designate another cohort of partnership schools that qualify for extra support based on a new round of standardized test results that showed widespread declines. Those declines mirrored student performance around the country.

“Because of the pandemic and remote learning, almost all the gains that many of our districts/schools had made were erased or almost erased,” the Michigan Department of Education wrote in its response to the report.

EPIC’s study highlights the disproportionate impact the COVID pandemic had on high-poverty areas and communities of color, where partnership schools are concentrated. Researchers hope policymakers use the data to target resources to schools and students who need them most.

MDE said it plans to intensify efforts to address student and teacher absenteeism and to help partnership districts attract and retain certified educators.

“One of the greatest challenges facing partnership districts is human capital,” MDE wrote.

Program assigns goals and resources to schools

Michigan launched the Partnership District Model in 2017 to help improve the state’s lowest performing schools and to meet requirements of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, an Obama-era law that requires states to identify their lowest performing schools and provide comprehensive support to them.

Progress in partnership districts stalled during the pandemic and hasn’t yet recovered, EPIC found.

Yet, students in partnership schools performed comparably to — and in some cases better than — counterparts in demographically and academically similar districts that are not in the partnership program.

“If my child is enrolled in one of these schools, they’re getting extra support, and so I’d rather my child be in this school than one that barely missed the cutoff” for being designated a partnership school, said Katharine Strunk, director of EPIC.

Partnership districts are assigned liaisons who help them develop goals and access resources from the Michigan Department of Education and other agencies and stakeholders. They also receive a share of about $6 million a year in additional state funding — roughly $61,000 for each of the 978 current partnership schools.

Principals say they use that money to improve access to technology, hire more staff, and offer professional development, but told EPIC it hasn’t been enough.

But the ranks of partnership schools are likely to grow, based on recent standardized test results, Strunk says. That means each school’s share of the funding pool will decrease, unless more money is appropriated.

“These districts are the same districts that have been hit hardest by the pandemic, and what they’re going to need is more funding to support their strategies for improving student outcomes,” Strunk said.

How partnership schools addressed pandemic’s effects

Although tutoring is widely seen as an important strategy to address learning loss caused by the switch to online learning and other disruptions, principals of partnership schools told researchers it hasn’t been a priority in their districts.

That doesn’t surprise Strunk.

Successful tutoring programs are hard to implement, and they rely on being able to hire enough staff. Many districts already have trouble filling vacancies, she said. Enrollment in tutoring programs is another obstacle, Strunk said.

“Not just in Michigan but across the country, parents just did not opt in, especially for programs after school or during vacation time,” she said. “It might be because of transportation problems, or it might be because they think their kids have been through enough.”

Instead, partnership districts continued to use strategies already in place before the pandemic. New programs have largely prioritized students’ mental health and behavioral needs, which also grew during the pandemic.

Educators in partnership districts told EPIC researchers in surveys and interviews that their students continue to struggle with emotional challenges of the pandemic, which disproportionately affected their communities.

Sixty-two percent said they believed mental health was a major challenge for their students, and many pointed to inadequate resources to address them.

“We have a high population of students who have experienced trauma, but no one to help them with it, because the social worker is in a classroom substituting,” one teacher told researchers.

Attendance was another substantial challenge researchers identified in partnership districts. Educators told EPIC that student absenteeism was one of the biggest impediments to academic progress.

Updated report card expected in the fall

The state makes partnership designations based on school-level data, not district data. Districts that have at least one partnership school in them are considered partnership districts.

“The theory is that when a school is identified as really struggling, it often is reflective of district systems that have not supported the school,” Strunk said. “If a middle school is failing or struggling, there’s no way the high school and elementary school are doing just fine.”

The goal of the Partnership Model is to raise achievement, reduce dropout rates, and improve attendance and behavior.

Currently, there are 978 partnership schools in 26 partnership districts. Each of them has worked with the Department of Education on a set of goals that will qualify them to exit the program.

The department is expected to release a report in late fall announcing which have met their goals and which additional schools will enter the partnership model this year.

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@gmail.com.

Michigan test scores down sharply from pre-pandemic

2022-09-01T21:59:42+00:00

Student scores on Michigan’s standardized test are sharply down from before the pandemic, underlining the severe academic toll of virtual learning and other COVID-related disruptions and traumas.

Last spring, 41.5% of third-graders statewide scored at least proficient in math on the exam, known as the M-STEP. That’s a decline of 5.2 percentage points from 2019, the last time the test was given before COVID-19 shuttered classrooms.

In English language arts, 41.6% of third-graders scored proficient or higher, a decline of 3.5 points from 2019.

With participation in the test returning to normal this spring, the results are among the strongest evidence available of the academic fallout from the pandemic.

“This year’s results indicate that Michigan students are still performing below pre-pandemic levels — with persistent and troubling opportunity gaps for our most underserved students,” Amber Arellano, executive director of the Education Trust-Midwest, a nonprofit education advocacy group, said in a statement. She noted that Michigan has been “behind our peers across the nation for far too long, and long before the pandemic.”

The scores have high stakes for the lowest-scoring students and schools. About 6% of third-graders will be recommended for retention under Michigan’s Read by Grade Three law based on their English language arts skills, though fewer than half of students targeted for retention have been made to repeat third grade in years past.

The scores also play a major role in teacher evaluations and in the letter grades that the state gives to each school. The most academically troubled districts will be put under increased state scrutiny, known as a partnership agreement, that can lead to a takeover or closure if scores don’t improve.

The results also underscore research showing Michigan students learned less in virtual settings during the pandemic. Though many districts that rarely or never resorted to remote classes saw declines, districts that offered the most remote instruction saw some of the biggest drops in scores.

In districts with at least 50 third graders, 127 districts saw the percentage of students scoring proficient or above in English language arts fall by 10 percentage points or more compared with 2018-19. Of those, 22% — or 28 districts — were fully remote for four months or more during the 2020-21 school year, while 54% were fully remote for just one month or none. Of the 37 districts to record gains of 10 percentage points or more, just two were remote for four months, or 5%. Far more — 70%, or 26 districts — were remote just one month or not at all.

Scores are down in most grades and subject areas across the state. For example:

30% of high schoolers who took the SAT surpassed the benchmark college-readiness score in math, down from 36.3% in 2019.
28.4% of sixth graders scored proficient or better on the math M-STEP exam, down from 35.1% in 2019.
43.4% of fourth graders scored at least proficient on the English language arts test, down from 45.8% in 2019.

Amid growing concerns about students’ well-being, Michigan schools are spending billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief to address the academic and emotional impacts of the pandemic. Many educators say the toll would be much worse if not for that additional federal funding, which expires in 2024. This year, they’ll be further aided by a record state education budget that includes extra funding for low-income students and for teacher recruitment and retention.

Schools were required to give the M-STEP in 2020-21, but parents worried about COVID-19 were allowed to opt out. Many did so, and just 70% of students took the test compared with 95% this year, a figure in line with the historical average. Experts noted that comparing statewide results year-to-year doesn’t work when participation rates differ so widely.

Nationally, students are also suffering significant academic losses. The National Center for Education Statistics released nationwide results Thursday of reading and math scores on the NAEP, a test often referred to as the “the nation’s report card.” Reading scores dropped more than they have in over 30 years, and math scores dropped for the first time since the test first began in the early 1970s.

A call for new investments in proven policies

Students who skipped the test last year typically belonged to groups that faced the greatest challenges during the pandemic, including students who had spent the year learning online, students of color, students from low-income families and English language learners, state Superintendent Michael Rice said. The inclusion of those historically lower-scoring students this year may partly explain why statewide scores fell in most grade and content areas compared with last year.

Responding to the new test data, Rice said new investments are needed in evidence-based policies such as smaller class sizes, in-depth professional development, tutoring, and small-group instruction.

“Each of these things has a disproportionately greater benefit for those who need than for those who don’t,” he told Chalkbeat. “They have a disproportionately favorable impact on at-risk children than middle-class children.”

In the Detroit Public Schools Community District, Michigan’s largest, officials have set aside a portion of COVID dollars for small-group and one-on-one literacy tutoring for students several grades or more below reading level. The district’s scores remain well behind pre-pandemic levels, suggesting a long road ahead. Detroit Superintendent Nikolai Vitti pointed to the various COVID-related disruptions of student learning during the 2021-22 school year as well as chronic absenteeism as significant factors in last spring’s test scores.

The trauma of the pandemic, combined with dark headlines about climate change and school shootings, offer one explanation for falling scores, said Elizabeth Moje, dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan.

“They’re looking around and going, ‘Gosh, the world is crumbling around us.’ There’s all this violence. How about school shootings? These are young people who are trying to make sense of their place in the world and asking ‘Where do I fit?’ and they’re being asked to learn abstract things that they don’t understand the purpose for learning. That in itself is stress-inducing.”

How to use the testing data

Testing experts cautioned against using the exam scores to draw conclusions about how schools performed during the pandemic given how much classroom time students missed.

“The word I would use is ‘grace,’” said Ed Roeber, assessment director for the Michigan Assessment Consortium, a nonpartisan education group. “There were a whole lot of people putting in 110% effort in getting kids taught.”

He said schools have the tools to accelerate student learning now that children are back at school. They can reduce class sizes, for example, or double check that every student is taught all the key concepts that show up on the test.

“Every child who’s tested can achieve proficiency,” he said. Schools can help them do so “not by practicing the test items but by looking at their instructional program and saying, ‘What kinds of skills do kids need to have?’”

At Westwood Community School District in Dearborn Heights, Superintendent Stiles Simmons said helping students recover includes both academic support and social-emotional support. His district is expanding a mentorship program it started last year for middle school students. He credits pandemic relief money for his being able to hire a districtwide social-emotional learning coordinator, who he said “has been a godsend.”

He said the M-STEP data can serve as a “baseline” and can be a “good exercise for maybe research purposes, but it doesn’t necessarily help us long term.“

“We need to really look at where we are now because that’s where our kids are,” he said.

In the Reeths-Puffer School District near Muskegon, 2021 scores dipped but have now returned to pre-pandemic levels for most grade levels for English language arts and in elementary grades for math. The district enrolls about 3,500 students, more than half of whom are considered economically disadvantaged by the state.

“I would say we’ve stayed relatively consistent through the pandemic,” Superintendent Steve Edwards said. “If you didn’t regress during the pandemic, I guess you can count that as a small win.”

He said he believes two factors contributed to that: the district’s decision to remain in-person for all of 2020-21, and its $500,000 investment in summer acceleration programming over the last two years. That funding came from federal COVID relief money that will run out in September 2024.

The pandemic funds provided “an immediate shot in the arm, but it could be detrimental to build systems and supports that people come to rely on, that then are no longer funded,” he said. “In the short term it’s great, but in the long term it makes me nervous.”

Brooke Brawley, director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment at Niles Community Schools, said the testing information is helpful in determining what extra supports students need. But she said it’s important to remember these scores are only one data point among many that inform teachers on students’ academic levels.

She said one area for growth would be looking at math scores and seeing how to use multi-tier systems to help students improve. A multi-tier system includes curriculum for all students and additional supports for students who need them.

Simmons, of Westwood, agreed. He said his district tends to focus more attention on benchmark tests that are administered three times a year, since they provide more real-time data of where students stand.

He expects to receive a comprehensive report from one of his employees Friday about how the district did. From there, he wants to analyze how the district compares with similar districts in size and demographics.

The district used benchmark scores last school year to determine who should receive high dosage tutoring. Simmons said students who regularly attended tutoring sessions had better grades and better benchmark test scores. He said the district is considering working with companies that have strong after school tutoring programs as well.

Frances Vicioso, a parent of a Kalamazoo Public Schools graduate, said the district’s results are very “concerning” but “absolutely what I expected.”

She wants more equitable school funding, more accessible information for parents about the school district’s budget, and more understanding from others about the limitations of standardized testing.

One-third of Kalamazoo Public Schools third grade students were proficient or higher in English language arts while 30.7% of third grade students were proficient or higher in math.

Kalamazoo’s third grade English language scores remained lower than the state average and had nearly the same size declines as the state from 2018-19 to 2021-22. In third grade math, however, the district’s proficiency rates fell nearly 7 percentage points, from 37.5% to 30.7%, compared with the 5 percentage point drop statewide (from 46.7% to 41.5%).

The district was fully remote for nine months during the 2020-2021 school year.

Vicioso, a former middle school teacher, said students’ achievement can be measured in other ways, including verbal reflections, class participation, and projects.

Vicioso is the co-director of Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Kalamazoo, an initiative that works to provide accurate historical narratives, build strong relationships and advocate for systemic change. She said she is concerned about many local students including students from low-income families and students of color..

“It tracks that the lack of services and lack of support would be reflected in these M-STEP scores,” she said.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

Isabel Lohman covers education for Bridge Michigan. You can reach her at ilohman@bridgemi.com.

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

Reading skills gap grows in Michigan

2022-09-01T19:30:16+00:00

Researchers found alarming increases in the proportion of Michigan third graders reading significantly below grade level and widening gaps in performance between Black and white students, and between students from low-income families and peers from wealthier families.

The performance disparities provide more evidence of the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on at-risk children.

“This should be a clarion call to us,” said Katharine Strunk, director of the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative at Michigan State University. “What are we doing to help these particular students?”

EPIC on Thursday released its annual data report on the number of students eligible for retention under a controversial Michigan law that says third graders can be held back if they score at least a year behind grade level on the reading portion of the Michigan Student Test of Education Progress, or M-STEP. The report is based on results of reading tests given this spring.

The results are important because they help policymakers and schools target resources. They’re also a gauge of the effects of the pandemic on young children during crucial years when most children learn to read. Some researchers say reading by third grade is “a make or break benchmark” correlated to later academic success.

Nearly 5,700 of last year’s third-graders scored low enough to be eligible for retention. That’s 5.8% of all third-graders, up from 4.8% the previous year. The Michigan Department of Education hasn’t yet collected data on how many of them are actually repeating third grade this year.

More than half would have been eligible for automatic exemptions based on, for example, their status as English learners or special education students, according to EPIC’s report. In the past, the vast majority of others were exempted too, because administrators and parents agreed that retention was not in the child’s best interest.

It rarely is, said Elizabeth Birr Moje, dean of the University of Michigan School of Education.

“Everything we know from research tells us that retention at a young age has negative consequences across the board,” including on dropout rates, future earning potential, and incarceration rates.

That’s one reason why the Reeths-Puffer School District near Muskegon promoted all third graders to fourth grade, even though 10 of them had reading scores that made them eligible for retention. Instead, those students will get extra help with reading this year, Superintendent Steve Edwards said.

“You’d struggle to find much evidence anywhere of the long-term benefit” of retention, he said.

Academics are more focused on what the M-STEP data reveal about learning disparities between demographic groups than on the retention component of the third-grade reading law.

“The hope with the retention law was not so much that we would actually be retaining children but that it would motivate people — whether families, or teachers, or school leaders — to do early intervention, to engage kids (in reading) very early,” Moje said.

The retention law also provides an accountability benchmark to let parents and community members know how well their schools are educating children in early literacy. And it helps schools focus resources on students who need the most help.

Advocacy groups like Education Trust-Midwest are concerned by the results.

“While it’s not surprising that so many children have fallen so far behind, we are now seeing the evidence of the impact of the pandemic, especially for underserved students,” said Executive Director Amber Arellano.

Michigan’s declines mirror results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress also released Thursday. NAEP scores show sharp declines across the country in math and reading during the pandemic. Among 9-year-olds who took the national test, reading scores dropped more sharply than they have in more than 30 years.

Remote learning and pandemic-related disruptions emerged as clear factors in student performance on the M-STEP.

Of Michigan third graders who spent all or most of second grade learning remotely, 10.6% were eligible for retention, twice the rate for those who learned in person all or most of their second-grade year.

In Reeths-Puffer schools, where students attended in person for all of 2020-21, 34% of students scored at or above the proficient level, down from 38% in the last two test cycles. It might have been worse if Reeths-Puffer schools had closed to in-person learning that year, as 16% of Michigan districts did for at least part of the year. Another 16% used hybrid models, teaching partly online and partly in classrooms.

“Most students learn best in a face-to-face environment,” said Edwards, the superintendent. “From a social-emotional and academic perspective, being face-to-face as much as we were at least mitigated what was a very difficult situation” during the pandemic.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that remote learning alone caused sinking scores, Strunk said.

Black students and those from low-income families, who historically underperform white and wealthier peers, were more likely to be in districts that used remote instruction during the pandemic.

Fifteen percent of Black third-graders scored low enough to be eligible for retention. That’s grown from 13% in 2020-21, and 10.9% in 2018-19, before the retention law took effect. Students were not tested in 2019-20 because of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the percentage of white third-graders eligible for retention grew from 2.3% in 2018-19 to 3.3% last school year.

“That’s a very large gap between Black students and everyone else, so we have to ask what’s happening there,” Strunk said.

The performance of students from low-income families is concerning, too, she said. Nine percent of third-graders from low-income families last year scored low enough to be eligible for retention, compared with 6.3% before the pandemic.

Among more affluent students, 2% were eligible for retention last school year, compared with 1.3% before the pandemic.

The state’s lowest performing schools also saw big declines in third-grade reading scores. Those buildings have been designated by the state as partnership schools based on factors including low graduation rates, attendance, and test scores. Those schools — including many in Detroit — have been in a turnaround program for the last three years and had shown progress before the pandemic.

A quarter of third-graders in partnership schools were eligible for retention based on 2022 scores, up from 22.3% last year, and 19.1% in 2018-19.

“Partnership districts have really been through it over the last couple of years,” Strunk said. “The communities in which partnership districts and schools exist faced the most dire economic and health consequences of the pandemic. We need to be working as hard as we can to support those communities and schools so they can help students recover from an unbelievably challenging time.”

Policymakers, administrators, and teachers need to target resources to districts and students struggling the most, Strunk said.

“I’d be doubling down on training our teachers to help them teach kids who may be very, very far behind grade level,” she said. “I don’t think we can assume they will catch up without targeted intervention and support.”

Schools in Michigan and across the country received federal COVID relief dollars that can be used, in part, to provide tutors to improve reading skills, but districts are having trouble finding enough tutors to meet their needs.

Arellano said those interventions should include specialized support for students with dyslexia. That’s an area the state Senate has begun to prioritize with legislation that advanced in May, although the state House hasn’t yet taken it up.

Schools seem to be working with parents to help struggling readers instead of holding them back from fourth grade, said Mike Testa, a member of the Michigan PTA Advocacy Committee and parent of four Livonia Public Schools students.

“Districts have done a good job working with parents to see what is actually best for that specific student,” he said. “They’re coming up with a course of action and a plan, not just putting a kid in fourth grade with no support but actually doing something to get that child caught up.”

That’s the kind of approach Moje advocates.

“Reading is a very complex endeavor” that requires an understanding of phonics, an ability to understand clues from syntax, an understanding of how sentences are put together, and a comprehension of meaning, she said.

“You have to assess where children are, why they’re there, and then intervene appropriately,” she said. “The sheer volume of children makes that difficult.”

She is hopeful that schools will be able to help struggling readers catch up to their peers.

“The idea that if you can’t read proficiently by third grade you’re doomed is a fallacy,” Moje said. “Somebody has to be intervening to help you make progress, but it’s not actually the case that you stop learning to read at third grade.”

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan’s pandemic-era special education guidance under U.S. investigation

2022-06-27T21:32:05+00:00

Federal officials are investigating a complaint alleging that Michigan provided illegal guidance to districts about serving students with disabilities during the pandemic.

The November 2020 guidance specifically concerned students who lost access to special education services — such as tutoring or physical therapy — during pandemic-caused school shutdowns, and the districts’ obligation to make up for those losses later through so-called compensatory services.

In its guidance, the Michigan Department of Education said compensatory services “may be awarded as a result of a finding from a state complaint, due process hearing, or monitoring activity.”

Critics said this language implied that districts didn’t need to provide compensatory services unless a parent filed a successful complaint through official channels, an often complex process that may require a lawyer or paid advocate to navigate.

“Districts have been terrible about providing compensatory education, and they all cite the MDE guidance,” said Marcie Lipsitt, an advocate who asked federal officials to look into the guidance.

Districts struggled this year to help all students recover learning lost during the pandemic, and limit the long-term negative impacts of COVID on children’s education. The stakes of this effort were especially high for students with disabilities, many of whom missed out on services that were guaranteed under federal disability law.

Lipsitt said the MDE should have directed districts to work with parents to ensure that students’ civil rights were protected despite the pandemic.

The pandemic created lapses in special education services nationwide, which led to large backups in claims for compensatory services. From New York City to Denver, families have struggled to make up for the education students missed when classrooms shut down in the first year of the pandemic.

In Michigan, districts’ approaches to compensatory services vary widely, advocates say: Some districts willingly provide funding for compensatory services, while others require parents to file a formal complaint with the state or request a hearing.

The decision to investigate the MDE’s guidance doesn’t mean the department did anything wrong, according to a letter announcing the investigation from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

An MDE spokesperson said the department is cooperating with the investigation and declined to comment further.

When schools recognize a student as disabled, they work with parents to identify the additional services the student needs to get an adequate education and develop a plan to provide them. For instance, a student struggling with speech might get expert help forming sounds into words. Under federal law, schools that don’t supply services according to students’ education plans must provide make-up services later.

States offer schools and districts guidance on how to meet the requirements of state and federal law. In Michigan, the education department’s guidance is not binding on districts, but it may influence their approach to negotiations with parents of students with disabilities.

Sharon Kelso, a Detroit-based special education advocate, said the MDE’s 2020 guidance suggests that districts don’t owe students compensatory services unless families demand them.

It made districts think “they have wiggle room around providing services, but they don’t have any wiggle room,” Kelso said.

Kelso filed a state complaint last year saying that her nephew, a high-schooler at Detroit’s virtual school, did not receive 35 hours of compensatory services that state officials determined he was owed because of education he missed between September and December 2020. The district said it didn’t have the staff to provide the services at that time. After the state ruled in Kelso’s favor, the district created a plan to provide the services this summer.

Such disputes may be less likely if federal officials require the state to change its guidance and push districts to provide compensatory services voluntarily.

In Denver, for example, the district took a proactive approach, evaluating students to see if they qualify for compensatory services rather than waiting for parents to file complaints. Denver set aside $12 million in federal COVID relief dollars to cover the costs.

Lipsitt hopes federal officials will go further and require Michigan to evaluate all of its roughly 194,500 students with disabilities to determine what compensatory services they deserve.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan summer school is going big — again. Here’s what parents need to know.

2022-06-22T20:55:52+00:00

Michigan students looking to have fun and catch up on missed learning this summer have many more choices than usual.

Districts have once again beefed up their summer programming, from credit recovery to camps focused on robotics and sports.

Fueled by federal COVID relief aid, the expanded summer school options come at the right time for students struggling with the academic impact of the pandemic. Many parents and students are looking for extra study time and opportunities to make up credits.

School districts planned to spend $179 million in COVID aid on summer programming over several years, according to budget proposals filed with the state in December. That’s on top of the smaller summer programs that most Michigan districts were offering before the pandemic.

What can parents expect from their districts this year?

In many cases, districts plan to keep the expanded summer programs they began offering last year, when most of the COVID relief dollars became available.

Many districts are still accepting registrations, and some will allow students to sign up after programming has started. Attendance generally isn’t mandatory, and most programs — with the exception of some enrichment camps — are free.

Here are examples of how some Michigan school districts are using their federal COVID funds for summer programming:

The Detroit Public Schools Community District will again offer its robust Summer Learning Experiences program this year.

Summer school in Detroit will run from July 11 to Aug. 4. It includes academic enrichment classes, STEM courses and recreational activities for students. The program will be conducted in person for most students, while students who currently attend DPSCD Virtual School will be allowed to take their classes online.

Some districts are using their share of COVID relief dollars to move away from summer programs that look like school, and offering extra learning time to as many students as possible.

Ypsilanti Public Schools rebranded its summer offerings Grizzly Learning Camp, rather than summer school. The camp features robotics and sports instruction, as well as credit recovery classes for students who need them. The district planned to spend $1.5 million in federal funds on the camp, which runs through August.

Grand Rapids Public Schools has more than 3,100 signed up for summer programs — about 20% of its total enrollment. That’s about the same number as last summer, but 2-1/2 times as many as pre-pandemic summers. The district is spending about $2.5 million on summer school, thanks to an influx of federal COVID relief money, compared with just under $1 million before the pandemic.

Fun is part of the curriculum. Students might, for example, play educational games on PlayStations, record podcasts about community heroes, or practice photojournalism, said Mel Atkins, district director of community and student affairs.

“We’re trying to disguise learning, so it doesn’t look like the school year,” Atkins said. “We’re not advocating for desks in rows. We’re looking for hands-on activities out in the community.”

The district is also offering online learning programs for children in kindergarten through 8th grade.

Other districts are narrowing their focus on students who need the most academic help.

Kalamazoo Public Schools’ summer school enrollment shrank from 2,500 last summer to 800 this year. That was by design, said Superintendent Rita Raichoudhuri, who wanted to focus on children identified by teachers as struggling the most.

“Last summer everyone needed extra support, because everyone was transitioning back into brick-and-mortar schools after being virtual for 18 months,” Raichoudhuri said. “The need was higher, and we needed the summer months to ease the transition. We were really glad we made that decision.”

Many smaller school communities are also offering more summer programming. Joseph K. Lumsden Bahweting Anishnabe Academy, a charter school in the Upper Peninsula with an emphasis on Anishinaabe culture and tradition, is enrolling more than one-third of its 630 students in an expanded academic summer school. The program will include field trips and two free meals a day. Activities will focus on environmental science and indigenous games and crafts, among other subjects. All students are eligible to participate.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

How a lawsuit could make way for DeVos’ bid to end Michigan’s public-private school funding divide

2022-05-12T15:42:31+00:00

May is a critical month for a two-part effort by conservative groups to dismantle Michigan’s 50-year-old prohibition on public funds going to private schools.

Part one is a ballot initiative that would give Michigan residents a tax break if they contributed to scholarships for private school tuition. Supporters must collect 340,000 signatures on petitions by June 1 for that proposal to have a chance at becoming law.

Part two is a federal lawsuit that challenges Michigan’s prohibition on public funding for private schools as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. A decision in the case, Hile v. Michigan, is expected in the next few weeks, though an appeal is likely.

Both efforts are linked to long-running efforts by former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to direct public funds to private schools.

The ballot initiative would chip away at a strict separation of public and private education in Michigan. The lawsuit would smash the firewall entirely.

Together, the two efforts represent one front in a political battle to define how Michigan education policy should change in response to the pandemic.

DeVos and her allies say the pandemic showed the need for more school choice, noting that many students struggled with online learning during public school shutdowns, while many private schools continued in-person instruction.

The petition “is crafted in a way that really meets the moment for COVID education, providing families the ability to use a variety of education options,” said Ben DeGrow, director of education policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank that DeVos has supported.

Opponents say these policies would cut into public school enrollment and funding at a time when schools need additional help to manage the social and emotional fallout from the pandemic. They say that efforts to shift public funds to private schools are part of efforts by activists such as DeVos to undermine public education — efforts that originated long before the pandemic.

“Their intent is to eliminate public education as we know it,” said Casandra Ulbrich, president of the Michigan Board of Education and a leader of a coalition opposing the ballot initiative.

A challenge to Michigan’s constitution

Michigan’s constitution contains an unusually broad prohibition on public dollars going to private schools. The clause dates to 1970, when voters amended the state constitution after a heated debate.

Similar provisions in other states have been struck down recently by the federal courts on the grounds that they discriminate on the basis of religion. But the language in Michigan’s constitution remains in effect. Unlike many states, Michigan banned funding for all private schools, not just religious schools, making its constitution less vulnerable to claims of religious discrimination.

Michigan private schools receive some indirect public support. For example, they can enroll their students part time in public schools for classes that they don’t offer, at taxpayer expense. After a lengthy court fight, private schools in the state also won the right to draw state funding to comply with state health and safety regulations, an amount that reached $1 million this year.

DeVos has long aimed to expand taxpayer support for private schools. Along with her husband, Dick DeVos, she was a key backer of a 2000 ballot proposal that would have created a voucher system in Michigan, allowing students to apply their share of public school funding to private school tuition. The proposal was roundly defeated at the polls.

Now she’s backing the current ballot initiative to give tax breaks for contributions to private-school scholarships, which critics say is effectively a voucher program. Once the ballot initiative gathers enough signatures, supporters plan to take advantage of a provision in state law that allows them to put their plan to a vote in the GOP-led legislature, bypassing voters and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s likely veto.

This time, the main obstacle for the proposal is not voters but the 1970 amendment to the Michigan Constitution.

That’s where the lawsuit comes in.

The lead plaintiffs, Jill and Joseph Hile, are Kalamazoo parents of school-aged children who say they should be allowed to use funds from their Michigan Education Savings Plan account — a tax-favored account used for college or K-12 expenses — to cover tuition to a private, religious school. Their suit, filed in U.S. District Court in southwest Michigan, takes direct aim at the 1970 amendment.

The Hiles argue that Michigan’s prohibition of public funding for private schools violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects freedom of religion and speech, and the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection for all citizens under the law.

The plaintiffs claim that the 1970 amendment was motivated by anti-Catholic animus, and that denying funding to private religious schools amounts to religious discrimination.

The state has asked Judge Robert Jonker to dismiss the case, and he is expected to issue a ruling in coming weeks. If he agrees, his decision would likely be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, a process that could take several years, said Patrick Wright, vice president for legal affairs at the Mackinac Center, who is representing the Hile family.

The ballot issue, on the other hand, would likely be resolved well before then — even if it is challenged in state court as a violation of Michigan’s constitution.

Some predict the petition would surmount such a challenge, because the tax credits DeVos and her allies are pushing for involve individual contributions to private scholarship funds: If individuals are paying for the scholarships, they argue, does that really count as public funding for private schools?

But even Wright says that such an argument could be a tough sell in state court given the strict and explicit language in the current Michigan Constitution:

“People … challenging the ballot initiative would do well in court,” he said.

Overriding Michigan’s constitution

This is why the federal lawsuit is such an integral component of DeVos and her allies’ long-term plan to provide public support to private schools.

Suppose the tax credit plan for scholarships secured 340,000 signatures and was voted into law by state legislators, but the Michigan Supreme Court struck it down as a violation of the state constitution. The tax breaks would remain on the books, but would not take effect.

If, years later, the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down Michigan’s prohibition on public funding for private schools — the legal obstacle to the tax credit plan — then the credits for scholarships could take effect.

The situation has a parallel in the abortion fight now raging in Michigan, Wright said. Michigan has a 1931 ban on abortion on the books that could go into effect if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that recognized a right to an abortion.

Both the scholarship tax credits and the abortion ban will likely be hotly contested.

“There would be all kinds of lawyerly stuff to be going on,” Wright said, “but in the long run, the federal Constitution trumps the state constitution.”

That means Hile v. Michigan could ultimately pave the way for the scholarship tax credits — and more policies like it that would direct taxpayer dollars to private schools.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

One way to address student mental health? Bring the clinic to school.

2022-04-04T15:12:18+00:00

Many Michigan school administrators say they’ve often served as stand-in public health officials during the pandemic. So it’s no surprise that districts across the state are eager to get some backup from a program that opens clinics in school buildings.

School-based health centers make it convenient for students to leave class and walk down the hall for therapy, a medical checkup, or a dental appointment. While the first centers in Michigan opened decades ago, policymakers have renewed interest in them in the wake of COVID and the ongoing student mental health crisis.

As advocates push for a major funding increase, the outcome of this year’s budget negotiations could shape Michigan’s system for supporting student mental health for years to come — even after federal COVID funds run out. It would mean new health centers in roughly 100 districts that have expressed an interest in opening one but weren’t awarded funds.

Rates of depression and suicide among Michigan youth were already rising when the pandemic hit. State and federal officials are now warning of an emergency in youth mental health. Yet one-third of Michigan students with a mental illness don’t receive treatment, particularly in rural areas.

Many school districts are trying to address that problem by putting more counselors, nurses, and social workers in schools with their share of federal COVID funds, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of spending plans. Adding new school-based health centers would make those efforts more effective, experts say, because the centers are better equipped to assist with the most complex cases, freeing up school staff to handle other needs.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wants the state to invest an additional $11 million to open new health centers in schools this year. A bipartisan group of lawmakers studying the Oxford shooting agree that more funding is needed, though they haven’t yet said how much. Advocates are pushing for even more: an additional $25 million this year, which would nearly double the state’s current investment in the centers.

Here’s what you need to know about school-based mental health centers.

What is a school-based health center?

The centers are formed under an agreement between local health care providers, such as a hospital system, a school district, and the state. All three parties share the costs.

Unlike a typical school nurse’s office, the centers are recognized by the government as health care providers, which means they can more easily provide referrals for care, and they can bill for services if students have insurance.

The school provides office space — often rent free — while the healthcare system provides medical workers such as licensed therapists and nurse practitioners. In some cases, a school nurse will share the space with health system employees.

If students have health insurance, the center can bill their insurer. If not, grants from the state help cover the cost of care, or the center can bill Medicaid. Students never have to pay out of pocket.

“The centers eliminate barriers of transportation and cost,” said Kim Baron, director of health services for Grand Rapids Public Schools. She also noted that students who get medical care in their school building don’t miss as much school as they would if they left during the day for a doctor’s appointment.

Why are school-based health centers getting so much attention now?

The first school-based health centers in Michigan opened in the 1980s, and their funding increased slowly but steadily for decades.

There are 124 centers across Michigan, with one in nearly half of the state’s 83 counties, according to the School-Community Health Alliance of Michigan, a nonprofit advocacy group.

The pandemic spotlighted the strengths of school-based health centers, said Deb Brinson, executive director of the School Community Health Alliance, which is pushing for a major new funding expansion to serve more students.

The centers stayed open even when many schools closed their doors, Brinson said. They offered medical expertise and infrastructure at a time when many school administrators were struggling to coordinate their community’s public health response. In many cases, the centers offered COVID testing and vaccinations.

As administrators across the state saw what the centers could do, “We started getting calls: How do we get a school based health center?” Brinson recalled.

Funding shot up last year, with an additional $5 million for mental health services. Now Whitmer is proposing an even larger increase.

Whitmer and legislative leaders will consider funding for the centers as part of this year’s budget negotiations, which will take place over the next few months.

Do the centers make a difference?

Students who used school-based mental health centers reported less risky behavior, better emotional coping strategies, and reduced physical stress, according to a 2018 study.

Various national studies have come to similar conclusions. A study of 168 schools in Oregon found that students at schools with health centers were less likely to report depression and suicide attempts.

Administrators in districts with centers say they are effective.

“There are hundreds of kids walking down the hall and getting the care that they need from a medical, dental, and behavioral health aspect,” said Tom Livezey, superintendent of Oak Ridge Public Schools near Muskegon.

“I can’t imagine having to go through the pandemic without this service.”

Before the pandemic, the Oakridge school health center typically served more than 700 unique students per year, including more than 1,000 mental health appointments. The district enrolls roughly 1,900 students.

How do the centers support mental health?

School-based health centers in Michigan are required to have a mental health staff person on site in addition to a medical professional such as a nurse.

Students can attend therapy or seek help if they are having an emotional crisis.

“From a mental health standpoint, we’re seeing kids act out in classrooms, and the anger and anxiety can turn into physical altercations in the schools,” Livezey said.

Given the lack of mental health providers for young people in the surrounding community, Livezey says school-based mental health centers are “the only way our kids are going to get adequate care.”

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan students who are homeless more likely to be disciplined

2022-03-30T14:00:49+00:00

Students who are homeless face suspension and expulsion at much higher rates than do their peers in Michigan schools.

Statewide, 17% of students who have experienced homelessness were suspended or expelled in 2017-18 compared with 8% of all students in Michigan’s district-run public schools. The rates are especially high in Wayne and Macomb counties, researchers found.

Those are among figures highlighted in an interactive map recently created by the Poverty Solutions Center at the University of Michigan based on its earlier analysis of data from that school year.

For example, the discipline rates for students who have been homeless are 38%, 37% and 36% in Hamtramck, Eastpoint, and Westwood school districts, respectively.

Benton Harbor Area Schools (41%), Atlanta Community Schools (41%) and Flint Community School District (41%) have the state’s highest discipline rates for students who have been homeless.

Superintendents of those districts did not respond to requests for comment. Many districts are on spring break this week.

The numbers are troubling and could be even higher, said Poverty Solution Center senior researcher Jennifer Erb-Downward, who suspects many districts underreport discipline.

“If you have a student that doesn’t have a fixed living space, school may be the only stable place they have. To expel them from that place can be devastating,” Erb-Downward said. “It’s pushing them out of a system we want them to be able to engage with.”

The percentages are similar in other states.. Other studies have shown that students experiencing homelessness in Texas, Indiana, and Washington, for example, are at least twice as likely to be suspended as their peers.

Researchers want administrators to consider the reasons behind student misbehavior.

School administrators “need to step back from that moment when something is happening in the classroom and hallway and think about how to diffuse that situation when there is something underlying the behavior that is more than just a discipline issue,” Erb-Downward said.

Suspension and expulsion seldom lead to the desired behavior change, according to studies by Johns Hopkins University and American Institutes for Research. Instead, they likely make students feel more disconnected from school and more likely to drop out, Erb-Downward said.

Researchers hope their work will spark conversations about school discipline and changes that de-emphasize punishment and lean toward connecting traumatized students with resources.

The Student Advocacy Center of Michigan wants to be part of those conversations. The center works to ensure children stay in school and understand their rights to a quality public education.

The center is asking districts with the highest discipline rates to revisit their policies.

“A different policy choice could mean we’re going to find another way to educate young people who’ve made a mistake,” said Peri Stone-Palmquist, the center’s executive director.

Among her recommendations are:

· Convene discipline policy committees that include teachers, students, principals, community mental health providers, and the district’s homeless liaison.

· Require districts to consider traumatic experiences in students’ background before punishing them.

· Allow students to appeal discipline to county, regional, or state-level arbiters.

· Consider alternatives to suspension and expulsion that can be more effective and less likely to lead to dropping out.

· Add homelessness as a factor schools must consider before removing a student from school.

· Hold suspension and expulsion hearings within 10 days of removal from school so students and their families have a chance to be heard sooner.

· Invest federal COVID-relief dollars in mental health initiatives.

Michigan has been moving away from automatically suspending or expelling students who bring items to school that can be used as weapons. A 2018 state law requires districts to consider seven factors including age, disability, and disciplinary history before suspending or expelling. That doesn’t always happen.

Democratic state Senators Jeff Irwin of Ann Arbor, Erika Geiss of Taylor, and Adam Hollier of Detroit have introduced bills to change school discipline policies, but they haven’t yet come to a vote.

One of the bills would establish an appeals process and would require districts to disclose data about suspended students including race, gender, ethnicity, disability status, and whether they are homeless.

Another bill would require independent decision-makers to authorize expulsions or suspensions of more than 10 days. It also would require districts to develop individualized education plans for students who are removed from school.

A third bill would require districts to determine whether behavior leading to potential discipline is related to homelessness, whether removal from school would create a barrier to enrollment and retention of the child, and whether a behavior plan would better address the violation.

Erb-Downward’s research shows that nearly 1 out of 10 Michigan children will experience homelessness at some point before they graduate high school. According to the latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics, 2.7% of Michigan’s public school students were homeless in 2014-15, slightly above the national average of 2.5%.

“That really is a large number of students who are having housing instability that we know has long-term impacts,” Erb-Downward said. “That’s why we have to get out in front of this.”

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

This Hamtramck principal wants to prepare students for life

2022-03-16T15:19:01+00:00

To understand what drives Alvin Ward as principal of Hamtramck Academy, you might have to go back to his days as a teacher of students with learning disabilities.

Back then, while some teachers shied away from this population of students, “I thought it was the greatest opportunity to help students who need it the most.” He calls it the highlight of his teaching career.

Ward wasn’t just focused on helping students achieve academically so they could move on to the next grade. He was determined to help them to succeed in life well after they completed their K-12 education.

“For some kids, we determine whether they’re going to stay at home with their family or whether they’re going to live an independent … life,” he said. “We have to equip students with skills. That made it much more than a job. It was a moral duty for me.”

Alvin Ward is the principal at Hamtramck Academy, a charter school that was one of four in Michigan recently recognized by the Education Trust-Midwest for academic success.

Fast forward to 2021, when the Education Trust-Midwest named Hamtramck Academy one of its first four “Building the Hope” schools (see below for more information), largely because of the success the school has seen improving academic achievement for its students, many of whom are immigrants from Bangladesh, and many of whom are from low-income homes.

Ward, who has led the school for six years after a few years as a principal in Lansing, is as inspired as ever, noting: “We’re molding kids to move on and become adults. That’s the motivator for me — to see kids come and they learn and they can have fun and they can be safe. It’s more than just a school.”

He spoke recently with Chalkbeat Detroit.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What is it about this school that stands out?

We think we have embraced and put into practice some of the best strategies that can help K-8 students everywhere, but particularly in communities with many less affluent, minority, and English-learner students.

We are a National Heritage Academy charter school serving about 550 students in grades K-8. Our school was recognized as a “Building the Hope School” because multiple student groups, including Asian students and students from low-income backgrounds, showed exceptional academic progress, exceeding the statewide proficiency rate in both English language arts and math for three consecutive years.

But we don’t do this work for awards. We do it because making sure every child succeeds is central to our mission.

We strongly believe that having real-time data combined with individualized learning are critical — but we start first by creating a culture where students feel comfortable being themselves, regardless of their backgrounds, family income, ZIP code, or home language.

Why is it so crucial to build relationships with students and their families?

Many of our students come from families who are recent immigrants and speak another language at home, and many are Muslim. Our education team members, who often do not share those characteristics, take care to embrace our students’ diversity. That includes working hard to embed their culture into our classroom instruction, diverse reading materials and in the images of people whose faces line the walls of our classrooms and hallways. We also offer Arabic and Bengali translators and make sure our communications are accessible to our families.

Honoring our students’ and families’ culture is a big part of who we are – and something we know is also a significant contributing factor to our growth and progress.

How do you involve families in the school?

We have found our families have a true passion for learning. We feed on that hunger, provide a safe, fun environment – and from there we can apply the teaching tools that meet our students’ needs.

Every classroom works to create a “social contract,” where students agree to how they want to treat their teacher and fellow students. The students themselves then hold each other accountable in a classroom that is managed by them.

Our teachers also meet students where they are academically and then tailor instruction to their needs. That means really taking active steps to create plans and set goals based on the individual child.

To truly individualize instruction, we track and monitor student data regularly to inform how we teach, making adjustments where needed. Based on what we learn, our students may then receive intervention and support or small group instruction with other students who could also benefit from additional support on a subject.

Beyond providing ongoing instructional support for students who need it, we are passionate about creating a learning environment to encourage students to accelerate. For instance, we recently launched EXCEL-ERATE, our new advanced learning program to provide learning opportunities for top-performing students who are ready to learn at an accelerated pace beyond grade level.

Four Michigan schools that show promise

Hamtramck Academy is one of four schools singled out by the Education Trust-Midwest for helping traditionally underserved students progress academically.

The others are Bennett Elementary School in the Detroit Public Schools Community District, Discovery Elementary in Kentwood, and Thomas Jefferson Elementary in South Redford.

They were selected to receive the inaugural Building the Hope Schools awards for demonstrating that students from all backgrounds can learn at high levels despite challenges at home and school.

All of them predominantly serve students of color and students from low-income backgrounds, and all performed in the top 25% of Michigan schools for academic proficiency or showed above average academic growth.

Here’s why each school was selected:.

Hamtramck: Multiple groups, including Asian students and students from low-income backgrounds, progressed academically and exceeded statewide proficiency rates on standardized tests for three consecutive years. Hamtramck faculty and staff use diverse reading materials, culturally responsive communication, and Arabic and Bengali translators to meet the needs of their community.
Bennett: English language learners improved substantially on state standardized tests for three straight years. The school uses a translation app to communicate with parents and caregivers who are not fluent in English.
Discovery: Most subgroups of students progressed academically and exceeded statewide proficiency rates for math and English language arts for three consecutive years. Discovery uses small learning groups to support struggling students.
Thomas Jefferson: Black students and students from low-income homes showed improvement on state standardized tests for three straight years. The school has decreased suspension and discipline rates, and aligned instruction with individual student needs.

The Education Trust-Midwest is a nonpartisan research organization that advocates for improved education for all Michigan students.

How COVID cash could help Michigan schools tackle a mental health crisis

2022-03-14T10:00:00+00:00

Mariana Hernandez knew her son was struggling through the first year of COVID. His normally stellar grades had dropped to F’s, and he didn’t seem like himself.

But she wasn’t prepared for her quiet, bright child to ask, “If I wasn’t here, how would you feel, mami?”

Hernandez was used to taking action when her kids needed her — a few years earlier, when her children’s Detroit charter school was failing, she helped teachers unionize.

Now she was at a loss. “I didn’t know what to do,” she recalled. She reached out to one of her son’s former teachers, who referred her to a counseling center.

“You think your kid’s OK,” Hernandez said. “But then I talked with a psychologist and she said, ‘Actually, these are suicidal thoughts.’”

Two years of frustration, disruption, and loss have taken their toll on Michigan students, exacerbating a youth mental health crisis that has been building for more than a decade. Michiganders want schools to take action, polls show, and educators are stepping up to the challenge, drawing on research showing that emotional distress and student learning do not mix well. Michigan schools have no shortage of funds on hand, thanks to $6 billion in federal COVID relief, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is recommending a budget that includes an additional $361 million for student mental health.

Yet it’s not clear how far that money will go. Districts have hired social workers and counselors, selected new social-emotional learning curriculums, and purchased therapy dogs (see below for a detailed list). But students’ needs are immense, and the pandemic-roiled labor market is limiting districts’ efforts to hire additional staff.

At stake is the post-pandemic recovery of Michigan’s youngest citizens, not just emotionally but academically.

“We have kids that are chronically depressed and addicted,” said Paul Liabenow, executive director of the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association. “There is a massive backlog of need.”

Second graders at Becker Elementary School in Dearborn cut out paper hands and wrote their own best qualities on the fingers, part of an activity designed by the school social worker.

On a recent snowy Thursday, fifth graders at Becker Elementary in Dearborn lit up at the sight of Kawkab Hachem.

Hachem is the school social worker at Becker — and only at Becker.

Before the pandemic, Dearborn Public Schools social workers were assigned to several schools, moving between buildings to work only with the most severe needs. Now, with help from federal COVID funding, the district expanded its social work staff, and Hachem works full time at Becker. That means she’s gotten to know all 226 students at least a little bit, even as she spends focused time with certain students. And it means she has time to visit every classroom for weekly lessons on managing emotions, self-compassion, and connecting with peers.

Nearly a year has passed since these fifth graders last had an online lesson. Kassem is an outgoing child who smiles behind his glasses as he talks. But his face darkens at the memory of sitting in his bedroom all day in front of a computer screen.

“Virtual learning made me so angry,” he said. “I felt like I was stuck.”

Today, though, Kassem and his classmates are making a list of 15 kind things students can do for another person. At another table, students are instructed to write kind notes to friends. “Dear Rached,” one student writes. “You are always there for me and you are the kindest person that I met in my life.”

Their teacher, Kristin Koss, has been with the Dearborn district for decades. In previous years, she said, social workers visited her classroom for social-emotional learning twice a year — not once a week.

“This is money well spent,” she said of the district’s new social worker hires. “The kids came back to the classroom (after virtual learning) and they didn’t know how to do school, they were so immature. These lessons help.”

Hachem’s presence also gives teachers space to focus on students with the most pressing academic needs — no small matter for teachers working to help students catch up from lost learning. While Hachem worked with the class, Koss pulled a single student aside to help him with a math concept he’d been struggling with.

At Kassem’s table, one of his neighbors, Mazen, agreed that lessons with Hachem are paying off.

“To care for other people, you have to care for yourself,” she said. “I learned that here.”

Michigan has taken notice of the mental health struggles of students like Khyiana Tate.

“Students — me included — we’ve been isolated, ” said Khyiana, a senior at the Michigan School for the Deaf. “I was stuck at home. A lot of times I was depressed. They don’t know what it’s like to have outside socializing just be snatched right from under us.”

For Tate, one solution is to hire more social workers and counselors.

Many Michiganders would agree. They put higher priority on addressing student mental health than almost anything else schools can do with federal COVID funds, according to a January poll conducted by Chalkbeat and the Detroit Free Press. Policymakers, too, have turned their focus to student mental health with budget proposals and efforts to revamp a health care system that lacks enough beds and providers to meet the needs of youth who are battling mental illness at growing rates.

Yet schools are struggling to find mental health workers to hire. The pandemic caused turmoil in labor markets, adding to a shortage of trained school social workers that began years before, said Kim Battjes, a professor at Michigan State University who trains school social workers. If districts can find someone to hire, Battjes said, they must often find ways to train them on the job.

“It’s like, ‘Yay, we’re getting money! Oh no, we don’t have people to fill these positions!’” she said. “School districts are hiring people who have never even worked with a kid a day in their life as therapists in schools.”

COVID funds alone won’t be enough to improve working conditions in schools, which have been deteriorating for years and making hiring more difficult, said Elizabeth Koschmann, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan and the director of TRAILS to Wellness, a nonprofit that shares research-based mental health practices with schools.

“The environment inside our schools is one of unimaginable stress, pressure, and relentless competing demands that all present as urgent priorities,” she said in an email. “And yet, the salaries for the staff remain largely the same. Burnout is driving staff away from the entire field of education and districts can’t find enough people willing to take open jobs.”

Surveys of parents and teachers in Coloma, a small town on the west side of the state, suggested that social and emotional health should be top priorities, echoing statewide poll results. But the district decided not to expand its staff of social workers, instead opting to purchase software that promotes social-emotional learning. District leaders were wary of funding the positions with one-time money, and they worried they couldn’t hire social workers if they tried.

“We didn’t try to allocate funds for social workers because we knew we couldn’t find them,” said Dave Ehlers, superintendent of Coloma Community Schools.

In Detroit, the district opted to contract out for additional mental health services rather than temporarily hire new counselors and social workers, said Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.

Dearborn, a large urban district bordering Detroit, took another path. The district hired new social workers using federal funds on the assumption that it won’t replace employees in other areas, if need be, as the funding runs out.

“A lot of how we look at funding is through attrition,” said David Mustonen, director of communications for Dearborn Public Schools. “Being a big district, we know we can lose anywhere from 80-100 instructional employees every year. It may mean we don’t replace a resource teacher, or maybe instead of four custodians in a building, there’s three.”

And that might not even be necessary, Mustonen said, if state funding for education rises, something Whitmer is proposing amid a historic budget surplus.

Students at Becker Elementary School in Dearborn wrote letters to friends saying what qualities they liked best about them. “Dear Rached,” one student wrote. “You are always there for me and you are the kindest person that I met in my life.”

After asking her son’s former teacher for help, Hernandez found a therapist for her son at Southwest Counseling Solutions, a nonprofit in southwest Detroit, where she lives.

His depression has lifted somewhat, she said, and the suicidal thoughts stopped, though he felt anxious and isolated when his school in the Detroit Public Schools Community District reopened this fall.

“He has ups and downs, and the lows we have are still really low,” she said.

The episode left Hernandez with feelings of guilt. Was she prepared for something like this? Should she have noticed sooner how badly her son was struggling?

She said she would have benefited from training on how to recognize mental illness in a child. And she said she is glad that many districts, including in Detroit, are looking to expand their mental health staff.

Parents: Resources if your child is having a mental health crisis

Mental illness or distress can be scary and confusing to parents. But there is no shortage of resources for parents worried that their children are not well.

In the Detroit area, parents can find help from organizations such as the Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network, Caleb’s Kids, and Central City Integrated Health.
Parents anywhere in Michigan can reach out to health officials in their county for help with mental health. Find a list of mental health services by county here.
The Stay Well Project at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services offers free, 24/7 mental health counseling during the pandemic. Just dial 1-888-535-6136 and press 8.
TRAILS to Wellness offers tips for maintaining students’ mental health during the pandemic. TRAILS also has a self-care guide to help teens cope with COVID.
The Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a national group, has a list of coping tips and other resources, and a 24-hour hotline that families can call if a child is expressing suicidal thoughts at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). There is also a guide for youth struggling with mental health challenges.
Some schools also offer mental well-being training to students and parents, and school social workers are trained to support children in distress.

School districts across Michigan are using COVID funds to do those things and more:

In response to the pandemic, the federal government poured a record amount of money into schools — $6 billion in Michigan alone. Chalkbeat, the Detroit Free Press, and Bridge Michigan are collaborating to track where the money is going and how it is helping students.

To report on how schools are using the money to support student mental health, we pored over state records showing how districts planned to spend their share.

Lansing Public Schools is creating mental health programs with TRAILS to Wellness, a school-based program based at the University of Michigan. TRAILS provides brief lessons on mental health designed to be delivered to entire classes, student well-being surveys, mental health activities for staff, and suicide protocols.
In Grand Blanc, a suburb of Flint, the school district plans to hire seven new staffers to work one-on-one with students on social and emotional issues — one for every two elementary buildings, one for each middle school, and one for the high school. Students will be selected to work with the new staffers based on a mental health assessment or referrals by an adult.
The Kalamazoo district plans to pay 100 teachers an annual stipend to meet with small groups of students in advisory sessions that will focus on the challenges students are facing in life.
In Grand Rapids, the district plans to cover the cost of additional social workers and therapists.
Detroit Public Schools Community District will spend $10 million to contract with five organizations to provide mental health services, including therapy and diagnosis, to 3,700 Detroit students with the most severe mental health needs. The district expanded its full-time counseling staff in recent years, but demand for their services became overwhelming during the pandemic.
In Battle Creek, the district plans to hire a student support coordinator, an administrator who will help schools develop plans to address severe mental health issues among students and work with community agencies to connect students to mental health services outside of school.
In Flint, the city district contracted with a behavior specialist to address student trauma when classrooms reopened. When classes were virtual, the district hired a social-emotional learning coordinator to work with 9-12 graders who were learning online during the 2020-21 school year.
In Plainwell, near Kalamazoo, teachers, social workers, and other staffers are set to review district curriculums to bring social-emotional learning into academic lessons. For instance, a math teacher might include instruction on coping with frustration or working with partners to solve challenging problems.
Chatfield School, in rural southeast Michigan, hired an outside firm to provide mental health workshops to parents, students, and staff.
North Huron Schools, a small rural district in eastern Michigan, purchased a therapy dog named Chipper who lives with a teacher and spends his days at school. Teachers can refer distressed students to spend time with Chipper.

At the same time, Michigan has a massive budget surplus. With student activists calling for expanded mental health services in the wake of the school shooting in Oxford, Whitmer is calling for the state to invest an additional $361 million in student mental health. That proposal will likely be challenged by the Republican legislature, which proposes spending the surplus on a tax cut.

Still, these new investments may not be able to keep up with the need for mental health services. Consider the Grand Haven School District in western Michigan, where a string of six suicides between 2011 and 2017 spurred district leaders to expand their mental health staff to the levels that many other districts are trying to reach today.

Even as other districts in the area struggle to hire mental health workers, Grand Haven’s larger staff is struggling to keep up with mental health needs.

“We’re seeing the trickle effects of the constant chaos and uncertainty of the pandemic,” said Katie Havey, a district social worker. “We’re seeing more kids needing major interventions. We’re doing more suicide screenings and seeing higher levels of threat assessments.

“It is crazy to reflect on all of these things that we’re doing really well and realize that we could still use so much more support.”

About this project

$6 billion.

That’s how much Michigan schools are receiving from the federal government to help students and staff recover from the pandemic.

But it isn’t entirely clear how this unprecedented amount of federal cash is being spent and whether it is having an impact.

Chalkbeat Detroit, the Detroit Free Press, and Bridge Michigan have teamed up to find out where the money is going, who is benefiting, and whether the money is helping students get back on track academically, emotionally, and socially.

Please share your thoughts — and tips — with reporters Koby Levin at klevin@chalkbeat.org, Lily Altavena at laltavena@freepress.org, and Isabel Lohman at ilohman@bridgemi.com.

Check out a few of the most recent stories from our series below:

Federal COVID relief aid to schools will dry up soon. Are districts ready?

Michigan school districts are flush with cash, but wary

COVID aid helps Michigan school districts plug deficits

How private schools are spending COVID relief cash

New MI ESSER tutoring programs have room to grow

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@Chalkbeat.org.

Michigan 4-year graduation rates dropped during the pandemic

2022-02-25T23:39:16+00:00

Graduation rates in Michigan dipped for the first time in recent years.

The statewide four-year graduation rate was 80.4% for the Class of 2021, a decrease of 1.6 percentage points from the previous year. The state graduation rate is the percent of students graduating who began as freshmen four years earlier.

The numbers come as a timely reminder of the ongoing academic and mental health challenges COVID has placed on students, and the costs of educational turmoil. Without a high school diploma, students face an uphill struggle in the job market.

Those effects have been felt in Michigan and across the country. High school graduation rates dipped in at least 20 states after the first full school year disrupted by the pandemic, especially among students from low-income families.

State Superintendent Michael Rice said in a statement Friday that the graduation rates reflect the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on students of color and economically disadvantaged students.

“While we remain considerably higher at 80.5% than we were a decade ago at 74.3 percent in our four-year graduation rate, we have a particular need to make sure that graduation delayed is not graduation denied and that our students graduate and do so with the requisite knowledge and skills to continue in some form of postsecondary education,” he said.

Michigan’s largest school district, the Detroit Public Schools Community District, saw a drop of 8 percentage points in its four-year graduation rate from the previous year, going from 72.5% for the 2019-20 school year to 64.5% for the 2020-21 school year. The district’s graduation rate has declined every year for the last five years, in part because some of the city’s lowest-performing schools were reincorporated into the district in 2017.

Detroit Superintendent Nikolai Vitti tied the decline to that transition, but also said the pandemic was a big factor.

“Obviously, had it not been for the pandemic, which caused extreme absenteeism and therefore course failures, we would have been higher than 65%,” he said in an email. “This is now our new baseline and we will build from here.”

He said the district is taking steps to help students make up coursework and graduate. Teachers can make extra money by offering extra courses during the day, and after-school courses are being offered to help students make up missed credit.

Statewide, the graduation rate among Black students declined 2.8 percentage points, while American Indian students decreased 4.1 percentage points.

Among students from low-income families, the four-year graduation rate dropped 2.8 percentage points to 68.8%, after having been on a steady increase over the last five years.

The statewide decline is the first during the pandemic: Graduation rates ticked up for the class of 2020, which finished school after just three months of pandemic-influenced education.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@Chalkbeat.org.

This story has been corrected to reflect that the decreases in graduation rates were drops in percentage points.

School tiplines have prevented suicides, assaults, vandalism, police say

2021-12-22T18:29:44+00:00

A Michigan student threatened to kill his ex-girlfriend at school. Another posted on social media that he planned to vandalize cars at the prom and would shoot any “snitches.”

Police intervened in both cases before harm was done, thanks to the state’s confidential OK2SAY tipline, which logged 3,742 calls, texts, and emails reporting school threats last year and nearly as many in the three weeks since the deadly shooting at Oxford High School.

It’s impossible to say how many of those threats would have been carried out if not for the tipline, but state police believe OK2SAY has stopped suicides, assaults, vandalism, and worse.

School safety experts say anonymous tiplines are among the most effective tools for preventing school violence, including mass shootings like the one that took four lives and injured seven last month at Oxford High School.

Just over half of the public middle and high schools in the U.S. have tiplines, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The most successful ones have coordinated, trained, expert teams prepared to respond quickly and appropriately, the department said in an April report.

“I absolutely believe if we did not have the OK2SAY tipline we would have had a school tragedy like Oxford a long time ago” in MIchigan, said Lt. Colonel Chris Kelenske, deputy director of state police who supervises the Office of School Safety.

OK2SAY is Michigan’s only statewide tipline. School districts do not sign up to participate but some are better than others at promoting it. Anyone can call. A few school districts have their own local tiplines, Kelenske said, but those aren’t staffed 24 hours a day by trained responders like OK2SAY.

Citing the ongoing investigation, Kelenske declined to say whether OK2SAY received any tips about Oxford in the days and hours before the shooting.

But in the 18 hours after, OK2SAY received a record number of more than 2,000 tips, Kelenske said. About 1,000 more have rolled in since then. Calls typically escalate after shootings — even when the violence happens in other states — because people are on high alert as news reports inspire copycat threats, he said. Copycat threats have caused more than 100 school closures in Michigan this month.

Threats are continuing, and law enforcement is taking them seriously.

For example, a 15-year-old was arrested this month, ordered not to return to school, and outfitted with a GPS monitoring device after police investigated an OK2SAY tip that the student had threatened violence at Bloomfield Hills High School.

Another 15-year-old was arrested in Oakland County after an OK2SAY tipster reported that the boy had said he would “shoot up” Lake Orion High School if he could get a gun.

Ninety percent of school shooters displayed warning signs, said Michael Planty, director of the Center for Community Safety and Crime Prevention at the Research Triangle Institute, a North Carolina-based research institute whose scientists study technology’s role in solving critical problems.

“They revealed information about their plans days or weeks before carrying out the actual attacks. People knew, whether siblings or other students,” said Planty, a former Department of Justice researcher who studies victimization, crime prevention, and school safety.

OK2SAY is monitored around the clock by technicians trained to assess the urgency of calls and route tips to responders best equipped to handle them. Last year, OK2SAY routed 1,004 tips to school officials; 460 to local law enforcement; 379 to online resources, counseling or crisis lines; 95 to Child Protective Services; and one to mental health services.

OK2SAY was established by the state Legislature as a tool for anonymous reporting of tips about school-related crimes, or potential harm to safety of students, teachers, and staff. Since then, more than 29,000 tips have rolled in via phone, text and email. The program initially was housed in the Department of the Attorney General but now is managed by the Michigan State Police.

According to the program’s 2020 annual report, half of the cumulative tips have related to suicide and bullying, while 1,046 related to planned school attacks. The report does not include calls made after the Oxford shooting.

Students shouldn’t hesitate to call if they hear something concerning, Kelenske said.

“Saving your friend’s life is not betraying your friend,” Kelenske said. “If they did not say anything and something happened, how would that make them feel knowing they could have potentially done something.”

Anything concerning is worth reporting when it comes to school safety, said Brian Gard, founder of School Safety Associates, a national consulting firm based in west Michigan.

“If there’s any doubt, if there’s any hesitation” that it might not be a credible threat, report it anyway, he said. “It might be one pice of a puzzle, and somebody else might just make a tip that is another piece of the puzzle, and the person investigating might put these two things together” and be able to avert a threat to safety.

A tipline is only as effective as its marketing, Planty said. Students need to be aware of the tipline, and they need to know how to use it so they provide sufficient information for schools and law enforcement to follow up, he said. Students also need a school culture that supports reporting threats and concerns about safety, he said.

“The problem is that school culture often doesn’t allow students to provide this information. It comes across as snitching that will get them or someone else into trouble,” he said. “They need a school climate that’s there for them to feel safe, and they need to know that when they put in a tip it will be acted upon.”

That means tiplines need to be properly staffed, especially at times of high call volume, such as after a high profile attack like the Oxford shooting.

“When there’s a shock to the system people become hyper vigilant” and call in more tips, Planty said. “People feel more compelled and empowered to report.”

Door security, window locks, visitor screening, and well rehearsed lockdown drills also help. Gard also recommends that every classroom have an emergency backpack with a first aid kit, a whistle, high-visibility vests to identify teachers, and name tags to help with reunification of young children after an evacuation.

“It’s really important to focus on prevention and identification of threats, but if things do happen, schools need to be prepared,” Planty said.

OK2SAY costs about $1.1 million a year to operate. It is modeled after Colorado’s Safe2Tell program created after the Columbine High School shooting, where 15 people were killed and dozens were injured. According to the Colorado program’s website, the aim was to penetrate the “code of silence” that keeps students in fear of being labeled a “snitch” or of being targeted by the person they report.

(Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the title for Michael Planty, the director of the Center for Community Safety and Crime Prevention at the Research Triangle Institute.)

Sandy Hook mom seeks answers 9 years, scores of shootings later

2021-12-08T00:29:34+00:00

It’s been nine years since a gunman murdered first-grader Jesse Lewis, 19 of his schoolmates, and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

Jesse would be 15 now, the same age as some of the students at Oxford High School, where a shooting last week took the lives of 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana, 16-year-old Tate Myre, 17-year-old Justin Shilling, and 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin.

Both of those shootings could have been prevented, said Scarlett Lewis, Jesse’s mother, who is on a mission to stop them through Jesse Lewis Choose Love, one of several nonprofits created by Sandy Hook families.

Lewis spoke with Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan about her efforts, her frustrations, and her advice for helping the Oxford community as it heals. Her responses have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

There have been scores of school shootings since Sandy Hook, 30 this year alone. What needs to change to stop them?

We need to shift our focus from the problem to the cause of these school shootings: loneliness, disconnection, isolation, and the lack of emotional management that negatively impact the mental health and well-being of our children. There are essential life skills that must be taught in order to most effectively deal with the challenges we face.

I have learned through my experience that every one of us needs to step up and take responsibility for what is causing these children to perpetrate these horrific events. We are in this together and change is needed.

After school shootings people tend to separate themselves into two camps. One wants to strengthen gun laws by expanding background checks and outlawing certain kinds of weapons. The other wants to focus on mental health. Which is the right approach?

The first approach hasn’t worked. In fact, it seems that it has actually amplified the issue. We continue to implement school safety in a physical sense, for example, by locking doors and arming school resource officers. We aren’t addressing the real cause of the problem: the mental health and well-being of our children.

We need to shift our focus to teaching children how to manage the difficulties in their lives, how to cope with challenges, and how to have healthy relationships and connections. Creating a connected, compassionate, and loving home and school culture can prevent grievances from escalating into attacks. Society is failing in keeping our children safe. We need to re-focus on the needs of our children.

How is your organization, the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement, helping?

I stood up at my son Jesse’s funeral and asked the congregation to choose a loving thought over an angry thought. I said the Sandy Hook tragedy started with an angry thought and a thought can be changed. We have to work on what we can control, and this starts with our thoughts. This is something everyone can do right now to do their part to create a safe, more peaceful, and loving world.

I’m trying to do that through the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement. It’s a free program that teaches how to thoughtfully respond with love in any situation. It started as a school-based program but has expanded into communities, workplaces, and even correctional institutions.

As you detail in your book, Jesse left a guiding message behind. How are you carrying forward his message of “nurturing healing love?”

Scarlett Lewis reaches out to catch her son Jesse as he jumps in a pool in the summer of 2012. That December Jesse would be murdered in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn.

“Nurturing healing love” (or, in Jesse’s first-grade spelling: ‘Norurting Helinn Love’) are the three insightful words Jesse wrote on our kitchen chalkboard before his death. They are actually included in the definition of “compassion” across all cultures. Nurturing means loving kindness and gratitude, healing means forgiveness, and love is compassion in action

I realized after seeing Jesse’s chalkboard message that if the Sandy Hook shooter had been able to give and receive ‘nurturing healing love’ the tragedy would never have happened. I set out to bring this message to as many people as possible and to let them know they could choose love over anger. I began with children.

How did you find compassion for the shooter who murdered your son?

People are astounded that I forgave the young man who murdered Jesse, but I know that hurt people hurt people. I realized that love, connection, and belonging are universal wants and needs that connect all of humanity, and that if the shooter had received more of it in his life, the tragedy might never have happened. In fact, the Sandy Hook shooter was denied essential services from kindergarten onward. There were stories I read, such as when he was in first grade and came to school with a backpack filled with birthday invitations and no one came to the party. Learning about his history you see the isolation, disconnection, and loneliness that plagued him.

There are only two kinds of people in the world: good people and good people in pain. Perhaps it will take a while for us to understand this as it feels easier to assign blame. In order to stop school shootings it will require that we address the cause and it starts with putting the spotlight on the continued mental health and well-being of these children.

What can the community do in the weeks and months ahead to help survivors of the Oxford High School shooting and families of victims?

The victims’ families and communities are in shock right now. We see school shootings happening across the country but never think it will happen to us. Families are writing obituaries and making funeral arrangements, struggling to comprehend how they will continue to live life without their beloved children.

It’s important to offer techniques and treatment related to trauma and make it available to everyone in the community, even those who are not intimately impacted as these events can cause others to experience trauma. The focus on mental health and well-being must be on-going.

Neighbors, friends, and the surrounding community need to open their hearts to all and offer acts of kindness and extended caring and concern for each other. It’s a beautiful thing that happens after a tragedy takes place as people come together in love and compassion.

I don’t want another parent to have to go through what I went through, and what parents in Oxford are going through right now. We can honor those lost by committing ourselves to shining a national spotlight on the need for mental health services for our children, and ourselves.

Parents of Oxford High School shooting suspect charged

2021-12-03T20:08:39+00:00

An internet search for ammunition during class. A chilling drawing of a pistol and a gunshot victim with blood everywhere. The words, “The thoughts won’t stop,” “The world is dead,” and “My life is useless.”

The signs were there, but Ethan Crumbley’s parents did nothing, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said.

That’s why James and Jennifer Crumbley are now charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter after the shooting rampage that killed four students and wounded six others and one teacher at Oxford High School.

McDonald announced the charges Friday. She would not say whether Jennifer and James Crumbley are in custody.

Their son, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, was charged Wednesday with one count of terrorism causing death, four counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of assault with intent to murder, and 12 counts of possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony. He is being prosecuted as an adult.

New details emerged Friday about the failures leading up to the shooting that took the lives of 16-year-old Tate Myre, 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana; 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin; and 15-year-old Justin Shilling.

There were many opportunities to prevent the shooting, McDonald said, acknowledging the community’s anger at the school for not doing more.

When asked whether school personnel bear criminal responsibility, McDonald said only that the investigation is continuing.

She offered this timeline of events during a news conference on Friday:

Four days before the shooting: The teenager posted a photo of the Sig Saur SP2022 semi-automatic handgun on social media, calling it “my new beauty.”
Three days before the shooting: Jennifer Crumbley posted on social media, “Mom and son day testing out his new Christmas present.”
One day before: The school left voicemail and email messages notifying Jennifer Crumbley that a teacher saw him searching on his phone for ammunition. She did not respond to the messages but instead texted her son saying, “LOL. I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught.”
Several hours before the shooting: A teacher noticed and photographed an alarming note on the teenager’s desk that included a drawing of a semi-automatic handgun, a bullet, a bleeding figure with two gunshot wounds, and several quotes including “The world is dead.” A school counselor escorted him to the school office with the drawing, which had since been altered to scratch out the violent scene and some of the words including, “My life is useless.” The school summoned the Crumbleys.
Three hours before the shooting: The parents arrived for a meeting where they declined to take their son home with them and failed to ask him where the gun was.
At 1:22 p.m. Jennifer Crumbley texted her son saying, “Ethan, don’t do it.”

By then, 11 people had been shot and her son was in custody.

As news of the shooting spread, James Crumbley looked for the gun, McDonald told reporters Friday. When he couldn’t find it, he called 911 to say he believed his son might be the shooter, she said.

“The notion that a parent could read those words (on the drawing) and also know that their son had access to a deadly weapon that they gave him is unconscionable, and I think it’s criminal,” McDonald said. “It is criminal.”

Criminal charges against parents of school shooters are unusual but not unprecedented.

“I am by no means saying that an active shooter situation should always result in a criminal prosecution against parents, but the facts in this case are so egregious,” McDonald said. “I expect parents — and everyone — to have humanity, and to step in and stop potential tragedy.”

She said the investigation is continuing and intimated that Michigan gun laws insufficiently address criminal responsibility.

“We should take a very hard look at what gun owners are required to do,” she said. “It’s your duty to make sure you don’t give access to this deadly weapon to somebody that you have reason to believe is going to harm someone.

“Looking at that drawing it’s impossible not to conclude that there was a reason to believe that he was going to hurt somebody.”

Michigan has no laws requiring gun owners to secure weapons when children are in the home.

County prosecutors have been asking the Legislature to change that but partisan gridlock has prevented any movement to tighten gun laws. Proponents of the provision envisioned it stopping accidental shootings, not purposeful ones. Under it, adults who fail to properly secure firearms could be charged with a felony if a child under 12 uses the weapon to kill or injure.

In some cases, prosecutors have been able to file charges under existing law. For example, prosecutors charged parents of two young children after unrelated gun incidents in Detroit. In one case, a boy shot himself in the arm. In the other a 10-year-old shot his cousin. Both survived.

And in 2000, Jamelle James was charged with involuntary manslaughter after his 6-year-old found his handgun and shot 6-year-old classmate Kayla Rolland in Mount Morris Township.

Oxford is about 45 miles north of Detroit. The shooting is the 23rd incident involving gunfire on Michigan K-12 and college school grounds since 2013, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group.

Nationwide, there have been 28 shootings this year, according to the publication Education Week. Twenty of them have occurred since August.

Resources to help Michigan families cope with the Oxford High School shooting

2021-12-02T22:20:23+00:00

Communities across the nation are grappling with the fallout from the school shooting at Oxford High School that left four students dead and injured more.

“There are no unwounded students and staff today,” Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter said earlier this week. “Everyone … has been impacted by this tragedy.”

The ripple effects are already apparent. School leaders rushed this week to urge parents to be vigilant about reporting threats. Mental health experts warned that students far beyond Oxford may be traumatized by the shooting. And some school districts across Michigan shut down Thursday because of copycat threats.

Chalkbeat put together the list of resources below for parents and students to help them understand where to go for help dealing with trauma, what to do if they hear about a threat, and what warning signs to look for in troubled youth.

What to do if your child suffers emotional trauma after the shooting

Children and teenagers often turn to parents, relatives and teachers for comfort and guidance after a school shooting or mass violence. Survivors, friends and loved ones, as well as surrounding community members can be at risk of emotional distress following a tragedy, displaying a variety of reactions.

Organizations such as the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration provides guidelines and tips for caregivers looking to help their child or student in the aftermath of a school shooting.

Some common reactions and warning signs to look for include:

Feelings of anxiety, fear or worry about their safety or the safety of others
Fears that another shooting or violent event may occur
Changes in behavior or mood
Lack of interest in past activities
Physical ailments such as headaches or stomach aches

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is providing a list of resources and actionable steps for those affected by the Oxford school shooting.

Reassure children that they are safe. Let them know all feelings are okay when a tragedy occurs.
Make time to talk. Be patient and let children guide how much information you share by the questions they ask. Young children may need other activities like drawing or playing to identify and express feelings.
Keep explanations about the shooting age appropriate.
Review safety procedures both at school and at home.
Observe your child’s emotional state in case professional mental health support is needed.
Limit television viewing of the events.
Maintain normal routines.

What can parents do to learn more about their schools’ safety plans?

Michigan law requires school districts to develop an emergency plan for school attacks and threats of school violence, among other risks. The plans must be reviewed by a local law enforcement agency. While the plans aren’t posted online or submitted to the state, parents can ask district leaders for details of the plan, or even for a copy to review.

And parents can always contact leaders of their students’ school for information about safety drills and procedures.

Warning signs exhibited by troubled students to watch for

As research surrounding U.S. school shootings continues to emerge, some preliminary analysis has begun to identify common signs exhibited by troubled students who carry out acts of violence. School shooters usually show signs of distress prior to the incident, and were often suicidal, according to two criminologists who built a database of mass shootings in the U.S.

Notable patterns can include:

Experiencing or witnessing childhood trauma
Suicidal thoughts
Chronic loneliness or social isolation
Expressing thoughts of harming themselves or others
Expressing direct threats
A history of mental health concerns

Additional signs can involve “unusual or violent communications, expressed anger or intent to cause harm, and substance abuse,” according to Ready.gov.

A recent report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, outlines how school districts can avert targeted school violence and identify students in distress or exhibiting concerning behavior. A majority of plotters of school based attacks, the report states, experienced compounding family, social and academic stressors that can result in a range of responses from depression to hyperactivity.

What can parents do if their children show warning signs of violent behavior?

Parents may feel isolated or embarrassed at the prospect of sharing concerns about their children’s possible violent behavior. But there are many steps they can take to find help and support.

First, parents can lock up guns or other weapons.

Many specialists can help parents address warning signs of violence, which include intense anger, frequent loss of temper, and a history of being bullied. Guidance counselors, teachers, school psychologists, or school resource officers are trained to support families. Family members, friends, coaches, or clergy may also be able to help.

Mental health support groups available through the National Alliance on Mental Illness can help parents and children find resources and work through challenges.

If you suspect imminent danger, call 911.

Hear about a threat? Here’s what to do

What do you do if you’re a student, parent, or staff member and you hear about a threat? Law enforcement experts say it’s simple: Say something.

Michigan law makes it easy to report threats of school violence and other suspect behavior. The state has a program, called OK2SAY, that allows anyone to report a threat anonymously. Since 2014, nearly 2,900 tips have been received, 1,133 of them tips about threats.

It’s possible that the threat isn’t credible, but Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said he’d rather his deputies check them out rather than have to deal with one that ends up being credible but wasn’t reported.

Bouchard said tips can also be relayed to your local police department.

In the case of the Oxford shooting, there are rumors that students saw threats from the suspect. One parent said her son refused to attend school the day of the shooting.

Here’s what Detroit parents need to know about getting children ages 5-11 vaccinated

2021-11-12T22:51:27+00:00

Students ages 5-11 can now be vaccinated against COVID, and parents have several options, whether they’re looking for an appointment or seeking answers from a doctor about the vaccine.

Schools, city-run clinics, and pharmacies are offering shots for youngsters. Parents or guardians must accompany children under age 18.

The vaccine was deemed safe and effective for kids by federal officials last week. Parents say they are relieved that it is available, and school officials cheered it as another step toward normal in-person instruction. Vaccinated students typically don’t have to quarantine after a potential COVID exposure.

Here’s what families need to know about getting the vaccine and how to protect their children and those around them from COVID.

Where can I get my child vaccinated?

There are numerous sites across Detroit, including pharmacies, city clinics, and schools.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District is hosting vaccine clinics at two locations from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 13:

Martin Luther King, Jr. Senior High School,  3200 E. Lafayette Street
Randolph Career and Technical Center, 17101 Hubbell Street

No appointment is needed for district-run clinics. DPSCD will provide second doses on Dec. 4 at the same locations.

The district is holding more clinics next week, and district leaders say more will be scheduled.

Mark Twain School for Scholars, 12800 Visger St. Detroit, MI 48217, 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 16 (return for a second dose Dec. 7)
Bagley Elementary School, 8100 Curtis St., 3-6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 17 (return for a second dose Dec. 8)
Burton International Academy, 2001 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 19 (return for a second dose Dec. 10)

The city is providing vaccinations for children ages 5 to 11 at the following locations:

Detroit Health Department, 100 Mack Ave., from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays-Fridays
Northwest Activities Center, 18100 Meyers Road, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays-Fridays and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays

The city clinics are offering the youth vaccine by appointment only. Mayor Mike Duggan said last week that appointments will be longer than normal vaccine slots to reduce wait time and anxiety. City clinics will be staffed by nurses with experience working with children.

To book an appointment with the city, call 313-230-0505 or register online.

Pharmacies including Rite Aid, Walgreens, and CVS are offering vaccines for children ages 5-11 in the Detroit area. Some doctors’ offices may also offer the vaccine.

How is this vaccine different from adult COVID vaccines?

Only the Pfizer vaccine is currently available to children ages 5-11. Other manufacturers are working to win approval for their vaccines for younger children.

The shot has the same active ingredients as the Pfizer vaccine that has been taken by more than 100 million Americans, but contains one-third the amount as the adult vaccine and is given with a smaller needle. Like the adult vaccine, the one for children consists of two shots given three weeks apart, with full immunity reached two weeks after the second dose.

What is the evidence that the pediatric vaccine is effective and safe?

Pfizer’s vaccine for kids was 91% effective at preventing COVID in clinical trials, an efficacy rate similar to the adult vaccine. Side effects in children were mild and similar to those seen in adults. The most common side effect was a sore arm. The vaccine was recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after officials examined safety data.

I have questions about the vaccine. Who can I talk to?

Your child’s doctor will have the latest information about the vaccine. Parents can also call the Detroit COVID hotline at 313-876-4000 and press 3 to be connected to a nurse.

Michigan dyslexia bills launch debate over supporting struggling readers

2021-11-11T23:39:45+00:00

Parents and students gave emotional testimony on Tuesday about struggling to read in a hyper-literate society, kicking off a renewed effort by Michigan lawmakers to pass a package of bills designed to help struggling young readers.

The bills require school districts to screen students for dyslexia characteristics and increase teacher training requirements so teachers are better able to identify and address reading problems. Dyslexia is a hereditary disorder that makes it difficult for people to do basic reading tasks such as sounding out written words. Researchers estimate that between 5% and 20% of all people have dyslexia.

The proposed laws have drawn unusually broad support from lawmakers and experts across Michigan’s political and geographical divides, who say the state has not done enough to identify and support struggling readers. Until last year, dyslexia was not mentioned in state law.

But the bills’ fate is not guaranteed. The same legislation was introduced last year but didn’t go to a vote. And some literacy experts and school officials urged caution about the bills, calling them overly prescriptive and too similar to policies that have proved ineffective in other states.

To some advocates, bipartisan support for the bills signals a promising opportunity to address dyslexia in Michigan.

“The hearings were dynamite,” said Sen. Jeff Irwin, a Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill package. “I feel really good about our trajectory in the legislature.” He added that similar bills were introduced late in the legislative session last year and said there wasn’t enough time for them to be seriously considered.

Supporters of the bills say they will help schools identify students with reading issues early in their school careers when teachers can do the most to help them. Several speakers during the hearing Tuesday said they have dyslexia themselves, or that their children do.

“I never wanted to read as far back as first grade,” said Anri Haglund, a seventh grader who said he has dyslexia. “I wasn’t able to read long words. I didn’t know the sound of ‘dge,’ ‘tch,’ and ‘tion.’ I can read harder things now and understand them. I should have learned these things sooner.”

Reading difficulties can also emerge for other reasons, including what some researchers, with tongue in cheek, call “dysteachia,” or a failure of classroom instruction that can leave students without the building blocks of reading, especially if they aren’t getting help with literacy at home.

Whether the literacy roadblock is dyslexia, poor instruction, or something else, research points to many of the same solutions: high-quality, personalized instruction.

An effort to improve literacy in Michigan’s youngest students got underway in recent years. A 2016 law known as “read by grade three” sought to improve reading scores in Michigan by expanding the state’s corps of coaches who will work with teachers to improve literacy instruction. It also pushed schools to emphasize literacy instruction by requiring that third graders be held back if they fell too far behind in reading.

Research suggests that the initiative has begun to have modest positive effects on reading scores.

The new bills aim to go further.

Well-to-do parents whose children struggle to read are already paying for specialized tutoring, and the proposed legislation would make those services available to more children, said Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools Community District. Vitti has dyslexia, as do two of his children, experiences that he says fuel his work in education.

“This is an equity issue,” he said. “What families pay for out of pocket — mainly middle class and upper middle class parents — should be happening for every child within the traditional public schools.”

Existing processes for identifying Michigan students who need extra help with reading, such as the special education process, aren’t cutting it, he added.

“We cannot pretend that this is happening,” he said of students receiving adequate support with reading. “It’s not.”

Some experts and school officials worry that the bills, which narrowly define effective reading instruction, could have unintended consequences.

Rachael Gabriel, an education professor at the University of Connecticut, said similar legislation in other states, including Connecticut and Tennessee, has been less effective than advocates hoped. Tests that screen for signs of dyslexia aren’t reliable, she said, and can over- or under-identify students.

Gabriel says schools need to ensure that staff with literacy expertise have the time they need to comb through the test results and determine which students need extra support. The proposed laws don’t include funding for more reading specialists.

Legislation in Texas and Arkansas that relied on screeners to identify students with dyslexia didn’t lead to more students being identified, according to one study Gabriel cited. She also warned that some resource-strapped schools would struggle to implement the proposed law, pointing to a study showing that in states that implemented screening requirements, students of color were less likely to be identified with reading challenges.

“We should ask what would let existing systems work, rather lay on top of them with more specifications,” she said.

Some school officials are wary of the proposals because they attempt to enshrine a particular approach to literacy in law.

Existing special education systems are able to identify students who need extra help learning to read, said Justin Michalak assistant superintendent for special education and student services at Macomb Intermediate School District, a countywide education agency in suburban Detroit.

“It’s not a problem to try to work to identify dyslexia. The issue is writing very specific interventions into law,” said Peter Spadafore, spokesman for the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators. “We should leave flexibility to the specialists.”

Some specialists support the bills. David Winters, head of the special education department at Eastern Michigan University, said extra screening for dyslexia would ensure that more struggling readers would get help early, easing pressure on the already overtaxed special education system.

He also spoke in favor of a component of the law that would require teacher education programs to put a heightened focus on literacy instruction and dyslexia.

“While some Michigan teacher education programs may briefly mention dyslexia, | have personally found few teachers who have received sufficient accurate knowledge without personally taking on additional professional development,” he said.

Several of the state’s largest teacher preparation programs previously told Chalkbeat that they already cover dyslexia and the science of reading.

Bills SB 380, SB 381, SB 382, and SB 383 haven’t yet been approved by the Senate Education and Career Readiness Committee. They would also have to be approved by the House and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The office of Sen. Lana Theis, chairwoman of the education committee and a cosponsor of the bills, did not immediately return a request for comment on when the next vote is expected.

Kindergarten catchup: How teachers are helping young learners

2021-11-08T16:01:13+00:00

He. Me. An. With. Is.

A hand shot up as soon as the words appeared on the first-grade classroom overhead projector at Ann Visger Preparatory Academy in the Detroit suburb of River Rouge.

“Jorell, you might know these words but we still have to sound them out. Can you do that with us?” teacher Christina Ogle asked.

“Everybody knows those words,” Jorell blurted.

The truth was that some of his classmates couldn’t even name the letters in them.

While Jorrell attended kindergarten last year, some of his classmates did not. And while schools are relieved that enrollment in early grades has bounced back after last year’s steep drop, first grade teachers in Michigan and across the country are now confronting big differences in their students’ readiness — and working with the children who missed instruction during a critical year for their development.

Kindergarten enrollment was down 11.3% across Michigan last year as parents chose to keep their students home rather than face the COVID health risk. In River Rouge it was down 37.2%. In some places — Flint, Benton Harbor, Chandler Park Academy, and Old Redford — fewer than half of last year’s would-be public school kindergarteners showed up.

Now, teachers across Michigan — one of 31 states where kindergarten is optional — are working to help them catch up to their peers.

As they entered school this year, parents and administrators had to decide where to place 5-year-olds who didn’t go to kindergarten last year.

Teachers have always had to adapt lessons to meet children’s different needs. But kindergarten and first-grade teachers said this year’s challenges have been more pronounced because some children moved directly into first grade with their peer group while others enrolled in kindergarten a year late.

Teacher Naja Moore uses a smart board to read to her kindergarten class at Ann Visger Preparatory Academy in River Rouge.

Overall, 13,593 fewer kindergarten students registered for public traditional and charter schools in Michigan last year compared with 2019-20. Enrollment figures for the current school year aren’t yet available.

Last year’s kindergarten enrollment was particularly low in communities with more Black, Latino, and low-income families, putting already disadvantaged students a year behind their peers.

“Historically, schools have not done a great job of serving minority kids and families, so any time schools are additionally burdened they’re likely to do even less of a good job,” said Amy Parks, professor of early childhood education at Michigan State University.

State enrollment shows students who did not enroll in public school kindergarten weren’t flocking to private schools, either. Private school enrollment increased by less than 1%.

Some children may have been taught at home but it’s impossible to know how many because Michigan doesn’t require homeschool registration.

Thousands, though, were unaccounted for last year.

Parents kept their children home last year for a variety of reasons including health concerns and logistic challenges exacerbated by additional burdens families faced during the pandemic, said Walter Cook, a researcher with the Detroit Education Research Partnership at Wayne State University. Researchers there have been analyzing kindergarten enrollment data with The Skillman Foundation, a Detroit philanthropy group whose grantees include Chalkbeat.

Job constraints, lack of childcare, and inadequate internet access were additional obstacles that prevented some parents from providing the time and attention young children need to participate in virtual learning, he said.

‘It’s not play time, nap time, coloring.’

Kindergarten has become more academic, with its increased focus on reading and math readiness. It’s also a grade where children develop interpersonal skills and social behaviors.

“It’s not play time, nap time, coloring. We’re really pushing academics,” said Naja Moore, who teaches kindergarten at Ann Visger Preparatory Academy, the River Rouge school. “The hope is for kindergarteners to be able to read by the end of the year but even if they don’t reach that goal at the end of the year they still get that exposure.”

“If they go to first grade without any kindergarten experience they’re really behind because they’re expected to already know their numbers, already know how to write their name,” Moore said. “If they just go right to first grade they miss that educational foundation.”

For those students, the goal this year is academic growth, not necessarily proficiency, said Nichole German, the Ann Visger principal.

Missing kindergarten could have lasting effects, Cook said.

Detroit Public Schools Community District saw a 25% drop in kindergarten enrollment with 3,145 enrolling last year —1,039 fewer students than the year before, pre-pandemic. Kindergarten enrollment in Detroit charter schools was down 20.5%.

Most DPSCD students who skipped kindergarten last year went directly to first grade, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said. Smaller class sizes, expanded after-school programming, and literacy intervention for individuals and small groups will help them catch up, Vitti said.

In Ingham County, Holt schools are extending school days, offering extra instruction during scheduled school breaks, and having kindergarten students begin school with a “soft start” that allows teachers to get to know students before assigning them to classrooms, Superintendent David Hornak said.

“Everything is really hard for her.”

At Ann Visger Academy, Ogle uses a variety of approaches to meet the needs of students who skipped kindergarten. For example, she created two different sets of worksheets for her students.

Most students’ worksheets are geared toward beginner readers. They show, for example, a picture of a mouth and ask children to choose which is correct: “lip” or “lop.” or a picture of a police officer with the words “cop” and “cap.”

Students who missed kindergarten have easier worksheets that ask them, for example, to trace letters.

A first-grader struggles with a worksheet at Ann Visger Preparatory Academy in River Rough. The girl, who skipped kindergarten during the pandemic, was unable to match identical words and color them the same.

During independent reading time on a recent Monday, a boy who’d had a full kindergarten year sailed through three books, moving his lips as he read fluently, “It was Friday, and school was out. Froggy flopped home from the school bus — flop flop flop — singing ‘Hurray! Hurray! It’s Friday! Friday!”

Across the room, a classmate put her head on her pile of picture books and cried. It was her third meltdown of the morning. She stayed home last year and isn’t used to being away from her mother, Ogle explained.

Ogle persuaded her to flip through a picture book.

“As of now, that’s what she can do. One of the ways to start reading is to look at the pictures,” Ogle said. “Everything is really hard for her.” She doesn’t have the social, emotional and academic skills of a child who has been through kindergarten, Ogle said.

The differences might have been more pronounced if the children who did attend kindergarten last year had had a normal year, teachers from across the state said in interviews. Instead, they were in and out of school as the severity of the pandemic waxed and waned. Those who attended virtual kindergarten spent the year touching and clicking tablets instead of writing and coloring with pencils and crayons.

“When I introduced an activity that required scissors, my jaw hit the floor watching these kids try to cut,” said Chip Bennett, who teaches first grade at Perry Early Learning Center in Ypsilanti. “They’re holding scissors like they’ve never held a set of scissors in their life, and they might not have.”

Ogle noticed that in River Rouge, too. To sharpen fine motor skills she’s introducing more crafts than in a typical year.

She’s also spending more time than usual on phonics. A typical year begins with a review, but this year, some of her students have had no exposure to letters and their sounds. It’s been difficult, she said, to teach beginning concepts to children who are new to school while keeping more advanced students like Jorell engaged.

“It’s constantly adjusting so they’re not bored. I have to keep that in mind all the time,” she said. “I try to give them something extra to do.”

Parents shouldn’t worry too much, Parks said.

Older children enrolled in kindergarten will have developmental advantages that will carry through their schooling, she said, and those who skip kindergarten have plenty of time to catch up.

Still, she said, districts have to be more flexible in their academic expectations this year.

“First-grade teachers are going to have to spend a little more time on ‘How do we find the bathroom in the classroom?’and ‘What do we do when we want someone’s attention?’ and ‘What does a line mean?’ And it means other things might not happen, and that’s ok,” she said. For example, learning about greater-than and less-than may have to wait for second grade, she said.

“If both educators and families are looking at what kids need, I think we’ll be fine coming out of this,” Parks said.

How staff shortages are hurting Michigan students with disabilities

2021-10-26T21:37:35+00:00

In August, David Davis, a fifth grader with severe mental health problems, ran away from his school in Flint. Police found him several blocks away, playing in the street.

He soon received a special education plan that called for a paraprofessional to monitor his behavior throughout the day and ensure he didn’t hurt himself or run away.

David’s mother, Betty Nostrant, was still frustrated. She says she’d been telling school officials that David needed constant supervision since the family moved to Flint from Lansing two years ago. She also had been asking for an aide for her younger son, Jeffery, who has physical disabilities including seizures and incontinence.

What’s more, the district didn’t provide an aide for David until late September.

“They say they have children without parapros, that they’re doing the best they can,” she said. “But this is a physical safety issue.”

Flint Community Schools did not return requests for comment.

Many Michigan students are feeling the effects of the tight labor market as schools struggle to fill a wide range of positions, from teachers to nurses to social workers.

But the effects of staff shortages are especially severe for students with disabilities. The absence of a classroom aide, or parapro, can sharply reduce their learning opportunities and can even bring their education to a halt. For these children, many of whom were unable to fully access education while most Michigan schools were operating virtually, the post-pandemic year of recovery threatens to become another lost year.

District leaders say it has never been easy to attract and retain parapros, who receive meager pay and little training for a demanding job that has the potential to profoundly affect students’ lives.

Across the state, special education officials say hiring aides has gotten even harder during the pandemic.

“Where you would have had five applicants, nobody applies,” said Derek Cooley, vice president of the Michigan Association of Administrators of Special Education and special education director for Godwin Heights Public Schools, a district outside Grand Rapids.

“We have postings open, and you go in to check and there are literally zero applications.”

Statewide data on paraprofessional staffing challenges during the pandemic isn’t currently available. But anecdotes from people like Cooley suggest that special education programs are facing the same poorly understood pandemic-related pressures that have made hiring for challenging low-wage jobs difficult across the U.S. economy.

The shortages are creating a vicious cycle by making work harder for existing classroom aides, said Robyn O’Keefe, a parapro working in Birmingham Public Schools in suburban Detroit.

O’Keefe, a union leader in her district, said the district has been short paraprofessionals this year. Retirements are up, and a pay increase under the newest contract hasn’t been enough to help the district fill vacant positions.

“The demands of being in an understaffed environment, and with student needs being really great with the transition back from virtual — a lot of people are really questioning whether they’ll stay in the profession.”

For students with disabilities, the staffing squeeze can lead to civil rights violations, said Michelle Driscoll, policy coordinator for Michigan Alliance for Families, a nonprofit that helps parents advocate for children with disabilities.

“What I’m hearing from parents is that (federally mandated individualized education programs) are not being implemented and services are not being provided,” she said. “And it’s all kinds of services — academic supports, behavioral supports, social-emotional supports.”

Districts face a no-win situation when there aren’t enough aides to provide legally required levels of support to students, Cooley said. Other staff — such as school counselors, social workers, or reading specialists — can be reassigned to make sure students with disabilities receive necessary help. But that means they won’t be available to help other students.

Stephanie Jodway says her two 16-year-old daughters are on the autism spectrum and need constant adult support to get through the school day. Aides help her daughters with school work and with routine tasks like navigating to the bathroom.

Neither student is assigned a one-on-one aide, but their special education programs call for various school employees to stay with them throughout the school day. Their in-school support network has been stretched thin this year as their district, Port Huron Area Schools, struggles to hire aides.

“The paras and the teachers band together to make sure that they get what they need,” Jodway said. “Teachers are not getting their prep hours because students who need a parapro according to their IEPs don’t have one.”

Jodway worries that her daughters’ post-pandemic recovery is in jeopardy. Both regressed socially after spending almost all of last year learning from home.

“It’s frustrating because I feel like the easiest way to support all the kids is to have more adults in the room.”

Port Huron Area Schools did not return requests for comment.

In classrooms for students with particularly complex disabilities, paraprofessional shortages are dangerous and can stop the education process completely. Aides in these classrooms may be responsible for essential tasks such as changing diapers, feeding students, or calming an irate, emotionally challenged teen who has become dangerous to themself or others around them.

“We’re likely to have to do periodic closures this year due to unsafe staffing levels,” said Rachel Fuerer, director of special education for the Eastern Upper Peninsula Intermediate School District, a regional agency that runs classrooms for students with severe special needs.

She says her program is lucky to get one applicant today for an open paraprofessional position that might have drawn 15 applications before the pandemic.

“I’ve been in this position since 2008, and I’ve never had to consider closing a classroom due to staffing, but we’ve had to come up with a plan to do so this year.”

Black teacher workforce declined sharply as Michigan students left city districts — study

2021-10-18T22:50:28+00:00

Michigan’s Black teacher workforce declined 48% between 2005 and 2015, far outpacing overall declines in the size of the state’s educator corps, according to a new study from Michigan State University.

During that period, tens of thousands of African American students left distressed city districts in Michigan. Hundreds of schools shut down in Detroit alone, eliminating thousands of jobs historically held by Black teachers.

Many students moved to suburban districts with largely white teaching workforces, but those districts didn’t pick up the slack by hiring more Black teachers, the study says. During the same period, the number of African Americans entering traditional teacher training programs also fell.

Michigan’s urban school districts haven been hobbled by a lack of funding, said Pamela Pugh, an elected member of the Michigan Board of Education. Indeed, the study notes that increased student-teacher ratios in city districts — likely a result of underfunding — also helped shrink the state’s Black educator corps.

“Public education was purposefully dismantled, and what happens when you dismantle something?” she said. “Yeah, you’re going to have educators and students leaving.”

Michigan lost Black teachers even as their particular importance to schools became clear in a growing body of education research. The presence of a Black teacher in the classroom has been shown to contribute to higher test scores and better behavior for all students — and Black students especially.

“We did not have a large number of educators of color in the workforce to begin with, and to see such a substantial loss is very troubling,” said Leah Breen, director of the Office of Educator Excellence at the Michigan Department of Education.

Attrition among Black educators has been on the state’s radar for years: At last count, 17% of Michigan students were African American compared with only 7% of teachers.

That underrepresentation is worse than the U.S. average: About 15% of U.S students are African American versus 7% of public school teachers. The number of Black teachers nationwide has dropped by about 1% over the last two decades.

The new study, “Deurbanization and the Struggle to Sustain a Black Teaching Corps,” breaks new ground by drawing a connection between enrollment declines in Michigan city school districts and the Black teacher workforce.

The study draws on statewide data that track the movement of teachers and students. The researchers did not survey Black teachers to find out why so many left the education workforce.

Rod Wallace, a former Detroit teacher and a member of a state education department advisory group that focuses on diversity in the workforce, said African Americans remaining in Michigan classrooms can bear an extra burden precisely because they are rare.

“I think in many districts, the requirements for African American teachers to not only instruct but to be beacons of hope and access creates an inordinate burden of stress,” he said, adding that “it’s one we readily take on.”

Steve Drake, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate at Michigan State University, said his research suggests that focusing on diversifying the teacher workforce outside of cities should be a priority.

“Policymakers and supporting institutions like universities and school districts must develop strategies to build sustainable pipelines of Black educators in all of the communities where Black students live and work every day — not just in urban centers,” he said.

The paper points to research showing that Black teachers are more likely to stay in schools where they have more Black colleagues.

Thousands of Black students enrolled in suburban Detroit districts in recent years, but teaching staffs in those districts remained overwhelmingly white.

Black student enrollment in the Warren Consolidated School District grew by more than 500 between 2006 and 2015, according to state data. During the same period, the number of Black teachers in the district fell from 8 to 5.

In Eastpointe, a district that became majority Black over the last decade amid an influx of new students, the teaching force was 2% African American in 2017.

“Our kids deserve to see themselves in the people that serve them,” said Christina Gibson, assistant superintendent for human resources in Eastpointe. She said the pandemic drove a wave of retirements that she hopes will diversify the district’s teaching staff, noting that 25% of applicants for the open positions are African-American.

Warren district officials didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

The state education department has mounted several efforts to attract and retain more African American educators, from encouraging students to return to their home districts as teachers to supporting alternative certification programs, which offer a fast track into the teaching profession.

Such programs have proved appealing to would-be educators who are Black at a time when the number of Black students entering traditional teacher prep programs has fallen. In Detroit, training programs for district support staff have already put dozens of people, many of them African American, into classrooms for the first time.

Researchers only used audited data, meaning they couldn’t get figures after the 2015-2016 school year. They noted, however, that the decline of Black teachers in Michigan may have leveled off in recent years. According to data from the Michigan Department of Education, there were 52 Black students for every Black teacher in Michigan in 2015. By 2019, that figure had fallen to 43.

But stark racial disparities remain: Statewide, there are 12 white students for every white teacher.

The study also notes that population declines in Michigan — with the corresponding reduction in the state’s teaching workforce — doesn’t account for the steep loss of Black educators. While the Black educator workforce fell 48%, the white teaching force shrank by 19% and the Latino teaching force grew by 6%.

Reversing the trend won’t be easy, but adults can start by encouraging Black students to become teachers, said Quan Neloms, a former Detroit teacher who is now a career counselor for Wayne RESA, the county education agency, in addition to serving on the state advisory committee on diversity in the education workforce and running an organization that aims to recruit Black men into teaching.

“African American teachers may not be getting introduced to teaching at an early age like some of their white counterparts,” he said.

“Just ask that question. Have you thought about being an educator? That’s what hooked me.”

Correction: A previous version of this story named the study’s lead author as Steve Beck. He is Steve Drake.

U.S. approves Michigan COVID funding for affluent districts

2021-10-08T18:42:19+00:00

Districts in affluent communities across Michigan will receive $363 million in COVID funds for their highest need students.

The U.S. Department of Education today approved Michigan’s plan for spending $1.24 billion from the Biden administration’s COVID relief package, which includes the funds for wealthy districts.

Federal officials had raised concerns that the plan didn’t focus enough on the students who were hit hardest by the pandemic.

Most of that money will go directly to school districts, with more going to districts with large numbers of students living in poverty. On average, districts will receive $3,040 per pupil, though big winners such as Detroit, Flint, and Benton Harbor will receive upward of $16,000 per pupil.

But state lawmakers set aside some additional funds for districts in wealthier areas — those that were in line for less than $1,093 per pupil — arguing that all schools faced increased costs during the pandemic.

Although affluent districts have fewer students living in poverty and rely on large local tax bases, lawmakers argued that they educated some students with acute needs during the pandemic. In suburban Detroit, the Royal Oak district was set to receive $201 per pupil, while Plymouth-Canton Community Schools was in line for $480 per pupil.

Under the approved plan, those districts and more than 200 others will receive $1,093 per pupil.

In recent months, uncertainty about whether the plan would be allowed by the U.S. Department of Education left some of those districts wondering whether they would face an unexpected, multimillion hole in their budgets. While $363 million is only a fraction of the total federal COVID aid, and will not bring the districts up to the statewide average of federal aid, superintendents said they were counting on it for program expansions that would help disadvantaged children.

“Today’s approval of that plan is a welcome step forward and gives our schools the assurance that they can continue providing their students with the support and top-notch educational experience they both need and deserve,” said Kenneth Gutman, superintendent of Walled Lake Consolidated School District and president of the K-12 Alliance, an advocacy group.

Under the approved state plan, his district will receive roughly an extra $391 per student,or $5.2 million total.

In their application, Michigan officials noted that even the wealthier districts had an average of 35% of students who receive free or reduced-price lunch, an indicator that a not-insignificant portion of students in those districts are living in poverty.

“Notwithstanding the fact that these 223 (districts) as a rule have lower percentages of children with special needs, English learners, and economically disadvantaged children, they nonetheless each educate students in these categories that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19,” state officials wrote.

Districts must spend about half of the funds to address learning loss, 10% for summer enrichment, and 10% on after-school programs.

They are also required to use the funds to address the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on students from families with low incomes, students of color, children with disabilities, English learners and migrant students, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care.

Transparency on COVID school dollars can help make the case for equitable funding, report says

2021-09-09T22:18:54+00:00

As Michigan schools work to hire school counselors and reduce class sizes with their share of $6 billion in federal COVID aid, a group of education advocates say the state should do more to show that education funding reaches the most vulnerable students.

After decades of meager state education funding, Michigan should be prepared to raise its investment in schools once the federal funds run out, according to a new report from The Education Trust-Midwest, a nonprofit advocacy organization. But first, the group says, the state should begin publishing data showing how money intended to support students from low-income families or students with disabilities impacts their classrooms.

Nearly 30 years after Michigan established its current school funding system, a chorus of experts and educators say the state is due for another overhaul, this one aimed at supporting the students with the greatest needs. At the same time, that idea is being put to the test by the billions of dollars in federal COVID aid now flowing into the state: Much of the money is destined for districts with high concentrations of poverty.

Showing exactly where those federal dollars go would lay the groundwork for future increases in state education spending, said Amber Arellano, executive director of EdTrust.

She called for “a serious system of fiscal accountability and transparency,” which, she said would serve as an answer to “people in Lansing who say, ‘Oh, if we put more money into public education, we don’t know where it’s going to go.’”

Michigan’s education budget has grown in recent years — and this year especially, thanks to a state budget surplus — but it still doesn’t come close to providing the extra funding that education finance experts recommend for the most vulnerable students.

Michigan spent roughly $12,700 per pupil in 2019 on K-12 schools, a figure that includes state and federal funds, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s less than the national average, but more than 29 other states.

Within Michigan, school districts receive increasingly equal funding. But districts with more high-need students — English learners and students with disabilities, for example — receive very little additional funding. And because school buildings are funded through local property taxes, wealthy communities can afford to build up-to-date schools while children in areas with low property values often attend run down classrooms.

The EdTrust report argues that available public reports don’t show whether funds intended to help at-risk students end up in those students’ schools.

The data exists, even if it hasn’t been packaged for public consumption, said Craig Thiel, research director for Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a nonpartisan think tank. Michigan schools are required to account in detail for their spending, and districts are regularly audited. The state’s school accounting manual runs to hundreds of pages.

Thiel says it’s up to the state to package the available financial information to show the public how the money is being used.

“Transparency is not opening up the government checkbook,” he said. “It’s figuring out what info in that checkbook is important, and then figuring out how to explain to taxpayers why it’s important and how to understand it.”

Transparency is good politics, said Dave Meador, vice chairman and chief administrative officer for DTE Energy and a member of the Michigan Partnership for Equity and Opportunity, a coalition organized by EdTrust that is pushing for increased funding for vulnerable kids. He said it would be easier to win support from Michigan’s business leaders for a major new investment in Michigan education if the state expands its reporting on education spending.

“Now is the right time for Michigan to put in place a stronger fiscal transparency system that allows for the tracking of equity-focused dollars down to the school level,” he said in a statement, adding that such a system would also help track how federal pandemic aid is used.

Asking school leaders to produce additional reports — even as they face new accounting requirements related to federal COVID aid — would not be fair, said Peter Spadafore, deputy executive for public relations for the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators, an advocacy group that represents district leaders across the state.

“We are not afraid of accountability; we submit very detailed spending plans annually,” he said. “I don’t think a lack of reporting is the problem with Michigan’s funding system, the problem is a lack of equitable funding.”

Cornerstone gets OK to merge three schools in a turnaround bid

2021-06-25T01:10:52+00:00

Cornerstone Schools, one of Detroit’s largest charter school networks, will consolidate three schools into one new K-12 program in what its leaders say is an effort to boost flagging academic performance.

The network is creating a new school called Lincoln-King Adams-Young Academy, which will have an anticipated enrollment of 1,400 students across three campuses. The school will replace Cornerstone Health and Technology High School, Lincoln-King High School, and the network’s Adams-Young elementary building. Many students currently attending school in those buildings will be able to stay in place, though most will see major changes to school leadership and staff. Teachers at the schools being consolidated will receive offer letters to join the new school, Cornerstone officials said.

Trustees of Grand Valley State University, which oversees Cornerstone and dozens of other charter schools in Detroit, voted in favor of the proposal on Friday.

The changes come after GVSU officials called Cornerstone Health and Technology High School, which will close under the plan, a “weaker school” due to poor test scores and high teacher turnover.

Cornerstone has no plans to change its curriculum or emphasis on character-building — its schools mostly perform above average in Detroit, although well below the statewide average.

The network’s founder said that changes in leadership — including his own return to a top role — will help reverse lackluster academic results.

Clark Durant, 72, founded Cornerstone as a chain of private schools before converting them in 2009 to publicly funded charters. In January 2020, he took over as CEO of the Cornerstone Education Group, the nonprofit that runs five schools in Detroit.

“I’m coming back to be the CEO with an enormous mission focus and outcome focus for these kids,” he told Chalkbeat, explaining why he expected GVSU to support the plan.

In hiring new school administrators and staff, “I’m looking for people who no longer see this as a job, but as a real calling and are prepared to spend the time, and the energy, and the commitment, to change the reality for these children,” Durant said.

Don Cooper, assistant vice president for charter schools at GVSU, noted that the changes will alter the oversight structure in the Cornerstone network by putting students in the new school under the authority of a single school board. Currently, Lincoln-King shares a school board with Washington-Parks Academy, another Cornerstone school. Cornerstone Health and Technology High School had its own school board.

Under the plan, students from Lincoln-King High School, Cornerstone Health and Technology High School, and the network’s Adams-Young elementary campus will all technically attend the same school.

According to Cornerstone’s application to start the new school, students in grades K-8 will go to class in the current Adams-Young Building. The current Lincoln-King building will host students in 11th and 12th grades, and the current Cornerstone Health and Technology High School will host students in 9th and 10th grades.

Read the full application here.

Michigan’s school board wants to know how charter schools spend public dollars. It might not find out.

2021-06-22T22:05:37+00:00

The Michigan Board of Education is directing state officials to request records from charter schools in coming months in an effort to show how the schools avoid releasing basic information about how they spend public dollars.

Most Michigan charters are run to a significant degree by private companies that are not subject to public disclosure laws. The schools in some cases have responded to requests for payroll information, for example, by asserting that they don’t employ teachers — a contractor does.

Leaders of the Democrat-controlled board, which initiated the inquiry, said that transparency in school budgets ensures that for-profit management companies don’t divert money that was intended for classrooms.

Transparency advocates say charter schools’ open records practices are problematic, though they are legal.

“We’ve always found it concerning that [charter schools] are using a backdoor to avoid releasing records because they’re a private company,” said Lisa McGraw, public affairs manager for the Michigan Press Association, which advocates for stronger transparency laws. “I don’t know why they wouldn’t just say, ‘This is our budget, here’s how much we’re paying teachers and administrators, and here’s what the management fee is. What are they trying to hide?”

The records requests, which are set to go out by the end of summer, add fuel to long-running policy debates about whether Michigan places enough checks on the companies and on charter schools in general. More than 80% of the state’s charter schools were managed by a full-service management company, or contracted with a private company to handle some administrative functions, in 2018-2019, according to a recent report from Gary Miron, a professor at Western Michigan University. Only three states had higher rates of private charter management.

Charter advocates insist that the schools are fully transparent. Critics say charters use legal loopholes to hide their finances from the public, and warn that there’s no way to know if for-profit charter school operators are diverting money from classrooms that enroll tens of thousands of Michigan students.

Debates over charter school oversight have largely gone dormant during the coronavirus pandemic, but they could regain steam after the 2022 elections if the decennial redrawing of Michigan’s political boundaries tilts the balance of power toward Democrats in Lansing. The state’s GOP has generally sought to limit regulation of charter schools.

Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, a charter advocacy group, said the board is going to waste charter school employees’ time in order to score a political point.

He noted that charter schools, like all schools in Michigan, publicly document student test scores, graduation rates, teacher turnover rates, and student demographics, among other information.

Asked whether the public can access charter school payroll information, management company fees, and other management company spending, he said “I’m going to guess that it is. We’ll do some checking and find out. I think it’s being provided to the [charter school] boards, I think it’s being provided to the state, I think it’s already public.”

Researchers and journalists in Michigan have struggled to access this information. Gary Miron, a professor at Western Michigan University who produces a national report on the charter school industry, said that his team of researchers are often unable to obtain basic information from charter schools, such as who owns the learning materials and who employs the teachers.

“About 20% give us what we ask for,” he said at an April meeting of the state board. “Another 10% respond and say, we don’t have to give that to you, we won’t. And then 70%, silence, no response at all.”

Chalkbeat reporters have also struggled to obtain basic information from Detroit area charter schools. In 2019, when Chalkbeat requested teacher payroll data from dozens of charter schools and school districts in Wayne County, most of the charters either didn’t respond, said such records don’t exist, or denied the request. Nearly all of the school districts complied.

Casandra Ulbrich, president of the Michigan Board of Education, said she doesn’t yet know which records will be included in the public records requests to charter schools. Regardless, she said any entity that uses public funding to operate a school should be willing to say how it spends that money.

“I think that public education is an investment in the future, and everyone who is paying for that investment has a right to be confident that their investment is being used appropriately,” she said.

As Michigan lawmakers move to pause third grade read-or-flunk law, GOP splits over retaining fourth graders next year

2021-05-26T22:45:07+00:00

On the day Michigan sent letters to thousands of families saying that their third graders might be held back because of low reading scores, Republican lawmakers split over the future of the state’s controversial “read or flunk” law.

Legislators from both parties generally agree on eliminating the state’s retention mandate for third graders. That means families who receive those letters are likely in for some whiplash if the state reverses course.

But while it appears likely that the legislature will pause retention this year, it remains unclear what the requirements will look like next year.

The GOP-led Senate will soon consider a bill that would extend the state’s retention requirements to struggling fourth graders next year. While the bill passed out of the Senate education committee along party lines, some Republicans opposed it.

A bill sponsored by GOP Sen. Jon Bumstead would pause retaining third graders for a year. But Republican leaders amended the bill to require that fourth graders also be held back next year if they are behind in reading.

In an unusual move, Bumstead spoke against his own legislation during a committee hearing, saying he would ask for his name to be removed from the bill. He said he was not consulted about the changes.

“Our students, teachers, administrators, and parents don’t need more mandates from Lansing,” he said. “They need our help and empathy for all they’ve gone through.”

Sen. Lana Theis, Republican chair of the Senate Committee on Education and Career Readiness, who supports the plan to hold fourth graders back next year, said pausing retentions this year “is not an outright rejection of the third grade reading law. It’s clear the fundamentals of the third grade reading law are working.”

She noted that she recently introduced a separate bill that would use $55 million in federal COVID-19 relief to provide scholarships of up to $1,000 so that families of struggling readers can pay for private tutoring or instructional services.

The mandated retention component of Michigan’s 2016 literacy reform law was set to begin last spring, but was postponed after schools closed and the state canceled standardized tests.

Even without retention, Michigan students have scored slightly higher in reading since the literacy law was put in place. Researchers found that literacy coaching for teachers, a key component of the reading law passed that year, contributed to improved student outcomes.

Sen. Dayna Polehanki, a Democrat, said that retaining students doesn’t help them learn to read. “Retaining kids can be emotionally harmful in a typical year, but in a pandemic, it’s my feeling that it’s just plain cruel,” she added.

Holding older students back is especially harmful, said Jennifer Smith, director of government relations for the Michigan Association of School Boards.

While it’s especially important to pause the third grade retention requirement this year due to the pandemic, she said, any change is coming very late. Parents are starting to receive retention notices.

“We would have liked to see this done earlier,” she said. “It seems a little late for those parents you can’t contact and can’t reach. “

Officials sent 2,966 letters to Michigan parents Wednesday saying their third graders had received a low score on the state English exam and might be held back, according to a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Education. While a few more families could get similar letters, the ones sent today represent the “vast majority” of the total, Martin Ackley said.

State Superintendent Michael Rice, who leads the department, said in a statement that he opposes the retention policy for third and fourth graders.

“Third grade retentions are bad public policy, and even more so if expanding to students in two grades,” he said. “Local school districts need to work carefully with families to focus on reading supports and minimize retentions and the resultant adverse impact to children.”

That’s a lower number than would have been expected in a non-pandemic year because fewer students than usual took the state exam. Michigan counted 100,684 third graders this year, but only about 70,000 have taken the English exam so far. The testing window closes June 4.

Report: Here’s how Michigan schools can help students recover from the pandemic.

2021-05-19T16:02:21+00:00

Michigan schools should use federal COVID-19 funding to hire more nurses, social workers, and psychologists as part of a multi-year campaign to help students recover from the pandemic.

That’s a key takeaway from a sweeping new set of recovery recommendations developed in recent months by a 29-member council of educators, public health experts, and others from Michigan’s education landscape. The council, which was appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in February, called on districts to send federal aid to the people who work directly with children and asked state lawmakers to continue that support once the federal dollars run out. The council also asked schools to ensure that low-income students and students of color are prioritized in academic and emotional recovery efforts.

While the council’s recommendations aren’t binding, they represent a high-profile push for districts to invest in new staff using the federal funds, which are set to run out in 2024. Some school business officials have emphasized infrastructure spending rather than creating new positions.

“If it’s just one time funding that will go away, then districts concerned about legacy costs are not going to invest in the necessary supports for students,” said Kevin Polston, chair of the council and superintendent of Godfrey-Lee Public Schools, a district outside of Grand Rapids with a high proportion of Latino and Black students.

The state Legislature could help, he said, by promising to increase funding for schools by the time the federal dollars run out. “Our job as a state is to make sure that the funding necessary for our students is in place so districts can have some certainty,” he said.

Districts across the state have already begun spending federal funds, and many are already following some of the council’s recommendations. For example, the Detroit Public Schools Community District has spent more than $1 million in federal funds on nursing staff since July, and it expects to spend even more on mental health.

The state’s largest teachers unions expressed support for the recommendations. “There are and will continue to be increasing demands placed on educators to meet student needs, so we must be intentional about similarly increasing respect and compensation for the profession,” said Paula Herbart, president of the Michigan Education Association, who served on the council. “Failure to do so will make the job of helping all students continue their learning post-COVID-19 even harder – and none of us can afford for that to happen.”

The council was tasked with providing ideas for helping students across the state recover academically and emotionally to the pandemic. Its final report, which was released on Wednesday, provides detailed suggestions and materials for helping districts achieve a range of goals, from helping students get on track after time away from the classroom to addressing health issues that may have gone unnoticed during the pandemic.

The recommendations include:

Provide high-dosage tutoring during the school day to the students who have fallen furthest behind and those with disabilities, either one-on-one or in small groups.
Train teachers in academic strategies that will help students catch up.
Create a mental health screening tool for students and train staff to provide follow-up support.
Meet suggested staff-student ratios for counselors (1:250), social workers (1:250), school psychologists (1:600), and nurses (1:750).

Whitmer said in a statement that the council’s report “will not only help local education leaders comprehensively address immediate challenges, but it will move us towards an education system that works better for all of our children.”

The council made several policy recommendations that would need to be taken up by the Michigan Legislature:

Increase state funding for schools, including additional funds for students with higher needs, such as English learners or students with disabilities.
Allow districts to offer virtual instruction in the fall to parents who want it.
Fund districts next year based on their highest enrollment count in the last three years.
Create financial incentives for teachers to stay in the profession, including scholarships and loan forgiveness.
Create innovation zones that would allow districts to opt out of state testing requirements in order to try new modes of teaching. Polston said districts would need support from teachers. Unlike innovation zones in other states, participating schools wouldn’t be able to waive any aspects of collective bargaining agreements, he said.
Provide free preschool to every 3- and 4-year-old in the state, regardless of income.

If any of the council’s recommendations are going to work, lawmakers must guarantee an increase in long-term funding,” said Tina Kerr, executive director of the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators.

“We all know ... that without a commitment from lawmakers to invest the necessary resources for long-term results the best laid plans and blueprints will not have any positive impact on our students,” she said.

City faces blowback for plan to sell vacant land to KIPP charter school

2021-04-28T01:14:00+00:00

Activists protested Detroit’s proposal to sell 10 acres of vacant land to KIPP, a national charter school operator, during a virtual meeting Tuesday evening.

While activists vowed to pressure the Detroit City Council to stop the sale, there is little they can do to stop the school from opening somewhere in the city. The school, which is to be called KIPP Detroit: Imani Academy, got legal permission to open in December from Central Michigan University, which is 150 miles north of Detroit.

“I thought this call was about asking us if we wanted KIPP to be here, but it seems like they’re here, and they’re in place, and there’s nothing the public can do about it,” said Yolanda Peoples, a teacher in Detroit Public Schools Community District.

The debate is a flashpoint in a long-running battle over the role of charter schools in Detroit. Organizations like KIPP — a prominent national charter operator with a track record of successfully preparing students for college — have typically avoided Detroit, in part because schools here face unfettered competition for a shrinking pool of students and funding. No local entity controls where and when schools open in the city. Efforts to create such a system died in Lansing in 2016 amid a blitz of political donations by former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and opposition from local activists and policymakers who didn’t want the mayor to have a hand in education.

Opponents of the new school said it would draw students and resources from surrounding schools, many already struggling with low enrollment and unrelenting turnover of teachers and students. KIPP officials said the school would offer a higher-quality education than surrounding schools. Some residents of the area said they were glad to see the vacant land, previously the site of Longfellow Junior High School, put to use.

Candace Rogers, superintendent of Imani Academy, said the goal was to work with local residents to create a high-quality school close to the homes of Detroit students.

“This is not just a big box charter that enters… and plops a school on the corner,” she said. “Our job is to do this in a way that models community.”

As many as 78 people logged on to the virtual meeting Tuesday night to weigh in on the proposed sale, and more than a dozen offered comments and questions, mostly in opposition to the school. Many of the commenters said they are affiliated with By Any Means Necessary, a group of education activists led by teachers, and 482Forward, a parent and student advocacy group.

Some commenters pressed KIPP officials on the funding sources for the new school. An anonymous donor contributed $20 million to help build the campus; the school is also supported by federal grants for new charter schools, which have fueled KIPP’s ambitious growth plans.

City rules require community outreach for large land sales. KIPP’s attempt to buy a 10-acre city-owned parcel opened a new public forum for discussion of the new school — and renewed a long-running debate over how charter schools should be allowed to open and close.

“I support both DPSCD and I support charter schools, as long as they’re quality and as long as we have a transparent and accountable process,” said Arlyssa Heard, a local parent and organizer for 482Forward.

But she said the worried Imani Academy would cause problems for students at schools in the area.

“What about the schools that are already here? What’s going to happen to New Paradigm? What about the students at Joy Prep?” she asked, referring to two nearby charter schools.

KIPP, a nonprofit that runs 255 schools nationwide, is not unfamiliar with public controversy. Anti-charter activists strongly opposed KIPP’s efforts to open a school in Chicago, for instance, and school boards in other states have rebuffed new KIPP schools in recent years. (Most of those schools eventually opened.) The network has also faced criticism for its strict discipline policies, though it says those policies have been relaxed somewhat.

KIPP plans to build a K-12 campus on the land at 13141 Rosa Parks Boulevard, at the intersection of M-10 and M-8. The proposed price of the land is $125,000. Students would start school in fall of 2022 in a temporary structure, then move to a new building in 2023 once the first phase of construction is complete.

As many as 1,300 students could eventually attend the school, KIPP officials said. With that enrollment, the school would bring in at least $10 million in state funds every year that would have otherwise gone to other schools.

Network leaders spent part of the meeting detailing their plans for the school. Imani Academy will have an on-site food pantry, mindfulness lessons, and well-supported teachers, said Jennifer Hodges, director of KIPP’s whole child initiative.

Several residents of the area said they were glad to have a high quality new school in the neighborhood, especially since it would put the vacant land to use.

“I see it as bringing students back to the community who have been leaving to go to school in the suburbs for lack of a quality education,” Denise Lyles, a local resident who heard KIPP officials speak at a block club meeting, said.

The city council is expected to vote on the sale in the fall. The next meeting about the planned sale is June 15.

In high school, I witnessed inequities in public education. Now, I want to write about it.

2021-04-23T17:56:20+00:00

I first learned the term “redistricting” over a bag of honey mustard pretzels in my high school English teacher’s office.

A budding journalist, my questions over inequities between my high school and the neighboring high school within the same district began with a simple set of questions: Why did they get to wear hats, when we couldn’t? Why was their course selection so much greater?

These were some of the differences between the wealthy high school blocks away and my less affluent school. Like any inquisitive reporter, I was curious about what was behind the disparities.

My teacher, Mr. Anderson, highlighted a red line across the map of Darien, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Like shattered glass, the zigzag pattern created by what he called redistricting made no sense to me. It was as if someone had haphazardly drawn a pattern to avoid the low-income housing apartments, keeping the mansions and traditionally wealthy on the opposite end.

On the map, I saw my small white house, where I lived with my family of six, along the border of the zigzag. I am the resident bookworm and youngest daughter of a stay-at-home mom and a landscaper. A line was the only thing separating me from an entirely different education at a different school with a different student body.

Much of my educational experience was shaped by the stark contrasts between the rich and poor. I was a lower-income student. I waited in the free hot lunch line and I filed for college application fee waivers.

I went on to attend private universities and even graduated from a prestigious graduate program at Northwestern University. But through it all, I was always one of the few people of color in the room, often unable to shake off the feeling of being an out-of-place poor kid.

A young journalist, Jessica (third from left) preparing for a statewide journalism competition in Illinois.

I went to Hinsdale South High School, a public school composed of a mixture of low-income students from those housing apartments, wealthy kids on the border of the zigzags, and everyone in between. Students from my high school attended community colleges, trade schools, and a handful of Ivy League institutions. But just a five-minute drive away, the neighboring school was wealthy, with a majority white student body and a pipeline to top-tier colleges.

I convinced my school’s administration to let me shadow a student at the neighboring school, in the name of journalism and in pursuit of my own curiosity. I walked through less crowded hallways and overheard conversations about ACT prep courses and students who had applied to over 13 universities. Students streamed in and out of the lunchroom without a school monitor yelling at them to go back inside. There was no free hot lunch line.

I realized there would always be extra steps I had to take to even get close to the kids from the other side of town.

Over the course of the school day, I recognized that inequity was more than students who couldn’t wear hats or leave the lunchroom. The district border had been created by people who would never look me in the eye and tell me why I hadn’t been on the right side of the town, the one with an aquarium sciences class and greater AP class offerings.

Now, years later, I’m excited to get to work and demand answers from state officials who have the power to address the funding inequities that exist. As the new Chalkbeat reporter covering the Detroit Public Schools Community District, I know that students in the city have experienced and seen the inequities between suburban and city schools. They see school buildings in wealthier communities in better conditions and students whose parents can provide extra tutoring or test preparation.

I want to hear about the inequalities in your schools and report on those disparities, many of which I experienced. I want to shine a light on these inequities and push state officials to take action, so students don’t have to continue dealing with these inequities year after year. Send me a note with your story ideas at jvillagomez@chalkbeat.org.

I can’t wait to dig in.

KIPP wants to buy 10 acres of Detroit-owned land for its campus; public hearing scheduled for April 27

2021-04-22T23:54:55+00:00

KIPP, a national charter school operator with a track record of improving test scores, aims to purchase 10 acres of city-owned land to build its new K-12 campus in Detroit.

While Michigan makes it easy to open a charter school without community input, city rules require public outreach for large land sales. That means Detroit residents will get a chance to weigh in on the project at two public hearings, the first of which will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 27, via Zoom.

KIPP’s arrival in Detroit is a milestone for the city. National education groups have previously avoided Detroit, where decades of declining enrollment and state interventions left the education system in a state of disarray unequaled almost anywhere in the country.

When KIPP’s plan for a new school was unveiled, some local advocates said it meant more Detroit students would have access to a high-quality education. Detractors of the project said Detroit is already struggling to fill its existing classrooms and that the new school will siphon students and resources from schools already operating nearby.

Residents had little say in whether KIPP would be able to open a school. KIPP was cleared in December to operate the school by Central Michigan University, which sits 150 miles from Detroit. In Michigan, charter schools can open with support from a state-approved authorizer, typically a public university. Some charters have opened within blocks of another school, competing for enrollment and state funding.

Melia Howard, a district manager for the city, said KIPP representatives have already met with Longfellow Block Club; the Muslim Center, a mosque and community center near the proposed school; and with other block clubs.

KIPP officials promised to look for students and teachers in the neighborhood, and to provide halal food and space for Muslim students to pray during the school day, Howard said. She said she had not heard from any residents who opposed the plan.

“They are excited because so many schools have closed in that area,” she said.

The proposed location for the school, which will be called KIPP Detroit: Imani Academy, is within roughly a mile of Durfee Elementary, a district-run school, and New Paradigm Glazer Academy, a charter school.

The Detroit City Council will vote this fall on whether to sell the land at 13141 Rosa Parks Blvd, a vacant 10-acre parcel near the city’s geographic center, for the proposed price of $125,000, said city spokesman John Roach.

The land previously housed Detroit City High School, which was shuttered in 2012 by Roy Roberts, a state-appointed emergency manager who closed dozens of other Detroit Public Schools. Roughly 200 Detroit schools closed between 2000 and 2015.

Amid high teacher turnover in Michigan, audit finds failings in teacher support systems

2021-04-01T21:21:21+00:00

Key policies designed to support Michigan teachers aren’t being adequately enforced, according to a recent audit by the state’s Office of the Auditor General.

Districts spotlighted in the audit couldn’t prove that new teachers had been assigned mentors or that teachers’ annual evaluations were based on a classroom visit — both of which are legal requirements.

Michigan is grappling with high rates of teacher turnover, especially in low-income communities. Some experts predict a mass exodus from teaching after a grueling pandemic year. In a recent report, Chalkbeat used a trove of state data to document the toll that teacher departures take on student learning. But the audit, published last week, calls into question whether existing policies designed to retain teachers are being adequately enforced.

“If the laws and the rules are all set up, but no one is checking to see if the rules are being followed, how can [the state] achieve its goal of retaining teachers?” said Craig Thiel, research director for the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a nonpartisan think tank that has reported on problems in the state’s teacher workforce.

Auditors surveyed thousands of teachers and examined records from randomly selected school districts from the 2015-16 through 2017-18 school years. They found:

Fewer than half of school districts in the sample were able to document that they provided teachers with all required training. Many couldn’t document that mentors were assigned to new teachers, a legal requirement.
Thirteen of 20 districts in the sample were unable to document that all of their teacher evaluations were based in part on a classroom observation, a legal requirement.
Nearly 40% of a random sample of 114 teachers couldn’t document the training they claimed to receive for teaching certificate renewals.

The Michigan Department of Education agreed with the audit findings. In a response, department officials said they hadn’t had enough staff to provide the required oversight.

“We have a teacher retention problem here in Michigan and the kinds of things that are touched on in this audit are key strategies to improving teacher retention,” said Leah Breen, director of the Office of Educator Excellence, an arm of the state’s education department that is responsible for overseeing and supporting teachers in Michigan.

Breen said the department will offer new guidance to districts on requirements around teacher certification, evaluation, and mentorship.

And, in a further response to the audit, the department will conduct its own audits of districts’ handling of those issues beginning this fall. Breen said her staff will have to cut back in other areas to complete the audits, but said that it’s not clear yet what those areas will be.

Breen said that the discrepancies uncovered by the audit weren’t just a matter of missing paperwork. In some cases, she said, teachers were not being given the help that the law guarantees them.

“I think it’s probably both, she said. “There are definitely instances where mentors are not being assigned.”

Breen pointed out that the state does not provide funding to school districts to pay teachers for the additional work of mentoring new teachers.

Oversight of the teaching profession in Michigan has fluctuated over the last decade. An audit in 2011-2012 found similar problems to the new one, prompting the state to increase its enforcement of teacher support laws. A few years later, another audit found that districts were doing much better at documenting teacher training and mentorship. At that point, the department of education stopped auditing districts on this subject, and compliance fell off again.

Rep. Regina Weiss, a Democrat from Oak Park who was formerly a high school social studies teacher in Detroit, said she did not recall being assigned a mentor when she entered the classroom for the first time in 2011, as required by law.

She added that the state’s teacher training system, in particular, can be burdensome to teachers. Indeed, a quarter of teachers surveyed by the Auditor General said they were “dissatisfied” with training provided by their districts.

“It’s a missed opportunity,” she said. “It is helpful for teachers to be able to go to trainings, but I really do think it becomes just a box-checking exercise.”

How we used data to tell the human stories behind Michigan’s high teacher turnover rates

2021-03-28T12:06:49+00:00

In report after report, experts have sounded alarms about the large number of teachers leaving Michigan schools.

When Chalkbeat obtained a trove of data about the teacher workforce in Michigan, we saw an opportunity to tell the stories of the humans behind the numbers.

To do so, we dug through nearly a million rows of data and spoke with more than two dozen teachers, students, and researchers. Here’s a closer look at our reporting process.

Want to double check our work? We’ve included more technical information and code at the bottom of the page.

What is teacher turnover, anyway?

Turnover is the percentage of teachers who leave during a given year. Teachers who leave might go to another school or district, or they might leave the classroom entirely.

Turnover, as it appears in most state reports, is measured from fall to fall. In this case, a teacher turnover rate of 50% at a given school would mean that half of teachers left the school between the beginning of the school year and the next fall. This includes teachers who changed schools during the summer.

To capture midyear turnover, which research suggests is especially detrimental to students, we calculated the percentage of teachers who left between the fall and the following spring.

Who is represented in the data?

Teachers who were assigned to a classroom in Michigan. This includes long-term substitutes, librarians, career and technical education teachers, and school counselors who were assigned to teach classes.

We did not include teachers who taught in multiple districts schools since accounting for their moves would be extremely difficult. These teachers were about 2% of all teachers, and they tended to be specialists, such as music teachers, or to teach in cyber schools.

Teachers who left due to school closures are included in the data and our analysis. We considered removing them from our analysis, but opted not to because closures are significant experiences for the teachers in question and because leaving them in didn’t substantially change our findings. About 1% of Michigan schools closed in 2019. While several Detroit charter schools closed that year, eliminating school closures from our calculations would have reduced the turnover rate for Detroit charters by just over 1%.

What did we learn from the database?

The data gave us a more detailed picture of turnover than current data published by the state. The database helped us answer questions like:

How many teachers left their schools midyear?
How many teachers remained at a given school throughout a five-year period?
How many teachers left the profession between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2020, after the pandemic closed schools across the state?
How many students attended schools with high turnover?
What are the demographics of students who attend the schools that teachers are most likely to leave?

How much teacher turnover is too much?

The most recent national teacher turnover rate we could find was 16%, a figure that dates to 2012.

Over the last 15 years in Michigan, the turnover rate has typically been between two and four points higher than that.

In Michigan cities, the rate is substantially higher, often exceeding 30%, according to our analysis of teacher certification data.

Some turnover is normal, even healthy. But experts we spoke with mostly said that 20% to 25% turnover should be considered problematic.

To calculate the number of students enrolled in high turnover schools, we defined “high turnover” as 30%.

Where did the data come from?

The state keeps extensive records on teachers, which are housed by the Michigan Department of Education and Michigan’s school data provider, the Center for Education Performance and Information.

Chalkbeat obtained records of teachers who were assigned to any classroom in the state between 2015 and 2020 by submitting multiple requests through the Freedom of Information Act to the Michigan Department of Education.

The database is based on teachers who were assigned to classrooms in the Registry of Educational Personnel, which is maintained by the Center for Educational Information and Performance, Michigan’s education data provider. The data includes people with teaching certifications and substitutes or licensed school counselors who are leading classrooms.

As part of the request, we asked the department to create a unique identification number for each teacher. (These were different from the unique IDs that the state assigns to every teacher, which are an important part of their personnel files.) This allowed us to track and visualize the movement of teachers over time, which hasn’t been done before by a news outlet in Michigan.

Separately, Chalkbeat obtained a list of schools with teacher turnover rates calculated by the state. This allowed us to check our work with the other data. We also used this list to figure out how many students attend schools with high teacher turnover.

How did you calculate the number of students attending high turnover schools?

A key question we wanted to answer was: Which students attend the schools with the highest teacher turnover?

To find an answer, we used a state database that contains teacher turnover rates over several years for every school in the state. It’s the same data contained in the state’s online parent dashboard.

Turnover rates from that database are available through 2018-19. First, we linked the turnover data with school enrollment data from the same year. Then we added up enrollments for subgroups, such as English learners, Black students, and students from low-income families, in schools with turnover rates of 30% or higher.

The state only provided turnover rates for school buildings. To find rates for cities and charter schools, we did our own calculations using teacher certification data.

Too many Michigan teachers want to leave their classrooms. Here’s how to keep them.

2021-03-28T12:06:13+00:00

Michigan has a teacher turnover problem that is limiting the educational opportunities of Black students and those from low-income families.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Teachers are more likely to stay when they have better training, their principals are well-trained, they receive reasonable pay, and their schools can afford to hire enough paraprofessionals, psychologists, and social workers.

When those things are missing, teachers tend to leave, severing relationships and routines that are essential to student learning. Their departures take a steep toll that is borne largely by students in Michigan’s low-income communities, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of state data.

Improving the situation would be expensive, and Michigan’s Republican-controlled legislature has shown little appetite for a major school funding overhaul. But significant new investments in the teacher workforce suddenly seem possible as school districts prepare to spend billions in federal coronavirus aid.

Advocates say that some of the money could be used beginning this year to pay for training and mentorship that make teachers more effective — and more likely to stay.

“We absolutely have the ability now to reduce turnover and create greater retention,” said Adam Zemke, executive director of Launch Michigan, a business consortium that advocates on education issues.

A systemic problem

Ask many observers how to reduce teacher turnover, and they will tell you that turnover is merely a symptom of a much larger problem.

The state isn’t investing enough in schools, said Barbara Schneider, a sociologist at Michigan State University who has studied turnover.

“It’s a resource issue,” she said.

Efforts to reduce turnover in Michigan have often centered on giving teachers more money for their work. When a nonprofit in Detroit pumped millions of dollars into a handful of higher performing charter schools, some of the money went toward retention bonuses. Just last year, the state set aside $5 million for a similar program: New teachers will receive as much as $1,000 for staying on after their first year, with the possibility of receiving more if they stay longer.

But those are small numbers in the context of Michigan’s $15 billion education budget.

By contrast, the amount of money Michigan spends on schools overall has dropped in recent years — it declined 30%, adjusting for inflation, between 2002 and 2015 as state revenue for schools was reduced by tax cuts.

Schneider says more funding wouldn’t just allow for increased teacher pay, but also for improvements to school working conditions. More money could pay for decreased class sizes, better teacher training, better learning materials, or for more school staff — paraprofessionals, counselors, and social workers — who give teachers the freedom to focus on teaching.

“Apart from really systematic investment in schools, it’s going to be hard to improve working conditions meaningfully,” said Lucy Sorensen, a professor at the State University of New York Albany who has studied teacher turnover. “To the extent that urban schools are less funded, higher stress work environments serving students with greater needs, that’s more likely to cause teachers to depart.”

Training, coaching, and mentorship

Advocates say that billions of dollars in coronavirus aid to Michigan schools presents an opportunity to boost spending on teacher training and mentorship.

School districts have broad discretion to spend the money, including by “hiring additional educators to address learning loss, (and) providing support to students and existing staff,” according to the U.S. Education Department.

Ongoing training, mentorship, and coaching are key to supporting staff, Zemke said. Launch Michigan surveyed 17,000 Michigan teachers in 2019 and found a widespread sense that they aren’t given the same training opportunities as members of other U.S. professions, such as doctors, lawyers, and veterinarians.

“They don’t feel empowered, they don’t feel like they’re being treated as professionals, they’re not supported,” Zemke said.

Several efforts across the state aim to expand teacher training and mentorship. In Detroit, an innovative school is modeled on the residency training system used by medical doctors in which trainees receive support from mentors and from more experienced peers over three years. In Battle Creek, a philanthropic initiative pairs veteran teachers with novices for regular classroom visits and consultations about teaching technique.

Expanding and supporting programs like that one — and teacher training in general — would go a long way toward improving retention, said Elizabeth Moje, dean of the College of Education at the University of Michigan, who was pivotal in the creation of the residency school in Detroit.

While districts have only a few years to spend the federal aid, Moje said the benefits of high-quality training would last far longer.

“What better way to use the money than to actually develop the best teachers?” she said. “If we spend it on a text or a learning tool, that might need to be replaced in a few years. Actively developing our teachers to feel really good about their work, that’s something that goes on and on and on.”

Principals need training and support too, and research shows that effective principals play a crucial role in retaining teachers.

The Detroit Children’s Fund, a nonprofit that is investing tens of millions of dollars in Detroit to improve schools, has already paid for principal training programs across Detroit.

But principals don’t generally get that kind of support, said Nicole Simon, a researcher affiliated with the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, an initiative at Harvard University.

“We know that for teachers one of the most important factors in keeping them in their schools is strong leadership. And we have not invested in that kind of leadership. We don’t teach people how to do it, we don’t support them while they’re doing it.”

Small fixes can yield big rewards

Sorensen emphasizes the need for systemic investment to truly improve teacher working conditions and thus reduce turnover.

That doesn’t mean there’s nothing schools can do in the absence of major new funding, she said, pointing out that turnover varies widely even among schools that receive similar funding and serve similar students. Detroit, for instance, was home to 76 schools with high turnover rates of 30% or more in 2018-19. But the city is also home to more than 40 schools with turnover rates below 16%, the most recent available national average.

What sets those schools apart? Often it’s communication, Sorensen said.

“People in the education field have not done enough of the simple task of asking teachers what they need and what the difficulties are in their everyday jobs,” she added.

Positive communication can be as simple as simply asking teachers to stay, said Punita Thurman, vice president of program and strategy for the Skillman Foundation, which funded several charter high schools in Detroit.

A principal at one of those schools experimented with periodically telling teachers that their presence at the school was valuable and that she hoped they would stay.

“It was a small gesture, but she was blown away at how much of a difference it made,” Thurman recalled.

Simply asking teachers for input is the not-so-secret recipe behind Upbeat, a company that aims to help districts reduce teacher turnover by getting teachers and school leaders on the same page. Upbeat surveys teachers anonymously to identify their frustrations, then shares the results with administrators.

“If teachers are involved in shaping the rules and procedures that govern their work days, they’re more likely to buy in,” said Henry Wellington, CEO of Upbeat, a company that consults with school districts about reducing teacher turnover. “If their performance evaluations are considered fair, they feel more successful. And we know that when teachers feel more successful they’re more likely to stay.”

Editor’s note: March 30, 2021: This story has been updated to correctly identify Barbara Schneider, a sociologist at Michigan State University.

Michigan lost 62,000 students this fall. Black enrollment fell 5%.

2021-03-16T22:18:45+00:00

Editor’s note: March 18, 2021: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Michigan’s 2020-21 enrollment decline was greater than the decline we reported in December. However, since the story was published Tuesday, we have learned that the figures the state released in December aren’t comparable to the enrollment data released this month. The December data were based on full-time equivalent counts that account for students who are part-time. The new data is based on a head count of students. Generally, the full-time equivalent enrollment is lower than the head count enrollment.

The story also incorrectly stated that the new data released by the Michigan Center for Performance and Information had been audited. It has not. Also, the December story included K-12 student counts, while the March data cited in Tuesday’s story included K-12 and preschool counts.

Michigan lost 61,940 students in preschool through 12th grade last fall, a figure that underscores the toll the past year has taken on students and adds urgency to early efforts to provide students with extra academic and emotional support.

Michigan’s public school enrollment decline is among the best barometers of the pandemic’s impact on students. Behind the numbers are students who may have abruptly moved to a new school, or whose education simply came to a halt.

Over the last decade, Michigan has lost an average of 13,000 students per year. This year, though, the state lost nearly five times as many. The 4.1% decline in enrollment is the largest by far since at least the Great Recession more than a decade ago.

“Where are the kids that are MIA?” asked Paul Liabenow, director of the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association. “We need to seek them out. We need to find a way to provide the support to families so the students can come to school.”

Students get much more than an education at school. Missing school means students miss out on school lunches, counseling, social services, and a connection with teachers, who are key advocates for students’ well-being.

Many states are grappling with declining enrollments. Colorado, for example, expanded its AmeriCorps program to help districts find missing students.

The trend in Michigan — as in much of the country — is driven partly by kindergarten, where enrollment fell by 13,000, more than twice as much as any other grade. Many families decided to keep young children at home rather than attempt to navigate Zoom education with a 5-year-old or preschooler.

But the declines were not limited to kindergarten. Enrollment in certain categories fell more steeply than overall enrollment, notably among white well-off students, as well as students who are African-American, or from low-income families.

Black enrollment fell by 13,700, a 5.1% decline.
Enrollment of students from low-income families fell by 34,400, or 4.5%.
Native American enrollment fell by 496, or 5.5%.
Enrollment of white, well-off students declined by 25,000, or 4.4%.

Some wealthier families have sent their children to private schools that offered in-person learning during the pandemic.

In December, Chalkbeat revealed that Michigan fall enrollment fell by an estimated 53,000 students.

That count was based on “full-time equivalent” counts that account for students who attend class part time. The new data, which was published this month by the Michigan Center for Performance and Information, is based on simple student head counts. The new numbers are not comparable to the figures Chalkbeat reported in the fall.

At the time, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer acknowledged that missing students are “a significant concern.” State superintendent Michael Rice acknowledged that some students — he eventually put the number at 13,000 — “likely weren’t being educated” during the pandemic.

So far, though, there has been no coordinated statewide effort to find them.

“Bold leadership is needed now,” said Jennifer Mrozowski, director of communications for The Education Trust-Midwest, a nonprofit education advocacy group. “State leaders should develop a plan that includes near- and far-term solution-oriented strategies to ensure that our students, who have suffered from interrupted learning over two school years, can have every opportunity to catch up and accelerate.”

“This data makes clear Michigan must rise to the opportunity and the challenge before us, act with great urgency and invest significantly and equitably in Michigan’s children, especially those who have historically been underserved.”

Rice didn’t answer requests for comment Tuesday.

Michigan counts student enrollment twice a year, in October and February. Some superintendents say their enrollments are rebounding as they offer more in-person instruction. Enrollment figures for February aren’t yet available.

Rice has called on the state legislature to require home-schooling families to register with the state. He said in December that 17,000 families told their schools that they planned to home-school during the pandemic. But the number could be higher — Michigan parents don’t have to tell anyone before starting a home-school.

With no quality controls in place, there is no way to know whether students who are being home-schooled this year will learn as much as they would have in a private or public school. Some district leaders say they have already begun to prepare to help students catch up after a year of home-schooling.

Individual teachers and districts have tried to find students, going to great lengths in some cases to call students, leave messages, and reach out to relatives. In Detroit, teachers, staff, and volunteers went door to door to ensure students came to school.

Districts in rural, urban, affluent, and low-income areas lost students. Detroit lost 1,600 students, or 3%.

Oak Park, which enrolls a high proportion of students of color, lost 542 students, or 12%.

Birmingham, a majority white, affluent district, lost 486 or 6%.

Three federal coronavirus relief packages have now passed Congress, all of them containing substantial support for schools that could be used to find students and help those who missed a large chunk of school.

In the most recent package, Michigan is set to receive $3.7 billion, of which a significant portion must be spent on efforts to help make up for the academic and emotional toll of the pandemic on students across the state.

Michigan teachers go out of their comfort zones again as schools reopen

2021-02-26T01:25:42+00:00

Lori List is both nervous and excited to return to her sixth grade English classroom in Southfield.

For weeks, Southfield held out as most other traditional public school districts made plans to open their doors to students who want to learn face-to-face.

But now the district has made plans to reopen its classrooms, forcing List — along with thousands of local teachers slated to return to in-person teaching for the first time in a year — to face one of the worst education quandaries of the pandemic.

On the one hand, educators’ morale has plummeted as it becomes clear that despite teachers’ efforts to adapt to virtual instruction, remote learning isn’t working for many students. At the same time, many teachers fear catching the coronavirus — which has now killed more than half a million Americans — in the classroom.

“It’s scary,” said List, one of thousands of local teachers slated to return to in-person teaching for the first time in a year. “It’s been very tough. It’s hard because it’s hard on the kids, because they’re not doing particularly well. And when we see our kids not doing well, it’s hard on us too.”

By and large, teachers are prepared to work face-to-face with their students — a key reason most of the state’s largest districts will soon reopen their doors, if they haven’t already. But the difficult decision to return to work adds to an already excruciating year that some say will take a long-term toll on the state’s already beleaguered education workforce.

Since January, COVID-19 cases have fallen sharply in Michigan, and concern is growing over the well-being of students who are still learning online. New guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that if cases are low enough and schools take the right precautions, schools can reopen even before teachers are vaccinated.

Many Michigan teachers have gone along with recent reopening measures — a marked departure from the fall, when many educators were fiercely opposed to returning to the classroom and teachers in Detroit blocked school buses that were set to take students to the first day of summer school.

The vaccine is making a difference. Teachers were placed near the front of the line for coronavirus vaccines statewide. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Wednesday that two-thirds of the state’s teachers have received the vaccine or have plans to do so, well above the national average.

Mary Bouwense, president of the Grand Rapids teachers union, said the availability of the vaccine has “helped a lot” to shift teachers’ attitudes in favor of in-person instruction. The Grand Rapids district reopened its classrooms to students in a hybrid model in late January with support from the union.

Also helping to ease teachers’ minds about returning to in-person instruction: Research on schools that opened in the fall showed that the virus wouldn’t spread out of control if everyone in the building remained masked and socially distanced.

Teachers unions in some larger districts also forged agreements with district leaders that have made teachers more comfortable with a return to in-person instruction.

In Detroit, for instance, the district and its teachers union agreed to give teachers the ability to choose between in-person and virtual instruction this year. District officials hope that by not forcing the issue they will see alignment between the number of teachers and the number of students who volunteer to return to classrooms.

Terrence Martin, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said it is up to the district to give teachers the confidence to teach face-to-face.

“The comfort level of in-person instruction is going to hinge on how transparent the district is going to be, how well the mitigation strategies are implemented, making sure there’s proper ventilation,” he said.

While many teachers in Michigan are willingly returning to the classroom, many others remain opposed.

Teacher retirements are up across the state, and education leaders worry that the state’s already leaky teacher pipeline is going to fracture further.

Teacher shortages have “only gotten worse as midcareer and closer-to-retirement teachers say, ‘You know what, I’m going to retire early or change careers because I don’t want to jeopardize my health and the health of my family,’” said David Crim, spokesman for the Michigan Education Association.

Available vaccines provide excellent protection against COVID-19, but they don’t guarantee that a vaccinated person won’t fall ill. In a nonscientific survey earlier this month by the Michigan Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, 42% of educators said they remained “very concerned” about the safety of in-person learning.

Kalamazoo, one of the state’s largest districts with roughly 12,000 students and 800 teachers, will remain virtual through the end of the school year, in part because of opposition from teachers.

While case numbers and research on COVID-19 in schools suggested that a hybrid model would have worked for Kalamazoo, parents and teachers opposed that plan, Superintendent Rita Raichoudhuri said earlier this month. Parents preferred virtual instruction by a narrow margin, while teachers preferred it overwhelmingly.

Amanda Miller, president of the Kalamazoo Education Association, said a lack of vaccine availability for local teachers was to blame. She said the Kalamazoo Health Department prioritized only teachers who were already teaching in person.

A spokesman for the Kalamazoo Health Department confirmed that it was giving priority to teachers who were working in person, but did not respond to a request for further comment.

“Doing school this way is not very good,” Miller said. “There’s a lot of pressure [to reopen], and it’s understandable. It’s hard for everybody to be home.

“Teachers want to get back if we can do it safely and vaccinated.”

As classrooms reopen, stagnant water pipes pose a health risk — and schools don’t have to do anything about it

2021-02-17T23:19:59+00:00

Water safety experts say thousands of students returning to Michigan schools that have been closed for months are potentially walking into a health hazard.

Water left stagnant in school plumbing systems during COVID-19-related shutdowns could contain dangerous bacteria or elevated lead levels, potentially posing a threat to students and staff.

Schools can eliminate the danger by flushing plumbing systems with fresh water, a process most districts complete after summer breaks. But experts say schools may need to take extra precautions now, because COVID-related closures have stretched to 11 months in some communities — ample time for bacteria to grow and for lead to leach out of pipes.

As more schools reopen, advocates worry that the intense focus on preventing COVID-19 will lead overstretched school staffs to forget about drinking water hazards.

The state doesn’t require schools to ensure water quality or to regularly test their water. Even districts that say they are flushing their water systems may not be doing enough, said Elin Betanzo, founder of the consulting firm Safe Water Engineering.

“Everyone will say, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve been flushing.’ But that can mean different things to different people,” she said.

State guidance and water quality experts suggest weekly flushing, but that isn’t enough to guarantee safe water.

Officials in Ann Arbor say they followed state-recommended flushing procedures twice a week throughout the summer. But tests of the district’s water in October revealed potentially dangerous levels of bacteria in water pipes at several schools. The district is now flushing its pipes three times a week, said Bernie Rice, executive director of physical properties.

How to flush a school water system

Flushing school water can literally require flushing. Toilets move a lot of water quickly and can help restart a dormant plumbing system.

But it’s not so simple to prepare school water systems for returning students after a months-long closure.

Michigan offers detailed guidance for safely restarting school water systems. The steps include planning to ensure all pipes are flushed, running hot and cold water through pipes, and, if possible, testing the water for contaminants.

Water experts recommend flushing pipes for 12 weeks before students return to school in order to restore corrosion control treatment. Elin Betanzo, founder of the consulting firm Safe Water Engineering, said schools should use bottled water as long as they aren’t sure their running water is safe.

Click here to find slideshows and recorded webinars focusing on restoring drinking water in schools before reopening.

More classrooms are open to students in Michigan than at virtually any other point during the pandemic after Gov. Whitmer urged schools to offer an in-person option by March 1. In January, 60% of districts planned to offer an in-person option, up from 50% in December. That figure will grow as large urban districts in Flint and Dearborn are set to reopen.

Concerns about water quality for returning students is not limited to Michigan. Schools in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York have reported elevated levels of legionella in their drinking water after returning from a COVID-19 closure. Legionella can cause Legionnaires’ disease, a potentially deadly type of pneumonia, when it is inhaled through mist or steam generated by faucets or shower heads.

Still, a small survey of school administrators in Michigan suggests that some schools aren’t doing everything they can to mitigate the danger. Of 252 people surveyed, 14% said their schools don’t normally flush their plumbing systems after summer break. Another 37% said they don’t know if their schools flush plumbing systems.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy conducted the survey. The survey is anonymous, and the department doesn’t know how many of the state’s 842 school districts are represented in the results.

“We aren’t very confident that the right people are getting the message,” said Patrick Kelly, a senior health care analyst at the Center for Health and Research Transformation, a nonprofit based in Ann Arbor. He said he’d been in contact with school district officials who didn’t know they needed to worry about the safety of their drinking water in addition to the coronavirus as students return to school.

“The possibility of people returning to schools in the near term makes this a very urgent issue,” he said.

If schools don’t have time to make their water safe before students return, experts recommend passing out water bottles until the plumbing can be flushed. That’s what happened in Birmingham, a wealthy Detroit suburb, but it is easier said than done in lower income communities that may lack the means to provide bottled water to all students and staff.

Some districts, including the Detroit Public Schools Community District, use filtered drinking water systems capable of removing lead. A minority of those also have filters capable of removing bacteria such as legionella.

But many districts don’t have filters. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s new budget proposal attempts to fill the gap by spending $55 million to install water filters in schools statewide.

If a school doesn’t flush its plumbing system and doesn’t have filters, students and educators could be in danger of lead poisoning or bacterial infections.

“Schools need to take action now so we don’t have another health risk for students,” said Kristin Totten, education attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. “We can’t focus so much on COVID that we miss this underlying nemesis that has been in our schools for a long time, which is lead in the drinking water.”

Water that normally runs through school plumbing typically comes from public water plants, where it is disinfected and often combined with anticorrosive agents that work to prevent pipes from leaching lead into the water.

When new water isn’t pumped into school pipes for weeks at a time, those treatments dissipate, allowing bacteria to form and lead to get into the water.

Most school plumbing systems contain some lead, Betanzo said. She played a role in detecting lead in Flint after a state-appointed emergency manager there changed the city’s water source, causing lead to leach into its water supply. Nearly 9,000 children were likely exposed to lead.

“During the extended shutdown, there may not be corrosion control treatment left,” Betanzo said. “If a school is opening and expecting kids to be drinking the water, they should have been flushing 12 weeks prior” on a regular basis.

She added: “There’s no safe level of lead exposure.” Lead is a potent poison that damages brain development.

Betanzo said that districts that have already found legionella in their plumbing — including Ann Arbor and Birmingham, where she has two children attending schools — should serve as a warning across the state.

Legionella was discovered in November in the Birmingham district, then again in January, days before some students were scheduled to return to in-person classes. Students were asked to bring bottled water and showers were shut down.

Betanzo said that the presence of legionella suggests that other bacteria might also be present in the water. Other common bacteria that grow in untreated plumbing systems can cause infections of the skin or digestive tract.

“If one thing can grow, then a lot of things can grow in the water,” she said.

She added that the results of the school administrator survey, which show that some schools don’t flush their water systems after an extended break, “don’t surprise me at all.”

Flushing water systems “hasn’t been an area of focus,” she said. “We have no requirements for drinking water quality in school for schools that get public water.”

When schools nationwide shut down in March, school officials in Ann Arbor knew they would have to regularly flush district plumbing systems in order to offer safe drinking water when students returned.

Rice, the district’s top facilities official, said his staff started out flushing the pipes once a week. Then they met with a water safety consultant, who recommended that they follow the state’s recommended flushing methods twice a week.

Bacteria grew anyway, prompting district officials to begin flushing the pipes three times a week. The Ann Arbor district hasn’t indicated when classrooms will be reopened, but Rice said he is increasingly confident that school water systems are ready for students.

“It’s kind of crazy to me that it’s voluntary,” he said. “You’d think that with all the stuff that happened in Flint someone would say ‘Hey, this is mandatory.’”

Editor’s note: Feb. 18, 2021: The story has been updated to clarify that most Michigan schools have some lead components in their plumbing systems, not necessarily pipes, and that corrosion control treatments don’t guarantee that no lead will leach into drinking water.

Extend Michigan school year by five days — but not this year — says state superintendent

2021-02-08T23:49:24+00:00

This school year already seemed to be dragging on for some teachers and parents when state Superintendent Michael Rice recently suggested extending Michigan’s school year in response to the pandemic.

Rice would like to assure those people that he didn’t mean this year in his comments last Tuesday.

“Some people have said, ‘Oh my god, you’re talking about extending this terrible year,’” he said in an interview with Chalkbeat last week. “Not my point. This year needs to end.”

Rice also clarified the amount of days he thinks should be tacked on to the state academic calendar, which currently requires a minimum 180 school days per year.

“I think the state should increase its number of days by a modest number,” he said. “I think it’s reasonable to consider another five days.”

Rice’s comments come as Michigan begins to grapple with how best to support student learning when the pandemic subsides. Advocates are calling for a national tutoring effort, and Tennessee already passed bills requiring tutoring and additional summer schooling. An influx of federal coronavirus aid means schools will have additional funds to work with as they seek to help students make up for academic learning losses.

After an exhausting school year, some parents weren’t thrilled with the notion of adding school days next year.

“I honestly don’t think an additional five days would be significant,” said Tyisha Hudson, a parent in Detroit.

While Rice said he thinks that students statewide could use more learning time, he said that some would need it more than others.

Rice also urged individual districts to consider adding more learning time for certain students, or in some cases the entire district. He said additional classroom time could be especially beneficial for:

Districts that had little in-person learning this year, or those that have a high proportion of low-income students and those learning English.
Certain children who had higher-than-average needs even before the pandemic, including English learners, early readers, and students with disabilities.
Children who were struggling academically before the pandemic and who could use extra help, such as a fifth grader who is still reading on a third-grade level.

Nearly 20 years ago, Michigan eliminated the annual days of school requirement. In 2010, the state reinstated the requirement, setting it at 165 days per year. The minimum was raised three more times in five-year increments until it reached 180 in 2016-17. Most U.S. states require schools to be in session 180 days per year.

“Every district needs to reflect on” the possibility of adding extra learning time, Rice said.

“Most districts are going to find that there are gaps in what was provided for young people. Not because educators didn’t work extraordinarily hard, because they did. But it’s in the midst of a pandemic.”

State superintendent: Extend the Michigan school year to combat pandemic learning loss

2021-02-02T20:32:26+00:00

Michigan’s top school official wants state lawmakers to increase the minimum number of days children are required to attend school.

Michael Rice, state superintendent, said that the pandemic has exacerbated students’ learning needs. With schools closed to slow the spread of COVID-19, thousands of students statewide spent much of the last 10 months learning online.

“Most students will receive less instruction from March of last year through the end of this school year than in any similar period of their education,” he said, speaking before members of the Michigan house and senate education committees.

“The current minimum number of days 180 was too low before the pandemic. It isn’t close to that of high performing nations. Students and staff need more coming out of the pandemic. The state legislature should raise the minimum number of days to underscore the need for more time.”

Rice’s comments add to a growing national conversation about how best to help students catch up from pandemic learning losses. Advocates are calling for a national tutoring program. In Tennessee, lawmakers recently beefed up their third-grade reading law and authorized tutoring and summer school programs. School officials in Detroit recently said they would dramatically expand their summer school offerings this year.

Michigan schools are set to receive a large infusion of federal coronavirus relief money, which could be used to expand students’ learning time. (The Michigan GOP is currently threatening not to allocate the coronavirus relief funds.)

Rice did not specify how many days he wants added to the minimum school year. Most other states in the U.S. require 180 school days per year at minimum.

Extending the school year is one way to increase learning time. Rice also echoed national calls for additional out-of-school learning time through tutoring, mentoring, and summer school.

Certain groups especially need more time with teachers, Rice said: Early readers, struggling readers, students with disabilities, and students who don’t speak English at home.

Over the last decade, Michigan steadily expanded its minimum school year from 165 to 180 days. It has been 180 days since the 2016-2017 school year. This is only a minimum, and some schools currently hold classes more than 180 days a year.

Whitmer: State should send $300 million in COVID relief to schools

2021-01-19T21:33:38+00:00

Michigan schools are already set to receive $1.7 billion in federal coronavirus relief. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wants to add $300 million in state funds to the total.

The funds are part of a wide-ranging, $5.6 billion COVID recovery plan that Whitmer is sending to the state legislature for approval. She said the money would help schools offer an in-person learning option by March 1, a goal she set earlier this month.

Schools that enroll a higher share of Michigan’s most vulnerable students — English learners, students with disabilities, and low-income students — would get a larger portion of the state funds under Whitmer’s proposal.

School groups applauded Whitmer’s goal of sending more state money to schools.

“We urge leaders in Lansing to work together to swiftly appropriate these dollars so that districts can begin making plans for recovery programs, in-person instruction, summer learning, and other expenditures for the resources our schools and students need now, and post-pandemic,” said Tina Kerr, executive director of the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators, in a statement.

Whitmer’s COVID Recovery Plan includes $1.7 billion in federal funds for schools, but her administration will have little say over how that money is spent. The federal funds will be distributed to schools according to a federal formula. Most of that money will go directly to schools, while the remaining 10% will be distributed by the Michigan Department of Education, which Whitmer does not control.

The department hasn’t yet announced how it plans to distribute those funds. Whitmer didn’t make clear whether she had reached an agreement with the department on how the money would be spent. The department didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Could addressing dyslexia boost literacy in Michigan? Some lawmakers want to find out.

2020-12-22T23:54:52+00:00

Michigan has spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars aimed at improving early literacy, yet roughly one in three Michigan fourth-graders don’t have basic reading skills, a figure that has hardly budged in two decades.

Sen. Jim Runestad says he can help explain why: In the 50 years since he was an elementary schooler with dyslexia grappling with a “mishmash of letters” in English class, little has changed for people like him.

Maeve Janssens, an 8-year-old from northern Michigan who was diagnosed with dyslexia this summer, knows the feeling of struggling to decode text on a page.

“It just didn’t click in my brain,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t do anything.”

Dyslexia is a common and well-understood learning disability. As many as 15% to 20% of people have some of the symptoms of dyslexia, which make reading difficult. Studies show that most people with dyslexia who receive high-quality instruction early on will become average readers. More than two-thirds of states try to promptly identify children who struggle with the basics of decoding text and to teach them the skills they need to become literate.

Yet Michigan law barely mentions dyslexia.

“Michigan currently has no statewide strategy to screen and treat dyslexia, the most common language-based learning disability in existence,” Runestad, a Republican from southeast Michigan, wrote in October. “This is unacceptable.”

Runestad is part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers backing a package of bills designed to help students with dyslexia. Their proposals, expected to reach the Senate early next year, would identify students who show signs of dyslexia in the early grades, and give educators more training to identify and work with dyslexic students.

The bills still have a long way to go. Senate analysts haven’t yet said how much they are likely to cost, and school associations and universities could still withhold their support, hurting the bills’ political prospects.

Still, advocates believe the bills have a good chance at passage because they have the support of key senators from both parties. And they’ve won the support of some education leaders who say Michigan’s approach to literacy is outdated and disadvantages struggling readers.

“These proposed bills are the most promising K-12 reform-minded legislation I have seen since being superintendent in Detroit,” said Nikolai Vitti of the Detroit Public Schools Community District in a statement. Vitti has dyslexia himself and is raising children with dyslexia.

Decades of education research suggest that enacting the right early literacy policies together can make a huge difference for students with dyslexia and other struggling readers. Mississippi has garnered national attention for its focus on putting in place these pieces — high-quality literacy curriculum, well-trained teachers, and effective early screening and intervention for reading difficulties. After seeing little return on its investments to improve reading scores, Colorado recently shifted its focus to these policies as well.

“If you think about it, it’s a somewhat easy fix to give people a life,” said Nadine Gaab, an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School who studies dyslexia and early literacy.

“We know that you are more likely to enter the criminal justice system if you’re a poor reader. It has tremendous implications for your self-esteem. There are higher rates of suicide. It’s estimated that 30% of inmates in the U.S. have a language-based learning disability. There are a lot of implications if you can’t read in this society, more than if you can’t do math.”

Advocates say the dyslexia bills will strengthen Michigan’s approach to literacy, but some education leaders aren’t yet convinced, and concerns about school funding could complicate the proposals’ political prospects.

Here are some of the key issues to watch as these proposals are debated in 2021:

What’s the problem, and what’s being proposed?

Dyslexic students can learn to read with the right kind of help. But Michigan is allowing some of them to fall through the cracks, said Brian Gutman, director of external relations at Education Trust-Midwest, a nonprofit education advocacy group.

“It’s startling that in Michigan in 2020 we still don’t have a system that makes sure that [dyslexic students] are identified as early as possible and teachers are equipped in classrooms across the state to meet the needs of a significant portion of the population,” he said.

Michigan already provides specialized services to many dyslexic students. Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities recognized by the state.

However, fewer students with disabilities have been recognized in recent years, a trend some advocates say doesn’t reflect reality, but rather a narrowing of special education criteria in Michigan.

Supporters of the bills hope that by identifying dyslexic students early, they can help them become effective readers without resorting to the expensive and complex special education process.

“There are a number of kids who in the first and second grades, they get through really well because they have a lot of really good oral language,” said David Winters, one of the authors of the bills and the head of the department of special education and communications sciences and disorders at Eastern Michigan University.

The bills propose to solve this problem by requiring schools to screen all students in kindergarten through third grades for signs of dyslexia. Schools would only flag signs that a student might be dyslexic; it takes a trained clinician to provide a diagnosis. Supporters of the bills say that schools could flag possible dyslexic students using the same literacy screening tests that they already must give to young students under Michigan’s third-grade reading law.

Winters worries, too, that classroom teachers in Michigan aren’t getting enough instruction in the structure of language that students need to acquire to become good readers and writers.

Teachers in training “consistently say, ‘nobody taught us this, or nobody told us anything about this,’” he said. “It’s a knowledge issue, it’s not a motivation issue.”

The bills would attempt to improve literacy instruction by 2024, by requiring teacher preparation programs to offer instruction on dyslexia and how to support dyslexic students and by requiring teachers to have a minimum level of training about dyslexia to be certified.

What works for dyslexic students?

In short: Curriculum and instruction that attend to the sound components of language, given as early as possible in a students’ school career.

A key finding of research on struggling readers is that the sooner they get help, the better.

Numerous studies show that when struggling beginning readers receive intensive instruction, 56% to 92% become average readers. Researchers have also found that it’s easier to help struggling readers in kindergarten and first grade than later and that overall, struggling readers need help “early and often.”

Shannon Koenen, a member of the board of directors of the International Dyslexia Association-Michigan, said it took far too long for her son to be diagnosed as dyslexic. He didn’t learn to read until he was 10 years old.

“He was getting in trouble at school, and he was having all kinds of mental health problems,” she said. “If this bill had been in effect when my son was in kindergarten, not only would he have better skills, he would have avoided heartache.”

Quickly identifying students who may have dyslexia isn’t enough, however, if teachers don’t have the skills to help them.

“Anybody at the elementary level who is engaged in teaching literacy must really understand the typical characteristics of dyslexia, and especially how they can adjust their own teaching” to help dyslexic students, Winters said. That means focusing on the relationships between letters and sounds. For instance, a teacher might ask students to identify the sounds that make up the word “fix” (there are four, Winters said).

Curriculums that focus on the sound elements of language are also viewed as crucial for students with dyslexia. The bills require the Michigan Department of Education to provide schools with “instructional methods and curriculum resources” that work for students with dyslexia by the 2023-24 school year.

A ‘philosophical logjam’ over literacy instruction

Heather Eckner, a special education advocate in Ann Arbor and a former classroom teacher, said Michigan schools have drifted too far away from explicitly teaching phonemic awareness, or the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words.

For evidence, she points to her own experience in teacher training.

“I was trained in this philosophy of letting kids find their own way” to reading rather than directly teaching them how written language works, she said. “I recently came across some papers from grad school, and I was horrified at what I wrote.”

Eckner and other supporters of the dyslexia proposals say they hope the bills will push schools to focus more on the structures of literacy.

“There’s been a philosophical logjam,” said Susan Schmidt, a retired Michigan teacher and advocate who helped draft the bills. “Reading instruction, around the time I got to college, took on the idea that reading is like speaking: We’ll just immerse you, and then you’ll figure it out.”

There is no research showing what the average Michigan teacher learns about literacy instruction before entering the classroom. Similarly, there is no data showing how much class time teachers typically spend on different types of reading instruction.

“There’s no empirical research,” said Elizabeth Moje, dean of the College of Education at the University of Michigan. “The claims [about how reading is taught in Michigan] are made without evidence, though that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem.”

Some teacher preparation programs in Michigan don’t give educators the skills they need to teach early readers, including students with dyslexia, Moje said, though she said her university does give future teachers those tools.

Paula Lancaster, dean of the college of education at Central Michigan University, said her program is already fulfilling the teacher training requirements laid out in the dyslexia bills.

”We recognize and teach the science of language and reading development,” she wrote in an email. “Thus, the content changes suggested in these bills align with our approach.”

Moje said she is not necessarily opposed to the bills, but she cautioned that they could push schools to overemphasize sound-based elements of literacy instruction — the parts that are especially important for dyslexic students — at the expense of other elements.

An overemphasis on phonemics — or the sounds of language — could be problematic for students who can easily link sounds and letters, but struggle in other ways.

“We absolutely need systematic instruction in phonemic awareness,” she said. “It’s necessary, but not sufficient.”

Moje also warned that elementary school teachers in training learn much more than literacy instruction, and that it is unrealistic to expect them to exit teacher colleges as experts in reading disabilities.

‘Unfunded mandate’ or cost-saver?

Runestad and Maeve both had the feeling of exclusion that is common among struggling readers.

“It was a feeling that you’re falling further behind, Runestad recalled. “You can’t figure out why but you’re slipping behind.”

Maeve, who has three older siblings, couldn’t help but compare her reading abilities to theirs. By second grade, her deteriorating self-esteem became apparent to her family, said her mother, Amy Janssens. “She came up with tricky strategies to avoid reading at school.”

“I would hide under the desk when we were doing reading groups and pretend I was doing something else,” Maeve said.

Still, both Runestad and Maeve were fortunate in at least one sense.

Runestad’s parents paid for him to attend a literacy summer camp, which helped him crack the code. Today, he reads constantly, though he has accepted that he’ll never be a speed reader. He’s currently working through a three-volume history of political oppression in the Soviet Union.

Maeve’s family paid for a literacy summer camp, too, and for a year of one-on-one lessons with a clinician who specializes in dyslexia. Reading still doesn’t come easily, but she can read, and her confidence is back.

“I can read bigger books. It’s easier now and I feel like I can do anything,” she said.

Amy Janssens said she and Maeve are advocating for the dyslexia bills because many families can’t afford to pay for private dyslexia testing and instruction.

“It’s not a viable solution for any family,” she said. “The amount of money that it takes to get a dyslexia diagnosis and the amount of money it takes to get real support isn’t accessible to pretty much anyone right now.”

Eckner, the special education advocate, said it’s common for families to pay lots of money to support their students with dyslexia if they have the means to do so.

“There’s a huge groundswell of parents who are paying thousands of dollars for outside instruction because their kids are not learning to read in school,” she said.

So will schools have to cover those costs if the bills are passed?

That question poses perhaps the most significant threat to the proposals’ chance of becoming law. The dyslexia bills don’t provide any new funds, for instance, to hire more reading specialists. New spending likely wouldn’t gain traction in the GOP-controlled state legislature in the midst of a recession.

“Districts are afraid of another unfunded mandate, which I believe will be the inevitable argument made by districts and their lobbyists when these bills move forward,” said Vitti, the Detroit superintendent.

Vitti said K-12 education badly needs more funding, but he believes that districts can better serve struggling readers even with the funding they already have. His district recently adopted an effective elementary English curriculum, and is in the process of training all of its teachers in the science of reading.

“There is no doubt that additional funding would assist districts and schools to implement these reading interventions but the truth is that they need to start using their funding differently for teacher training, materials, and interventions,” he added.

Still, school groups say they are not ready to sign on to the bills.

“As of now, we have some concerns with the details of the bills as drafted,” Peter Spadafore, spokesman for the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators, said in a statement. He declined to specify the issues.

Gutman, the education advocate, said screening students for dyslexia using existing tests provides valuable information to teachers without adding additional costs.

“Whether these students are identified or not, the need is still there,” he said. “It frankly shouldn’t be controversial.”

Winters, the professor of special education, said the bills could save money.

“If we could do a good enough job catching more students than we are now who are struggling to read, then it should reduce the caseload in special education,” he said, “which means that you end up spending less money.”

Moje said one reliable way to get more students reading would be to hire more literacy experts. Michigan’s third-grade reading law, which was passed in 2016, helped hire teacher coaches across the state to focus on literacy instruction — but not enough to make much of a difference.

“I would say that we need to all be advocating for more literacy specialists who have the deep knowledge of literacy challenges,” she said. “We used to have many more.”

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

Whitmer: State has ‘very important role to play’ finding missing students

2020-12-18T22:12:37+00:00

Michigan officials should work to account for students who disappeared from school rolls this fall due to the pandemic, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Friday.

There has been no coordinated statewide effort so far to identify the 13,000 students who are unaccounted for this fall.

Tens of thousands more are being home-schooled or, in the case of kindergartners, waiting an additional year before entering classrooms. Last week, Chalkbeat reported an overall enrollment drop of nearly 4% this year, or 53,000 students, according to unaudited figures. While Michigan enrollment has been declining steadily for years, the decline this fall was the largest by far in more than a decade.

Educators worry that students who did not enroll in school this fall will need more academic and emotional support than usual when in-person instruction resumes.

“Accounting for every child is an important part of the work that we will have to do — that we must do,” Whitmer said during a press conference Friday, adding: “The state has a very important role to play.”

In an opinion piece about missing children published this week, State Superintendent Michael Rice called on the state legislature to create a registry of home-schoolers, which he said would help ensure that no students went unaccounted for. Rice said that 17,000 families told their schools that they intended to home-school this year.

Rice did not articulate a statewide plan to identify missing students, writing that “the granular work to find children must take place at the local level, where teachers, support staff, and administrators know children, families, and communities, and where community connections with churches, neighborhood associations, and other youth- and family-serving entities can help.”

Whitmer said during the press conference that the state is working on strategies to meet the needs of children who have “experienced a real gap in their education and real learning loss.”

“Working in collaboration with our families, with our teachers, with our administrators, our expertise is going to be absolutely essential,” she said. “But this gap will be real. The learning loss will be profound. We know this, and that’s why it has to be a centerpiece of the work we do going forward.”

Tens of thousands of Michigan students are missing this fall. The state doesn’t have a plan to find them.

2020-12-11T23:04:03+00:00

Michigan does not have the ability to find thousands of students who are likely “not being educated” during the pandemic, much less a unified plan to do so.

As COVID-19 deaths rise in Michigan and more schools move to online instruction, districts have shouldered the responsibility for finding missing students, making phone calls, and in some cases knocking on doors.

But many of those students remain unaccounted for three months into the school year, and state leaders have done little more than encourage local superintendents to find them. Michigan’s incomplete data system — it does not include home-schooling families — makes the problem worse.

“Schools can’t do it alone,” John Severson, superintendent of Muskegon Area ISD, a county-level education support agency in western Michigan, said. There are “a lot of lost voices that we are not hearing from right now. And if we were to get them back, think about how far behind they are. We’ve got to find them.”

Superintendents are already bracing for the staggering challenge of helping students get back on track academically after the pandemic. That challenge will be more difficult to overcome if Michigan’s missing students aren’t found. Even with a vaccine on the way, public health experts say this winter will be among the grimmest periods of the pandemic. It will likely be months, at best, before schools across the state resume in-person instruction.

Many students “are not attending online classes and they’re not attending in-person classes — they’re just kind of lost,” said Jennifer Lewis, an associate professor of math education at Wayne State University in Detroit. That means students are missing out on concepts that they’ll need to understand next year’s work. Not to mention they’re missing out on the emotional and social support that they receive at school.

Educators are concerned about the well-being — academic, emotional, and physical — of students who simply aren’t attending school. Reports of child abuse have declined sharply during the pandemic, in part because teachers are among the people most likely to notice the signs of abuse.

Adding to the urgency of the situation, these students were already at greater risk of falling behind, she added.

“The kids who will suffer the most will be the kids who were already suffering,” she said. “The achievement gaps will only grow. We’ve already struggled with, ‘How do we help kids catch up?’ Now it’s going to be a stronger concern.”

Michigan’s enrollment fell by 53,200 students this fall, according to unaudited data obtained by Chalkbeat. That’s nearly double the enrollment decline in 2009-2010, the last year of the Great Recession.

District	County	2019 Enrollment	2020 Enrollment	Difference	% Difference
Detroit Public Schools Community District	Wayne	50,392	47,673	-2,719	-5%
Lansing Public School District	Ingham	10,392	9,464	-927	-9%
Utica Community Schools	Macomb	26,599	25,672	-926	-3%
Grand Rapids Public Schools	Kent	15,386	14,510	-876	-6%
Chippewa Valley Schools	Macomb	15,688	14,817	-871	-6%
Wayne-Westland Community School District	Wayne	10,292	9,460	9,460	-8%
Waterford School District	Oakland	8,193	7,403	-789	-10%
Walled Lake Consolidated Schools	Oakland	13,376	12,609	-767	-6%
Plymouth-Canton Community Schools	Wayne	17,303	16,598	-705	-4%
Kalamazoo Public Schools	Kalamazoo	12,848	12,157	-690	-5%
Ann Arbor Public Schools	Washtenaw	17,903	17,265	-637	-4%
Huron Valley Schools	Oakland	8,777	8,146	-631	-7%
Flint, School District of the City of	Genesee	3,724	3,099	-625	-17%
Port Huron Area School District	St. Clair	7,811	7,195	-616	-8%
Oak Park, School District of the City of	Oakland	4,400	3,788	-611	-14%
South Lyon Community Schools	Oakland	8,774	8,187	-586	-7%
Warren Consolidated Schools	Macomb	13,506	12,949	-557	-4%
Traverse City Area Public Schools	Grand Traverse	9,723	9,171	-552	-6%
Livonia Public Schools School District	Wayne	14,097	13,563	-534	-4%
Grosse Pointe Public Schools	Wayne	7,447	6,921	-527	-7%
Lake Orion Community Schools	Oakland	7,324	6,824	-500	-7%
Birmingham Public Schools	Oakland	7,971	7,501	-469	-6%
Bay City School District	Bay	7,232	6,769	-462	-6%
Anchor Bay School District	St. Clair	5,838	5,380	-458	-8%
Grand Ledge Public Schools	Eaton	5,380	4,944	-435	-8%
Rochester Community School District	Oakland	15,412	14,987	-425	-3%
Lapeer Community Schools	Lapeer	4,936	4,522	-414	-8%
Holt Public Schools	Ingham	5,596	5,184	-412	-7%
Grand Blanc Community Schools	Genesee	8,274	7,864	-410	-5%
Southfield Public School District	Oakland	5,559	5,163	-396	-7%
Forest Hills Public Schools	Kent	9,706	9,346	-360	-4%
Troy School District	Oakland	13,081	12,731	-350	-3%
Grand Haven Area Public Schools	Ottawa	5,995	5,657	-338	-6%
Midland Public Schools	Midland	7,744	7,413	-331	-4%
Zeeland Public Schools	Ottawa	6,442	6,123	-319	-5%
Berrien Springs Public Schools	Berrien	4,320	4,006	-314	-7%
Farmington Public School District	Oakland	9,327	9,021	-307	-3%
Pontiac City School District	Oakland	3,907	3,603	-303	-8%
Carman-Ainsworth Community Schools	Genesee	4,282	3,986	-297	-7%
Northville Public Schools	Wayne	7,378	7,084	-294	-4%
Jackson Public Schools	Jackson	4,871	4,583	-287	-6%
Mattawan Consolidated School	Van Buren	3,781	3,497	-284	-8%
Old Redford Academy	Wayne	1,528	1,246	-282	-18%
L'Anse Creuse Public Schools	Macomb	10,163	9,885	-278	-3%
Garden City Public Schools	Wayne	3,647	3,370	-277	-8%
Redford Union Schools, District No. 1	Wayne	2,668	2,394	-274	-10%
Lake Shore Public Schools (Macomb)	Macomb	3,433	3,162	-271	-8%
Ypsilanti Community Schools	Washtenaw	3,827	3,558	-269	-7%
Southgate Community School District	Wayne	3,442	3,180	-262	-8%
Howell Public Schools	Livingston	6,958	6,697	-261	-4%
Van Dyke Public Schools	Macomb	2,292	2,046	-246	-11%
Marshall Public Schools	Calhoun	2,790	2,545	-246	-9%
Portage Public Schools	Kalamazoo	8,913	8,671	-242	-3%
Taylor School District	Wayne	5,950	5,709	-242	-4%
Dexter Community School District	Washtenaw	3,628	3,387	-241	-7%
Allegan Public Schools	Allegan	2,388	2,148	-240	-10%
Saline Area Schools	Washtenaw	5,200	4,962	-238	-5%
Pennfield Schools	Calhoun	2,185	1,961	-224	-10%
Lincoln Consolidated School District	Washtenaw	3,769	3,549	-220	-6%
Eaton Rapids Public Schools	Eaton	2,256	2,036	-220	-10%
Three Rivers Community Schools	St. Joseph	2,655	2,438	-217	-8%
Rockford Public Schools	Kent	7,955	7,739	-216	-3%
Harper Woods, The School District of the City of	Wayne	2,483	2,270	-212	-9%
Holland City School District	Ottawa	3,417	3,206	-211	-6%
Hartland Consolidated Schools	Livingston	5,472	5,261	-210	-4%
Roseville Community Schools	Macomb	4,569	4,359	-210	-5%
Monroe Public Schools	Monroe	5,160	4,952	-208	-4%
Lowell Area Schools	Kent	3,768	3,563	-205	-5%
Royal Oak Schools	Oakland	5,233	5,029	-203	-4%
West Ottawa Public School District	Ottawa	6,683	6,480	-202	-3%
Bloomfield Hills Schools	Oakland	5,597	5,396	-201	-4%
Dearborn City School District	Wayne	20,620	20,419	-201	-1%
Cedar Springs Public Schools	Kent	3,577	3,379	-198	-6%
Hudsonville Public School District	Ottawa	7,137	6,939	-198	-3%
Gaylord Community Schools	Otsego	3,020	2,826	-195	-6%
Van Buren Public Schools	Wayne	4,537	4,344	-193	-4%
Charlotte Public Schools	Eaton	2,526	2,348	-178	-7%
Battle Creek Public Schools	Calhoun	3,878	3,701	-177	-5%
Alpena Public Schools	Alpena	3,699	3,522	-176	-5%
Berkley School District	Oakland	5,927	5,752	-176	-3%
Lakewood Public Schools	Ionia	1,795	1,623	-172	-10%
Saginaw Township Community Schools	Saginaw	4,816	4,646	-170	-4%
Milan Area Schools	Washtenaw	2,168	1,998	-170	-8%
Kentwood Public Schools	Kent	9,258	9,088	-170	-2%
Niles Community Schools	Berrien	3,729	3,560	-169	-5%
Fenton Area Public Schools	Genesee	3,443	3,276	-167	-5%
Plainwell Community Schools	Allegan	2,819	2,652	-167	-6%
Chandler Park Academy	Wayne	2,289	2,124	-165	-7%
East China School District	St. Clair	3,974	3,812	-162	-4%
Lakeview Sch. District (Calhoun)	Calhoun	4,065	3,903	-162	-4%
Holly Area School District	Oakland	3,261	3,103	-159	-5%
Caro Community Schools	Tuscola	1,629	1,473	-155	-10%
Fraser Public Schools	Macomb	4,828	4,673	-155	-3%
Romulus Community Schools	Wayne	2,580	2,426	-154	-6%
Tecumseh Public Schools	Lenawee	2,683	2,530	-153	-6%
Linden Community Schools	Genesee	2,672	2,519	-152	-6%
Muskegon, Public Schools of the City of	Muskegon	3,616	3,464	-152	-4%
Ionia Public Schools	Ionia	2,992	2,843	-149	-5%
Kelloggsville Public Schools	Kent	2,385	2,238	-147	-6%
Ferndale Public Schools	Oakland	3,119	2,973	-146	-5%
St. Johns Public Schools	Clinton	2,792	2,647	-145	-5%
Hamilton Community Schools	Allegan	3,201	3,056	-145	-5%
Saginaw, School District of the City of	Saginaw	5,210	5,065	-145	-3%
Wayland Union Schools	Allegan	3,055	2,912	-143	-5%
Corunna Public Schools	Shiawassee	1,758	1,616	-142	-8%
Mona Shores Public School District	Muskegon	3,906	3,764	-142	-4%
Clawson Public Schools	Oakland	1,470	1,329	-141	-10%
Flushing Community Schools	Genesee	4,223	4,083	-140	-3%
Dowagiac Union School District	Cass	2,205	2,066	-139	-6%
Romeo Community Schools	Macomb	5,218	5,080	-139	-3%
Caledonia Community Schools	Kent	5,059	4,921	-139	-3%
Bedford Public Schools	Monroe	4,267	4,129	-138	-3%
Jonesville Community Schools	Hillsdale	1,450	1,312	-138	-10%
Eastpointe Community Schools	Macomb	2,470	2,332	-138	-6%
Northview Public Schools	Kent	3,324	3,187	-137	-4%
Flat Rock Community Schools	Wayne	1,925	1,788	-137	-7%
Martin Luther King, Jr. Education Center Academy	Wayne	432	297	-135	-31%
Barack Obama Leadership Academy	Wayne	383	248	-135	-35%
Wyoming Public Schools	Kent	4,150	4,017	-133	-3%
Chelsea School District	Washtenaw	2,429	2,297	-133	-5%
Lakeview Public Schools (Macomb)	Macomb	4,357	4,224	-132	-3%
Woodhaven-Brownstown School District	Wayne	5,546	5,414	-132	-2%
West Bloomfield School District	Oakland	5,411	5,279	-132	-2%
Trenton Public Schools	Wayne	2,534	2,402	-132	-5%
Swartz Creek Community Schools	Genesee	3,628	3,498	-131	-4%
Clintondale Community Schools	Macomb	2,656	2,525	-130	-5%
Vicksburg Community Schools	Kalamazoo	2,694	2,564	-130	-5%
Coldwater Community Schools	Branch	2,863	2,734	-129	-5%
Lincoln Park, School District of the City of	Wayne	4,932	4,804	-128	-3%
Marysville Public Schools	St. Clair	2,832	2,705	-127	-4%
Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences	Wayne	1,050	923	-127	-12%
Bradford Academy	Oakland	1,275	1,150	-125	-10%
Gibraltar School District	Wayne	3,712	3,587	-125	-3%
Vassar Public Schools	Tuscola	1,076	951	-125	-12%
Standish-Sterling Community Schools	Arenac	1,555	1,431	-124	-8%
Allen Park Public Schools	Wayne	3,842	3,719	-123	-3%
Bridgman Public Schools	Berrien	888	766	-123	-14%
Clio Area School District	Genesee	2,876	2,754	-123	-4%
Croswell-Lexington Community Schools	Sanilac	2,051	1,929	-122	-6%
South Haven Public Schools	Van Buren	1,900	1,778	-122	-6%
Davison Community Schools	Genesee	5,748	5,628	-120	-2%
Benton Harbor Area Schools	Berrien	1,724	1,605	-118	-7%
Fruitport Community Schools	Muskegon	2,655	2,536	-118	-4%
Leslie Public Schools	Ingham	1,204	1,086	-118	-10%
Hopkins Public Schools	Allegan	1,641	1,523	-117	-7%
Haslett Public Schools	Ingham	2,713	2,595	-117	-4%
Washtenaw Technical Middle College	Washtenaw	911	795	-117	-13%
Leland Public School District	Leelanau	555	439	-116	-21%
Parchment School District	Kalamazoo	1,633	1,517	-116	-7%
Cornerstone Health and Technology School	Wayne	529	414	-115	-22%
Northwest Community Schools	Jackson	3,614	3,499	-115	-3%
Novi Community School District	Oakland	6,711	6,596	-115	-2%
Goodrich Area Schools	Genesee	2,114	2,000	-114	-5%
Mt. Morris Consolidated Schools	Genesee	1,715	1,602	-113	-7%
Williamston Community Schools	Ingham	1,907	1,795	-112	-6%
Waverly Community Schools	Eaton	3,000	2,888	-112	-4%
Grandville Public Schools	Kent	5,633	5,523	-110	-2%
Grand Traverse Academy	Grand Traverse	871	761	-110	-13%
Lamphere Public Schools	Oakland	2,429	2,321	-108	-4%
Madison District Public Schools	Oakland	1,123	1,016	-108	-10%
Imlay City Community Schools	Lapeer	1,980	1,873	-107	-5%
Hazel Park, School District of the City of	Oakland	3,058	2,951	-107	-3%
Shelby Public Schools	Oceana	1,247	1,141	-106	-8%
Central Montcalm Public Schools	Montcalm	1,460	1,355	-105	-7%
Fitzgerald Public Schools	Macomb	2,378	2,273	-105	-4%
Essexville-Hampton Public Schools	Bay	1,682	1,578	-105	-6%
Center Line Public Schools	Macomb	2,531	2,427	-103	-4%
Crossroads Charter Academy	Mecosta	508	406	-103	-20%
Harper Creek Community Schools	Calhoun	2,750	2,648	-102	-4%
Pinckney Community Schools	Livingston	2,423	2,321	-102	-4%
Greenville Public Schools	Montcalm	3,655	3,554	-101	-3%
Okemos Public Schools	Ingham	4,595	4,494	-101	-2%
Perry Public Schools	Shiawassee	1,054	954	-100	-9%
Byron Area Schools	Shiawassee	805	706	-99	-12%
Jefferson Schools (Monroe)	Monroe	1,533	1,434	-99	-6%
Pontiac Academy for Excellence	Oakland	629	531	-98	-16%
Grant Public School District	Newaygo	1,777	1,679	-98	-6%
Almont Community Schools	Lapeer	1,458	1,361	-97	-7%
Cornerstone Jefferson-Douglass Academy	Wayne	689	592	-97	-14%
East Jackson Community Schools	Jackson	884	787	-97	-11%
Atherton Community Schools	Genesee	827	730	-97	-12%
St. Joseph Public Schools	Berrien	3,025	2,929	-96	-3%
Clare Public Schools	Clare	1,635	1,539	-96	-6%
American International Academy	Wayne	728	632	-96	-13%
South Lake Schools	Macomb	1,634	1,539	-95	-6%
Crescent Academy	Oakland	893	799	-95	-11%
Bangor Public Schools (Van Buren)	Van Buren	1,111	1,019	-93	-8%
Ludington Area School District	Mason	2,169	2,077	-93	-4%
Constantine Public School District	St. Joseph	1,483	1,391	-92	-6%
Dearborn Heights School District #7	Wayne	2,525	2,434	-91	-4%
Lakeview Community Schools (Montcalm)	Montcalm	1,076	985	-91	-8%
Reed City Area Public Schools	Osceola	1,432	1,342	-90	-6%
Lake Fenton Community Schools	Genesee	2,102	2,014	-88	-4%
Orchard View Schools	Muskegon	2,224	2,136	-88	-4%
Gull Lake Community Schools	Kalamazoo	3,591	3,503	-88	-2%
Ovid-Elsie Area Schools	Clinton	1,488	1,400	-88	-6%
Mt. Pleasant City School District	Isabella	3,589	3,503	-86	-2%
Detroit Community Schools	Wayne	699	613	-86	-12%
Public Schools of Petoskey	Emmet	2,837	2,751	-86	-3%
Montague Area Public Schools	Muskegon	1,493	1,407	-86	-6%
Morley Stanwood Community Schools	Mecosta	1,183	1,098	-85	-7%
Fowlerville Community Schools	Livingston	2,715	2,630	-85	-3%
Warren Woods Public Schools	Macomb	3,248	3,164	-84	-3%
Alma Public Schools	Gratiot	2,032	1,949	-84	-4%
West Branch-Rose City Area Schools	Ogemaw	2,013	1,930	-83	-4%
Public Schools of Calumet, Laurium & Keweenaw	Houghton	1,627	1,543	-83	-5%
Escanaba Area Public Schools	Delta	2,313	2,230	-83	-4%
Adrian Public Schools	Lenawee	2,865	2,783	-82	-3%
Houghton Lake Community Schools	Roscommon	1,222	1,140	-82	-7%
Harrison Community Schools	Clare	1,333	1,251	-82	-6%
Negaunee Public Schools	Marquette	1,561	1,481	-80	-5%
Summit Academy North	Wayne	1,779	1,699	-80	-4%
Covenant House Academy Grand Rapids	Kent	307	228	-79	-26%
Marquette Area Public Schools	Marquette	3,235	3,156	-79	-2%
Mount Clemens Community School District	Macomb	1,000	921	-79	-8%
Big Rapids Public Schools	Mecosta	2,150	2,071	-79	-4%
Melvindale-North Allen Park Schools	Wayne	3,041	2,963	-78	-3%
Madison Academy	Genesee	875	797	-78	-9%
Delton Kellogg Schools	Barry	1,185	1,108	-77	-7%
Bullock Creek School District	Midland	1,865	1,787	-77	-4%
Olivet Community Schools	Eaton	1,351	1,274	-77	-6%
Tri County Area Schools	Montcalm	1,843	1,766	-77	-4%
Mancelona Public Schools	Antrim	943	866	-77	-8%
Cheboygan Area Schools	Cheboygan	1,590	1,514	-76	-5%
White Pigeon Community Schools	St. Joseph	774	698	-76	-10%
Four Corners Montessori Academy	Oakland	456	380	-76	-17%
University Yes Academy	Wayne	538	463	-75	-14%
Coloma Community Schools	Berrien	1,304	1,229	-75	-6%
Madison School District (Lenawee)	Lenawee	1,625	1,550	-74	-5%
Voyageur Academy	Wayne	1,164	1,090	-74	-6%
East Grand Rapids Public Schools	Kent	2,889	2,815	-74	-3%
Cesar Chavez Academy	Wayne	2,270	2,196	-74	-3%
Reeths-Puffer Schools	Muskegon	3,587	3,513	-74	-2%
Wyandotte, School District of the City of	Wayne	4,688	4,615	-73	-2%
Brandywine Community Schools	Berrien	1,343	1,271	-73	-5%
Boyne City Public Schools	Charlevoix	1,349	1,277	-73	-5%
Edwardsburg Public Schools	Cass	2,708	2,636	-72	-3%
Farwell Area Schools	Clare	1,064	992	-72	-7%
Thornapple Kellogg School District	Barry	3,221	3,151	-70	-2%
Charlevoix Public Schools	Charlevoix	842	772	-70	-8%
DeWitt Public Schools	Clinton	3,191	3,121	-70	-2%
Roscommon Area Public Schools	Roscommon	856	786	-70	-8%
Sturgis Public Schools	St. Joseph	3,112	3,042	-70	-2%
Joy Preparatory Academy	Wayne	285	215	-70	-24%
Fremont Public School District	Newaygo	2,104	2,034	-70	-3%
Bath Community Schools	Clinton	1,122	1,053	-69	-6%
Schoolcraft Community Schools	Kalamazoo	1,071	1,001	-69	-6%
Otsego Public Schools	Allegan	2,352	2,284	-69	-3%
Newaygo Public School District	Newaygo	1,599	1,531	-68	-4%
Chippewa Hills School District	Mecosta	1,936	1,869	-67	-3%
Grand Blanc Academy	Genesee	332	265	-67	-20%
Napoleon Community Schools	Jackson	1,323	1,256	-67	-5%
Beaverton Schools	Gladwin	1,007	939	-67	-7%
Armada Area Schools	Macomb	1,784	1,717	-66	-4%
Owosso Public Schools	Shiawassee	3,051	2,985	-66	-2%
Montabella Community Schools	Montcalm	792	726	-66	-8%
Hancock Public Schools	Houghton	697	631	-66	-9%
Bentley Community School District	Genesee	820	754	-66	-8%
Blissfield Community Schools	Lenawee	1,203	1,138	-66	-5%
North Muskegon Public Schools	Muskegon	1,042	977	-65	-6%
Manchester Community Schools	Washtenaw	875	810	-65	-7%
West Iron County Public Schools	Iron	859	794	-65	-8%
Potterville Public Schools	Eaton	797	733	-64	-8%
Comstock Park Public Schools	Kent	1,835	1,771	-64	-4%
Western School District	Jackson	2,901	2,836	-64	-2%
Mason County Central Schools	Mason	1,329	1,265	-64	-5%
Brandon School District in the Counties of Oakland and Lapeer	Oakland	2,279	2,215	-64	-3%
Hanover-Horton School District	Jackson	1,135	1,071	-64	-6%
St. Louis Public Schools	Gratiot	1,029	965	-64	-6%
Grosse Ile Township Schools	Wayne	1,775	1,711	-63	-4%
Huron School District	Wayne	2,567	2,504	-63	-2%
Hillsdale Community Schools	Hillsdale	1,367	1,305	-62	-5%
Eaton Academy	Macomb	366	304	-62	-17%
Coopersville Area Public School District	Ottawa	2,661	2,599	-62	-2%
East Lansing School District	Ingham	3,697	3,635	-62	-2%
Conner Creek Academy East	Macomb	942	880	-62	-7%
Lawrence Public Schools	Van Buren	527	465	-62	-12%
Manistique Area Schools	Schoolcraft	797	736	-61	-8%
Houghton-Portage Township School District	Houghton	1,428	1,367	-61	-4%
NICE Community School District	Marquette	1,162	1,101	-61	-5%
Millington Community Schools	Tuscola	1,156	1,095	-61	-5%
Bendle Public Schools	Genesee	1,148	1,088	-60	-5%
Detroit Public Safety Academy	Wayne	230	170	-60	-26%
Kent City Community Schools	Kent	1,324	1,264	-60	-5%
Bloomingdale Public School District	Van Buren	1,174	1,115	-58	-5%
Carrollton Public Schools	Saginaw	2,289	2,230	-58	-3%
Buchanan Community Schools	Berrien	1,568	1,510	-58	-4%
Avondale School District	Oakland	4,607	4,549	-58	-1%
Hastings Area School District	Barry	2,562	2,504	-58	-2%
North Branch Area Schools	Lapeer	2,390	2,332	-58	-2%
East Arbor Charter Academy	Washtenaw	600	542	-58	-10%
Colon Community School District	St. Joseph	569	511	-57	-10%
Allendale Public Schools	Ottawa	2,725	2,668	-57	-2%
Lighthouse Academy	Kent	375	318	-57	-15%
Belding Area School District	Ionia	1,796	1,740	-56	-3%
Spring Lake Public Schools	Ottawa	2,488	2,432	-56	-2%
Pinconning Area Schools	Bay	1,241	1,185	-56	-5%
Kearsley Community School District	Genesee	2,937	2,881	-56	-2%
Dundee Community Schools	Monroe	1,726	1,670	-56	-3%
Galesburg-Augusta Community Schools	Kalamazoo	1,015	959	-56	-5%
Hope of Detroit Academy	Wayne	1,081	1,026	-55	-5%
McBain Rural Agricultural Schools	Missaukee	1,063	1,008	-55	-5%
Bangor Township Schools	Bay	2,562	2,507	-55	-2%
Academy of Warren	Macomb	695	640	-55	-8%
Eau Claire Public Schools	Berrien	766	711	-55	-7%
W-A-Y Academy	Wayne	315	260	-55	-17%
Union City Community Schools	Branch	1,004	949	-55	-5%
Columbia School District	Jackson	1,514	1,459	-55	-4%
Lake City Area School District	Missaukee	1,203	1,149	-54	-4%
Westwood Heights Schools	Genesee	1,599	1,545	-54	-3%
Kalkaska Public Schools	Kalkaska	1,450	1,396	-54	-4%
David Ellis Academy West	Wayne	710	657	-53	-8%
Brighton Area Schools	Livingston	8,326	8,273	-53	-1%
Memphis Community Schools	St. Clair	815	762	-53	-7%
Marvin L. Winans Academy of Performing Arts	Wayne	396	344	-52	-13%
Grass Lake Community Schools	Jackson	1,327	1,276	-52	-4%
Covenant House Academy Detroit	Wayne	520	468	-51	-10%
Marlette Community Schools	Sanilac	782	731	-51	-7%
River Rouge, School District of the City of	Wayne	2,427	2,376	-51	-2%
Capac Community Schools	St. Clair	826	775	-51	-6%
Pathways Academy	Wayne	150	100	-50	-33%
Marcellus Community Schools	Cass	781	732	-49	-6%
University Preparatory Academy (PSAD)	Wayne	1,898	1,849	-49	-3%
Hart Public School District	Oceana	1,264	1,215	-49	-4%
David Ellis Academy	Wayne	271	223	-48	-18%
Bellaire Public Schools	Antrim	339	291	-48	-14%
Springport Public Schools	Jackson	1,018	970	-48	-5%
St. Charles Community Schools	Saginaw	878	830	-48	-5%
Tawas Area Schools	Iosco	1,209	1,161	-48	-4%
Cass City Public Schools	Tuscola	988	941	-47	-5%
Yale Public Schools	St. Clair	1,885	1,837	-47	-3%
Gwinn Area Community Schools	Marquette	1,032	985	-47	-5%
Cassopolis Public Schools	Cass	913	866	-47	-5%
Saranac Community Schools	Ionia	907	860	-47	-5%
Innocademy	Ottawa	324	278	-46	-14%
Riverside Academy	Wayne	919	873	-46	-5%
Manistee Area Public Schools	Manistee	1,355	1,309	-46	-3%
Hamtramck, School District of the City of	Wayne	3,332	3,286	-46	-1%
Central Academy	Washtenaw	605	560	-46	-8%
Rogers City Area Schools	Presque Isle	516	471	-45	-9%
Quincy Community Schools	Branch	1,176	1,131	-45	-4%
Byron Center Charter School	Kent	235	190	-45	-19%
Carson City-Crystal Area Schools	Montcalm	833	789	-44	-5%
Whitehall District Schools	Muskegon	2,098	2,054	-44	-2%
Greater Heights Academy	Genesee	256	212	-44	-17%
Arts Academy in the Woods	Macomb	320	276	-44	-14%
East Jordan Public Schools	Charlevoix	814	771	-43	-5%
Athens Area Schools	Calhoun	520	477	-43	-8%
Ann Arbor Learning Community	Washtenaw	316	273	-43	-14%
Jackson Preparatory & Early College	Jackson	361	318	-42	-12%
Inland Lakes Schools	Cheboygan	642	600	-42	-7%
Reese Public Schools	Tuscola	793	750	-42	-5%
Hope Academy	Wayne	496	454	-42	-8%
Ithaca Public Schools	Gratiot	1,079	1,037	-42	-4%
Munising Public Schools	Alger	645	603	-42	-6%
Richfield Public School Academy	Genesee	649	607	-42	-6%
Decatur Public Schools	Van Buren	755	714	-41	-5%
Durand Area Schools	Shiawassee	1,296	1,255	-41	-3%
Kenowa Hills Public Schools	Kent	3,156	3,116	-41	-1%
Paw Paw Public School District	Van Buren	2,165	2,124	-40	-2%
Stockbridge Community Schools	Ingham	1,244	1,203	-40	-3%
Clarenceville School District	Wayne	1,854	1,814	-40	-2%
Algonac Community School District	St. Clair	1,406	1,366	-40	-3%
Hesperia Community Schools	Newaygo	913	873	-40	-4%
L'Anse Area Schools	Baraga	589	549	-39	-7%
Iron Mountain Public Schools	Dickinson	826	786	-39	-5%
Alcona Community Schools	Alcona	687	648	-39	-6%
Gobles Public School District	Van Buren	806	767	-39	-5%
Pittsford Area Schools	Hillsdale	408	369	-39	-10%
Meridian Public Schools	Midland	1,346	1,307	-39	-3%
Benzie County Central Schools	Benzie	1,353	1,315	-38	-3%
Westwood Community School District	Wayne	1,571	1,533	-38	-2%
Addison Community Schools	Lenawee	800	762	-38	-5%
Burton Glen Charter Academy	Genesee	647	609	-38	-6%
West MI Academy of Environmental Science	Kent	789	751	-37	-5%
Da Vinci Institute	Jackson	501	464	-37	-7%
Clinton Community Schools	Lenawee	1,239	1,202	-37	-3%
University Preparatory Science and Math (PSAD)	Wayne	1,545	1,509	-37	-2%
Maple Valley Schools	Eaton	968	932	-37	-4%
Pellston Public Schools	Emmet	476	439	-36	-8%
Godwin Heights Public Schools	Kent	2,047	2,010	-36	-2%
Ishpeming Public School District No. 1	Marquette	725	689	-36	-5%
George Crockett Academy	Wayne	427	391	-36	-8%
Adams Township School District	Houghton	488	452	-36	-7%
Rutherford Winans Academy	Wayne	223	187	-36	-16%
Bessemer Area School District	Gogebic	407	371	-36	-9%
Gladwin Community Schools	Gladwin	1,609	1,573	-36	-2%
Hale Area Schools	Iosco	332	296	-36	-11%
Mason Public Schools (Ingham)	Ingham	3,212	3,177	-36	-1%
Landmark Academy	St. Clair	800	764	-36	-4%
Dr. Joseph F. Pollack Academic Center of Excellence	Oakland	754	719	-35	-5%
Comstock Public Schools	Kalamazoo	1,845	1,810	-35	-2%
Harbor Springs School District	Emmet	773	738	-35	-5%
Eagle Crest Charter Academy	Ottawa	728	693	-35	-5%
Forest Academy	Kalamazoo	155	120	-35	-22%
Morrice Area Schools	Shiawassee	524	489	-35	-7%
Coleman Community Schools	Midland	671	637	-34	-5%
Shepherd Public Schools	Isabella	1,768	1,734	-34	-2%
Kingsley Area Schools	Grand Traverse	1,548	1,513	-34	-2%
Clara B. Ford Academy (SDA)	Wayne	126	92	-34	-27%
Bay-Arenac Community High School	Bay	159	125	-34	-21%
Arts and Technology Academy of Pontiac	Oakland	806	773	-33	-4%
Breckenridge Community Schools	Gratiot	625	592	-33	-5%
White Cloud Public Schools	Newaygo	946	913	-33	-3%
Highland Park Public School Academy System	Wayne	306	274	-33	-11%
Pine River Area Schools	Osceola	1,051	1,018	-33	-3%
Vandercook Lake Public Schools	Jackson	843	810	-33	-4%
St. Ignace Area Schools	Mackinac	513	481	-32	-6%
Elkton-Pigeon-Bay Port Laker Schools	Huron	960	928	-32	-3%
Detroit Innovation Academy	Wayne	377	345	-32	-8%
Britton Deerfield Schools	Lenawee	485	454	-31	-6%
Deckerville Community School District	Sanilac	575	544	-31	-5%
Airport Community Schools	Monroe	2,715	2,684	-31	-1%
Mendon Community School District	St. Joseph	510	479	-31	-6%
Countryside Academy	Berrien	772	741	-31	-4%
FlexTech High School	Livingston	250	219	-31	-12%
Bark River-Harris School District	Menominee	712	681	-31	-4%
Fulton Schools	Gratiot	614	583	-31	-5%
Vista Charter Academy	Kent	719	688	-31	-4%
Onsted Community Schools	Lenawee	1,297	1,267	-31	-2%
Ironwood Area Schools of Gogebic County	Gogebic	745	715	-30	-4%
Birch Run Area Schools	Saginaw	1,868	1,838	-30	-2%
Hillsdale Preparatory School	Hillsdale	95	65	-30	-31%
Norway-Vulcan Area Schools	Dickinson	641	611	-30	-5%
Montrose Community Schools	Genesee	1,481	1,451	-30	-2%
Ubly Community Schools	Huron	620	590	-30	-5%
Concord Academy - Petoskey	Emmet	178	149	-29	-16%
Baldwin Community Schools	Lake	484	455	-29	-6%
Onaway Area Community School District	Presque Isle	568	539	-29	-5%
ACE Academy (SDA)	Wayne	158	129	-29	-18%
Mt. Clemens Montessori Academy	Macomb	297	269	-28	-10%
Ida Public School District	Monroe	1,440	1,412	-28	-2%
River Heights Academy	Wayne	247	219	-28	-11%
Knapp Charter Academy	Kent	703	675	-28	-4%
North Star Academy	Marquette	248	220	-28	-11%
Keystone Academy	Wayne	702	674	-28	-4%
Riverview Community School District	Wayne	2,958	2,931	-27	-1%
Sand Creek Community Schools	Lenawee	829	801	-27	-3%
International Academy of Flint	Genesee	969	942	-27	-3%
Brown City Community Schools	Sanilac	764	737	-27	-4%
Blue Water Middle College	St. Clair	424	397	-27	-6%
NexTech High School of Lansing	Ingham	113	86	-27	-24%
Laingsburg Community Schools	Shiawassee	1,161	1,134	-27	-2%
The Dearborn Academy	Wayne	516	490	-26	-5%
Unionville-Sebewaing Area S.D.	Tuscola	724	697	-26	-4%
Lake Linden-Hubbell School District	Houghton	392	365	-26	-7%
Michigan Educational Choice Center	Wayne	277	251	-26	-9%
Oscoda Area Schools	Iosco	1,150	1,124	-26	-2%
Battle Creek Area Learning Center	Calhoun	161	135	-26	-16%
New Lothrop Area Public Schools	Shiawassee	921	896	-25	-3%
Lakeshore School District (Berrien)	Berrien	2,798	2,773	-25	-1%
Godfrey-Lee Public Schools	Kent	1,829	1,804	-25	-1%
Oakridge Public Schools	Muskegon	2,002	1,977	-25	-1%
Oakland FlexTech High School	Livingston	229	204	-25	-11%
Gladstone Area Schools	Delta	1,541	1,516	-25	-2%
Windover High School	Midland	139	114	-25	-18%
LakeVille Community School District	Genesee	1,147	1,123	-24	-2%
Oakland County Academy of Media & Technology	Oakland	227	203	-24	-11%
Ravenna Public Schools	Muskegon	1,033	1,009	-24	-2%
Academy for Business and Technology	Wayne	556	532	-24	-4%
Forest Park School District	Iron	466	442	-24	-5%
Genesee STEM Academy	Genesee	334	311	-23	-7%
Rapid River Public Schools	Delta	301	278	-23	-8%
Oakland International Academy	Wayne	827	804	-23	-3%
University Preparatory Art & Design	Wayne	1,296	1,273	-23	-2%
Mio-AuSable Schools	Oscoda	510	487	-23	-4%
Elk Rapids Schools	Antrim	1,264	1,241	-23	-2%
Tipton Academy	Wayne	476	454	-22	-5%
Walker Charter Academy	Kent	749	727	-22	-3%
Innocademy Allegan Campus	Allegan	105	82	-22	-21%
Bridgeport-Spaulding Community School District	Saginaw	1,510	1,488	-22	-1%
Muskegon Covenant Academy	Muskegon	181	159	-22	-12%
Commonwealth Community Development Academy	Wayne	186	164	-22	-12%
Ewen-Trout Creek Consolidated School District	Ontonagon	184	163	-22	-12%
Sault Ste. Marie Area Schools	Chippewa	1,962	1,941	-22	-1%
Portland Public Schools	Ionia	2,128	2,107	-22	-1%
MacDowell Preparatory Academy	Wayne	379	358	-21	-6%
WSC Academy	Washtenaw	70	49	-21	-30%
Superior Central School District	Alger	330	309	-21	-6%
Mason Consolidated Schools (Monroe)	Monroe	1,070	1,049	-21	-2%
Chandler Woods Charter Academy	Kent	784	763	-21	-3%
Benton Harbor Charter School Academy	Berrien	482	461	-21	-4%
Concord Community Schools	Jackson	656	635	-21	-3%
St. Clair County Intervention Academy	St. Clair	73	52	-21	-28%
AGBU Alex-Marie Manoogian School	Oakland	394	373	-21	-5%
New School High	Wayne	73	53	-20	-27%
West Village Academy	Wayne	373	353	-20	-5%
Manton Consolidated Schools	Wexford	971	951	-20	-2%
Beal City Public Schools	Isabella	681	662	-19	-3%
Detroit Service Learning Academy	Wayne	1,330	1,311	-19	-1%
New Bedford Academy	Monroe	105	86	-19	-18%
Camden-Frontier School	Hillsdale	510	491	-19	-4%
Atlanta Community Schools	Montmorency	252	233	-19	-7%
West Michigan Aviation Academy	Kent	603	585	-19	-3%
NexTech High School	Kent	123	105	-18	-15%
Eagle's Nest Academy	Genesee	183	165	-18	-10%
Hemlock Public School District	Saginaw	1,193	1,175	-18	-2%
River City Scholars Charter Academy	Kent	460	442	-18	-4%
Insight School of Michigan	Eaton	786	769	-18	-2%
Caseville Public Schools	Huron	268	250	-18	-7%
William C. Abney Academy	Kent	346	328	-18	-5%
Will Carleton Charter School Academy	Hillsdale	283	266	-18	-6%
Brimley Area Schools	Chippewa	532	515	-17	-3%
Pentwater Public School District	Oceana	262	245	-17	-7%
Bronson Community School District	Branch	1,060	1,043	-17	-2%
Morenci Area Schools	Lenawee	617	600	-17	-3%
International Academy of Saginaw	Saginaw	145	129	-16	-11%
Chassell Township School District	Houghton	249	233	-16	-6%
Carney-Nadeau Public Schools	Menominee	287	271	-16	-6%
Onekama Consolidated Schools	Manistee	338	322	-16	-5%
Global Heights Academy	Wayne	250	234	-16	-6%
Menominee Area Public Schools	Menominee	1,257	1,241	-16	-1%
Webberville Community Schools	Ingham	499	483	-16	-3%
New Paradigm Glazer-Loving Academy	Wayne	310	295	-15	-5%
Walden Green Montessori	Ottawa	242	227	-15	-6%
Renaissance Public School Academy	Isabella	438	423	-15	-3%
DeTour Arts and Technology Academy	Chippewa	89	74	-15	-17%
Oxford Community Schools	Oakland	6,861	6,846	-14	0%
Kensington Woods Schools	Livingston	128	114	-14	-11%
Old Mission Peninsula School	Grand Traverse	170	156	-14	-8%
Engadine Consolidated Schools	Mackinac	337	323	-14	-4%
Holton Public Schools	Muskegon	839	825	-14	-2%
Chesaning Union Schools	Saginaw	1,437	1,423	-14	-1%
Harbor Beach Community Schools	Huron	494	481	-14	-3%
Outlook Academy	Allegan	58	44	-14	-24%
Pewamo-Westphalia Community Schools	Clinton	711	697	-14	-2%
Black River Public School	Ottawa	928	915	-14	-1%
Academic and Career Education Academy	Midland	95	81	-14	-15%
Tahquamenon Area Schools	Luce	572	559	-14	-2%
Covert Public Schools	Van Buren	362	349	-14	-4%
Arbor Academy	Calhoun	204	191	-13	-7%
Branch Line School	Wayne	142	129	-13	-9%
South Arbor Charter Academy	Washtenaw	792	779	-13	-2%
Weston Preparatory Academy	Wayne	284	271	-13	-4%
Evart Public Schools	Osceola	884	871	-13	-1%
Vista Meadows Academy	Wayne	103	90	-13	-12%
Crawford AuSable Schools	Crawford	1,617	1,605	-13	-1%
North Dickinson County Schools	Dickinson	254	242	-12	-5%
Saugatuck Public Schools	Allegan	834	822	-12	-1%
Michigan Center School District	Jackson	1,366	1,355	-11	-1%
Marion Public Schools	Osceola	457	446	-11	-2%
Mayville Community School District	Tuscola	578	567	-11	-2%
Holly Academy	Oakland	622	611	-11	-2%
Central Lake Public Schools	Antrim	275	264	-11	-4%
River Valley School District	Berrien	550	540	-10	-2%
Windemere Park Charter Academy	Ingham	666	656	-10	-2%
Beecher Community School District	Genesee	708	698	-10	-1%
Merrill Community Schools	Saginaw	555	545	-10	-2%
Summerfield Schools	Monroe	587	577	-10	-2%
Whittemore-Prescott Area Schools	Iosco	721	711	-10	-1%
Reading Community Schools	Hillsdale	697	688	-10	-1%
North Central Area Schools	Menominee	348	338	-10	-3%
George Washington Carver Academy	Wayne	514	504	-10	-2%
Whitmore Lake Public School District	Washtenaw	693	684	-9	-1%
New Buffalo Area Schools	Berrien	554	545	-9	-2%
Mildred C. Wells Preparatory Academy	Berrien	230	221	-9	-4%
Charyl Stockwell Academy	Livingston	1,132	1,123	-9	-1%
AuTrain-Onota Public Schools	Alger	32	23	-9	-28%
Merritt Academy	Macomb	662	653	-9	-1%
Detroit Edison Public School Academy	Wayne	1,294	1,285	-9	-1%
Stephenson Area Public Schools	Menominee	479	470	-9	-2%
Watersmeet Township School District	Gogebic	142	133	-9	-6%
Great Lakes Academy	Oakland	161	152	-9	-5%
Centreville Public Schools	St. Joseph	837	829	-8	-1%
Mackinac Island Public Schools	Mackinac	64	55	-8	-13%
Frankfort-Elberta Area Schools	Benzie	469	461	-8	-2%
Tekonsha Community Schools	Calhoun	226	218	-8	-4%
DeTour Area Schools	Chippewa	94	86	-8	-9%
Sandusky Community School District	Sanilac	1,033	1,025	-8	-1%
Big Jackson School District	Newaygo	19	11	-8	-42%
Saginaw Preparatory Academy	Saginaw	269	261	-8	-3%
WAY Academy - Flint	Genesee	96	88	-8	-8%
Genesee School District	Genesee	670	663	-8	-1%
Vanguard Charter Academy	Kent	781	773	-8	-1%
Grand Rapids Child Discovery Center	Kent	278	270	-8	-3%
West MI Academy of Arts and Academics	Ottawa	418	411	-7	-2%
Faxon Academy	Oakland	72	65	-7	-10%
Woodland School	Grand Traverse	216	209	-7	-3%
Fennville Public Schools	Allegan	1,299	1,292	-7	-1%
Wolverine Community School District	Cheboygan	261	254	-7	-3%
Battle Creek Montessori Academy	Calhoun	169	162	-7	-4%
New Haven Community Schools	Macomb	1,295	1,289	-7	-1%
Life Skills Center of Pontiac	Oakland	104	98	-6	-6%
Three Oaks Public School Academy	Muskegon	368	362	-6	-2%
Advanced Technology Academy	Wayne	1,263	1,257	-6	0%
Northridge Academy	Genesee	212	206	-6	-3%
Ashley Community Schools	Gratiot	249	243	-6	-2%
Excelsior Township S/D #1	Kalkaska	50	44	-6	-12%
Republic-Michigamme Schools	Marquette	98	92	-6	-6%
The Greenspire School	Grand Traverse	130	124	-6	-5%
Capstone Academy Charter School (SDA)	Wayne	165	160	-6	-3%
WAY Michigan	Wayne	197	191	-6	-3%
Creative Technologies Academy	Kent	312	307	-5	-2%
Rising Stars Academy	Macomb	121	116	-5	-4%
Frankenmuth School District	Saginaw	1,390	1,384	-5	0%
Woodland Park Academy	Genesee	331	326	-5	-2%
Glenn Public School District	Allegan	38	33	-5	-13%
Stanton Township Public Schools	Houghton	177	172	-5	-3%
Alanson Public Schools	Emmet	215	210	-5	-2%
Dollar Bay-Tamarack City Area K-12 School	Houghton	336	331	-5	-1%
Pickford Public Schools	Chippewa	444	439	-5	-1%
Hanley International Academy	Wayne	648	644	-4	-1%
Wellspring Preparatory High School	Kent	383	379	-4	-1%
Blended Learning Academies Credit Recovery High School	Ingham	131	127	-4	-3%
East Shore Leadership Academy	St. Clair	179	175	-4	-2%
Wakefield-Marenisco School District	Gogebic	277	273	-4	-1%
Arvon Township School District	Baraga	13	9	-4	-31%
Watervliet School District	Berrien	1,478	1,474	-4	0%
Mackinaw City Public Schools	Emmet	136	133	-4	-3%
Alba Public Schools	Antrim	113	110	-3	-3%
Litchfield Community Schools	Hillsdale	285	282	-3	-1%
Chatfield School	Lapeer	486	483	-3	-1%
Macomb Academy	Macomb	72	69	-3	-4%
Johannesburg-Lewiston Area Schools	Otsego	703	700	-3	0%
Ellsworth Community School	Antrim	251	248	-3	-1%
Muskegon Montessori Academy for Environmental Change	Muskegon	164	162	-2	-1%
Hagar Township S/D #6	Berrien	75	73	-2	-3%
Trillium Academy	Wayne	608	606	-2	0%
Church School District	Huron	16	14	-2	-13%
Colfax Township S/D #1F	Huron	22	20	-2	-9%
Easton Township S/D #6	Ionia	25	23	-2	-8%
Cadillac Area Public Schools	Wexford	3,103	3,101	-2	0%
Swan Valley School District	Saginaw	1,826	1,824	-2	0%
Climax-Scotts Community Schools	Kalamazoo	500	499	-2	0%
Waterford Montessori Academy	Oakland	368	366	-2	0%
Freeland Community School District	Saginaw	2,010	2,008	-2	0%
Detroit Merit Charter Academy	Wayne	748	746	-2	0%
Dansville Schools	Ingham	740	739	-2	0%
Buckley Community Schools	Wexford	437	435	-1	0%
Keys Grace Academy	Oakland	477	476	-1	0%
Elm River Township School District	Houghton	6	5	-1	-17%
Wells Township School District	Marquette	13	12	-1	-8%
Burr Oak Community School District	St. Joseph	275	274	-1	0%
Moran Township School District	Mackinac	86	85	-1	-1%
Hope Academy of West Michigan	Kent	369	369	-1	0%
Lawton Community School District	Van Buren	971	970	-1	0%
Honey Creek Community School	Washtenaw	225	225	0	0%
Presque Isle Academy	Presque Isle	29	29	0	-1%
Breitung Township School District	Dickinson	1,902	1,902	0	0%
Sparta Area Schools	Kent	2,467	2,467	0	0%
Burt Township School District	Alger	30	30	0	0%
Oakland Academy	Kalamazoo	152	152	0	0%
Sodus Township S/D #5	Berrien	81	81	0	0%
Mar Lee School District	Calhoun	333	333	0	0%
Beaver Island Community School	Charlevoix	49	49	0	0%
Jalen Rose Leadership Academy	Wayne	417	417	0	0%
Ontonagon Area School District	Ontonagon	267	268	1	0%
Three Lakes Academy	Mackinac	104	105	1	1%
Owendale-Gagetown Area School District	Huron	154	154	1	0%
Casman Alternative Academy	Manistee	64	65	1	2%
Bangor Township S/D #8	Van Buren	24	25	1	4%
Achieve Charter Academy	Wayne	791	792	1	0%
Legacy Charter Academy	Wayne	748	749	1	0%
Huron Academy	Macomb	631	632	1	0%
Hamtramck Academy	Wayne	540	541	1	0%
Saginaw Covenant Academy	Saginaw	99	101	2	2%
Excel Charter Academy	Kent	778	780	2	0%
Henry Ford Academy	Wayne	511	513	2	0%
Bois Blanc Pines School District	Mackinac	3	5	2	67%
New Branches Charter Academy	Kent	363	365	2	1%
Boyne Falls Public School District	Charlevoix	198	200	2	1%
Alternative Educational Academy of Ogemaw County	Ogemaw	116	118	2	2%
Grant Township S/D #2	Keweenaw	6	8	2	42%
Francis Reh PSA	Saginaw	489	492	3	1%
Mason County Eastern Schools	Mason	401	404	3	1%
North Huron School District	Huron	350	353	3	1%
Sigel Township S/D #4F	Huron	26	29	3	12%
Augusta Academy	Kalamazoo	34	37	3	9%
Posen Consolidated School District No. 9	Presque Isle	207	210	3	1%
South Canton Scholars Charter Academy	Wayne	789	792	3	0%
Taylor Exemplar Academy	Wayne	769	772	3	0%
Plymouth Educational Center Charter School	Wayne	488	491	3	1%
Berlin Township S/D #3	Ionia	9	12	3	38%
Madison-Carver Academy	Wayne	623	627	3	1%
South Pointe Scholars Charter Academy	Washtenaw	752	755	3	0%
Fowler Public Schools	Clinton	481	484	3	1%
Powell Township Schools	Marquette	29	33	4	12%
Nah Tah Wahsh Public School Academy	Menominee	197	201	4	2%
Hartford Public Schools	Van Buren	1,316	1,320	4	0%
Waldron Area Schools	Hillsdale	218	222	4	2%
Kalamazoo Covenant Academy	Kalamazoo	163	167	4	2%
Verona Township S/D #1F	Huron	20	24	4	20%
Michigan Department of Human Services		3	7	4	148%
Baraga Area Schools	Baraga	331	335	4	1%
Caniff Liberty Academy	Wayne	469	474	5	1%
Relevant Academy of Eaton County	Eaton	52	57	5	10%
Ridge Park Charter Academy	Kent	560	565	5	1%
Cross Creek Charter Academy	Kent	786	791	5	1%
Taylor Preparatory High School	Wayne	431	437	5	1%
Youth Advancement Academy	Kalamazoo	20	26	6	27%
Linden Charter Academy	Genesee	754	760	6	1%
Oneida Township S/D #3	Eaton	22	28	6	27%
Walkerville Public Schools	Oceana	267	274	6	2%
Dove Academy of Detroit	Wayne	460	466	6	1%
Au Gres-Sims School District	Arenac	392	398	6	2%
Vanderbilt Charter Academy	Ottawa	472	478	6	1%
Mid Peninsula School District	Delta	183	190	6	4%
Walton Charter Academy	Oakland	818	825	7	1%
Ojibwe Charter School	Chippewa	114	121	7	6%
Gateway To Success Academy	Mason	116	123	7	6%
Sigel Township S/D #3F	Huron	17	24	7	43%
Joseph K. Lumsden Bahweting Anishnabe Academy	Chippewa	623	630	7	1%
Fortis Academy	Washtenaw	679	687	8	1%
Kaleva Norman Dickson School District	Manistee	535	543	8	1%
Noor International Academy	Macomb	168	176	8	5%
Hudson Area Schools	Lenawee	1,174	1,182	8	1%
Livingston Classical Academy	Washtenaw	233	241	8	4%
Ionia Township S/D #2	Ionia	7	15	8	120%
Flextech High School Shepherd	Isabella	43	51	8	19%
Island City Academy	Eaton	200	209	9	4%
Marshall Academy	Calhoun	243	252	9	4%
Bad Axe Public Schools	Huron	890	901	10	1%
Fairview Area School District	Oscoda	300	310	11	4%
Northport Public School District	Leelanau	135	146	11	8%
Big Bay De Noc School District	Delta	155	166	11	7%
Lake Superior Academy	Chippewa	73	84	11	15%
Michigan Mathematics and Science Academy	Macomb	895	907	12	1%
Light of the World Academy	Livingston	229	241	12	5%
Concord Academy - Boyne	Charlevoix	154	166	13	8%
Charlevoix Montessori Academy for the Arts	Charlevoix	49	62	13	27%
Whitefish Township Schools	Chippewa	50	64	14	27%
Regent Park Scholars Charter Academy	Wayne	722	736	14	2%
American Montessori Academy	Wayne	466	480	14	3%
Forest Area Community Schools	Kalkaska	508	522	15	3%
Universal Academy	Wayne	672	687	15	2%
Homer Community School District	Calhoun	987	1,002	15	2%
Hillman Community Schools	Montmorency	430	444	15	3%
Canton Charter Academy	Wayne	729	744	15	2%
Virtual Learning Academy of St. Clair County	St. Clair	118	133	15	13%
Jenison Public Schools	Ottawa	5,356	5,371	15	0%
Nottawa Community School	St. Joseph	137	152	15	11%
Timberland Academy	Muskegon	667	683	16	2%
Dryden Community Schools	Lapeer	417	433	17	4%
Mesick Consolidated Schools	Wexford	595	612	17	3%
The James and Grace Lee Boggs School	Wayne	138	155	17	12%
Bellevue Community Schools	Eaton	588	605	17	3%
Vestaburg Community Schools	Montcalm	824	841	17	2%
Multicultural Academy	Washtenaw	150	168	17	12%
Akron-Fairgrove Schools	Tuscola	324	342	18	5%
Flat River Academy	Montcalm	104	122	18	17%
Francis Street Primary School	Jackson	51	69	18	35%
Flagship Charter Academy	Wayne	707	725	18	3%
Whiteford Agricultural School District of the Counties of Lenawee and Monroe	Monroe	754	773	19	2%
Alternative Educational Academy of Iosco County	Iosco	139	158	19	14%
Bear Lake Schools	Manistee	289	308	19	7%
North Saginaw Charter Academy	Saginaw	557	576	19	3%
Quest Charter Academy	Wayne	769	789	20	3%
Suttons Bay Public Schools	Leelanau	593	612	20	3%
Macomb Montessori Academy	Macomb	231	251	20	9%
Momentum Academy	Oakland	216	236	20	9%
Paragon Charter Academy	Jackson	633	654	21	3%
White Pine Academy	Ingham	66	87	21	31%
Rudyard Area Schools	Chippewa	600	621	21	3%
Les Cheneaux Community Schools	Mackinac	193	214	21	11%
Grand River Academy	Wayne	774	795	21	3%
Peck Community School District	Sanilac	327	349	22	7%
Leelanau Montessori Public School Academy	Leelanau	61	83	22	36%
Great Oaks Academy	Macomb	748	770	22	3%
Creative Montessori Academy	Wayne	796	818	22	3%
Triumph Academy	Monroe	754	776	22	3%
Lansing Charter Academy	Ingham	452	476	24	5%
New Paradigm College Prep	Wayne	213	237	24	11%
Mid-Michigan Leadership Academy	Ingham	328	352	24	7%
Richmond Community Schools	Macomb	1,464	1,488	24	2%
Vanderbilt Area Schools	Otsego	76	101	25	33%
Canton Preparatory High School	Wayne	391	416	25	6%
Kingsbury Country Day School	Oakland	322	347	25	8%
Inkster Preparatory Academy	Wayne	184	209	25	14%
Endeavor Charter Academy	Calhoun	643	672	29	5%
Reach Charter Academy	Macomb	593	623	30	5%
Pansophia Academy	Branch	342	372	30	9%
Plymouth Scholars Charter Academy	Wayne	774	804	30	4%
Carsonville-Port Sanilac School District	Sanilac	353	385	32	9%
Pembroke Academy	Wayne	278	310	32	12%
The Woodley Leadership Academy	Saginaw	157	189	32	20%
Martin Public Schools	Allegan	588	621	33	6%
The New Standard Academy	Genesee	675	708	33	5%
Detroit Enterprise Academy	Wayne	739	773	34	5%
State Street Academy	Bay	143	177	34	24%
Glen Lake Community Schools	Leelanau	665	700	35	5%
Warrendale Charter Academy	Wayne	746	781	35	5%
Grand River Preparatory High School	Kent	598	633	35	6%
Global Tech Academy	Washtenaw	183	219	36	19%
Detroit Leadership Academy	Wayne	698	734	36	5%
Escuela Avancemos	Wayne	311	348	37	12%
Detroit Premier Academy	Wayne	715	754	39	5%
Oakside Scholars Charter Academy	Oakland	783	825	42	5%
Charlton Heston Academy	Roscommon	700	743	43	6%
Paramount Charter Academy	Kalamazoo	399	448	49	12%
Arbor Preparatory High School	Washtenaw	281	332	51	18%
Muskegon Heights Public School Academy System	Muskegon	593	644	51	9%
Frontier International Academy	Wayne	759	811	52	7%
Great Lakes Learning Academy	Ingham	1,096	1,151	55	5%
Byron Center Public Schools	Kent	4,241	4,296	55	1%
North Adams-Jerome Public Schools	Hillsdale	294	353	59	20%
Clarkston Community School District	Oakland	8,602	8,663	61	1%
Cole Academy	Ingham	328	389	61	19%
Flex High School of Michigan	Genesee	111	174	63	57%
Universal Learning Academy	Wayne	698	764	66	9%
Kingston Community School District	Tuscola	582	652	70	12%
Laurus Academy	Oakland	733	803	70	10%
Crestwood School District	Wayne	4,126	4,201	75	2%
Flint Cultural Center Academy	Genesee	373	450	77	21%
South Redford School District	Wayne	3,729	3,809	79	2%
Ecorse Public Schools	Wayne	1,106	1,188	82	7%
Detroit Achievement Academy	Wayne	394	479	85	22%
Bay City Academy	Bay	389	477	88	23%
Distinctive College Prep.	Wayne	600	690	89	15%
Michigan Connections Academy	Ingham	1,597	1,687	90	6%
Metro Charter Academy	Wayne	624	716	92	15%
Prevail Academy	Macomb	565	664	99	18%
Success Virtual Learning Centers of Michigan	Montcalm	1,521	1,633	112	7%
LifeTech Academy	Ingham	248	361	113	45%
Star International Academy	Wayne	1,629	1,757	128	8%
Michigan Online School	Van Buren	462	602	140	30%
Bridge Academy	Wayne	869	1,014	145	17%
Washington-Parks Academy	Wayne	1,550	1,712	161	10%
Ivywood Classical Academy	Wayne	131	296	165	126%
ICademy Global	Ottawa	217	411	193	89%
Uplift Michigan Academy	Menominee	161	447	286	178%
Michigan Virtual Charter Academy	Oakland	2,810	3,100	290	10%
Westfield Charter Academy	Wayne	814	1,154	340	42%
Michigan Great Lakes Virtual Academy	Manistee	3,055	3,401	346	11%
Michigan International Prep School	Clinton	752	1,257	506	67%
Highpoint Virtual Academy of Michigan	Wexford	965	2,071	1,106	115%
Lighthouse Connections Academy	Oakland	522	1,896	1,374	263%

Enrollment across Michigan dropped sharply this fall

Source: Michigan Center for Educational Performance and Information, Michigan Department of Education. Fall 2020 figures are unaudited; Fall 2019 figures were audited. All figures are full-time equivalents. Enrollment equals K-12 enrollment plus special education enrollment as of Fall count date.

Koby Levin

A significant part of the decline — roughly 20% — was in kindergarten, suggesting that many parents decided against attempting to help their 5-year-olds learn virtually.

Some parents chose to home-school their children this fall. Others moved their students to private school. Still others may have moved their families to another district or out of the state due to COVID-related job loss or housing instability.

As schools attempt to make contact with students, they are already at the breaking point, said Bob McCann, executive director of the K-12 Alliance for Education, an association of Michigan school districts.

“It requires some level of coordination at a higher level to identify students who moved elsewhere versus students who we don’t know where they are right now,” he said. “It’s not as simple as a school having a list of who’s not here this year.”

As schools prepared to count students in October, State Superintendent Michael Rice sent memos to districts and spoke with superintendents across the state, urging them to find missing students.

But he stopped short of directing the Michigan education department, which he oversees, to use individual student data to ensure that districts were identifying missing students. Every student in Michigan is assigned a unique ID number that state officials can use to track them from school to school, including private and charter schools.

In an interview last month, Rice said that his role was to create a “drumbeat” of encouragement for districts to find missing students. But he said that doing so was ultimately up to them.

The Michigan Department of Education did not return requests for comment.

Enrollments have declined across the country, and many states are grappling with how to find missing students. In Colorado, the state expanded its AmeriCorps program to help districts find missing students. Still, the state faced pushback over concerns that missing students would be reported to legal authorities for truancy.

Michelle Fecteau, a Democrat and a member of the state board of education, said Friday that Michigan didn’t have enough staff to mount a statewide student-finding effort, and that some at the education department were concerned that it would be an “intrusion into the jurisdiction of local school districts.”

In any case, Michigan doesn’t even have the ability to track down all of the missing students, she said, because the state is not allowed to track home-schooling families.

“The state does keep track of who is in private schools, who is in charter schools, who is in traditional schools, but they don’t have any mechanism for tracking home-schoolers,” she said.

Some education leaders, Rice included, have called for the state to revisit a long-running debate about whether home-schooling families should be required to inform school districts when they pull their students out.

“They should have to say, ‘My kid went to a school last year here, in this district or at this private school, and now I’m home-schooling,’ ” said David Hecker, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “That’s your right to do, but you should have to tell the school district so the school district isn’t spinning its wheels trying to find your student.”

Tom McMillin, a Republican member of the state board of education, sharply rejected the idea, echoing the arguments of Michigan home-schoolers who aim to sever as many ties to the state as possible.

“They better not start knocking on doors,” he said. “That’s none of the state’s damn business. It’s the parents’ job” to home-school their children.

A registry of home schoolers would need to be approved by the Republican-controlled state legislature, which has typically shied away from regulating home schools.

Without a registry, though, Fecteau said it would be much more difficult to identify the students who need the most help.

“I’m concerned about kids who may be on the fringes, who may need not only education but food and shelter and day-to-day care, and who are not getting it,” she said. “Sometimes I just feel like nobody cares about these kids. They don’t have a lobby group, they don’t have money to have political influence.”

Michigan enrollment fell by 53,200 students this fall as the pandemic raged. Where did they go?

2020-12-09T00:10:14+00:00

As coronavirus cases skyrocketed this fall, tens of thousands of students didn’t show up to Michigan public schools as expected.

Rolls shrank by 53,200 students, or 3.7%, according to unaudited enrollment data newly compiled by the state. That’s twice as many students as the state lost during 2009-2010, the last year of the Great Recession, which was the largest drop in more than a decade.

The figures underscore the disruptive effect of the pandemic on thousands of students’ educations. Some families may have moved during the pandemic because of job loss or housing instability, while others are home-schooling their children. But many students are not accounted for, and educators worry that they aren’t attending school at all.

“I think there are going to be some children who we discern are likely not being educated,” said Michael Rice, state superintendent.

Statewide enrollments have declined steadily in recent decades as Michigan’s population declines. This year, though, the enrollment declines are sharper and widespread.

More than three-quarters of Michigan school districts, including charter schools, lost students. Dozens of districts — including in Flint, Oak Park, and Jackson — saw their rolls shrink by more than 10%.

Virtually all of the state’s largest districts lost students. The Lansing Public School District lost 927 or 9%; Utica Community Schools lost 926 or 4%; Grand Rapids Public Schools lost 876 or 6%; Kalamazoo lost 690 or 5%.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District, the state’s largest, lost 2,719 students, or more than 5%, as of the October count day. Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said Tuesday that more students have since returned to the district, and that he believes the districts numbers will eventually return to pre-pandemic levels.

“They just didn’t go to school,” he said. “Now, they’re slowly coming back.”

Since the beginning of the school year, superintendents across the state have reported that enrollments are down. The new, unaudited student counts give the clearest picture yet of the declines.

Chalkbeat compared unaudited enrollment data collected on Michigan’s October count day this fall with audited numbers from the same period last year. That means the numbers are still preliminary. But with such a large overall decline it is unlikely that the audit will substantially change the picture. Last year, auditors revised the numbers down by fewer than 1,000 students in a state that typically enrolls 1.5 million.

Kindergarten enrollment fell 13,000, a decline more than two times larger than downturns in other grades. Following a pattern that emerged nationwide this fall, many families opted to keep their young children in day care or at home rather than attempt to help their 5-year-olds learn online.

The data show net declines across most grades and most districts, making clear that students aren’t simply changing schools in order to find a pandemic learning arrangement that suits them.

“It’s not like students are going from one school to another,” said Randy Liepa, superintendent of Wayne RESA, an education support agency in Michigan’s most populous county. “It’s students who are somehow falling off the radar. And people are anxious to find out where they are and to make sure that their educational needs are being met.”

Educators in many districts have gone to great lengths to find missing students: Teachers in Detroit went door to door looking for children who weren’t logging in to online classes.

Advocacy groups are calling on state leaders to do more to find missing students.

“It’s critical that state and district leaders invest in robust efforts to find the students who have not returned to school since this school year began — and for some, even since the pandemic began,” Amber Arellano, executive director of Education Trust-Midwest, said in a statement.

Asked whether the state could use individual student data, which is not publicly available, to track down students, Rice said it wouldn’t be possible right away.

“The problem with the data until it gets cleaned up is that you’re invariably prone to double counts,” he said.

He views his role as a cheerleader for districts, which he believes are responsible for finding students. “The place to do that is locally, district by district.”

As some families opt to keep their children home, students could be behind academically once they return and have a harder time catching up. While the legislature took steps to limit the financial effect of enrollment declines this year, the downturn could cause financial trouble for schools in coming years if enrollments don’t rebound.

Wayne-Westland schools in suburban Detroit lost about 800 students this fall, or nearly 8%, a district spokesperson said, noting the shift to full virtual instruction contributed to some of the decline.

“We know some of our families left for other schools that were offering in-person options for students. We recognize that this is a challenge for families,” the spokesperson, Jenny Johnson, added.

Another Detroit charter, Barack Obama Leadership Academy, lost 142 students, or 36% of its enrollment.

Part of the decline was expected: Officials eliminated sixth through eighth grades to make social distancing possible when students returned to classrooms. But enrollment was down even in the remaining six grades.

Bernard Parker, the school’s founder, said there are concerns that families have moved around during the pandemic.

“It could be a situation where parents moved out of the city of Detroit,” he said.

Covenant House Academy, a charter school in Detroit, lost about 66 students, or a 19% decline, across its two charter campuses this year. A third campus in Southwest Detroit gained 16 students, or about an 11% increase. School officials noted the campus’ consistent communication with families and English language learner services may have boosted enrollment.

The schools serve ninth through 12th grade students who may have experienced homelessness, or encountered academic trouble at their previous schools. For these students, the pandemic disrupted family priorities.

“Some kids had to get full time jobs,” said district superintendent Terrence George. “We do have a percentage of our population that does not have stable housing. It’s hard to maintain continuity of learning if you don’t have continuity of living.”

District	County	2019 Enrollment	2020 Enrollment	Difference	% Difference
Detroit Public Schools Community District	Wayne	50,392	47,673	-2,719	-5%
Lansing Public School District	Ingham	10,392	9,464	-927	-9%
Utica Community Schools	Macomb	26,599	25,672	-926	-3%
Grand Rapids Public Schools	Kent	15,386	14,510	-876	-6%
Chippewa Valley Schools	Macomb	15,688	14,817	-871	-6%
Wayne-Westland Community School District	Wayne	10,292	9,460	9,460	-8%
Waterford School District	Oakland	8,193	7,403	-789	-10%
Walled Lake Consolidated Schools	Oakland	13,376	12,609	-767	-6%
Plymouth-Canton Community Schools	Wayne	17,303	16,598	-705	-4%
Kalamazoo Public Schools	Kalamazoo	12,848	12,157	-690	-5%
Ann Arbor Public Schools	Washtenaw	17,903	17,265	-637	-4%
Huron Valley Schools	Oakland	8,777	8,146	-631	-7%
Flint, School District of the City of	Genesee	3,724	3,099	-625	-17%
Port Huron Area School District	St. Clair	7,811	7,195	-616	-8%
Oak Park, School District of the City of	Oakland	4,400	3,788	-611	-14%
South Lyon Community Schools	Oakland	8,774	8,187	-586	-7%
Warren Consolidated Schools	Macomb	13,506	12,949	-557	-4%
Traverse City Area Public Schools	Grand Traverse	9,723	9,171	-552	-6%
Livonia Public Schools School District	Wayne	14,097	13,563	-534	-4%
Grosse Pointe Public Schools	Wayne	7,447	6,921	-527	-7%
Lake Orion Community Schools	Oakland	7,324	6,824	-500	-7%
Birmingham Public Schools	Oakland	7,971	7,501	-469	-6%
Bay City School District	Bay	7,232	6,769	-462	-6%
Anchor Bay School District	St. Clair	5,838	5,380	-458	-8%
Grand Ledge Public Schools	Eaton	5,380	4,944	-435	-8%
Rochester Community School District	Oakland	15,412	14,987	-425	-3%
Lapeer Community Schools	Lapeer	4,936	4,522	-414	-8%
Holt Public Schools	Ingham	5,596	5,184	-412	-7%
Grand Blanc Community Schools	Genesee	8,274	7,864	-410	-5%
Southfield Public School District	Oakland	5,559	5,163	-396	-7%
Forest Hills Public Schools	Kent	9,706	9,346	-360	-4%
Troy School District	Oakland	13,081	12,731	-350	-3%
Grand Haven Area Public Schools	Ottawa	5,995	5,657	-338	-6%
Midland Public Schools	Midland	7,744	7,413	-331	-4%
Zeeland Public Schools	Ottawa	6,442	6,123	-319	-5%
Berrien Springs Public Schools	Berrien	4,320	4,006	-314	-7%
Farmington Public School District	Oakland	9,327	9,021	-307	-3%
Pontiac City School District	Oakland	3,907	3,603	-303	-8%
Carman-Ainsworth Community Schools	Genesee	4,282	3,986	-297	-7%
Northville Public Schools	Wayne	7,378	7,084	-294	-4%
Jackson Public Schools	Jackson	4,871	4,583	-287	-6%
Mattawan Consolidated School	Van Buren	3,781	3,497	-284	-8%
Old Redford Academy	Wayne	1,528	1,246	-282	-18%
L'Anse Creuse Public Schools	Macomb	10,163	9,885	-278	-3%
Garden City Public Schools	Wayne	3,647	3,370	-277	-8%
Redford Union Schools, District No. 1	Wayne	2,668	2,394	-274	-10%
Lake Shore Public Schools (Macomb)	Macomb	3,433	3,162	-271	-8%
Ypsilanti Community Schools	Washtenaw	3,827	3,558	-269	-7%
Southgate Community School District	Wayne	3,442	3,180	-262	-8%
Howell Public Schools	Livingston	6,958	6,697	-261	-4%
Van Dyke Public Schools	Macomb	2,292	2,046	-246	-11%
Marshall Public Schools	Calhoun	2,790	2,545	-246	-9%
Portage Public Schools	Kalamazoo	8,913	8,671	-242	-3%
Taylor School District	Wayne	5,950	5,709	-242	-4%
Dexter Community School District	Washtenaw	3,628	3,387	-241	-7%
Allegan Public Schools	Allegan	2,388	2,148	-240	-10%
Saline Area Schools	Washtenaw	5,200	4,962	-238	-5%
Pennfield Schools	Calhoun	2,185	1,961	-224	-10%
Lincoln Consolidated School District	Washtenaw	3,769	3,549	-220	-6%
Eaton Rapids Public Schools	Eaton	2,256	2,036	-220	-10%
Three Rivers Community Schools	St. Joseph	2,655	2,438	-217	-8%
Rockford Public Schools	Kent	7,955	7,739	-216	-3%
Harper Woods, The School District of the City of	Wayne	2,483	2,270	-212	-9%
Holland City School District	Ottawa	3,417	3,206	-211	-6%
Hartland Consolidated Schools	Livingston	5,472	5,261	-210	-4%
Roseville Community Schools	Macomb	4,569	4,359	-210	-5%
Monroe Public Schools	Monroe	5,160	4,952	-208	-4%
Lowell Area Schools	Kent	3,768	3,563	-205	-5%
Royal Oak Schools	Oakland	5,233	5,029	-203	-4%
West Ottawa Public School District	Ottawa	6,683	6,480	-202	-3%
Bloomfield Hills Schools	Oakland	5,597	5,396	-201	-4%
Dearborn City School District	Wayne	20,620	20,419	-201	-1%
Cedar Springs Public Schools	Kent	3,577	3,379	-198	-6%
Hudsonville Public School District	Ottawa	7,137	6,939	-198	-3%
Gaylord Community Schools	Otsego	3,020	2,826	-195	-6%
Van Buren Public Schools	Wayne	4,537	4,344	-193	-4%
Charlotte Public Schools	Eaton	2,526	2,348	-178	-7%
Battle Creek Public Schools	Calhoun	3,878	3,701	-177	-5%
Alpena Public Schools	Alpena	3,699	3,522	-176	-5%
Berkley School District	Oakland	5,927	5,752	-176	-3%
Lakewood Public Schools	Ionia	1,795	1,623	-172	-10%
Saginaw Township Community Schools	Saginaw	4,816	4,646	-170	-4%
Milan Area Schools	Washtenaw	2,168	1,998	-170	-8%
Kentwood Public Schools	Kent	9,258	9,088	-170	-2%
Niles Community Schools	Berrien	3,729	3,560	-169	-5%
Fenton Area Public Schools	Genesee	3,443	3,276	-167	-5%
Plainwell Community Schools	Allegan	2,819	2,652	-167	-6%
Chandler Park Academy	Wayne	2,289	2,124	-165	-7%
East China School District	St. Clair	3,974	3,812	-162	-4%
Lakeview Sch. District (Calhoun)	Calhoun	4,065	3,903	-162	-4%
Holly Area School District	Oakland	3,261	3,103	-159	-5%
Caro Community Schools	Tuscola	1,629	1,473	-155	-10%
Fraser Public Schools	Macomb	4,828	4,673	-155	-3%
Romulus Community Schools	Wayne	2,580	2,426	-154	-6%
Tecumseh Public Schools	Lenawee	2,683	2,530	-153	-6%
Linden Community Schools	Genesee	2,672	2,519	-152	-6%
Muskegon, Public Schools of the City of	Muskegon	3,616	3,464	-152	-4%
Ionia Public Schools	Ionia	2,992	2,843	-149	-5%
Kelloggsville Public Schools	Kent	2,385	2,238	-147	-6%
Ferndale Public Schools	Oakland	3,119	2,973	-146	-5%
St. Johns Public Schools	Clinton	2,792	2,647	-145	-5%
Hamilton Community Schools	Allegan	3,201	3,056	-145	-5%
Saginaw, School District of the City of	Saginaw	5,210	5,065	-145	-3%
Wayland Union Schools	Allegan	3,055	2,912	-143	-5%
Corunna Public Schools	Shiawassee	1,758	1,616	-142	-8%
Mona Shores Public School District	Muskegon	3,906	3,764	-142	-4%
Clawson Public Schools	Oakland	1,470	1,329	-141	-10%
Flushing Community Schools	Genesee	4,223	4,083	-140	-3%
Dowagiac Union School District	Cass	2,205	2,066	-139	-6%
Romeo Community Schools	Macomb	5,218	5,080	-139	-3%
Caledonia Community Schools	Kent	5,059	4,921	-139	-3%
Bedford Public Schools	Monroe	4,267	4,129	-138	-3%
Jonesville Community Schools	Hillsdale	1,450	1,312	-138	-10%
Eastpointe Community Schools	Macomb	2,470	2,332	-138	-6%
Northview Public Schools	Kent	3,324	3,187	-137	-4%
Flat Rock Community Schools	Wayne	1,925	1,788	-137	-7%
Martin Luther King, Jr. Education Center Academy	Wayne	432	297	-135	-31%
Barack Obama Leadership Academy	Wayne	383	248	-135	-35%
Wyoming Public Schools	Kent	4,150	4,017	-133	-3%
Chelsea School District	Washtenaw	2,429	2,297	-133	-5%
Lakeview Public Schools (Macomb)	Macomb	4,357	4,224	-132	-3%
Woodhaven-Brownstown School District	Wayne	5,546	5,414	-132	-2%
West Bloomfield School District	Oakland	5,411	5,279	-132	-2%
Trenton Public Schools	Wayne	2,534	2,402	-132	-5%
Swartz Creek Community Schools	Genesee	3,628	3,498	-131	-4%
Clintondale Community Schools	Macomb	2,656	2,525	-130	-5%
Vicksburg Community Schools	Kalamazoo	2,694	2,564	-130	-5%
Coldwater Community Schools	Branch	2,863	2,734	-129	-5%
Lincoln Park, School District of the City of	Wayne	4,932	4,804	-128	-3%
Marysville Public Schools	St. Clair	2,832	2,705	-127	-4%
Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences	Wayne	1,050	923	-127	-12%
Bradford Academy	Oakland	1,275	1,150	-125	-10%
Gibraltar School District	Wayne	3,712	3,587	-125	-3%
Vassar Public Schools	Tuscola	1,076	951	-125	-12%
Standish-Sterling Community Schools	Arenac	1,555	1,431	-124	-8%
Allen Park Public Schools	Wayne	3,842	3,719	-123	-3%
Bridgman Public Schools	Berrien	888	766	-123	-14%
Clio Area School District	Genesee	2,876	2,754	-123	-4%
Croswell-Lexington Community Schools	Sanilac	2,051	1,929	-122	-6%
South Haven Public Schools	Van Buren	1,900	1,778	-122	-6%
Davison Community Schools	Genesee	5,748	5,628	-120	-2%
Benton Harbor Area Schools	Berrien	1,724	1,605	-118	-7%
Fruitport Community Schools	Muskegon	2,655	2,536	-118	-4%
Leslie Public Schools	Ingham	1,204	1,086	-118	-10%
Hopkins Public Schools	Allegan	1,641	1,523	-117	-7%
Haslett Public Schools	Ingham	2,713	2,595	-117	-4%
Washtenaw Technical Middle College	Washtenaw	911	795	-117	-13%
Leland Public School District	Leelanau	555	439	-116	-21%
Parchment School District	Kalamazoo	1,633	1,517	-116	-7%
Cornerstone Health and Technology School	Wayne	529	414	-115	-22%
Northwest Community Schools	Jackson	3,614	3,499	-115	-3%
Novi Community School District	Oakland	6,711	6,596	-115	-2%
Goodrich Area Schools	Genesee	2,114	2,000	-114	-5%
Mt. Morris Consolidated Schools	Genesee	1,715	1,602	-113	-7%
Williamston Community Schools	Ingham	1,907	1,795	-112	-6%
Waverly Community Schools	Eaton	3,000	2,888	-112	-4%
Grandville Public Schools	Kent	5,633	5,523	-110	-2%
Grand Traverse Academy	Grand Traverse	871	761	-110	-13%
Lamphere Public Schools	Oakland	2,429	2,321	-108	-4%
Madison District Public Schools	Oakland	1,123	1,016	-108	-10%
Imlay City Community Schools	Lapeer	1,980	1,873	-107	-5%
Hazel Park, School District of the City of	Oakland	3,058	2,951	-107	-3%
Shelby Public Schools	Oceana	1,247	1,141	-106	-8%
Central Montcalm Public Schools	Montcalm	1,460	1,355	-105	-7%
Fitzgerald Public Schools	Macomb	2,378	2,273	-105	-4%
Essexville-Hampton Public Schools	Bay	1,682	1,578	-105	-6%
Center Line Public Schools	Macomb	2,531	2,427	-103	-4%
Crossroads Charter Academy	Mecosta	508	406	-103	-20%
Harper Creek Community Schools	Calhoun	2,750	2,648	-102	-4%
Pinckney Community Schools	Livingston	2,423	2,321	-102	-4%
Greenville Public Schools	Montcalm	3,655	3,554	-101	-3%
Okemos Public Schools	Ingham	4,595	4,494	-101	-2%
Perry Public Schools	Shiawassee	1,054	954	-100	-9%
Byron Area Schools	Shiawassee	805	706	-99	-12%
Jefferson Schools (Monroe)	Monroe	1,533	1,434	-99	-6%
Pontiac Academy for Excellence	Oakland	629	531	-98	-16%
Grant Public School District	Newaygo	1,777	1,679	-98	-6%
Almont Community Schools	Lapeer	1,458	1,361	-97	-7%
Cornerstone Jefferson-Douglass Academy	Wayne	689	592	-97	-14%
East Jackson Community Schools	Jackson	884	787	-97	-11%
Atherton Community Schools	Genesee	827	730	-97	-12%
St. Joseph Public Schools	Berrien	3,025	2,929	-96	-3%
Clare Public Schools	Clare	1,635	1,539	-96	-6%
American International Academy	Wayne	728	632	-96	-13%
South Lake Schools	Macomb	1,634	1,539	-95	-6%
Crescent Academy	Oakland	893	799	-95	-11%
Bangor Public Schools (Van Buren)	Van Buren	1,111	1,019	-93	-8%
Ludington Area School District	Mason	2,169	2,077	-93	-4%
Constantine Public School District	St. Joseph	1,483	1,391	-92	-6%
Dearborn Heights School District #7	Wayne	2,525	2,434	-91	-4%
Lakeview Community Schools (Montcalm)	Montcalm	1,076	985	-91	-8%
Reed City Area Public Schools	Osceola	1,432	1,342	-90	-6%
Lake Fenton Community Schools	Genesee	2,102	2,014	-88	-4%
Orchard View Schools	Muskegon	2,224	2,136	-88	-4%
Gull Lake Community Schools	Kalamazoo	3,591	3,503	-88	-2%
Ovid-Elsie Area Schools	Clinton	1,488	1,400	-88	-6%
Mt. Pleasant City School District	Isabella	3,589	3,503	-86	-2%
Detroit Community Schools	Wayne	699	613	-86	-12%
Public Schools of Petoskey	Emmet	2,837	2,751	-86	-3%
Montague Area Public Schools	Muskegon	1,493	1,407	-86	-6%
Morley Stanwood Community Schools	Mecosta	1,183	1,098	-85	-7%
Fowlerville Community Schools	Livingston	2,715	2,630	-85	-3%
Warren Woods Public Schools	Macomb	3,248	3,164	-84	-3%
Alma Public Schools	Gratiot	2,032	1,949	-84	-4%
West Branch-Rose City Area Schools	Ogemaw	2,013	1,930	-83	-4%
Public Schools of Calumet, Laurium & Keweenaw	Houghton	1,627	1,543	-83	-5%
Escanaba Area Public Schools	Delta	2,313	2,230	-83	-4%
Adrian Public Schools	Lenawee	2,865	2,783	-82	-3%
Houghton Lake Community Schools	Roscommon	1,222	1,140	-82	-7%
Harrison Community Schools	Clare	1,333	1,251	-82	-6%
Negaunee Public Schools	Marquette	1,561	1,481	-80	-5%
Summit Academy North	Wayne	1,779	1,699	-80	-4%
Covenant House Academy Grand Rapids	Kent	307	228	-79	-26%
Marquette Area Public Schools	Marquette	3,235	3,156	-79	-2%
Mount Clemens Community School District	Macomb	1,000	921	-79	-8%
Big Rapids Public Schools	Mecosta	2,150	2,071	-79	-4%
Melvindale-North Allen Park Schools	Wayne	3,041	2,963	-78	-3%
Madison Academy	Genesee	875	797	-78	-9%
Delton Kellogg Schools	Barry	1,185	1,108	-77	-7%
Bullock Creek School District	Midland	1,865	1,787	-77	-4%
Olivet Community Schools	Eaton	1,351	1,274	-77	-6%
Tri County Area Schools	Montcalm	1,843	1,766	-77	-4%
Mancelona Public Schools	Antrim	943	866	-77	-8%
Cheboygan Area Schools	Cheboygan	1,590	1,514	-76	-5%
White Pigeon Community Schools	St. Joseph	774	698	-76	-10%
Four Corners Montessori Academy	Oakland	456	380	-76	-17%
University Yes Academy	Wayne	538	463	-75	-14%
Coloma Community Schools	Berrien	1,304	1,229	-75	-6%
Madison School District (Lenawee)	Lenawee	1,625	1,550	-74	-5%
Voyageur Academy	Wayne	1,164	1,090	-74	-6%
East Grand Rapids Public Schools	Kent	2,889	2,815	-74	-3%
Cesar Chavez Academy	Wayne	2,270	2,196	-74	-3%
Reeths-Puffer Schools	Muskegon	3,587	3,513	-74	-2%
Wyandotte, School District of the City of	Wayne	4,688	4,615	-73	-2%
Brandywine Community Schools	Berrien	1,343	1,271	-73	-5%
Boyne City Public Schools	Charlevoix	1,349	1,277	-73	-5%
Edwardsburg Public Schools	Cass	2,708	2,636	-72	-3%
Farwell Area Schools	Clare	1,064	992	-72	-7%
Thornapple Kellogg School District	Barry	3,221	3,151	-70	-2%
Charlevoix Public Schools	Charlevoix	842	772	-70	-8%
DeWitt Public Schools	Clinton	3,191	3,121	-70	-2%
Roscommon Area Public Schools	Roscommon	856	786	-70	-8%
Sturgis Public Schools	St. Joseph	3,112	3,042	-70	-2%
Joy Preparatory Academy	Wayne	285	215	-70	-24%
Fremont Public School District	Newaygo	2,104	2,034	-70	-3%
Bath Community Schools	Clinton	1,122	1,053	-69	-6%
Schoolcraft Community Schools	Kalamazoo	1,071	1,001	-69	-6%
Otsego Public Schools	Allegan	2,352	2,284	-69	-3%
Newaygo Public School District	Newaygo	1,599	1,531	-68	-4%
Chippewa Hills School District	Mecosta	1,936	1,869	-67	-3%
Grand Blanc Academy	Genesee	332	265	-67	-20%
Napoleon Community Schools	Jackson	1,323	1,256	-67	-5%
Beaverton Schools	Gladwin	1,007	939	-67	-7%
Armada Area Schools	Macomb	1,784	1,717	-66	-4%
Owosso Public Schools	Shiawassee	3,051	2,985	-66	-2%
Montabella Community Schools	Montcalm	792	726	-66	-8%
Hancock Public Schools	Houghton	697	631	-66	-9%
Bentley Community School District	Genesee	820	754	-66	-8%
Blissfield Community Schools	Lenawee	1,203	1,138	-66	-5%
North Muskegon Public Schools	Muskegon	1,042	977	-65	-6%
Manchester Community Schools	Washtenaw	875	810	-65	-7%
West Iron County Public Schools	Iron	859	794	-65	-8%
Potterville Public Schools	Eaton	797	733	-64	-8%
Comstock Park Public Schools	Kent	1,835	1,771	-64	-4%
Western School District	Jackson	2,901	2,836	-64	-2%
Mason County Central Schools	Mason	1,329	1,265	-64	-5%
Brandon School District in the Counties of Oakland and Lapeer	Oakland	2,279	2,215	-64	-3%
Hanover-Horton School District	Jackson	1,135	1,071	-64	-6%
St. Louis Public Schools	Gratiot	1,029	965	-64	-6%
Grosse Ile Township Schools	Wayne	1,775	1,711	-63	-4%
Huron School District	Wayne	2,567	2,504	-63	-2%
Hillsdale Community Schools	Hillsdale	1,367	1,305	-62	-5%
Eaton Academy	Macomb	366	304	-62	-17%
Coopersville Area Public School District	Ottawa	2,661	2,599	-62	-2%
East Lansing School District	Ingham	3,697	3,635	-62	-2%
Conner Creek Academy East	Macomb	942	880	-62	-7%
Lawrence Public Schools	Van Buren	527	465	-62	-12%
Manistique Area Schools	Schoolcraft	797	736	-61	-8%
Houghton-Portage Township School District	Houghton	1,428	1,367	-61	-4%
NICE Community School District	Marquette	1,162	1,101	-61	-5%
Millington Community Schools	Tuscola	1,156	1,095	-61	-5%
Bendle Public Schools	Genesee	1,148	1,088	-60	-5%
Detroit Public Safety Academy	Wayne	230	170	-60	-26%
Kent City Community Schools	Kent	1,324	1,264	-60	-5%
Bloomingdale Public School District	Van Buren	1,174	1,115	-58	-5%
Carrollton Public Schools	Saginaw	2,289	2,230	-58	-3%
Buchanan Community Schools	Berrien	1,568	1,510	-58	-4%
Avondale School District	Oakland	4,607	4,549	-58	-1%
Hastings Area School District	Barry	2,562	2,504	-58	-2%
North Branch Area Schools	Lapeer	2,390	2,332	-58	-2%
East Arbor Charter Academy	Washtenaw	600	542	-58	-10%
Colon Community School District	St. Joseph	569	511	-57	-10%
Allendale Public Schools	Ottawa	2,725	2,668	-57	-2%
Lighthouse Academy	Kent	375	318	-57	-15%
Belding Area School District	Ionia	1,796	1,740	-56	-3%
Spring Lake Public Schools	Ottawa	2,488	2,432	-56	-2%
Pinconning Area Schools	Bay	1,241	1,185	-56	-5%
Kearsley Community School District	Genesee	2,937	2,881	-56	-2%
Dundee Community Schools	Monroe	1,726	1,670	-56	-3%
Galesburg-Augusta Community Schools	Kalamazoo	1,015	959	-56	-5%
Hope of Detroit Academy	Wayne	1,081	1,026	-55	-5%
McBain Rural Agricultural Schools	Missaukee	1,063	1,008	-55	-5%
Bangor Township Schools	Bay	2,562	2,507	-55	-2%
Academy of Warren	Macomb	695	640	-55	-8%
Eau Claire Public Schools	Berrien	766	711	-55	-7%
W-A-Y Academy	Wayne	315	260	-55	-17%
Union City Community Schools	Branch	1,004	949	-55	-5%
Columbia School District	Jackson	1,514	1,459	-55	-4%
Lake City Area School District	Missaukee	1,203	1,149	-54	-4%
Westwood Heights Schools	Genesee	1,599	1,545	-54	-3%
Kalkaska Public Schools	Kalkaska	1,450	1,396	-54	-4%
David Ellis Academy West	Wayne	710	657	-53	-8%
Brighton Area Schools	Livingston	8,326	8,273	-53	-1%
Memphis Community Schools	St. Clair	815	762	-53	-7%
Marvin L. Winans Academy of Performing Arts	Wayne	396	344	-52	-13%
Grass Lake Community Schools	Jackson	1,327	1,276	-52	-4%
Covenant House Academy Detroit	Wayne	520	468	-51	-10%
Marlette Community Schools	Sanilac	782	731	-51	-7%
River Rouge, School District of the City of	Wayne	2,427	2,376	-51	-2%
Capac Community Schools	St. Clair	826	775	-51	-6%
Pathways Academy	Wayne	150	100	-50	-33%
Marcellus Community Schools	Cass	781	732	-49	-6%
University Preparatory Academy (PSAD)	Wayne	1,898	1,849	-49	-3%
Hart Public School District	Oceana	1,264	1,215	-49	-4%
David Ellis Academy	Wayne	271	223	-48	-18%
Bellaire Public Schools	Antrim	339	291	-48	-14%
Springport Public Schools	Jackson	1,018	970	-48	-5%
St. Charles Community Schools	Saginaw	878	830	-48	-5%
Tawas Area Schools	Iosco	1,209	1,161	-48	-4%
Cass City Public Schools	Tuscola	988	941	-47	-5%
Yale Public Schools	St. Clair	1,885	1,837	-47	-3%
Gwinn Area Community Schools	Marquette	1,032	985	-47	-5%
Cassopolis Public Schools	Cass	913	866	-47	-5%
Saranac Community Schools	Ionia	907	860	-47	-5%
Innocademy	Ottawa	324	278	-46	-14%
Riverside Academy	Wayne	919	873	-46	-5%
Manistee Area Public Schools	Manistee	1,355	1,309	-46	-3%
Hamtramck, School District of the City of	Wayne	3,332	3,286	-46	-1%
Central Academy	Washtenaw	605	560	-46	-8%
Rogers City Area Schools	Presque Isle	516	471	-45	-9%
Quincy Community Schools	Branch	1,176	1,131	-45	-4%
Byron Center Charter School	Kent	235	190	-45	-19%
Carson City-Crystal Area Schools	Montcalm	833	789	-44	-5%
Whitehall District Schools	Muskegon	2,098	2,054	-44	-2%
Greater Heights Academy	Genesee	256	212	-44	-17%
Arts Academy in the Woods	Macomb	320	276	-44	-14%
East Jordan Public Schools	Charlevoix	814	771	-43	-5%
Athens Area Schools	Calhoun	520	477	-43	-8%
Ann Arbor Learning Community	Washtenaw	316	273	-43	-14%
Jackson Preparatory & Early College	Jackson	361	318	-42	-12%
Inland Lakes Schools	Cheboygan	642	600	-42	-7%
Reese Public Schools	Tuscola	793	750	-42	-5%
Hope Academy	Wayne	496	454	-42	-8%
Ithaca Public Schools	Gratiot	1,079	1,037	-42	-4%
Munising Public Schools	Alger	645	603	-42	-6%
Richfield Public School Academy	Genesee	649	607	-42	-6%
Decatur Public Schools	Van Buren	755	714	-41	-5%
Durand Area Schools	Shiawassee	1,296	1,255	-41	-3%
Kenowa Hills Public Schools	Kent	3,156	3,116	-41	-1%
Paw Paw Public School District	Van Buren	2,165	2,124	-40	-2%
Stockbridge Community Schools	Ingham	1,244	1,203	-40	-3%
Clarenceville School District	Wayne	1,854	1,814	-40	-2%
Algonac Community School District	St. Clair	1,406	1,366	-40	-3%
Hesperia Community Schools	Newaygo	913	873	-40	-4%
L'Anse Area Schools	Baraga	589	549	-39	-7%
Iron Mountain Public Schools	Dickinson	826	786	-39	-5%
Alcona Community Schools	Alcona	687	648	-39	-6%
Gobles Public School District	Van Buren	806	767	-39	-5%
Pittsford Area Schools	Hillsdale	408	369	-39	-10%
Meridian Public Schools	Midland	1,346	1,307	-39	-3%
Benzie County Central Schools	Benzie	1,353	1,315	-38	-3%
Westwood Community School District	Wayne	1,571	1,533	-38	-2%
Addison Community Schools	Lenawee	800	762	-38	-5%
Burton Glen Charter Academy	Genesee	647	609	-38	-6%
West MI Academy of Environmental Science	Kent	789	751	-37	-5%
Da Vinci Institute	Jackson	501	464	-37	-7%
Clinton Community Schools	Lenawee	1,239	1,202	-37	-3%
University Preparatory Science and Math (PSAD)	Wayne	1,545	1,509	-37	-2%
Maple Valley Schools	Eaton	968	932	-37	-4%
Pellston Public Schools	Emmet	476	439	-36	-8%
Godwin Heights Public Schools	Kent	2,047	2,010	-36	-2%
Ishpeming Public School District No. 1	Marquette	725	689	-36	-5%
George Crockett Academy	Wayne	427	391	-36	-8%
Adams Township School District	Houghton	488	452	-36	-7%
Rutherford Winans Academy	Wayne	223	187	-36	-16%
Bessemer Area School District	Gogebic	407	371	-36	-9%
Gladwin Community Schools	Gladwin	1,609	1,573	-36	-2%
Hale Area Schools	Iosco	332	296	-36	-11%
Mason Public Schools (Ingham)	Ingham	3,212	3,177	-36	-1%
Landmark Academy	St. Clair	800	764	-36	-4%
Dr. Joseph F. Pollack Academic Center of Excellence	Oakland	754	719	-35	-5%
Comstock Public Schools	Kalamazoo	1,845	1,810	-35	-2%
Harbor Springs School District	Emmet	773	738	-35	-5%
Eagle Crest Charter Academy	Ottawa	728	693	-35	-5%
Forest Academy	Kalamazoo	155	120	-35	-22%
Morrice Area Schools	Shiawassee	524	489	-35	-7%
Coleman Community Schools	Midland	671	637	-34	-5%
Shepherd Public Schools	Isabella	1,768	1,734	-34	-2%
Kingsley Area Schools	Grand Traverse	1,548	1,513	-34	-2%
Clara B. Ford Academy (SDA)	Wayne	126	92	-34	-27%
Bay-Arenac Community High School	Bay	159	125	-34	-21%
Arts and Technology Academy of Pontiac	Oakland	806	773	-33	-4%
Breckenridge Community Schools	Gratiot	625	592	-33	-5%
White Cloud Public Schools	Newaygo	946	913	-33	-3%
Highland Park Public School Academy System	Wayne	306	274	-33	-11%
Pine River Area Schools	Osceola	1,051	1,018	-33	-3%
Vandercook Lake Public Schools	Jackson	843	810	-33	-4%
St. Ignace Area Schools	Mackinac	513	481	-32	-6%
Elkton-Pigeon-Bay Port Laker Schools	Huron	960	928	-32	-3%
Detroit Innovation Academy	Wayne	377	345	-32	-8%
Britton Deerfield Schools	Lenawee	485	454	-31	-6%
Deckerville Community School District	Sanilac	575	544	-31	-5%
Airport Community Schools	Monroe	2,715	2,684	-31	-1%
Mendon Community School District	St. Joseph	510	479	-31	-6%
Countryside Academy	Berrien	772	741	-31	-4%
FlexTech High School	Livingston	250	219	-31	-12%
Bark River-Harris School District	Menominee	712	681	-31	-4%
Fulton Schools	Gratiot	614	583	-31	-5%
Vista Charter Academy	Kent	719	688	-31	-4%
Onsted Community Schools	Lenawee	1,297	1,267	-31	-2%
Ironwood Area Schools of Gogebic County	Gogebic	745	715	-30	-4%
Birch Run Area Schools	Saginaw	1,868	1,838	-30	-2%
Hillsdale Preparatory School	Hillsdale	95	65	-30	-31%
Norway-Vulcan Area Schools	Dickinson	641	611	-30	-5%
Montrose Community Schools	Genesee	1,481	1,451	-30	-2%
Ubly Community Schools	Huron	620	590	-30	-5%
Concord Academy - Petoskey	Emmet	178	149	-29	-16%
Baldwin Community Schools	Lake	484	455	-29	-6%
Onaway Area Community School District	Presque Isle	568	539	-29	-5%
ACE Academy (SDA)	Wayne	158	129	-29	-18%
Mt. Clemens Montessori Academy	Macomb	297	269	-28	-10%
Ida Public School District	Monroe	1,440	1,412	-28	-2%
River Heights Academy	Wayne	247	219	-28	-11%
Knapp Charter Academy	Kent	703	675	-28	-4%
North Star Academy	Marquette	248	220	-28	-11%
Keystone Academy	Wayne	702	674	-28	-4%
Riverview Community School District	Wayne	2,958	2,931	-27	-1%
Sand Creek Community Schools	Lenawee	829	801	-27	-3%
International Academy of Flint	Genesee	969	942	-27	-3%
Brown City Community Schools	Sanilac	764	737	-27	-4%
Blue Water Middle College	St. Clair	424	397	-27	-6%
NexTech High School of Lansing	Ingham	113	86	-27	-24%
Laingsburg Community Schools	Shiawassee	1,161	1,134	-27	-2%
The Dearborn Academy	Wayne	516	490	-26	-5%
Unionville-Sebewaing Area S.D.	Tuscola	724	697	-26	-4%
Lake Linden-Hubbell School District	Houghton	392	365	-26	-7%
Michigan Educational Choice Center	Wayne	277	251	-26	-9%
Oscoda Area Schools	Iosco	1,150	1,124	-26	-2%
Battle Creek Area Learning Center	Calhoun	161	135	-26	-16%
New Lothrop Area Public Schools	Shiawassee	921	896	-25	-3%
Lakeshore School District (Berrien)	Berrien	2,798	2,773	-25	-1%
Godfrey-Lee Public Schools	Kent	1,829	1,804	-25	-1%
Oakridge Public Schools	Muskegon	2,002	1,977	-25	-1%
Oakland FlexTech High School	Livingston	229	204	-25	-11%
Gladstone Area Schools	Delta	1,541	1,516	-25	-2%
Windover High School	Midland	139	114	-25	-18%
LakeVille Community School District	Genesee	1,147	1,123	-24	-2%
Oakland County Academy of Media & Technology	Oakland	227	203	-24	-11%
Ravenna Public Schools	Muskegon	1,033	1,009	-24	-2%
Academy for Business and Technology	Wayne	556	532	-24	-4%
Forest Park School District	Iron	466	442	-24	-5%
Genesee STEM Academy	Genesee	334	311	-23	-7%
Rapid River Public Schools	Delta	301	278	-23	-8%
Oakland International Academy	Wayne	827	804	-23	-3%
University Preparatory Art & Design	Wayne	1,296	1,273	-23	-2%
Mio-AuSable Schools	Oscoda	510	487	-23	-4%
Elk Rapids Schools	Antrim	1,264	1,241	-23	-2%
Tipton Academy	Wayne	476	454	-22	-5%
Walker Charter Academy	Kent	749	727	-22	-3%
Innocademy Allegan Campus	Allegan	105	82	-22	-21%
Bridgeport-Spaulding Community School District	Saginaw	1,510	1,488	-22	-1%
Muskegon Covenant Academy	Muskegon	181	159	-22	-12%
Commonwealth Community Development Academy	Wayne	186	164	-22	-12%
Ewen-Trout Creek Consolidated School District	Ontonagon	184	163	-22	-12%
Sault Ste. Marie Area Schools	Chippewa	1,962	1,941	-22	-1%
Portland Public Schools	Ionia	2,128	2,107	-22	-1%
MacDowell Preparatory Academy	Wayne	379	358	-21	-6%
WSC Academy	Washtenaw	70	49	-21	-30%
Superior Central School District	Alger	330	309	-21	-6%
Mason Consolidated Schools (Monroe)	Monroe	1,070	1,049	-21	-2%
Chandler Woods Charter Academy	Kent	784	763	-21	-3%
Benton Harbor Charter School Academy	Berrien	482	461	-21	-4%
Concord Community Schools	Jackson	656	635	-21	-3%
St. Clair County Intervention Academy	St. Clair	73	52	-21	-28%
AGBU Alex-Marie Manoogian School	Oakland	394	373	-21	-5%
New School High	Wayne	73	53	-20	-27%
West Village Academy	Wayne	373	353	-20	-5%
Manton Consolidated Schools	Wexford	971	951	-20	-2%
Beal City Public Schools	Isabella	681	662	-19	-3%
Detroit Service Learning Academy	Wayne	1,330	1,311	-19	-1%
New Bedford Academy	Monroe	105	86	-19	-18%
Camden-Frontier School	Hillsdale	510	491	-19	-4%
Atlanta Community Schools	Montmorency	252	233	-19	-7%
West Michigan Aviation Academy	Kent	603	585	-19	-3%
NexTech High School	Kent	123	105	-18	-15%
Eagle's Nest Academy	Genesee	183	165	-18	-10%
Hemlock Public School District	Saginaw	1,193	1,175	-18	-2%
River City Scholars Charter Academy	Kent	460	442	-18	-4%
Insight School of Michigan	Eaton	786	769	-18	-2%
Caseville Public Schools	Huron	268	250	-18	-7%
William C. Abney Academy	Kent	346	328	-18	-5%
Will Carleton Charter School Academy	Hillsdale	283	266	-18	-6%
Brimley Area Schools	Chippewa	532	515	-17	-3%
Pentwater Public School District	Oceana	262	245	-17	-7%
Bronson Community School District	Branch	1,060	1,043	-17	-2%
Morenci Area Schools	Lenawee	617	600	-17	-3%
International Academy of Saginaw	Saginaw	145	129	-16	-11%
Chassell Township School District	Houghton	249	233	-16	-6%
Carney-Nadeau Public Schools	Menominee	287	271	-16	-6%
Onekama Consolidated Schools	Manistee	338	322	-16	-5%
Global Heights Academy	Wayne	250	234	-16	-6%
Menominee Area Public Schools	Menominee	1,257	1,241	-16	-1%
Webberville Community Schools	Ingham	499	483	-16	-3%
New Paradigm Glazer-Loving Academy	Wayne	310	295	-15	-5%
Walden Green Montessori	Ottawa	242	227	-15	-6%
Renaissance Public School Academy	Isabella	438	423	-15	-3%
DeTour Arts and Technology Academy	Chippewa	89	74	-15	-17%
Oxford Community Schools	Oakland	6,861	6,846	-14	0%
Kensington Woods Schools	Livingston	128	114	-14	-11%
Old Mission Peninsula School	Grand Traverse	170	156	-14	-8%
Engadine Consolidated Schools	Mackinac	337	323	-14	-4%
Holton Public Schools	Muskegon	839	825	-14	-2%
Chesaning Union Schools	Saginaw	1,437	1,423	-14	-1%
Harbor Beach Community Schools	Huron	494	481	-14	-3%
Outlook Academy	Allegan	58	44	-14	-24%
Pewamo-Westphalia Community Schools	Clinton	711	697	-14	-2%
Black River Public School	Ottawa	928	915	-14	-1%
Academic and Career Education Academy	Midland	95	81	-14	-15%
Tahquamenon Area Schools	Luce	572	559	-14	-2%
Covert Public Schools	Van Buren	362	349	-14	-4%
Arbor Academy	Calhoun	204	191	-13	-7%
Branch Line School	Wayne	142	129	-13	-9%
South Arbor Charter Academy	Washtenaw	792	779	-13	-2%
Weston Preparatory Academy	Wayne	284	271	-13	-4%
Evart Public Schools	Osceola	884	871	-13	-1%
Vista Meadows Academy	Wayne	103	90	-13	-12%
Crawford AuSable Schools	Crawford	1,617	1,605	-13	-1%
North Dickinson County Schools	Dickinson	254	242	-12	-5%
Saugatuck Public Schools	Allegan	834	822	-12	-1%
Michigan Center School District	Jackson	1,366	1,355	-11	-1%
Marion Public Schools	Osceola	457	446	-11	-2%
Mayville Community School District	Tuscola	578	567	-11	-2%
Holly Academy	Oakland	622	611	-11	-2%
Central Lake Public Schools	Antrim	275	264	-11	-4%
River Valley School District	Berrien	550	540	-10	-2%
Windemere Park Charter Academy	Ingham	666	656	-10	-2%
Beecher Community School District	Genesee	708	698	-10	-1%
Merrill Community Schools	Saginaw	555	545	-10	-2%
Summerfield Schools	Monroe	587	577	-10	-2%
Whittemore-Prescott Area Schools	Iosco	721	711	-10	-1%
Reading Community Schools	Hillsdale	697	688	-10	-1%
North Central Area Schools	Menominee	348	338	-10	-3%
George Washington Carver Academy	Wayne	514	504	-10	-2%
Whitmore Lake Public School District	Washtenaw	693	684	-9	-1%
New Buffalo Area Schools	Berrien	554	545	-9	-2%
Mildred C. Wells Preparatory Academy	Berrien	230	221	-9	-4%
Charyl Stockwell Academy	Livingston	1,132	1,123	-9	-1%
AuTrain-Onota Public Schools	Alger	32	23	-9	-28%
Merritt Academy	Macomb	662	653	-9	-1%
Detroit Edison Public School Academy	Wayne	1,294	1,285	-9	-1%
Stephenson Area Public Schools	Menominee	479	470	-9	-2%
Watersmeet Township School District	Gogebic	142	133	-9	-6%
Great Lakes Academy	Oakland	161	152	-9	-5%
Centreville Public Schools	St. Joseph	837	829	-8	-1%
Mackinac Island Public Schools	Mackinac	64	55	-8	-13%
Frankfort-Elberta Area Schools	Benzie	469	461	-8	-2%
Tekonsha Community Schools	Calhoun	226	218	-8	-4%
DeTour Area Schools	Chippewa	94	86	-8	-9%
Sandusky Community School District	Sanilac	1,033	1,025	-8	-1%
Big Jackson School District	Newaygo	19	11	-8	-42%
Saginaw Preparatory Academy	Saginaw	269	261	-8	-3%
WAY Academy - Flint	Genesee	96	88	-8	-8%
Genesee School District	Genesee	670	663	-8	-1%
Vanguard Charter Academy	Kent	781	773	-8	-1%
Grand Rapids Child Discovery Center	Kent	278	270	-8	-3%
West MI Academy of Arts and Academics	Ottawa	418	411	-7	-2%
Faxon Academy	Oakland	72	65	-7	-10%
Woodland School	Grand Traverse	216	209	-7	-3%
Fennville Public Schools	Allegan	1,299	1,292	-7	-1%
Wolverine Community School District	Cheboygan	261	254	-7	-3%
Battle Creek Montessori Academy	Calhoun	169	162	-7	-4%
New Haven Community Schools	Macomb	1,295	1,289	-7	-1%
Life Skills Center of Pontiac	Oakland	104	98	-6	-6%
Three Oaks Public School Academy	Muskegon	368	362	-6	-2%
Advanced Technology Academy	Wayne	1,263	1,257	-6	0%
Northridge Academy	Genesee	212	206	-6	-3%
Ashley Community Schools	Gratiot	249	243	-6	-2%
Excelsior Township S/D #1	Kalkaska	50	44	-6	-12%
Republic-Michigamme Schools	Marquette	98	92	-6	-6%
The Greenspire School	Grand Traverse	130	124	-6	-5%
Capstone Academy Charter School (SDA)	Wayne	165	160	-6	-3%
WAY Michigan	Wayne	197	191	-6	-3%
Creative Technologies Academy	Kent	312	307	-5	-2%
Rising Stars Academy	Macomb	121	116	-5	-4%
Frankenmuth School District	Saginaw	1,390	1,384	-5	0%
Woodland Park Academy	Genesee	331	326	-5	-2%
Glenn Public School District	Allegan	38	33	-5	-13%
Stanton Township Public Schools	Houghton	177	172	-5	-3%
Alanson Public Schools	Emmet	215	210	-5	-2%
Dollar Bay-Tamarack City Area K-12 School	Houghton	336	331	-5	-1%
Pickford Public Schools	Chippewa	444	439	-5	-1%
Hanley International Academy	Wayne	648	644	-4	-1%
Wellspring Preparatory High School	Kent	383	379	-4	-1%
Blended Learning Academies Credit Recovery High School	Ingham	131	127	-4	-3%
East Shore Leadership Academy	St. Clair	179	175	-4	-2%
Wakefield-Marenisco School District	Gogebic	277	273	-4	-1%
Arvon Township School District	Baraga	13	9	-4	-31%
Watervliet School District	Berrien	1,478	1,474	-4	0%
Mackinaw City Public Schools	Emmet	136	133	-4	-3%
Alba Public Schools	Antrim	113	110	-3	-3%
Litchfield Community Schools	Hillsdale	285	282	-3	-1%
Chatfield School	Lapeer	486	483	-3	-1%
Macomb Academy	Macomb	72	69	-3	-4%
Johannesburg-Lewiston Area Schools	Otsego	703	700	-3	0%
Ellsworth Community School	Antrim	251	248	-3	-1%
Muskegon Montessori Academy for Environmental Change	Muskegon	164	162	-2	-1%
Hagar Township S/D #6	Berrien	75	73	-2	-3%
Trillium Academy	Wayne	608	606	-2	0%
Church School District	Huron	16	14	-2	-13%
Colfax Township S/D #1F	Huron	22	20	-2	-9%
Easton Township S/D #6	Ionia	25	23	-2	-8%
Cadillac Area Public Schools	Wexford	3,103	3,101	-2	0%
Swan Valley School District	Saginaw	1,826	1,824	-2	0%
Climax-Scotts Community Schools	Kalamazoo	500	499	-2	0%
Waterford Montessori Academy	Oakland	368	366	-2	0%
Freeland Community School District	Saginaw	2,010	2,008	-2	0%
Detroit Merit Charter Academy	Wayne	748	746	-2	0%
Dansville Schools	Ingham	740	739	-2	0%
Buckley Community Schools	Wexford	437	435	-1	0%
Keys Grace Academy	Oakland	477	476	-1	0%
Elm River Township School District	Houghton	6	5	-1	-17%
Wells Township School District	Marquette	13	12	-1	-8%
Burr Oak Community School District	St. Joseph	275	274	-1	0%
Moran Township School District	Mackinac	86	85	-1	-1%
Hope Academy of West Michigan	Kent	369	369	-1	0%
Lawton Community School District	Van Buren	971	970	-1	0%
Honey Creek Community School	Washtenaw	225	225	0	0%
Presque Isle Academy	Presque Isle	29	29	0	-1%
Breitung Township School District	Dickinson	1,902	1,902	0	0%
Sparta Area Schools	Kent	2,467	2,467	0	0%
Burt Township School District	Alger	30	30	0	0%
Oakland Academy	Kalamazoo	152	152	0	0%
Sodus Township S/D #5	Berrien	81	81	0	0%
Mar Lee School District	Calhoun	333	333	0	0%
Beaver Island Community School	Charlevoix	49	49	0	0%
Jalen Rose Leadership Academy	Wayne	417	417	0	0%
Ontonagon Area School District	Ontonagon	267	268	1	0%
Three Lakes Academy	Mackinac	104	105	1	1%
Owendale-Gagetown Area School District	Huron	154	154	1	0%
Casman Alternative Academy	Manistee	64	65	1	2%
Bangor Township S/D #8	Van Buren	24	25	1	4%
Achieve Charter Academy	Wayne	791	792	1	0%
Legacy Charter Academy	Wayne	748	749	1	0%
Huron Academy	Macomb	631	632	1	0%
Hamtramck Academy	Wayne	540	541	1	0%
Saginaw Covenant Academy	Saginaw	99	101	2	2%
Excel Charter Academy	Kent	778	780	2	0%
Henry Ford Academy	Wayne	511	513	2	0%
Bois Blanc Pines School District	Mackinac	3	5	2	67%
New Branches Charter Academy	Kent	363	365	2	1%
Boyne Falls Public School District	Charlevoix	198	200	2	1%
Alternative Educational Academy of Ogemaw County	Ogemaw	116	118	2	2%
Grant Township S/D #2	Keweenaw	6	8	2	42%
Francis Reh PSA	Saginaw	489	492	3	1%
Mason County Eastern Schools	Mason	401	404	3	1%
North Huron School District	Huron	350	353	3	1%
Sigel Township S/D #4F	Huron	26	29	3	12%
Augusta Academy	Kalamazoo	34	37	3	9%
Posen Consolidated School District No. 9	Presque Isle	207	210	3	1%
South Canton Scholars Charter Academy	Wayne	789	792	3	0%
Taylor Exemplar Academy	Wayne	769	772	3	0%
Plymouth Educational Center Charter School	Wayne	488	491	3	1%
Berlin Township S/D #3	Ionia	9	12	3	38%
Madison-Carver Academy	Wayne	623	627	3	1%
South Pointe Scholars Charter Academy	Washtenaw	752	755	3	0%
Fowler Public Schools	Clinton	481	484	3	1%
Powell Township Schools	Marquette	29	33	4	12%
Nah Tah Wahsh Public School Academy	Menominee	197	201	4	2%
Hartford Public Schools	Van Buren	1,316	1,320	4	0%
Waldron Area Schools	Hillsdale	218	222	4	2%
Kalamazoo Covenant Academy	Kalamazoo	163	167	4	2%
Verona Township S/D #1F	Huron	20	24	4	20%
Michigan Department of Human Services		3	7	4	148%
Baraga Area Schools	Baraga	331	335	4	1%
Caniff Liberty Academy	Wayne	469	474	5	1%
Relevant Academy of Eaton County	Eaton	52	57	5	10%
Ridge Park Charter Academy	Kent	560	565	5	1%
Cross Creek Charter Academy	Kent	786	791	5	1%
Taylor Preparatory High School	Wayne	431	437	5	1%
Youth Advancement Academy	Kalamazoo	20	26	6	27%
Linden Charter Academy	Genesee	754	760	6	1%
Oneida Township S/D #3	Eaton	22	28	6	27%
Walkerville Public Schools	Oceana	267	274	6	2%
Dove Academy of Detroit	Wayne	460	466	6	1%
Au Gres-Sims School District	Arenac	392	398	6	2%
Vanderbilt Charter Academy	Ottawa	472	478	6	1%
Mid Peninsula School District	Delta	183	190	6	4%
Walton Charter Academy	Oakland	818	825	7	1%
Ojibwe Charter School	Chippewa	114	121	7	6%
Gateway To Success Academy	Mason	116	123	7	6%
Sigel Township S/D #3F	Huron	17	24	7	43%
Joseph K. Lumsden Bahweting Anishnabe Academy	Chippewa	623	630	7	1%
Fortis Academy	Washtenaw	679	687	8	1%
Kaleva Norman Dickson School District	Manistee	535	543	8	1%
Noor International Academy	Macomb	168	176	8	5%
Hudson Area Schools	Lenawee	1,174	1,182	8	1%
Livingston Classical Academy	Washtenaw	233	241	8	4%
Ionia Township S/D #2	Ionia	7	15	8	120%
Flextech High School Shepherd	Isabella	43	51	8	19%
Island City Academy	Eaton	200	209	9	4%
Marshall Academy	Calhoun	243	252	9	4%
Bad Axe Public Schools	Huron	890	901	10	1%
Fairview Area School District	Oscoda	300	310	11	4%
Northport Public School District	Leelanau	135	146	11	8%
Big Bay De Noc School District	Delta	155	166	11	7%
Lake Superior Academy	Chippewa	73	84	11	15%
Michigan Mathematics and Science Academy	Macomb	895	907	12	1%
Light of the World Academy	Livingston	229	241	12	5%
Concord Academy - Boyne	Charlevoix	154	166	13	8%
Charlevoix Montessori Academy for the Arts	Charlevoix	49	62	13	27%
Whitefish Township Schools	Chippewa	50	64	14	27%
Regent Park Scholars Charter Academy	Wayne	722	736	14	2%
American Montessori Academy	Wayne	466	480	14	3%
Forest Area Community Schools	Kalkaska	508	522	15	3%
Universal Academy	Wayne	672	687	15	2%
Homer Community School District	Calhoun	987	1,002	15	2%
Hillman Community Schools	Montmorency	430	444	15	3%
Canton Charter Academy	Wayne	729	744	15	2%
Virtual Learning Academy of St. Clair County	St. Clair	118	133	15	13%
Jenison Public Schools	Ottawa	5,356	5,371	15	0%
Nottawa Community School	St. Joseph	137	152	15	11%
Timberland Academy	Muskegon	667	683	16	2%
Dryden Community Schools	Lapeer	417	433	17	4%
Mesick Consolidated Schools	Wexford	595	612	17	3%
The James and Grace Lee Boggs School	Wayne	138	155	17	12%
Bellevue Community Schools	Eaton	588	605	17	3%
Vestaburg Community Schools	Montcalm	824	841	17	2%
Multicultural Academy	Washtenaw	150	168	17	12%
Akron-Fairgrove Schools	Tuscola	324	342	18	5%
Flat River Academy	Montcalm	104	122	18	17%
Francis Street Primary School	Jackson	51	69	18	35%
Flagship Charter Academy	Wayne	707	725	18	3%
Whiteford Agricultural School District of the Counties of Lenawee and Monroe	Monroe	754	773	19	2%
Alternative Educational Academy of Iosco County	Iosco	139	158	19	14%
Bear Lake Schools	Manistee	289	308	19	7%
North Saginaw Charter Academy	Saginaw	557	576	19	3%
Quest Charter Academy	Wayne	769	789	20	3%
Suttons Bay Public Schools	Leelanau	593	612	20	3%
Macomb Montessori Academy	Macomb	231	251	20	9%
Momentum Academy	Oakland	216	236	20	9%
Paragon Charter Academy	Jackson	633	654	21	3%
White Pine Academy	Ingham	66	87	21	31%
Rudyard Area Schools	Chippewa	600	621	21	3%
Les Cheneaux Community Schools	Mackinac	193	214	21	11%
Grand River Academy	Wayne	774	795	21	3%
Peck Community School District	Sanilac	327	349	22	7%
Leelanau Montessori Public School Academy	Leelanau	61	83	22	36%
Great Oaks Academy	Macomb	748	770	22	3%
Creative Montessori Academy	Wayne	796	818	22	3%
Triumph Academy	Monroe	754	776	22	3%
Lansing Charter Academy	Ingham	452	476	24	5%
New Paradigm College Prep	Wayne	213	237	24	11%
Mid-Michigan Leadership Academy	Ingham	328	352	24	7%
Richmond Community Schools	Macomb	1,464	1,488	24	2%
Vanderbilt Area Schools	Otsego	76	101	25	33%
Canton Preparatory High School	Wayne	391	416	25	6%
Kingsbury Country Day School	Oakland	322	347	25	8%
Inkster Preparatory Academy	Wayne	184	209	25	14%
Endeavor Charter Academy	Calhoun	643	672	29	5%
Reach Charter Academy	Macomb	593	623	30	5%
Pansophia Academy	Branch	342	372	30	9%
Plymouth Scholars Charter Academy	Wayne	774	804	30	4%
Carsonville-Port Sanilac School District	Sanilac	353	385	32	9%
Pembroke Academy	Wayne	278	310	32	12%
The Woodley Leadership Academy	Saginaw	157	189	32	20%
Martin Public Schools	Allegan	588	621	33	6%
The New Standard Academy	Genesee	675	708	33	5%
Detroit Enterprise Academy	Wayne	739	773	34	5%
State Street Academy	Bay	143	177	34	24%
Glen Lake Community Schools	Leelanau	665	700	35	5%
Warrendale Charter Academy	Wayne	746	781	35	5%
Grand River Preparatory High School	Kent	598	633	35	6%
Global Tech Academy	Washtenaw	183	219	36	19%
Detroit Leadership Academy	Wayne	698	734	36	5%
Escuela Avancemos	Wayne	311	348	37	12%
Detroit Premier Academy	Wayne	715	754	39	5%
Oakside Scholars Charter Academy	Oakland	783	825	42	5%
Charlton Heston Academy	Roscommon	700	743	43	6%
Paramount Charter Academy	Kalamazoo	399	448	49	12%
Arbor Preparatory High School	Washtenaw	281	332	51	18%
Muskegon Heights Public School Academy System	Muskegon	593	644	51	9%
Frontier International Academy	Wayne	759	811	52	7%
Great Lakes Learning Academy	Ingham	1,096	1,151	55	5%
Byron Center Public Schools	Kent	4,241	4,296	55	1%
North Adams-Jerome Public Schools	Hillsdale	294	353	59	20%
Clarkston Community School District	Oakland	8,602	8,663	61	1%
Cole Academy	Ingham	328	389	61	19%
Flex High School of Michigan	Genesee	111	174	63	57%
Universal Learning Academy	Wayne	698	764	66	9%
Kingston Community School District	Tuscola	582	652	70	12%
Laurus Academy	Oakland	733	803	70	10%
Crestwood School District	Wayne	4,126	4,201	75	2%
Flint Cultural Center Academy	Genesee	373	450	77	21%
South Redford School District	Wayne	3,729	3,809	79	2%
Ecorse Public Schools	Wayne	1,106	1,188	82	7%
Detroit Achievement Academy	Wayne	394	479	85	22%
Bay City Academy	Bay	389	477	88	23%
Distinctive College Prep.	Wayne	600	690	89	15%
Michigan Connections Academy	Ingham	1,597	1,687	90	6%
Metro Charter Academy	Wayne	624	716	92	15%
Prevail Academy	Macomb	565	664	99	18%
Success Virtual Learning Centers of Michigan	Montcalm	1,521	1,633	112	7%
LifeTech Academy	Ingham	248	361	113	45%
Star International Academy	Wayne	1,629	1,757	128	8%
Michigan Online School	Van Buren	462	602	140	30%
Bridge Academy	Wayne	869	1,014	145	17%
Washington-Parks Academy	Wayne	1,550	1,712	161	10%
Ivywood Classical Academy	Wayne	131	296	165	126%
ICademy Global	Ottawa	217	411	193	89%
Uplift Michigan Academy	Menominee	161	447	286	178%
Michigan Virtual Charter Academy	Oakland	2,810	3,100	290	10%
Westfield Charter Academy	Wayne	814	1,154	340	42%
Michigan Great Lakes Virtual Academy	Manistee	3,055	3,401	346	11%
Michigan International Prep School	Clinton	752	1,257	506	67%
Highpoint Virtual Academy of Michigan	Wexford	965	2,071	1,106	115%
Lighthouse Connections Academy	Oakland	522	1,896	1,374	263%

Enrollment across Michigan dropped sharply this fall

Koby Levin

Join us for a discussion about Michigan education policy during COVID

2020-12-02T23:42:32+00:00

What does the 2020 election mean for the future of Michigan schools?

Chalkbeat Detroit, the Education Trust-Midwest, and the Detroit Free Press are teaming up to host a conversation about the significance of the 2020 election at a time when the restrictions to curb the spread of coronavirus will increase inequities in schools across the state.

“As our policymakers look toward the new year amid an unprecedented crisis that has exacerbated long-standing inequities, it’s critical that they maintain a focus on working toward equity and fairness in education,” said Amber Arellano, executive director for the Education Trust-Midwest, a Royal Oak-based education research and advocacy organization.

“Already, the wide opportunity gaps between Michigan’s students are expected to worsen, impacting urban and rural students. Having a diverse set of voices from across the aisle discussing the challenges and working toward solutions is more important than ever,” Arellano said.

Chalkbeat Detroit’s Koby Levin and the Detroit Free Press’ Nancy Kaffer will moderate the conversation. Panelists are:

Rep. Brad Paquette, a Republican from Niles who serves as the vice chair of the House Education Committee.
Rep. Darrin Camilleri, a Democrat from Brownstown Township who serves as the minority vice chair of the House Education Committee.
Ama Russell, a senior at Cass Technical High School and a Detroit youth activist.
Cara Lougheed, an educator in Rochester Hills and the 2019 Michigan Teacher of the Year.
Michael Hutson, a parent and member of the Michigan League for Public Policy.

Before the event, Ife Martin, a high school junior who’s a spoken word artist with Inside Out Literary Arts, will perform.

Expect to hear a discussion about how schools are coping with pandemic learning, equitable education funding, missing students, accountability during COVID-19, and the long-term effects of the pandemic.

The conversation takes place at 4 p.m. Dec. 7. Register for it here.

‘Mom, I’m not feeling it’: Families overwhelmed by online learning turn to home schooling

2020-12-02T00:00:51+00:00

When the coronavirus shut down Michigan schools in March, Stacey Young tried to shepherd her five children through online classes at home while continuing to work remotely herself.

The Youngs lasted until mid-May before calling it quits more than a month before classes ended.

“I felt bad, but I was like, ‘We’re done with it,’” Young said. “One son, who does very well in school, he was overwhelmed. He said, ‘I don’t want to sit on the [video] calls.’”

The family is again absent from the Detroit Public Schools Community District this fall, but they are back to learning. Young decided to home-school her children rather than attempt another semester of classes by videoconference.

The Youngs are among the estimated tens of thousands of Michigan students who didn’t return to school as expected this fall. As school officials try to account for those students, they say a sharp increase in home schooling helps explain some of the decline.

Growth in home schooling during the pandemic underscores the dilemma facing many families in Michigan, especially low-income families who are less likely to have an in-person learning option. Even as they struggle mightily with online learning, few are willing to send their children to school in person due to concerns about the coronavirus.

The number of registered home schools in Michigan more than doubled this fall, jumping from 290 to 611. That’s a tiny sliver of Michigan’s 1.5 million public school students, but it’s likely an undercount because parents don’t have to inform anyone when they decide to home-school their children. Officials say the numbers may represent the overall trend in home schooling, even if they don’t reflect the total number of home schools in Michigan.

Some parents say home-schooling is the best option available to them during the pandemic. But while higher income families are able to work from home or take time off to home-school, many families don’t have that choice. Some low-income families, such as the Youngs, have found grants to cover home-school costs. But home schooling likely isn’t an option for parents who work in person, or who rely on their school for disability services, or who can’t cover the costs of school materials.

Even if home schooling were an option for every family, educators worry that students will fall even further behind while they work from home. Research suggests that home-schooled children do as well as their public-schooled peers in college, but there’s little precedent for pandemic-era home schooling. What’s more, most home schools in the U.S. have typically been run by stay-at-home mothers, an option that is not available to many working class people during the pandemic.

“I do believe that they will come back, and when they do I’m concerned about needs they will have all at once when the return occurs,” Erik Edoff, superintendent of L’Anse Creuse Schools in suburban Detroit, said of home-schooled students. He said the district, which enrolls roughly 10,000 students, audited its fall enrollment and found the numbers declined roughly 2.5%, often because families chose to home-school.

Indeed, national polls and data from other states point to upticks in home schooling nationwide.

“I lend significant credence to the doubling,” said State Superintendent Michael Rice. He added that the overall number of home-schooling families is likely small, and that home schools likely don’t come close to accounting for all of the students who didn’t enroll in school this fall.

Interest in home schooling has exploded during the pandemic, said Chandra Mongtomery Nicol, executive director of the Clonlara School, an Ann Arbor-based private school that for decades has offered support to home schools.

“Our phone rang off the hook all summer with people interested in online school and homeschooling,” she said.

Enrollment declines during the pandemic — and the rise of home schooling in particular — raise a number of thorny policy questions. For instance, Rice would like to see a statewide count of home-schooled students, an issue that has been hotly debated in Michigan for decades. And superintendents say they stand to lose critical state funds due to declining enrollment, although the latest Michigan budget partially shields them from pandemic fluctuations this year.

But those policy questions hardly register with families who are dissatisfied with online education.

“I knew when this virtual thing started that there would be some kinks, and I wanted to give it time,” said Jeanetta Riley, a single parent whose daughter is a ninth grader in Detroit. The family meets the low-income threshold for the federal lunch program.

“It just felt like in the beginning, she wasn’t learning anything. But then the weeks kept going, and she’s still not learning anything. The kids are in breakout rooms, the teachers aren’t in there, and the kids are doing whatever they want. It was just unorganized, a lot of chaos.”

Riley had heard from a friend that a group of families was forming a home-schooling pod. The group’s leader, Bernita Bradley, is a midwest delegate to the National Parents Union. The advocacy group is backed by the Walton Family Foundation (a Chalkbeat funder). She secured a $25,000 grant from the group to help families home-school during the pandemic.

The idea of home-schooling appealed to Riley, and she had time to spare after being laid off from her job at the Fiat Chrysler plant in Detroit. But she doubted her teaching ability. “I was very scared,” she said.

Riley noted that she likely wouldn’t have had the confidence to begin home-schooling her daughter if not for the coaching she received through the grant.

“It’s not easy at all, but having this group’s support has made it a lot better,” she said.

Riley says home schooling would be an option for more families if schools provided supplies and curriculum that might not otherwise be affordable.

Stacey Young agrees that home schooling would have been much more difficult without the extra help she received through grants.

“It’s a huge help,” Young said, pointing to coaching, art supplies, and desks that she received through the home-school grants. She says she isn’t sure yet whether she will continue home-schooling her five children after the threat of the coronavirus fades.

Even if they eventually return to school, she says they are better off now than they were when they were learning online. The family didn’t have enough computers or work areas for everyone, and the children rebelled against virtual lessons.

“They were sulking,” she said. “They would disappear. My son would come upstairs and hide under his bed. My other son, the one who really enjoys school, is like ‘Mom, I’m not feeling it.’ That’s what he told me. He’s 7.”

Now the children learn on their own schedules, making it easier to share space and computers. The family has taken lessons in music and cooking through online programs provided by their home school grant, and have spent time talking about Detroit’s past with a local historian. The eighth and tenth graders work on their math skills online, while Young works with the younger children.

Still, Young acknowledges that her children are missing out on some of the services they would normally receive through school. One of her sons typically receives speech therapy at school. He hasn’t been getting it at home, though Young is researching whether her insurance will cover the therapy.

She decided not to petition the school for special education services for her son, which she figured would turn into a prolonged bureaucratic battle.

“I feel like we need to just step out of [the district],” she said. “You know, while they figure stuff out.”

‘How am I going to do this again?’: Michigan families squeezed as COVID cases skyrocket and classrooms shut down

2020-11-16T16:42:06+00:00

The Troy School District in suburban Detroit shut down its in-person classrooms last week because of an alarming rise in COVID-19 cases. Just like that, life for the Onyx family was back to impossible.

Stephanie Onyx sees herself as a single mother and an accountant — not a teacher. She never doubted that she needed help to support her two children, both of whom have severe, complex special needs.

Both of her children are accompanied by aides every minute of a normal school day. Their personalized education plans call for a litany of therapies — speech, occupational, physical. Her son, a high school freshman who is unable to walk on his own or speak due to a chromosome disorder, built up strength at school with help from a special “stander” machine.

All that help disappeared when Troy classrooms shut down in March. The district allowed some students with special needs to return to school campuses this fall, but that plan was canceled after a month and a half of in-person instruction. Onyx will once more spend all day trying to keep her children interested in online lessons and sneaking in a few hours of work when they are watching TV or in bed.

When the Troy school board decided last week to revert to online learning, “It was like, ‘Oh my God, how am I going to do this again?’” Onyx said. “I barely made it through March to June.”

Six months into the pandemic, it is clear that in-person instruction is indispensable for a significant number of students. Think of restless elementary schoolers, students with special needs, English learners, and students who lack reliable access to devices and Wi-Fi. Yet many of these students are being shut out of their classrooms as a new wave of coronavirus infections pushes more districts to return to online learning.

As infection rates rise sharply in Michigan and hospitals sound the alarm about dwindling emergency room capacity, state officials have called on schools to prioritize their most vulnerable students as they plan for the next phase of the pandemic.

In-person learning “is especially important for … our severe special needs children, our beginning English language learners, our fledgling readers,” State Superintendent Michael Rice said this week. “At a minimum, they should have an opportunity to learn in school.”

But while some districts are heeding Rice’s words and allowing high-need students to learn at school, a growing number of district leaders say it’s now too dangerous to keep classrooms open for anyone.

“There are few easy answers during the pandemic,” said Kerry Birmingham, a spokeswoman for the Troy district. “These decisions, while difficult, are made with a specific focus on health and safety while continuing to make every effort possible to continue educating our students in the midst of a global health crisis.”

Onyx has filed several complaints against the district since May, she said, asking it to pay for the services that her children would normally receive at school. The case is pending. Birmingham declined to comment on the circumstances of any particular students.

A rapidly growing list of districts are shutting their classrooms completely in response to grim COVID-19 figures. Two weeks ago, roughly half of Michigan’s counties were given a COVID-19 risk grade of “E”, the worst possible rating. By Tuesday, as new cases skyrocketed, virtually every county in the state had an “E” grade. The Detroit Public Schools Community District — the state’s largest district — announced Thursday that it would end in-person learning until January at least. Officials there had fought for months to offer some in-person instruction to families that needed it. On Sunday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced that beginning Wednesday, all high schools in the state would need to shut down face-to-face classes and transition to virtual learning.

Across the state, districts that had been offering some in-person instruction closed their classrooms. Others, like the Royal Oak district in suburban Detroit, canceled reopening plans.

Plenty of families and teachers backed the move to online instruction as a necessary safety measure, even if they recognized that it would be hard on students.

“I supported the plan to go back to [in-person instruction] when the county was at a C” risk level, said John Staniszewski, whose two children attend Keller Elementary in Royal Oak, where Staniszewski is a member of the PTA. “Then of course I supported them when they pulled the plug.”

Staniszewski considers himself lucky: Both he and his wife are able to work from home, and they’ve been able to help their children learn online. Still, he said the district’s decision was a blow. After eight months of remote learning, “everybody needs some personal space,” he said. His children, for their part, had been looking forward to seeing their friends and to wearing their new backpacks.

Just days before the first day of in-person school, the Royal Oak school board voted to stick with virtual learning.

Mary Beth Fitzpatrick, Royal Oak superintendent, said in an email that the district had no good options as cases rose.

“Face-to-face instruction is preferred, and so making decisions to implement plans that fall short of that goal are difficult to make,” she said. But she said the state has indicated that schools should close completely when COVID-19 metrics reached current levels.

Students with disabilities in Royal Oak had been receiving some services in-person, even as other students learned online, but that ended this week.

One parent told the Royal Oak school board at an emergency meeting last week that virtual learning “just really isn’t an option” for her son, who is on the autism spectrum.

Online instruction “is not going to work with him whatsoever and on top of that I have to deal with a [general education] student who is in kindergarten,” she said, adding that her son with special needs has “regressed very significantly” since March.

Families and their children will pay a heavy price for the spike in new cases and the resulting school closures, said Sarah Reckhow, a professor of public policy at Michigan State University. Still, she said faulting districts for closing classrooms is difficult as the number of daily COVID-19 deaths in Michigan reaches its highest mark since May.

“For some districts it was a mistake to not open in August, but I don’t think it’s a mistake to be closing right now,” she said. The COVID-19 numbers are “simply awful, and obviously it’s a failure of leadership at every level.”

Reckhow felt the consequences personally. This spring, her first-grade son “didn’t engage online in any really meaningful way,” she said. When his school district returned to virtual instruction in the fall, she enrolled him in a private Catholic school that kept its classrooms open.

That only lasted three months — the Catholic school recently announced that it was going virtual, too. Reckhow agreed with the closure decision given rising case numbers, but says the in-person classroom time paid off for her son.

“In 12 weeks of in-person first grade, he learned how to read,” she said.

She acknowledged that not everyone has the privilege to send their children to private school, particularly in Michigan’s most vulnerable communities.

“The idea that you reopen the economy in some form and that schools are an afterthought is such an utterly irresponsible proposition that was particularly insensitive to the needs of working families, lower-income families, and the roles of women as both caregivers and members of the workforce,” she said. Indeed, women have left the workforce in droves during the pandemic.

Stephanie Onyx doesn’t have the option of leaving her job because she is the family breadwinner. When she learned that Troy was canceling in-person classes for all students, she furiously fired off emails to the district, asking again if they would give her children the services they normally received at school. Until then, the family is shifting back to a routine that never really worked.

Onyx spends much of her day trying to keep her children focused on their virtual lessons. Both are working with a dedicated aide online, but Onyx worries that they are still regressing, and some of the services they normally receive, such as physical therapy, can’t be easily replicated online. Her daughter gets bored and wanders away from the screen. Her son, who relies heavily on routine, sometimes expresses his frustration by biting himself.

“There were no cases reported in their classrooms,” Onyx said. “Knowing what the kids are losing by not being in the classroom, to me, moving them to online learning is just ethically wrong.”

Stephanie Onyx and her son, a freshman at Troy Athens High School who has multiple severe disabilities. Onyx says the Troy district hasn’t provided the help he needs while classrooms are closed.

This Detroit family is using the courts to fight two expulsions — and strengthen Michigan’s school discipline reforms

2020-11-12T03:25:39+00:00

Not much changed for the Davis sisters when the coronavirus pandemic shut down Michigan schools in March. The high school seniors had been expelled from their Detroit charter school months earlier, and they were already at home.

This fall, though, they’re back at Cornerstone Health and Technology High School — albeit virtually — after a judge found in August that the school ignored a state requirement that officials weigh all available options before kicking students out.

“It was just unfair,” said Latanya Davis, the girls’ mother, who sued the school over the expulsion. “That was their third year going to the school and they never really had issues.”

Advocates hope that the Davis case could give teeth to a 2017 school discipline reform law that they say schools too often ignore. The lawsuit is the first to successfully challenge a school over a key provision of the law, which requires schools to consider seven factors — including the student’s age, disciplinary history, disability, and whether a lesser consequence would be effective — before suspending or expelling a student.

With hundreds of thousands of Michigan students learning online, discipline issues are getting less attention during the pandemic, but they haven’t disappeared, said Peri Stone-Palmquist, executive director of the Student Advocacy Center, a nonprofit that represents students in disciplinary hearings.

Once schools return to in-person instruction, “our hope is that this lawsuit will get school districts… to be more considerate of the seven factors,” she said. “We really shouldn’t remove kids [from school] for a long time. It’s not good for the kids, and it’s not good for the school.”

With an appeal pending, it’s not yet clear what precedent, if any, the case sets, said Charles Hobbs, legal director of Street Democracy, a nonprofit that advocates for low-income and vulnerable people, including students. A trial seems unlikely after a judge on the 3rd Circuit Court in Wayne County issued a preliminary judgment in the students’ favor, indicating that they likely have the evidence on their side.

Cornerstone maintains that it didn’t break the law and is still fighting the case, but the parties are scheduled to discuss a settlement.

Still, school boards across the state will likely take notice of the case, Hobbs said, especially if Hubbard orders Cornerstone to pay the Davis family’s legal fees.

“If they win [attorney’s fees], it’s going to increase the number of students who are enforcing their rights,” said Hobbs, who has been monitoring the case. “Most students can’t afford an attorney.”

Advocacy organizations aren’t relying solely on a favorable ruling in the Davis case to strengthen discipline laws in Michigan. The Student Advocacy Center and the Michigan ACLU are backing bills that would give students additional rights in disciplinary hearings.

The bills, which will be proposed by Sen. Jeff Irwin, a Democrat, would require schools to inform families about accusations against their students before a disciplinary hearing. The prospects of the bill are unclear given that it lacks Republican co-sponsors and the GOP maintains control of the state legislature. However, the 2017 school discipline reforms were passed by a Republican-dominated legislature.

The Davis sisters are both high school seniors, though they were born one year apart. They were expelled in December after fighting with a security guard. They had been waiting for a ride when an argument broke out between them and the guard, a contractor who was not employed by the school. Video shows that the guard struck one of the sisters in the face. The sisters pushed the guard to the ground and beat her. An ambulance was called for the guard, but she refused to get in.

In Michigan, schools can’t expel or suspend students without considering seven factors: the student’s age, disciplinary history, disability, the seriousness of their behavior, whether the student poses a safety risk to others, whether restorative practices have been used to address the behavior, and whether lesser interventions would adequately address the students’ behavior.

Anthony Adams, attorney for the Davis family, pointed out that the sisters had maintained fair grades. During the hearing, the principal said that while both sisters had clashed with school staff early in their high school careers, their behavior had improved. Neither had been previously suspended.

“Had they considered those seven factors and all of the info that was available, they would probably have reached a different conclusion,” such as an in-school suspension, Adams said.

In a statement, Cornerstone’s lawyer said he could not comment on individual disciplinary matters or on the ongoing lawsuit. However, he said that school staff have been trained “multiple times on the seven factors and restorative practices.”

“The school recognizes that prior to issuing any long-term suspension or expulsion, students must be afforded due process and the seven factors, including restorative practices,” said John Kava, general counsel for the network.

Controversy about the discipline reforms hinges on a requirement that schools consider the seven factors. Advocates contend that schools are skirting the law by simply checking off the factors without substantially changing how they mete out discipline.

In this case, though, a judge found that Cornerstone did not create a checklist.

A lawyer for the school argued during an August hearing that the Cornerstone school board discussed the seven factors. An audio recording of the meeting obtained by Chalkbeat indicates that the board did discuss some of the factors, including the students’ age and disciplinary history. But other factors weren’t mentioned, such as whether restorative practices could be used to address the behavior.

A school staff member said during the meeting that he was planning to put a record in the sisters’ file indicating that the board had considered the seven factors.

If that document was included, it wasn’t signed, said Judge Susan Hubbard of the Wayne County Circuit Court. She also noted that Cornerstone couldn’t provide a signed document showing that Latanya Davis understood her rights as a parent during the expulsion hearing.

“There was a process to be followed, and it doesn’t appear as though it was. That’s pretty much the bottom line,” she said.

Mike Dixon, board president at Cornerstone Health and Technology High School, did not return a request for comment.

After the conflict, police arrested the Davis sisters and took them to a juvenile detention center. Latanya Davis, their mother, says she spent so much time ferrying them to court appointments that she lost her job doing quality control for a manufacturing company. One of the sisters has assault charges pending against her in juvenile court; charges against the other sister were dropped, Davis said.

Davis said her daughters felt betrayed by their school for expelling them and humiliated by their arrests, but noted that they haven’t given up on dreams of going to college.

“They’re eager to work and further their ambitions,” she said. “I talk to them every day about it.”

Editor’s note: Nov 14, 2020: This story was updated to clarify Charles Hobbs’ comments about the potential precedent created by the Davis case.

Wayne County school tax renewal wins overwhelming approval

2020-11-04T12:48:30+00:00

Voters overwhelmingly approved the renewal of a tax that will send about $90 million per year to schools in Wayne County beginning in 2022, continuing a program that has already allowed districts to reduce class sizes and provide extra help to struggling students.

With 100% of precincts reporting at 10:29 a.m. Thursday in the state’s most populous county, 68% of voters supported the millage.

There was no apparent organized opposition to the renewal, which won’t increase taxes for Wayne County homeowners. The average homeowner will continue paying $8 monthly, or about $96 annually, for the 2-mill millage.

The enhancement millage, first approved in 2016 with 54% of the vote, has generated about $80 million annually for schools. It expires in 2021.

Charter schools, public schools that are typically overseen by a public university instead of an elected school board, had previously been barred from receiving the funds. They will be able to get a piece of the millage revenue thanks to a Michigan law enacted in 2018.

Superintendents across the county said the millage has already allowed them to reduce class sizes, purchase technology, provide teacher training, and increase salaries for teachers. Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, said there would have been a “substantial hole” in his budget if the millage failed.

The tax will generate an estimated $90 million in 2022 and will continue for six years. The money will be divided based on enrollment between the county’s 33 school districts as well as dozens of charter schools. The tax will provide an estimated $300 per student.

Michigan school turnaround program shows promise, report finds

2020-10-19T22:06:32+00:00

Students in Michigan’s lowest performing schools have made gains in elementary math and English since they joined a state turnaround program, according to a new report.

Researchers at Michigan State University said policymakers should stay the course with the Partnership Model, which is designed to help struggling schools better serve students.

The success of the program is critically important for thousands of students of color in Michigan, who are disproportionately likely to attend low-performing partnership schools. It also adds new evidence to a national debate about whether — and how — struggling schools can improve student learning.

The early signs of improvement offer a ray of hope that the partnership schools will be able to help students catch up after months away from classrooms. The number of people who contracted COVID-19 in April was five times higher in the areas served by partnership districts than in other districts statewide.

The program promised guidance, training, and extra funding to schools with the lowest test scores in the state. Beginning in 2017, 123 schools in 36 districts were identified for the program and were required to meet improvement targets within three years.

Academic progress at the schools was uneven. On the whole, though, the positive statistical effects of the program on student test scores was better than other turnaround programs that have been evaluated using similar methods, such as Tennessee’s state-run Achievement School District schools, the researchers said.

Notably, students in partnership schools did better than their peers in schools that shut down. That’s especially significant in a state with a history of actively closing struggling schools or simply allowing them to fail.

Key findings about the program from the 262-page report include:

Partnership schools saw significant, if uneven, academic improvements in math and English scores for students in grades 3-8.
Graduation and drop-out rates were not significantly affected, and SAT scores at participating high schools were largely unaffected.
A school improvement method provided to schools leaders was useful, according to surveys with school staff.
Attracting and retaining effective teachers was a major challenge.
Teachers and principals at charter schools were more likely to support improvement efforts and to be knowledgeable about the program than their peers at traditional public schools.
Additional funds provided to partnership schools were helpful, but a “drop in the bucket,” according to several school leaders.

The Partnership Model of school turnaround was introduced by late State Superintendent Brian Whiston after the state botched attempts to close struggling schools. Researchers compared test score data from partnership schools with data from students across the state. They also surveyed teachers and principals in partnership districts and conducted case studies of three districts.

The stakes of the school improvement efforts are especially high for students of color. The Partnership Model schools reflect the racial inequities of Michigan’s education system: Roughly one-third of all Black students in Michigan are enrolled in low-performing partnership districts, compared with just 2.4% of white students.

Taken together, the early outcomes of the partnership program mean the state should stick with the program, researchers wrote.

“School and district reform take time, and a growing literature suggests a need to continue supporting low-performing schools and districts over multiple years,” the report says.

Read a summary of the report here, or the full report here.

Michigan civil rights commission urges education equity and end to state’s ‘unfair playing field’

2020-10-01T00:22:36+00:00

Declaring that Michigan’s education system is “inequitable and provides unequal opportunity,” the state’s commission on civil rights is urging a host of changes to ensure that all students have a shot at success no matter where they live or their economic status.

Among the many fixes the commission is encouraging: Changing Michigan’s funding system so that it provides additional funding for the most vulnerable students, educating school staff on implicit bias, expanding early childhood opportunities, allowing traditional schools to keep a portion of the funding they lose when students leave for charter schools, and eliminating “cutthroat competition,” that has districts fighting for students and teachers.

“Education is the key to unlocking a lifetime of opportunities and is also a basic civil right,” Stacie Clayton, chair of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, said during a meeting Wednesday.

But during hearings the commission held in 2018 and 2019 on education equity issues, she said, a common theme members heard was that the quality of education depends greatly on where students live.

“Residency is dependent on household income which is in turn dependent on opportunities provided to families which is also dependent on the parents’ own race and background,” Clayton said. “This circular connectivity results in Michigan’s education system being an unfair playing field.”

The recommendations are included in a report, “Education Equity in Michigan,” that the commission accepted and approved at its Wednesday meeting. The report highlights equity issues that have long plagued schools in the state.

It was released on the same day more than a dozen community leaders in Michigan released a statement urging more funding equity for Michigan schools. The statement was in response to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signing the state’s school aid budget Wednesday.

“More … must be done in the future to address the unique learning needs of students who have long been underserved and disproportionately impacted by the health, economic and educational crises resulting from COVID-19,” the statement said. “This includes students of color, students with disabilities, English learners, and students from low-income families.”

The equity in education report highlighted similar concerns.

Jeff Sakwa, a commissioner from Birmingham, urged action, saying that “the report is great,” but won’t mean anything if none of the recommendations are implemented.

“This is Day One. We’ve got to do it,” Sakwa said.

The 71-page report is full of recommendations. Ten of them are directed toward the Council of Local Governments and Education on Equity and Inclusion, which is housed in the Michigan Department of Civil Rights. The latter is overseen by the commission.

State Superintendent Michael Rice, who helms the Michigan Department of Education, said some of the findings in the report mirror issues that were included last month in a strategic plan adopted by the state education board.

He echoed the importance of taking on the work of improving equity in the state.

“It’s hard to have a fair shake in this 21st century without education and without a strong education,” Rice said.

Here are the recommendations the council on equity and inclusion is being asked to tackle. Read the full report here.

Develop a statewide educational equity plan to enhance policies, accountability and opportunities for everyone.
Ensure that all data collected by state and county government entities be disaggregated by race and ethnicity.
Encourage schools across the state to create local school equity plans and contribute information and resources to encourage and support equitable practices and opportunities for schools.
Host periodic professional development training workshops and an annual “best practices in education equity” conference.
Provide year-round advice and coaching on cultural competency, race and equity education.
Increase internet access for students and families and develop an easily accessible electronic outreach and inclusion model that is available to everyone involved in the education process.
Support a well-resourced and quality teacher training program (through universities and colleges), encouraging diversity in its teaching roles and student enrollment.
Work to encourage the placement of affordable public housing only in school districts that are educationally successful and can support new students who have additional needs as the result of prior inadequate educational opportunity.
Work with other entities to recognize the overlapping roles that housing discrimination, employment discrimination, environmental racism, and other existing racial disparities play in perpetuating educational inequity.
Create a multicultural, student-led component of the council to engage students and parents/guardians on the local level. Many students are interested in equity and can help make strides to remove barriers and reshape equity policies and practices that inhibit students of color.

Parents worried virtual learning won’t do enough for Michigan’s children with disabilities

2020-09-17T16:28:22+00:00

Detroit district parent Sharmell Graves is worried her daughter will forget essential skills like holding a crayon.

Her daughter, a fifth grader who attends a school that serves students with severe disabilities, has cerebral palsy, which limits her motor skills. With the help of her teacher, Graves’ daughter was getting help with her muscle movements so she could perform simple tasks.

Right now, Graves is helping her daughter with coloring at home, but is worried her assistance is not as effective as what a trained professional would offer.

“I don’t want her to lose her progress,” she said.

When school buildings closed in March to slow the spread of the coronavirus, advocates warned that students with disabilities would suffer the most. As virtual learning has become more imperative, parents are worried that access to services for students with special needs will not improve for their children this fall.

Advocates worry that students like Graves’ daughter will miss out on their federally guaranteed right to a fair education. Two years ago, Michigan was identified as “needing intervention” from the U.S. Department of Education because of poor academic performance, high dropout rates, and low graduation rates among its students with special needs. The state’s designation has improved in the last two years, but Michigan is still considered in need of some federal assistance.

Special education advocate Marcie Lipsitt said many of the more than 200,000 students with disabilities had little to no access to support services in the spring.

“There was nothing for them,” she said. “There were children that sat home … who had not one minute of meaningful educational benefits.”

Special education advocates and parents are experiencing similar frustrations across the country. In Chicago, some families of students with disabilities were disappointed with a lack of access to clinicians, difficult-to-navigate online applications, and limited time with teachers and classroom aides over the summer. In New York, there may not be enough teachers to support the same level of staffing that existed before the pandemic for the district’s 100,000 students with disabilities.

Detroit district parent Darlene Waller is taking on more responsibility for her daughter Elaina’s learning. Elaina is a second grader who has autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, meaning she has trouble focusing on tasks. Her daughter is chatty but has a hard time holding a two-way conversation.

Darlene worries Elaina will lose interest quickly if she has to stare at a computer for hours every day.

“I’m not sure how she’s gonna take to the computer even though I’ve been practicing with her. I really don’t know,” she said. “But no, I don’t think virtual will do enough.”

To help Elaina stay active, Darlene is adamant about getting her some fresh air during the week by taking her to the park and teaching her the names of trees and bugs.

In addition, Elaina, more than other children, needs practice interacting with her peers, which she does not receive when she is home learning online. “Whenever we’re out at stores and she sees a kid, she’ll beeline to that kid,” her mother said.

‘How does that translate to a computer?’

Learning is more difficult for students with disabilities when compared with their general education peers. They may have more trouble reading, writing, speaking, paying attention, or they may be blind, deaf, or hard of hearing, or have a hard time controlling their muscle movements.

A specialized education plan mandated by federal law describes each student’s learning needs and goals and includes parent input.

Most student’s specialized plans were designed for the ‘brick-and-mortar’ school setting, although some call for private treatment off-site. If a student needed one-on-one help at school, she would typically get pulled out of the classroom to work on targeted skills. But without access to special education teachers or clinicians when learning remotely, the child, with help, must fulfill those goals at home, said Kanika Littleton, the director of Michigan Alliance for Families.

“If you’re trying to help a student learn how to type, cut, write their name, or draw, you can’t help manipulate a child’s hand movement or pencil grip placement remotely,” she said.

A parent is even more involved in learning, not only as an at-home teacher, but also “an at-home social worker, an at-home therapist, or an at-home behavioral specialist,” Littleton said.

Special education staff will need to rethink the way they conduct student evaluations, which are key in figuring out what extra support students need. Educators expect some learning losses from the spring because of the extended school closures.

Littleton said some evaluations might be delayed because they can’t be done virtually. For instance, evaluations designed to observe a student’s behavior need to look at how they interact in a physical classroom.

“Is the child always getting up on their seat? Is their head always down when learning a certain subject? Are they always talking back?” she said.

Some parents are already overwhelmed with getting their children in front of the computer screen because students are trying to comprehend why they’re doing schoolwork at home during the first week of classes, special education teacher Susan Lachhman said about the students in her class.

Lachhman, who works for a Wayne County school, is teaching seven students diagnosed with autism, meaning they have trouble communicating or interacting. Some of her students can’t speak, while others can’t write by themselves.

The next few weeks will focus on building the culture of her virtual classroom: using a calendar board to help students stay on task, playing good morning songs, and helping students who can’t speak to use software that allows them to communicate by clicking on pictures. Lachhman hopes students will become accustomed to a daily virtual school routine.

“I’m learning a new way of presenting curriculum,” she said. “How would I do this in a classroom? How does that translate to a computer? How can I make this as easy as possible on the families that I’m working with? Or the kids that I’m working with?”

About 80% of the Detroit district’s students with special needs signed up for online learning this fall. A district spokesperson said students with disabilities will still get remote instruction tailored to their needs.

“Learning will be supported through lessons and activities aligned to state standards and designed to promote engagement, while targeting the identified needs of each student served,” Chrystal Wilson said.

These families also can send their children to learn face-to-face, although there may be limited staff available at some buildings, Wilson said.

Many school leaders may feel out of their comfort zone in providing virtual learning for students with disabilities, but they’re working hard to make sure their needs are met, said Karen Olex, the executive director of special populations for the Oakland Intermediate School District. The regional agency provides training, resources, and equipment to help districts serve about 21,000 special education students in the county.

“Believe me, special education directors are jumping through hoops and going around circles and doing everything they can to help their staff be prepared,” she said. “They are worried to death about these kids.”

‘You constantly have to fight for your child’

If there is a disagreement over virtual support services, Littleton encourages parents to seek out a third-party mediator to help compromise with the school.

“Parents should never be cut out of any planning process,” she said.

When students have a specialized learning plan, Littleton said districts must ensure that services they need are accessible, online or in-person. Certain equipment can’t be embedded onto an online platform, like a pencil grip that helps a student write.

“Just by design, they’re already cutting those students out,” she said.

Misty Kluck is a parent of a second grader, Tessa, who attends a Washtenaw County school. Tessa is diagnosed with autism, and also has apraxia and Down syndrome, which hamper her ability to control her body movements.

Tessa’s regression since the spring was striking. She began screaming in public, biting her fingers, and sometimes hitting her mother. She still wears headphones all day because she can’t tolerate loud noises. “It was almost as if we were completely starting over,” Kluck said. Tessa later improved through private therapy.

Kluck, who’s also a special education advocate, wants schools to send paraprofessionals or tutors to families’ homes to help students who can’t complete tasks independently. She wanted that extra help for Tessa.

“You have to constantly fight for your child,” the mother said. “COVID, all it did was it took from what we have fought for — and all this fighting that we had and anything that we had accomplished — and it basically wiped it clean.”

Lipsitt will host a rally advocating for equity in special education at 10:30 a.m. Oct. 7 at the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing.

The Michigan Alliance for Families has parent mentors to help families of students with disabilities. To find a mentor, call 1-800-552-4821.

‘Where are the kids?’ Inside the first day of online learning for one Detroit school.

2020-09-09T21:33:36+00:00

Karlotta Hicks was ready to teach online. Her handmade Zoom background featured numbers and the ABCs, kindergarten concepts she hoped would jog her first graders’ memories after nearly six months away from the classroom. She’d spoken by phone over the summer to the parents of her 14 students, letting them know that virtual classes would begin right after Labor Day at 8 a.m.

“It’s going to be as if the kids were in front of me,” she said confidently a week before classes began at Winans Academy for Performing Arts.

When class began on Tuesday, just one student appeared in her virtual classroom, and his audio wasn’t working. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of students and teachers were troubleshooting their way through glitch-filled first days of online learning. This was going to be tough.

After a spring of incalculable loss, educators in Detroit are scrambling to get students back on track. As the pandemic continues to spin out of control, schools have been forced to choose — with little guidance — from a menu of bad options for resuming classes. Winans Academy, set in east Detroit neighborhoods that bore the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic, chose to begin the year entirely online.

This spring, as the virus snowballed in Detroit and the city’s unemployment rate spiked to historic levels, school fell by the wayside for many families. Fewer than half of the students checked in with their teachers in an average week.

“Parents told me, ‘on the scale of things I’m dealing with, school work is No. 5,’” Principal James Spruill said.

Many students at Winans had fallen behind even before the pandemic. The school’s growth scores, which measure student improvement on standardized tests, have remained stubbornly low despite repeated staff shake-ups and state interventions. Experts warn that the pandemic will likely make things worse at schools like Winans, where nearly every student is economically disadvantaged.

The stakes have never been higher for the latest reinvention effort at Winans Academy. After surveying teachers and staff, school leaders announced that classes would be held online until January at least.

Would virtual instruction — a new format for most school staff — allow students to catch up, or at least avoid more backsliding?

Would students even show up?

“Give me a thumbs up if you can hear me,” Hicks said to her lone student. He wore bright blue headphones printed with characters from the movie Toy Story 4. No thumbs up.

Eventually, his mother leaned over the tablet that the school had lent the family, and the audio crackled to life.

“Yay, it’s fixed, wonderful,” Hicks said. “Welcome to the first day of school.”

Karlotta Hicks, a first grade teacher at Winans Academy of Performing Arts, in her classroom on the first day of school 2020. She taught from her classroom via video conference. She chose an outer space theme for her classroom this year, she said, to help students get used to the idea that the pandemic has ushered in a new world.

At 8:12 a.m. Hicks decided to stick with her game plan. She cued up a welcome song she’d found online. She sang along to the video: “Good morning, good morning, how are you?” The student smiled and mouthed some of the words, but the sound was choppy.

“Could you hear me singing when it glitched?” she asked.

“I didn’t hear you because of the glitching,” he said.

“You didn’t hear me, oh my goodness. I was singing, I was going all in!”

“Sorry.”

“No worries,” she said. But she decided to reschedule class for 12:15 p.m.

“I’m going to do the introduction with everyone,” she told the student’s mother. “I just need to call them to see where they are.”

‘I can easily say 100’

On a sunny Wednesday afternoon a week before classes began, it seemed like the entire neighborhood around Winans had gathered at the school to pick up devices and school supplies. Enrollment had been trending down for years, but more than 300 parents had already signed up, and Spruill estimated that at least that many came by. A line of cars snaked around the block.

Near the front door, teachers piled up backpacks stuffed with workbooks, pencils, and other school supplies. Wearing masks and keeping their distance, families and teachers greeted each other as if they hadn’t been together in years.

Lynn Coleman, a middle school math teacher, found one of her top students from the previous year. “Guess who got into Renaissance?” she asked school staff, referring to the selective Detroit high school.

“She worked us hard enough,” the student said, smiling.

Coleman grew up not far from Winans, attending nearby Denby High School, and she takes pride in the easy connections she makes with students.

Those connections took on a painful weight this spring: The coronavirus death rate in the school’s ZIP code, 48224, and in surrounding ZIP codes is more than three times higher than the death rate across Michigan. Coleman says the virus spread rapidly through her large extended family this spring, sickening eight people and killing several.

“I can easily say about 100” friends, family, and acquaintances got sick, she said. “Easily.” Her great aunt and uncle, who had been married for 60 years, died within a week of each other.

“If we are going through that, who knows what our scholars are going through?” she said.

Early in the pandemic, one of her students called her cell phone at 9:30 p.m.

“She said, ‘Miss Coleman?’ I said ‘Yes?’ She said, ‘Oh, I miss you.’” The student got off the phone quickly, but Coleman sensed the call’s significance.

“She only knows what that may have done for her,” Coleman said.

‘Where are the kids?’

Even after the community endured so much grief, the first day of Coleman’s math class felt almost normal.

Her goal for the day was to establish norms for virtual learning and to get to know her students by asking them about their summers, but the kids were playing it middle-school-cool.

“I didn’t do nothing this summer but sleep,” said one student. “I did order some shoes.”

“I didn’t do anything but be in my room on my phone,” another said.

“Were you playing on TikTok?” Coleman asked, referring to the video-sharing app.

That got a surprised laugh.

“Yeah, I know about TikTok,” she said.

They got through the rest of the lesson OK — students agreed that they should mute their microphones while others were talking and refrain from making fun of each other for incorrect answers — but there was a problem: Only nine students showed up of the 25 she was expecting.

Teachers across the school were reporting the same issue. While the school didn’t confirm the actual attendance number, Spruill acknowledged that attendance was low.

“The teachers and I were kind of sad at one point today,” Hicks said. “Like, where are the kids? It was emotional, because we weren’t having that interaction with our students, and that’s what you long for as a teacher. We just had to pull ourselves together, because we can’t let the kids see us like that.”

Hicks got some answers after calling families who had missed her morning class. One family had lost power during a morning thunderstorm that cut power to 4,000 Detroit homes, many of them near Winans. Other families were struggling to log onto their new laptops.

Spruill, who previously worked as a technical consultant for other charter schools in Detroit and who is the primary tech support person for Winans Academy, said he was not surprised by the low turnout.

“It was a constant line of parents not knowing how to log in,” he said. He insisted that attendance will improve throughout the week, adding that many schools in Detroit see attendance fluctuate wildly in the first weeks of school, because parents often sign their children up for more than one school.

Still, a more troubling possibility loomed: What if virtual learning asked too much of families, many of whom had jobs or were looking for one, and didn’t have time to provide full-time academic support for their children?

The phone numbers for three families in Hicks’ class were disconnected — what would happen to those students? And many parents already seemed stretched thin.

“I’m bouncing around to help my other kids,” one parent told Hicks. “I’m here, but I might not be on the screen.”

Amber White, whose son is a first grader in a different class at Winans, said she spent an hour on Tuesday morning just getting her two children logged on.

“This morning, it was really, really rough,” she said. “I was like ‘no, this isn’t going to work.’”

White took a week off work to help her kids get acclimated, but she worries that she’ll need more time. She was among a minority of parents at Winans who said they wanted the school to provide some in-person instruction this fall, and she said the first day of school showed that she was right.

“I mean, I understand the danger,” she said. “But the reality is that y’all might need to open the schools.”

‘We just have to make it work’

By 12:15 p.m., Hicks could breathe a small sigh of relief. Seven students popped into her Zoom class — just half of the total, but much better than one.

Hicks had the students practice what would become their morning routine, starting with the Pledge of Allegiance, then ran through class rules.

The students were visibly delighted to be in class together, virtual or not. They called out each other’s names and pushed their faces right into the camera. One girl wore a T-shirt printed with the words “First Day of Distance Learning 2020.”

“What did you learn today?” Hicks asked.

“Today I learned that school is fun,” said the boy with the Toy Story headphones.

“That makes me smile, my heart is smiling,” Hicks said.

The last part of the first day featured a story. A classroom aide read aloud as Hicks stepped away to take a phone call from a parent. The book, called “I Love School,” traced the routine of a single fictional school day. The pictures showed scenes that must have felt very distant to 6-year-olds who hadn’t been inside a classroom since March: a teacher leaning over students’ desks to look at their work, students eating lunch together in a cafeteria, students sitting in a circle on a rug while their teacher read a story aloud.

“Tell me what the story was all about,” the aide asked when it was over.

“I liked it because it told us about school, and we haven’t been at school for a loooong time,” said a girl with no front teeth and black beads in her braids.

“I miss my school,” said another student.

“And we miss you guys, but it’s so good to see you here now,” said Hicks, sitting back down. “This is our new way of going to school.”

That won’t change until January at the earliest. Winans officials said that they’ll consider moving to a hybrid schedule, bringing students into classrooms in shifts, if local coronavirus metrics take a turn for the better.

Facing nearly four months of online teaching, Hicks says she remains optimistic.

“It’s just Day One,” she said. “Seven came in, and they’re excited. That’s what you want, especially at this age, is for them to want to learn. That’s how you create lifelong learners. I’m excited for that.”

“It’s not like there are other alternatives,” she added. “This is how learning is occurring. We just have to make it work.”

This story is part of a series examining how Detroit schools, including Winans Academy, are adapting to educating students in the pandemic.

‘We’re still calling’: How a super-diverse Michigan district is ensuring that English learners don’t fall through the cracks

2020-09-03T21:23:02+00:00

Aysha Shamin has a long list of calls to make. With just a week to go before classes are set to begin in Hamtramck Public Schools, Shamin and other district parents are once again calling dozens of families to make sure they were all set for remote learning.

Speaking in Bengali, Shamin asks families if they have the technology they need to access online courses, and if they want to send their children to a physical classroom twice a week for extra help. Other parents call to ask the same questions in Arabic and Bosnian.

As many Michigan children return to online classes this fall, educators warn that online instruction — already challenging for most students — will be especially damaging for students who don’t speak English. In theory, this would be terrible news for the Hamtramck school district: 64% of the district’s students are classified as English learners, while another 14% are former English learners who have learned enough to leave the program.

Instead, Hamtramck’s pre-pandemic support systems for immigrant families have ensured that students don’t fall through the cracks. A team of bilingual parent liaisons, hired two years ago to support newcomers from other countries, worked through the summer to ensure that families had access to food, laptops, and an internet connection. An in-person orientation held weeks before the first day of online classes helped hundreds of U.S. newcomers navigate the challenges of remote instruction.

“I don’t think we had any family” whose students didn’t attend class because of a language barrier, Shamin said. “We’re still calling. We give them our number. If they need anything, they can call us any time.”

Advocates worry that English learners will be especially hard hit by the pandemic because their families are often vulnerable in several ways. They are more likely to have low incomes, face food insecurity, and avoid seeking help due to their immigration status. They’re also less likely to have access to a computer.

“Some of them just abandoned one country because of fear, and now they’re coming into another fearful situation,” said Mirjana Maros, Hamtramck’s facilitator for English language development. “It’s a journey into the complete unknown.”

Those complex challenges make relationships between parents and schools especially important, said Suzanne Toohey, an English learner consultant for Oakland Schools in the Detroit suburbs. That’s why a number of districts in the Detroit metro area are, like Hamtramck, finding ways to prioritize in-person contacts with families who don’t speak English at home.

“Hamtramck is doing all the right things,” she said. “Typically these families are underrepresented in things like a parent engagement committee, or the parents don’t know how to access the American school system. To put a face to an email name is really important for them.”

This is certainly true in Hamtramck, where 16 different languages are spoken within the Detroit enclave’s 2.1 square miles, according to district officials. A sizable minority of families are recent immigrants, and some arrive in the district with little formal education — parents may not be literate in their native languages or know how to turn on a computer, said Amra Poskovic, the district’s school and community facilitator.

That’s why hiring parent liaisons was a top priority for Superintendent Jaleelah Ahmed when she arrived on the job two years ago. Ahmed was previously the director of English learner programs in Dearborn, a Detroit-area district that is home to the largest population of Arabic speakers in the country. She recognized that supporting students learning English would be an essential part of her new role.

The district’s six parent liaisons saw their roles expand once the coronavirus hit. In addition to helping families access schoolwork online, they helped organize an in-person orientation for newcomers to the U.S. and recruited the most vulnerable students to come to school twice a week this fall for in-person help from teachers.

With thousands of students returning to school online, experts say that providing in-person instruction for the most vulnerable students can help prevent “scary” learning losses.

In order to support those families, though, districts first have to connect with them. That’s where Hamtramck has an advantage, said Jihan Aiyash, a liaison for MiStudents Dream, an advocacy group for immigrant students, and a member of the school board in Hamtramck, in an interview this spring. Even before the pandemic, the district was already focusing on its large numbers of English learners.

“If a district didn’t have it before, they’re not suddenly going to have it now,” Aiyash said, adding, “I don’t think our students are being neglected in that way.”

For the parents leading the district’s outreach efforts, this means long days and endless phone calls. Poskovic, who leads the parent liaisons, worries that it means she won’t be at home enough this fall to help her son, an English learner in the district, with his schoolwork.

The combination of record-high unemployment, the pandemic, and the language barrier has made the communities’ needs much more severe, Shamin said. She said she frequently checks in on the family of an autistic child. The father, the sole breadwinner, is unemployed due to the pandemic. They speak only Bengali, and need help connecting not only with the school district but also with their doctors and food services.

Their plight is not unusual.

“Actually, we have too many families to tell you about,” she said

Michigan child care providers struggle to stay afloat as fewer children show up and federal aid runs out

2020-08-28T21:03:54+00:00

This spring, three adults linked to Little Scholars of Detroit Child Development Center died of COVID-19. One staff member lost her husband and her sister, and another lost her mother. Shirley Hailey, the center’s owner, was infected and nearly lost her husband, who was hospitalized for 23 days before recovering.

The next coronavirus pandemic victim might be Little Scholars itself.

Hailey reopened the center in June, determined to keep serving the community where she has worked as a child care provider for nearly 20 years. But just one-fifth of her usual 148 students came back, mostly the children of essential workers. Money from the federal coronavirus relief package helped, but those dollars are running out. Hailey says her business is near the breaking point.

“Two more payrolls after this one and we’re out of money,” she said this week. “I’m looking at 45 days.”

Many parents are keeping their young children at home, making it difficult for child care providers to make ends meet. There is no certainty of further federal aid and no sign that the state will step up to help child care centers survive. Michigan is at risk of losing 41% of its licensed child care slots, according to an April study by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.

Hailey is a member of Providers for Change, a new group that’s pushing to save their centers by making significant changes to the state’s child care subsidy for low-income families. The subsidy is too small and unreliable to support providers through the pandemic, they argue. Many say they could be forced to close if nothing is done.

A rash of child care closures would be bad for children, for schools, and for the economy, especially in the state’s most vulnerable communities. Children rely on child care centers for food, socialization, and to prepare them for kindergarten. Without a safe place for children to go, it’s harder for parents to work and for teachers to teach. And closures mean more child care workers on the state unemployment rolls.

“There’s no economic recovery without child care, period,” said Dawne Bell, CEO of the Early Childhood Investment Corporation, a Lansing-based advocacy group.

The pandemic has exposed long-standing problems at every level of Michigan’s child care system. Costs can be prohibitive even for relatively well-off families. Detroit is already a massive child care desert, with 27,000 fewer slots than families need. Families living in poverty often can’t find subsidized care, and the subsidies are so small that early childhood teachers often live in poverty themselves.

“There are things we can do now” to help providers, said Sen. Winnie Brinks, a Democrat from Grand Rapids. “But I would say that we should have been doing most of those things before COVID hit. It just uncovered a lot of the challenges that made [the child care sector] really tough before.”

Helping child care providers stay afloat would require additional state spending, Brinks said. The state would essentially need to pay providers for empty seats, something it did for K-12 schools this spring but has never done for child care centers. But with Michigan facing a substantial budget deficit, Brinks said a major change to child care funding would be a “very, very heavy lift” politically unless Congress passes another federal aid package.

“Everyone right now is looking at the federal government,” said Bell.

Detroit centers, which often rely on a subsidy for low-income families, are at particular risk of shutting down.

The subsidy is tiny, one of the smallest in the nation, said Matt Gillard, director of the nonprofit advocacy group Michigan’s Children. Providers know that the parents they serve can’t pay more out of pocket.

“The easiest fix is for the state to dramatically increase the reimbursement rates that we’re giving providers per child,” Gillard said. “The rates are still abysmally low.”

Many providers in low-income communities are used to surviving from payroll to payroll. But the pandemic is proving impossible to navigate, even for businesspeople used to scraping by.

“The math doesn’t add up,” said Candies Rogers, owner and director of CircleTime with Friends Learning Center in Redford, a Detroit suburb. “At this point we probably won’t make it to the end of the calendar year.”

Rogers is one of the providers pushing for changes to the state’s main subsidy program, Child Development and Care assistance. The program spent nearly $200 million in largely federal dollars in 2018-2019 and served about 34,000 kids, nearly as many as the Great Start Readiness Program, Michigan’s banner preschool program for low-income 4-year-olds.

Rogers brings in funds from both programs, but she says DHHS is the reason she might have to close. She only gets paid for the hours that subsidized students are present, which means that she’s in trouble if they don’t show up.

And they haven’t: On a typical pandemic day, Rogers cares for 16 children. Before the coronavirus, she was at capacity — 68 kids — with a waitlist.

For a few months this spring, the state used money from the federal coronavirus aid package to pay providers based on their pre-pandemic enrollments. But those payments stopped by mid-summer.

In order to meet state requirements for teacher-to-student ratios, Rogers needs to have six teachers on staff to care for the children, who include a 6-month-old, a 3-month-old, and two 2-year-olds. “I can’t pay more than two staff members comfortably,” she said.

Further complicating matters for providers who depend on these funds, the hourly rate makes it impossible for providers to know how much money they’ll bring in. If a child leaves early or just doesn’t show up, they lose income. Providers get to bill for some absent hours, but many have blown through them in recent weeks.

“You don’t know what you’re going to get,” said Toya Taylor, owner of Reign Development Center in Detroit, who says virtually all of her income comes from state subsidies for low-income parents. “Your payment is different every two weeks. And I still have … bills that need to be paid.”

The pandemic made the problem worse, Taylor said, by making it harder to predict whether students will show up. She’s also had to adopt a much stricter sick policy, and is now sending students home for the slightest sniffle.

“I’m definitely in a position where I could be forced to close,” she said.

Difficult financial conditions could put a serious dent in the state’s child care offerings. The Make a Difference Learning Center offered care for roughly 30 children on a typical day before the pandemic.

When owner Valerie Draper reopened in July, only two children showed up, so she closed it back down.

“Staying open for a few kids to me is not worth it,” she said. “It doesn’t pay rent.”

Draper has been a child care provider for more than two decades in the suburbs along Detroit’s northeast border, which has one of the most severe child care shortages in the metro area. She says she’ll probably call it quits for good in September if demand doesn’t pick up when K-12 classes resume.

The pandemic, Draper said, has given new weight to something she has long sensed: that early educators aren’t valued by the state. She spent years working to comply with the stringent training and certification requirements imposed on child care providers, and now she feels abandoned.

“I’m devastated; I’m angry,” she said. The state “still treats us like babysitters. We’re not providers, we’re not professionals. They pay us babysitter rates.”

As teachers brace for student learning losses, many worry about the impact on Michigan’s most vulnerable students

2020-08-25T18:44:34+00:00

As schools across Michigan begin an unpredictable new year, teachers are facing what may seem like an insurmountable task: Helping students, particularly the most vulnerable, who’ve experienced learning loss because of the pandemic.

There is little doubt that the disruption caused by COVID-19, marked by an unheard-of shift from physical to remote learning, will leave many students struggling academically. That concern runs especially deep in cities like Detroit, home to long-existing inequities and students whose communities have borne the brunt of the virus’s damage.

Educators staring at a fall of more remote learning, a tentative return to classrooms, or a mix of both are grappling with how to best slow such slides. They’re weighing approaches such as investing more in supporting students socially and emotionally, tending to individual students’ needs, and steering clear of high-stakes tests — for now.

Although we don’t know yet how much loss students will have experienced or the long-term effects, some researchers have made dire predictions — including that students could lose as much as a year of learning in math because of COVID.

Experts say students from low-income families will be hit the hardest, exacerbating existing racial and socioeconomic gaps in achievement.

In Detroit, nearly 90% of the students in the city school district are considered economically disadvantaged, and rates in city charter schools are as high or higher.

These are the students for whom inequities in education are an everyday reality. Their schools are more likely to receive less state funding. They were less likely to have access to the technology needed to keep up with school work in the spring. Their parents were more likely to lose their jobs as the economy stalled, or to be employed in essential roles that left them and their families at risk of COVID. And they tend to live in communities that were hardest hit by the coronavirus, leaving social and emotional scars that will follow them when they return to the physical or virtual classroom.

Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, an assistant professor at Wayne State University, says schools offering choices between in-person and remote instruction should have considered the needs of students who may have suffered the greatest losses. Most district leaders left it up to parents to decide between the two.

“Parents choose what’s best for them,” Lenhoff said. “But that really leaves it up to chance whether the students who would benefit the most from face to face are the ones who are going to sign up for it.”

Lenhoff said it’s “scary, frankly,” to think about the long-term consequences for students from low-income families and students of color who attend economically segregated schools who will “are likely bearing the brunt of the learning loss.” Higher income parents are more likely to put pressure on their schools to provide resources and support, or to invest in those themselves.

Zakiya Traylor, a parent of a freshman who will attend Detroit’s Henry Ford High School online, said she’s concerned about how much learning her daughter lost during the spring. They had the technology to learn online, but she said it wasn’t enough.

“Even though they had some online learning, it wasn’t as structured as it was in school,” Traylor said. “I felt her learning was at a standstill. I felt she was stuck at a certain level.”

Students will need more resources

Elizabeth Moje, dean of the school of education at the University of Michigan, agrees that vulnerable students will be most affected by academic losses. But she hopes people take away an important message: It doesn’t mean those students didn’t learn anything in the spring or have experiences that supplemented their learning.

That’s why she says that while “we have to recognize the disparities and inequalities and inequities and work to address those,” it must be done without treating children as if they’re deficient.

It also must be done with “significant investments in educational resources and social services,” Lenhoff said.

That need comes are schools are already investing heavily in personal protection equipment such as face masks, hand sanitizer, thermometers, and face shields, as well as technology students will need to learn online.

Last week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said she was earmarking $60 million in federal coronavirus relief funding to K-12 schools, targeting schools with large numbers of low-income, special education, and English language learners. Whitmer said some of that money can be used to mitigate the effects of learning loss.

“In the middle of all of this pandemic we know we’re going to need additional … support and this can go towards that,” Whitmer said during a press conference.

Meanwhile, in the classroom, teachers will face a monumental task as they try to investigate what students learned, what they didn’t learn, what experiences they had that may have helped with their learning, and finally, how to help catch them up. Many will have the added frustration of having to accomplish this while teaching remotely.

In Detroit, the learning losses could upend several years of small growth in student achievement on state exams.

Tanisha Murray, whose daughter will be a freshman at Detroit School of the Arts, said her biggest concern as a parent is whether her daughter will get the help she needs while learning online. She’s ready to help, but it may not be enough.

She already knows what challenges could arise. In the spring, after a death in the family, her daughter lost focus and began struggling with math lessons.

“I would like to see tutors available to assist the parents … I may not be able to assist with every class.”

‘Meeting kids where they are’

So how do teachers get a handle on learning loss? In the same ways they do every year when students come back to school after a three-month summer break. Researchers may differ on the severity of the summer learning loss, but they tend to agree that some loss is experienced each year.

Owen Bondono, an Oak Park high school teacher who was recently named Michigan Teacher of the Year, said it will be important for teachers to not worry “about arbitrary benchmarks and where people say your kids should be.”

“We always meet kids where they are and this will be no different,” Bondono said. “Focus right now on students’ social/emotional health and academic learning will follow.”

There tends to be widespread agreement that schools must first address the social and emotional needs of children. That will be particularly true in communities like Detroit that were hit hard by COVID-19, and where many students may know relatives or others who became sick or died from the disease.

“We have to think about those things. Because unless those things are met, then all the rest isn’t going to be able to get taken care of,” Paula Herbart, president of the Michigan Education Association, said during an Aug. 12 town hall meeting co-hosted by Chalkbeat.

In other words, Herbart said, the kids should be treated “as humans,” and teachers shouldn’t be pushing “what did you learn, what did you lose.”

Another thing many educators agree on is that the last thing they should do to assess learning loss is to force students to take an exam that is used “to sum children up and put a label on them,” Moje said. Rather, tests now should be focused on understanding “where they are with their development.”

There are subtler ways to do that. It can be as simple as a conversation, or a writing assignment. Teachers will need to assess not only what students did and didn’t learn during the spring, but what they experienced during the summer, Moje said. Did they go to summer school? Did they travel? Did they spend a lot of time on the couch watching TV? And if so, what did they watch and possibly learn from it?

“They want to try to build on the amazing capacity of the human mind to always be learning,” Moje said.

Those assessments can also come in the form of a no-stakes exam that pinpoints where students are academically.

It is likely teachers will have a classroom of students at very different levels, depending on how much learning they did in the spring. It also depends on whether the students have books and other reading materials in their homes, said Lisa Lipscomb, a Detroit teacher.

Children whose families “engage young ones with continuous learning opportunities remember more,” Lipscomb said.

‘They had not logged in even once’

Lenhoff and her research team at Wayne State released a report recently that highlighted the spring experiences of nearly 30 Detroit high school students. Many of the students said they actively participated in remote instruction. But 28% of them didn’t take part at all.

“The students I’m most concerned about are those that did not participate at all in distance learning. They had not logged in even once, and we were talking to them in early June. Distance learning had been going on for two and a half months,” said Lenhoff, whose team has been doing a series of reports on Detroit education. “I’m worried about learning loss and increased dropout rates.”

Meanwhile, a RAND survey released in May found that just 12% of the teachers surveyed said they were able to cover their full curriculum while teaching remotely. And teachers in two other surveys estimated only about 60% of their students were regularly participating or engaging in distance learning, and up to three-quarters of teachers said their students were less engaged.

Such disparate experiences are why it will be difficult for teachers to develop a one-size-fits approach to dealing with learning loss. Compounding the issue is that children whose parents are better off financially likely were able to provide their children with tutors or other types of additional resources.

The term “differentiated instruction” has been a big part of the educator lexicon for many years. It essentially means teachers must adapt their curriculum to meet the individual needs of students. It will become increasingly important in the wake of COVID.

Teachers will also have to adjust how they teach some content, said Roland Sintos Coloma, assistant dean in the division of teacher education at Wayne State. An incoming fourth grader, for instance, may not have learned all of the third-grade math curriculum last school year. But the fourth grade teacher can find ways to integrate standards for both grades and “build upon them,” Coloma said.

“We’re still in crisis mode,” Coloma said of the start of the school year. “We need to use this as an opportunity to really think about what do we really value when it comes to teaching and learning. What are those metrics we are using to say students are on grade level or not. And how do we continuously engage young people so that they find what’s happening either in school or virtually meaningful for them.”

There are broader, more long-term steps schools can take. Earlier this year, Chalkbeat outlined five things research suggests could work: extending the school day or year, providing extra tutoring, particularly for students most behind, having elementary teachers retain the students they had last year, expanding the number of adults ready to help students with mental health and trauma issues, and integrating information about the coronavirus into the curriculum.

Traylor, whose daughter took a summer school math class, is worried about the start of the school year because it’ll begin the same way the last semester ended: With her daughter learning online.

“It’s frustrating,” she said. “It comes with a little anxiety. We have to learn how to survive and provide for our kids while also making sure they get the education that they need.”

5 key questions that could shape the future of virtual learning in Michigan

2020-08-06T14:00:00+00:00

Even with most back-to-school policy in Michigan still up in the air, one thing is already clear about the fall: Schools will continue the extraordinary online learning experiment that began when classrooms closed this spring.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer hasn’t announced whether classrooms will be allowed to reopen, but districts across the state are already planning to keep classrooms closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The widespread shift to virtual instruction could accelerate the state’s long-running push to offer more education online, a move with enormous but uncertain implications for students.

Five months ago, only a small fraction of Michigan’s students did much of their learning online. Now school building closures have familiarized most of those 1.6 million students with virtual instruction, and officials are investing tens of millions of dollars in technologies to make it even more widely accessible; Detroit’s school district alone has spent $23 million. Educators and online learning companies are welcoming the expansion, and some policymakers are pushing for back-to-school legislation that would open the door to even more online learning.

Yet experts estimate that at least 25% of Michigan students still don’t have the technology they need to learn online, raising questions about the equity of online learning policies. And there is scant evidence that existing online programs aid student learning.

“There are plenty of virtual learning organizations that are more than willing to provide their services, but we don’t have a lot of evidence that they have a positive effect on student learning,” said Mark Berends, a professor at University of Notre Dame who co-authored a recent study of virtual schools in Indiana.

Here are five issues to watch as this experiment with virtual learning enters a new phase.

What will districts take away from their early efforts to provide online learning?

Fewer than half of Michigan schools were able to transition to full-time online learning when classrooms shut down in March, typically because of poor broadband access. Others took hybrid approaches that combined online instruction with printed worksheets that were sent home with students. More than 10% only sent worksheets home in the spring, according to researchers at Michigan State University.

Some districts that weren’t prepared for virtual learning when the pandemic hit are gearing up for the fall by entering into contracts with online learning companies, said Joe Friedhoff, vice president of Michigan Virtual, a state-funded nonprofit that tracks virtual learning across the state, designs online lessons, and distributes them to districts for free.

If districts pay outsiders to provide online curriculum and track student learning, it could become harder for teachers to embrace virtual learning in the long run, he added, especially if the companies don’t provide training as part of their contracts.

“How are those organizations building local capacity?” asked. “There’s clearly some dependency [on contractors] that’s going to happen this year.”

Will more students get the tools they need to participate in online instruction?

Most schools in Michigan will provide some in-person instruction this fall, in part because so many students don’t have access to the devices and internet needed for online learning, said Peter Spadafore, associate executive director for advocacy at the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators. (Republican lawmakers are seeking to require schools to offer in-person instruction to students in grades K-5.)

At the outset of the pandemic, the Michigan Department of Education estimated that 500,000 students, or one-third of the total, didn’t have the tools to access online classes.

The pandemic has set off a minor spending spree aimed at narrowing that gap. Philanthropies spent millions to buy tablets for students in the Detroit district. State officials are using tens of millions of dollars in federal aid to buy Wi-Fi hot spots and devices for students across the state.

Still, large parts of the state are outside the range of existing broadband internet networks.

Broadband “is a public good that needs to expand to all American households,” Spadafore said, calling on the federal government to get involved in expanding networks.

Will full-time online schools grow even faster? Or will their academic track records hold them back?

Amid uncertainty about the return to school, a growing number of parents are eyeing full-time online schools as an alternative to traditional districts.

“I can tell you right now that we have over 250 enrollment appointments scheduled,” said Kristi Teall, executive director of Success Virtual Learning Center, a full-time online school, referring to meetings with parents who’ve expressed an interest in enrolling their child. “A year ago, we would have been at zero at this point.”

Mary Moorman, head of school at Highpoint Virtual Academy, an online charter school with an enrollment of roughly 1,000, said she’d also seen a spike in interest.

“The applications year over year from last year are up well over 500%,” she said.

Some of those applications may be from nervous parents hedging their bets in case schools are closed, Moorman acknowledged. If classrooms are closed, she said, parents may prefer to send their child to a school with experience providing online education.

Yet Highpoint, like most virtual programs, produces poor academic results, receiving a D letter grade for both growth and proficiency from the state last year. Success Virtual Centers received a D for proficiency and an F for growth.

Statewide, just 8% of 11th graders enrolled in full-time online schools met the SAT standard for college readiness in math last year, far below the state average.

Moorman said the low scores are no surprise because students typically choose online learning after having trouble in a traditional school.

“They don’t go from being proficient or advanced students to, ‘oh gosh, we’re behind,’” she said. “Students are coming to us with these concerns already. Their local district has let them down.”

Researchers have struggled to paint a complete picture of students at virtual schools, but they broadly agree that the schools produce far worse academic results than other types of schools.

The Notre Dame study in Indiana found that students who transferred to fully online schools lost significant ground compared with academically similar peers who transferred to schools that operate in person.

“Students who transfer to virtual charter schools perform worse on standardized tests for at least three years after they transfer,” said Brian Fitzpatrick, a Ph.D. candidate who co-authored the study. “They move from being slightly below average to being extremely below average.”

The combination of poor academic results and low spending have drawn scrutiny from state policymakers.

Most virtual schools rank near the bottom of the state in spending per pupil. Yet, Michigan, unlike states like Indiana and Ohio, sends as much money to virtual schools as brick-and-mortar charter schools. In 2018, then-Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, argued that they should receive less, pointing to research showing that, on average, costs for full-time virtual schools are more than 30% lower than for brick-and-mortar schools. Whitmer, a Democrat, has also sought to reduce funding levels for virtual charters.

The state auditor is also conducting an inquiry into online charter schools, which is expected to be published this year. An audit of online charters in Indiana raised serious questions about the misspending of state funds.

Will COVID-19 budget cuts lead to more online instruction?

In May, administrators in Avondale, a school district in Detroit’s northern suburbs, announced that they would convert their alternative school to a fully online program.

The reason? To save money.

The episode touched a nerve with many educators who fear that budget cuts brought on by the pandemic will prompt more school districts to create new virtual programs — and cut teacher jobs. Since 2016, 20 new full-time virtual schools have opened in Michigan as state spending on schools has stagnated compared with inflation.

To replace its alternative program, Avondale contracted with a company that promised to increase the district’s revenue by bringing in new online students from around the state.

“The virtual academies get more students at no extra cost to the school district,” said Maria Lograsso-Gaitens, a teacher and an organizer with MiCORE, an educators coalition that opposed the closure of the alternative program in Avondale. “That’s a lot of money saved, and it’s very very appealing to save that money.”

How will politics shape virtual learning policy?

Michigan was the first in the nation to require students to have at least one online experience, which can include virtual classes, in order to graduate. The policy was created in 2005 by a Democrat-led state board of education and passed by Republican lawmakers.

Then, in 2012, the Republican-led legislature removed an enrollment cap on full-time virtual schools, setting the stage for rapid growth in the sector. The move was sharply opposed by top Democratic school officials.

That partisan split is still evident during the pandemic: Republican lawmakers are hoping to make it easier for districts to provide virtual instruction as part of proposed back-to-school legislation, but they face fierce opposition from Democrats who argue that the measures amount to “outsourcing” of teacher jobs and an “infomercial” for online learning companies.

The divide has deepened over actions by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who said when she joined the Trump administration that she hoped to expand the presence of virtual schools. As part of the federal coronavirus aid package, DeVos distributed $180 million in grants to states that promised to expand and improve online education.

State Rep. Pamela Hornberger, the Republican chair of the House education committee, said she was called “Pamela DeVos” by opponents of her back-to-school proposal, which would allow districts to contract out for virtual instruction one day a week after the pandemic is over.

Whitmer, who has the power to veto the proposal, said in a statement last week that it “returns to the same Betsy Devos-style tactics of outsourcing education to for-profit business models.”

Detroit teachers want slaveholders’ names removed from these three charter schools

2020-07-30T20:14:38+00:00

Dozens of Michigan schools are named after slaveholders or prominent racists, including some whose statues have been toppled and whose names have been stripped from American institutions amid a national reckoning with racism.

Some educators are calling for these schools to be renamed, arguing that it’s wrong to ask students, especially those whose ancestors were enslaved, to attend school in a building that pays tribute to slave owners.

The legacies of historical figures including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison “are deeply rooted in the soil of racism and separatism,” a group of teachers at Cornerstone Schools, a network of charter schools in Detroit, wrote in a letter to the network’s CEO this month.

The teachers pointed out that the school names in question — Washington-Parks, Madison-Carver, and Jefferson-Douglass academies — link slaveholders with the names of prominent Black Americans Rosa Parks, George Washington Carver, and Frederick Douglass. They noted that almost every student at Cornerstone schools is Black.

“We deem it culturally insensitive and historically inappropriate to continue to connect these slaveholding founding fathers to the names of African Americans who fought against the very evils of slavery,” the letter says.

The teachers declined to comment or be identified out of concern for their jobs.

They met for several hours with Clark Durant, CEO of Cornerstone, earlier this month. Durant said that he and the educators talked about their values and their reasons for working at Cornerstone and discussed the names.

He did not say whether the names will be changed. Nor did he defend the decision to link the names of slaveholders with those of prominent Black people.

“We expressed appreciation that we are starting this conversation and doing this work together,” he said. “The group will meet again soon to continue to address these concerns.”

Clark Durant, Cornerstone CEO

The teachers are part of a growing national movement to stop using schools as memorials to racists. This month, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer, officials in California and Virginia renamed schools to remove the names of slave owners. The upwelling of anti-racist energy has extended far beyond the K-12 education landscape, with leaders of an NFL team and an Ivy League university giving in to long-standing calls for name changes.

Woodrow Wilson, the former U.S. president whose name was removed from several buildings at Princeton University, is also the namesake of two schools in Michigan. Wilson espoused racist views and resegregated the federal civil service decades after African Americans were first allowed to join. At least 33 other schools in Michigan are named after prominent white men who owned slaves or whose policies damaged Black communities.

Attempts to rename schools in Michigan often encounter plenty of opposition from local communities. In 2017, the Paw Paw school board voted to keep the school’s mascot, the Redskins, a word several dictionaries consider disparaging to Native Americans. The board reversed course earlier this year, and dropped the name before the George Floyd protests.

Belden, another community that stopped using the slur, was sharply divided about changing the name of its district mascot.

Pamela Pugh, a member of the state board of education, said she doesn’t want historical figures such as George Washington forgotten because they played major roles in shaping the United States, for good or ill. Still, she said, having a school named after you is an honor, and she supports communities that have pushed to change school names.

“If… this person is being celebrated, then yes, I do think that we have to listen to the voices of those who want to move us beyond … systemic racism,” she said.

Detroit, the Blackest big city in America, has its own, little-known history of slavery. Many of its most recognizable streets and places — Macomb, Campau, Beaubien, McDougall, Abbott, Brush, Cass, Hamtramck, Gouin, Meldrum, Dequindre, Beaufait, Groesbeck, Livernois, Rivard — are named after slave owners.

The city’s conference center was renamed in 2018, removing the name of Alfred Cobo, a racist former mayor who fought to prevent Black people from moving into majority-white neighborhoods. In the city school district, a movement sought to remove the name of U.S. Housing Secretary Ben Carson from a high school on the grounds that his work as a member of the Trump administration has hurt Black communities.

After Floyd’s death, which sparked weeks of protests in Detroit, city officials removed a statue of Christopher Columbus last month.

Weeks later, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer removed the name of Lewis Cass from a government building in Michigan’s capitol. Cass enslaved people himself and helped expand slavery to more states while he was a U.S. senator from Michigan

Whitmer’s move lent fuel to a long-running effort to rename Cass Tech, the elite high school named after Cass. There’s still little chance that the name will be changed, though, due to opposition from its alumni association. The Detroit district accepts name change proposals, but hasn’t received a formal one for Cass Tech.

“The kids are coming to get a great education,” said Monique Bryant, a member of the association and the founder of the Triangle Society, a nonprofit that supports the school and its students. “Nobody is thinking about Lewis Cass. I would think that any memory of Lewis Cass would be overshadowed by what the more than 80,000 alumni have been able to do.”

The Cornerstone schools, all of which opened after 2009, haven’t been around long enough to build large alumni associations. That means renaming the school will fall largely to Durant, a former candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan with an affinity for the men known as the Founding Fathers.

Arguing that Cornerstone has a chance to be “recognized as a beacon and catalyst for change,” the teachers’ letter suggests that the names of Jefferson, Washington, and Madison be replaced with the names of Benjamin Franklin, Gouverneur Morris, and Robert Treat Paine — key players in early American politics who also, at least eventually, opposed slavery. (The letter points out that Franklin was a slave owner who freed the people he enslaved and spoke in favor of abolishing slavery.)

“It is time to incorporate the names of patriots whose legacy unequivocally endorses the creed that, ‘all men are truly created equal,’” the letter says.

Here is a list of Michigan schools apparently named after people who enslaved other people or whose actions damaged Black American communities.

School	Presumed Namesake	% African American	City
Cornerstone Jefferson-Douglass Academy	Thomas Jefferson and Frederick Douglass	99%	Detroit
Washington-Parks Academy	George Washington and Rosa Parks	99%	Redford
Madison-Carver Academy	James Madison and George Washington Carver	98%	Detroit
Cass Technical High School	Lewis Cass	80%	Detroit
ACE Academy (SDA) -Glendale, Lincoln, Woodward, Jefferson	Thomas Jefferson	77%	Highland Park
Madison Academy - High School	James Madison	72%	Burton
Washington Writers' Academy	George Washington	69%	Kalamazoo
Thomas Jefferson Elem. School	Thomas Jefferson	63%	Redford
Madison Academy Elementary/Middle School	James Madison	63%	Flint
Madison High School	James Madison	57%	Madison Heights
Madison Preparatory High School	James Madison	53%	Madison Heights
Berrien Springs Discovery Academy	John M. Berrien	49%	Berrien Springs
Madison Elementary School	James Madison	43%	Madison Heights
Berrien County Juvenile Center	John M. Berrien	39%	Berrien Center
STEAM Academy at Woodrow Wilson Elementary	Woodrow Wilson	27%	Port Huron
Berrien Springs Middle School	John M. Berrien	25%	Berrien Springs
Berrien County Truancy Academy	John M. Berrien	25%	Berrien Springs
Berrien Springs High School	John M. Berrien	24%	Berrien Springs
Madison School	James Madison	18%	Wyandotte
Jefferson Elementary	Thomas Jefferson	15%	Holland
Jefferson Middle School	Thomas Jefferson	15%	Saint Clair Shores
Washington Elementary School	George Washington	12%	Bay City
Washington Woods Middle School	George Washington	10%	Holt
Jefferson Elementary School	Thomas Jefferson	7%	Sterling Heights
Madison Elementary School	James Madison	6%	Adrian
Cassopolis Alternative Ed.	Lewis Cass	6%	Cassopolis
Jefferson Elementary School	Thomas Jefferson	5%	Wyandotte
Woodrow Wilson School	Woodrow Wilson	4%	Wyandotte
Madison Middle School	James Madison	3%	Adrian
Berrien Springs Virtual Academy	John M. Berrien	3%	Berrien Springs
Madison High School	James Madison	3%	Adrian
Washington Elementary School	George Washington	3%	Washington
Washington Elementary School	George Washington	2%	Wyandotte
Washington Elementary School	George Washington	2%	Charlotte
Washington Street Elementary School	George Washington	2%	Otsego
Jefferson Middle School	Thomas Jefferson	2%	Midland
Washington Elementary School	George Washington	1%	Sault Sainte Marie
Jefferson High School	Thomas Jefferson	1%	Newport
Thomas Jefferson Elem. School	Thomas Jefferson	1%	Manistee
Jefferson School	Thomas Jefferson	1%	Ionia
Washington Middle School	George Washington	1%	Calumet
Cass City Elementary	Lewis Cass	1%	Cass City
Washington School	George Washington	0%	Bessemer
Cass City Jr. and Sr. High School	Lewis Cass	0%	Cass City
Jefferson Middle School	Thomas Jefferson	0%	Monroe
Jefferson Elementary School	Thomas Jefferson	0%	Coldwater
Washington Elementary School	George Washington	0%	Marysville

Michigan schools apparently named after slaveowners

Forty-seven schools in Michigan are apparently named after slaveholders or prominent racists, and there may be more. Chalkbeat cross-referenced school names with public lists of prominent slaveholders and white supremacists. Schools were omitted if their namesake was not clear from their name. Schools bearing only part of the names of the men known as the Founding Fathers, such as the various Jefferson Elementary Schools, are assumed to be named after that person even if their namesake was not verified.

Source: Michigan Center for Educational Performance and Information, Chalkbeat analysis

Michigan’s reopening economy needs child care. This educator’s struggle shows that rebooting centers won’t be easy.

2020-07-16T22:33:51+00:00

LaShawn Bridges had spent months worrying about reopening her child care center in Detroit. But what happened on Monday was more like opening an entirely new center.

Before the pandemic, students would have walked inside with their parents. Now Bridges met them outside with a handheld thermometer to screen them for fever, and parents weren’t allowed in the building. As soon as students walked inside, they were instructed to wash their hands. Everyone, including the kids, wore masks.

“It’s kind of awkward at first,” Lindsay Gray, a preschool teacher at Blessed Beginnings, Bridges’ center, said. “It’s like for that first second, when they hit that corner with the mask on, you don’t know who they are. Whereas before they’d just run in and go straight to whatever and hug you, now it’s different. They feel that it’s different.”

Soon enough, though, things began to feel somewhat normal. The students spent most of the day playing and learning outside, so teachers didn’t have to spend much time sanitizing toys.

“The kids are happy to be back with one another,” Bridges said.

That didn’t mean she could stop worrying. The coronavirus pandemic has already pushed her business — which she has owned and operated since 1999, starting out in her basement — into financial difficulties that would only get worse if children or staff were infected, or if not enough students showed up. Then there was the risk that one of her older teachers or children could become seriously ill.

“I have not slept a full night since Saturday night, just with the anxiety of wanting to keep the families and the children safe,” she said on Wednesday.

Bridges met children outside at the beginning of the day to take their temperature.

Bridges’ center is an example of the challenges child care providers across the state face as they try to reopen in the midst of a pandemic. Nearly 1,000 providers in southeast Michigan have already reopened, about one-third of the total.

What happens at Blessed Beginnings and other child care centers across the state will help determine whether the state can rebound financially. If the reopenings don’t go well and parents — especially essential workers — don’t have a place to send their children when they return to work, the economic recovery will be jeopardized.

That puts a heavy burden on providers like Bridges, who are now responsible for the health of their teachers and students. Yet as government aid for child care centers runs out or falls short, many providers are at risk of closing for good.

In Michigan, child care providers typically own and run their centers themselves, often on razor thin margins. Unlike K-12 schools and universities, which rely on state funding, child care centers depend on tuition payments that can vary week to week.

Nonetheless, providers of early education are among the first educators in the state to welcome children back for pandemic-era instruction.

“There’s all kinds of conversations happening right now about whether school is going to reopen in the fall,” said Erica Willard, director of the Michigan Association for the Education of Young Children. “Well, child care has already been facing this for a few months now. You say this field is essential, but there’s not the financial backing or the recognition of the critical work that this field is doing.”

If Bridges’ experience is any guide, reopening won’t be easy. Even extensive preparations can’t guarantee that children will show up.

“Me getting paid will depend on the children who are returning,” Bridges said late in June. “I don’t feel the financial strain right now, but it’s coming.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics has suggested that child care centers should reopen, saying children are less likely to become infected and spread the coronavirus. But many parents remain worried for their children’s health — and for their own if their children brought the virus home.

In her community on the east side of Detroit, Bridges is viewed as especially skilled and reliable. She’s one of a small number of providers who have earned a five-star quality rating from the state, the highest possible. After running a small program out of her home for 20 years, she won a $75,000 grant from the city last year to expand to a new building that would accommodate 60 children.

Most of her students come from low-income families, and their tuition is partially subsidized by the state. As part of Michigan’s coronavirus relief efforts, the payments kept coming this spring even after the center shut down. That money, plus a federal payroll loan, had allowed Bridges to keep paying her staff through the early months of the crisis.

Even after state subsidies ran out, Bridges brought back her six staff members to sanitize the center and develop a new pandemic-era curriculum, which would mix standard lessons on the solar system with discussions of germs and handwashing practice.

Bridges began working to win parents’ trust months ago, aiming for a June reopening. On a video conference call with parents in early June, she laid out a total overhaul of Blessed Beginnings’ daily routine. The 14-page reopening plan she’d submitted to the state amounted to a rethinking of her entire program, from morning drop-off to lesson topics to the policy on sick students.

Bridges had no choice but to be extremely careful. She knew that a COVID-19 outbreak at Blessed Beginnings would force her to close for at least two weeks and scare parents away, a catastrophic scenario that would raise questions about whether the center could ever reopen.

“It might be days that you guys will be mad at me, because I am going to stick to the sick policy to a T,” she told the 25 parents on the call.

Her efforts seemed to be paying off. Twenty parents signed on to bring their children back when the center reopened — fewer than the 40 she was allowed under COVID-19 rules, but a start.

Jasmine Harris, whose 4-year-old son has been a student at the center for two years, and who is an early childhood educator herself, said she intended to bring him back to child care even though the prospect made her nervous.

“As long as every parent is on board, it can be really effective,” she said, adding that Bridges was known for keeping her center neat and sanitary even before the pandemic.

Bridges told parents on the call that she already had to delay reopening by a week or two. She had leased a ZONO machine — a refrigerator-like device capable of disinfecting multiple shelves of toys at a time — so her staff wouldn’t have to spend all their time cleaning toys, but its delivery was delayed.

A few weeks later, the machine arrived, but now Bridges had another problem: Parents weren’t getting tested for the coronavirus as she’d requested.

With days to go before the center was supposed to open, one parent said she’d rather keep her child at home than undergo an invasive nasal swab. Others seemed to be dragging their feet.

Bridges knew she couldn’t afford to wait. Every day the center stayed closed pushed her closer to a financial precipice. But as opening day neared, she chose public health over her own wallet. She would give families another week to get tested — and forgo a week of tuition.

As the reopening date approached, Bridges called every parent on her roster, hoping to reassure them and bring in more students. Many of the calls were encouraging; Bridges figured that about 20 children would show up on the first day. But it was also clear that the center faced an uphill climb to recruit 40 children, the maximum number it can take during the pandemic.

Some parents told Bridges they weren’t convinced it was safe. One parent, an essential worker, said she wouldn’t bring her child back out of concern that her germs would be passed to other children at the center. Still others said they would wait until September, when they’d likely be able to see how reopening was going for K-12 schools.

LaShawn Bridges washes her hands at a newly installed sink at her child care center in Detroit.

A few days before the center was set to reopen, Bridges gathered her staff and asked them to share “roses, thorns, and rosebuds” — good things, bad things, and areas for growth.

“There were a lot more thorns than roses,” Gray recalled. She and others felt that the center was as well prepared as it could be, but there was no way to guarantee that the virus wouldn’t slip through the cracks. Older teachers expressed concerns about their health, while others wondered aloud if families would take the necessary steps to avoid bringing the virus with them into the classroom.

“We can do everything we can to be safe and to keep ourselves healthy, but we are putting ourselves at risk by opening ourselves up to these kids and to their families,” Gray added.

Finally, on Monday, Blessed Beginnings reopened. Just eleven students showed up. By Wednesday, 15 students showed up, giving Bridges hope that her numbers would continue to grow.

At the same time, though, the center had already sent children home for displaying symptoms of illness. One was sniffling, another seemed to be suffering from seasonal allergies, but Bridges couldn’t take a chance.

By Thursday afternoon, Bridges was beginning to feel that she and her students would get used to this strange new normal. It helped that 14 kids had shown up that day, and that she’d talked on the phone with a group of Detroit-based providers about the challenges of reopening.

“We got to vent, so that was helpful,” she said. “We talked about getting our legislators involved, wanting a seat at the table when they’re making up these policies. Hopefully a conversation can be had with the state about cutting our subsidies, and how it’s putting our businesses in jeopardy.”

Report: Keep school funding cuts away from Michigan’s vulnerable students

2020-06-23T10:30:41+00:00

Vulnerable children should be protected from any cuts to school funding if Michigan students are to have any chance at rebounding from the effects of the coronavirus, say the authors of a new report from the Education Trust-Midwest.

“If we do a flat, across-the-board cut, what we end up with is a system where cuts are inequitable because schools aren’t funded at the same level and they don’t serve the same kids,” said Brian Gutman, director of external relations for the education and research organization, which is based in Royal Oak.

The report, “A Marshall Plan: Reimagining Michigan Public Education,” was released Tuesday morning and outlines six recommendations for recovering from the pandemic and addressing opportunity and achievement gaps. (To read the full report, scroll down below).

There’s a lot at stake. Many Michigan students will enter the upcoming school year with learning losses due to the shutdown of school buildings and the shift to remote learning. Those losses are expected to hit particularly hard for students who were already behind academically. A successful return to the classroom will be important in Michigan, where leaders have been pushing to improve the state’s lackluster performance on a national exam.

But Michigan schools are facing historic cuts in funding as a result of the pandemic. The state shutdown of the economy caused steep drops in state revenue. Some projections have school leaders bracing for a potential cut in funding of nearly $700 per pupil.

While Michigan schools have benefited from $350 million in funding through the federal coronavirus relief bill Congress passed in March, advocates say that won’t be enough and are urging Congress to allocate more funding.

Gutman said he hopes Congress comes through and Michigan can avoid cuts altogether. But if there are cuts, he said Michigan officials should first ensure there will be no cuts to the money the state has traditionally set aside for vulnerable children (including “at-risk” funding and money for special education and English language learners).

In addition, he said, any cuts to the separate per-pupil allocation should not be made across the board, but done so that funding for vulnerable children is protected or cut less.

There have been calls recently for Michigan to adopt a funding system that provides more funding for the most vulnerable children, most notably as part of a 2018 report from the School Finance Research Collaborative, a group of education, policy, and business leaders pushing for a major change in school funding.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a spotlight on huge inequities and the lack of fairness in Michigan’s school funding approach,” said Robert McCann, the project director for the collaborative. “Lawmakers grappling with the possibility of school cuts amid this public health crisis need to heed the recommendations of the ... report during the pandemic and beyond so our kids don’t continue falling behind.”

Here are the other five recommendations in the report:

State leaders should ensure there is oversight and transparency of how schools are spending the federal coronavirus relief funds. Leaders should also ensure schools follow all guidelines for reporting public information.
State and district leaders must plan for extended learning opportunities for students, including summer school offered by all districts for all students for at least two to three summers.
For distance learning, schools must do more than ensure that students have devices and internet access. They also must ensure teachers are properly trained and supported, and families receive the right information to support their children learning at home.
Schools must ensure that students learning remotely receive socioemotional support, college and career counseling support, and access to other non-academic resources.
Schools must provide support to high school students transitioning to college. And the state should pick up the cost of college remedial classes for students who were in high school during the pandemic.

Page 1 of Education Trust Midwest a Marshall Plan Reimagining Michigan Public Education June 23 2020

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En Banc Order 18 1855 Documents (PDF)En Banc Order 18 1855 Documents (Text)

GOP lawmakers want judges to review Detroit literacy case

2020-05-13T22:13:09+00:00

Michigan’s Republican-led legislature is asking a federal court to reconsider its recent decision in the Detroit literacy lawsuit, calling it a “precedent-setting error of grave and exceptional public importance.”

A federal panel ruled last month that the state deprived Detroit students of a Constitutional right to basic literacy — the first time such a right has been established.

The main defendant in the case is Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who is under pressure from education activists to reach a settlement out of court. Detroit school leaders hope that a settlement might help the city district repair its crumbling school buildings or lead to changes in the way schools are funded statewide. Whitmer has not said whether she intends to settle the case.

Settlement negotiations are complicated by the coronavirus, which has blown a hole in Michigan’s overall budget and is expected to cause brutal cuts to the state’s education budget.

A settlement would close the case, eliminating the chance that the long-sought right to education will be overturned in the short run.

John Barsch, an attorney for the legislature, argued that the Sixth Circuit Court should review its decision in the literacy lawsuit Gary B. v. Whitmer et al, because of the “the financial implications of the panel’s decision to the State of Michigan—and the extraordinary breadth of the panel’s holding.”

State-appointed emergency managers controlled the Detroit school district for much of the last two decades. During that time, hundreds of city schools closed or fell into disrepair, and student test scores were among the worst in the nation.

The legislature argues that it has supported the district, pointing to a $617 million aid package that helped DPS avoid bankruptcy.

The legislature is calling for a rare “en banc” review of the case, in which all 28 Sixth Circuit judges take a second look at a decision made by three of their members.

The panel that ruled in favor of the Detroit students had three judges. The two who ruled in favor of the students were appointed by Democratic presidents. The full Sixth Circuit bench leans conservative, and observers have suggested that it would likely reverse the panel’s ruling.

On Tuesday, the Democrat-controlled state board of education voted to support the outcome of the lawsuit. The two Republicans on the board voted against that resolution, and they joined the state legislature in asking the Sixth Circuit to review the decision.

Read the legislature’s full request for review here:

Page 1 of Petition for en Banc Review

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It’s too soon to say whether the elimination of in-person instruction at the Academy points to a broader shift toward virtual education in Michigan in the wake of the pandemic.

Budget cuts are coming, but not all districts will follow Avondale’s lead, said Chris Wigent, executive director of the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators.

“That’s taking one situation and broad-brushing it,” he said. “I’ve talked to many superintendents, and there has not been a discussion of shifting any or all programs online.”

That may not be enough to reassure educators in a moment of historic uncertainty. On Tuesday, the governor in New York announced a partnership with the Gates Foundation to “reimagine” public education in the wake of the pandemic.

“All these physical classrooms — why, with all the technology you have?” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, announcing the partnership. (The Gates Foundation is a Chalkbeat funder.)

Virtual schooling has spread rapidly across Michigan over the last decade, even though just 55% of students enrolled online pass their classes, compared with an estimated 90% of all students statewide, according to Joe Friedhoff, vice president of Michigan Virtual, a state-funded online learning provider. For alternative programs the number is even lower: 44% of those students pass their online courses.

The Academy’s students are among the most vulnerable in the state. In addition to the academic or behavioral struggles that led many of them to enroll there in the first place, 83% are economically disadvantaged. More than half are people of color. Three-quarters missed more than 10 days of school last year. The Academy earned F’s last year from the state for student test scores.

Students in alternative programs are especially reliant on their relationships with their teachers for academic motivation and emotional support, said Deb Baughman, president of the Michigan Alternative Education Association. Across the state, alternative programs have been shifting to online learning; about half of them currently offer full-time virtual learning.

“That trend is motivated by financial considerations as opposed to what works best for the typical alternative student,” Baughman said.

Two years ago, her organization named Avondale Academy the alternative program of the year, pointing to the strength of its art program.

“I feel sad,” she said of the program’s shift online. “They were doing great things, and it will be much more challenging to reach their students if their instruction is primarily virtual.”

Justin Bryant, a sophomore at Avondale Academy, agrees. He’s never found much to like about school: Bullies seemed to target him, and he struggled to pick up concepts as quickly as the other students. Things were better at the Academy, he said, because he connected with his art and math teacher. His grades improved, and he’d begun to believe that he stood a chance of graduating high school. Now he’s not so sure.

“I feel like it might actually harm my chances of graduating, because I’ve never been good with online things,” he said.

Avondale officials acknowledged that finances played a key role in the decision.

Superintendent James Schwarz said that enrollment in the Academy has decreased in recent years, making it harder to pay teachers at the school.

“There are financial issues without a doubt,” he said. “We’ve got classrooms with five to eight kids to a teacher, and that’s something we can’t sustain financially.”

The budget shortfall is especially pressing as the coronavirus blows a hole in the state budget, he added: “There’s going to be a whole lot of hurt going on, with cuts, with loss of programs. We’ve gotta create something that we can move forward with, knowing those cuts are coming.”

Schwarz estimated that the district will save about $180,000 by contracting out the school’s academic services to a private company, Diploma & Careers Institute, which already runs a credit recovery program for Avondale students in danger of dropping out of high school.

Under Michigan law, DCI can enroll students online from across the state, bringing in additional funding for each one. Todd Biederwolf, chief academic officer of DCI and the former superintendent of the Harper Woods school district, argued that the online program will help students graduate while bringing in new revenue.

Research indicates that while online programs can help students graduate, it’s not clear that they teach students much.

‘Settle it.’ With the clock ticking, education advocates push Gov. Whitmer to end the Detroit literacy lawsuit

2020-05-05T21:46:18+00:00

The Constitutional right to education was in danger the moment it was established by a federal panel last month.

Whether that precedent survives — and what it means for Detroit students — is up to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Advocates and plaintiffs in the Detroit-based “right to read” lawsuit are pressuring Whitmer to settle the case quickly. They worry that their win and the precedent, long sought by education advocates, will be undone if Whitmer appeals it to a more conservative higher court.

But they hope that a settlement could make gains for Detroit students. Advocates say there’s a wide range of policies Whitmer could put in place to partially make up for problems that have long plagued Detroit schools — including shifting the state funding formula or creating a literacy fund for struggling Detroit schools.

“We have an opportunity right now to reset this and make it right,” said Arlyssa Heard, a parent organizer with the advocacy group 482Forward. “Think about all the harm that has been done.”

Heard says her two sons struggled in city schools with leaky roofs, outdated books, and a shortage of certified teachers. She moved them repeatedly, but found that many schools suffered from the same problems. “The bottom line was this: My son was not in an environment where he could learn,” she said.

The family’s experience is similar to ones described in the literacy lawsuit, Gary B. v. Whitmer, which argued that the state was responsible for the poor condition of the city’s schools.

Last week, Eric Clay, a federal judge on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled in favor of the seven students who brought the suit. “Education — at least in the minimum form discussed here — is essential to nearly every interaction between a citizen and her government,” he wrote.

Detroit schools are still badly underserving its students. Citywide, student scores on Michigan’s reading exam lag far behind the state average, though they made gains last year. The Detroit district’s literacy levels consistently rank below those of any other major city in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national exam considered the gold standard for measuring student learning.

Representatives of the plaintiffs, and Whitmer did not return requests for comment. Detroit district leaders urged Whitmer to settle the suit in a letter last week.

From the moment Whitmer was elected, the lawsuit put her in an awkward position. As a candidate, she had insisted that “every child in this state has a Constitutional right to literacy.” But as the state’s top official, she argued that the case should be thrown out because the state no longer controls Detroit schools. Another top Michigan Democrat, Attorney General Dana Nessel, declined to take part in the case, saying she sided with the students.

If Whitmer appealed the case now, though, the students’ victory could be overturned by a higher court. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to rule that education is a Constitutional right. The current court, with two appointees of President Donald Trump, is unlikely to rule in the Detroit students’ favor, said Mark Paige, an education law professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

The clock is ticking: Whitmer has only 90 days from the April 23 ruling to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, and 14 days from that date to ask the Sixth Circuit to undertake a rare review of Clay’s ruling.

Advocates have already begun to lay out a wish list. Angie Reyes, executive director of the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation, which has pushed Whitmer to settle the case, said the problems in the lawsuit hurt students across Michigan.

“There have been two or three generations where the schools have not met kids’ needs,” she said. “And it’s not just Detroit.”

Reyes hopes that a settlement might shift the state’s school funding formula, sending more money to schools whose students have greater needs connected to poverty, disability, or English proficiency.

She offered another idea: A “literacy fund” that would send money to schools that have failed to teach students to read. Parents and school staff would have a say in how the money was spent. A settlement reached in a similar lawsuit in California included a literacy fund.

Any settlement would be complicated by the economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus outbreak, which is projected to cost Michigan billions of dollars in revenue. The Republican-led state legislature would need to sign off on any major spending included in a settlement, an unlikely prospect as they work to cut the state budget.

But new spending might not be the only way to help schools.

“There are a variety of things that would represent a step forward for education conditions in the state that may not have a large price tag in the short run,” said David Arsen, professor of education policy at Michigan State University.

One example: The 2016 law that prevented the Detroit district from going bankrupt also limited the district’s ability to raise local tax money, a major problem for a school system whose buildings urgently need more than $500 million in repairs. A settlement could return the district’s full power to raise funds from Detroit residents, Arsen said.

A settlement could also breathe life back into a proposed citywide administrative body tasked with overseeing district and charter schools, Arsen said. That idea was initially included in the 2016 law but was removed at the urging of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who was an education activist and philanthropist at the time.

In an email, a spokesperson for the Detroit Public Schools Community District said that the district is advocating for a range of possible settlements, including: A commitment to equitable school funding, funding for literacy initiatives, facilities improvements, debt restructuring, elimination of the Financial Review Commission that oversees the district, bonding authority, and assurance that the state can no longer impose emergency management without the consent of voters in any district.

Reyes agreed that the city’s school system, which is composed of the city district and dozens of charter schools, could use an administrative overhaul.

“We want there to be some sort of oversight, and that both systems are meeting the needs of our children,” she said, referring to the district and charter schools.

More important, Reyes said, is that any settlement should address the root causes of the problems in Detroit schools.

“We want to be sure that it addresses some of these systemic issues, and that it’s not just a Band-Aid.”

Dyslexia just got its first mention in Michigan law. Will it make a difference for struggling readers?

2020-02-13T21:57:20+00:00

States across the country are taking steps to address dyslexia head on, betting that they can improve their literacy rates by tackling a reading disorder that affects roughly 1 in 5 students.

Michigan, not so much. Despite widespread concern over low reading scores — just 43% of students scored proficient in English last year — the state had no official policy on dyslexia.

That changed in December, when a single sentence mentioning dyslexia was quietly added to the state education budget.

But it’s far from clear whether the new policy will be enough to make a difference, given the limitations of the state’s special education system and a lack of training for teachers in effective approaches to teaching challenged readers like students with dyslexia.

Advocates are hoping that just mentioning dyslexia will provide a toehold to expand Michigan’s approach to a learning disorder whose impacts are felt in virtually every classroom. Children with dyslexia can learn to read sooner if they are exposed to appropriate instructional techniques.

“Michigan’s literacy crisis is well documented,” said Brian Gutman, director of external relations for Education Trust Midwest. “We know there are students sitting in classrooms across the state who are struggling to read because they have dyslexia, and in many cases they might not be aware, their teacher might not be aware. How can we expect them to be well served when we don’t understand their need?”

The new language added to the state budget requires that intermediate school districts use screening tests to identify potentially dyslexic students if the districts are already using a test capable of doing so.

Many are in fact using such a test. The state’s new third-grade reading law requires schools to choose from a state menu of tests to screen students for reading difficulties. Most of those tests can flag students for signs of dyslexia. (The tests can’t actually diagnose dyslexia; only a medical professional can do so.)

William Miller, director of the Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators, said that schools likely are already screening kids for dyslexia.

“If you’re giving assessments, why wouldn’t you use them?” he said. He added, “if someone has dyslexia, educators need to be aware of that.”

Gutman acknowledged that the new language is far from the comprehensive dyslexia policies that other states are adopting.

“Certainly in the future we need to make sure we see much more to make sure that students who have dyslexia are identified early, when it’s least expensive to address.”

Marcie Lipsitt, co-founder of the Michigan Alliance for Special Education, was skeptical.

“It will literally do nothing,” she said of the new language.

Roughly half of states require districts to identify students who might be dyslexic and inform teachers and parents. Others go further, requiring teachers to be trained specifically on working with dyslexic students.

But Lipsitt says that even a comprehensive system for identifying students with dyslexia wouldn’t make much difference given the limitations of Michigan’s teacher training and special education systems.

She said Michigan helps fewer students with reading disorders than do other states. Michigan’s special education system is underfunded by at least $700 million, according to a 2017 study commissioned by a former Republican lieutenant governor.

What’s more, teacher training programs in Michigan, like others across the country, aren’t doing enough to prepare educators to work with struggling readers, including dyslexic students. Only three out of 24 teacher prep programs statewide received an “A” rating for early literacy from the National Council on Teacher Quality, while eight were rated “F.”

Shannnon Shafer, a teacher in Pinckney Community Schools, trains other teachers in literacy instruction.

“The first thing they always say is, why didn’t I learn this in college?” Shafer said.

Safer says she would support a more comprehensive statewide dyslexia identification policy.

Amy Gulley, a dyslexia expert with the Institute for Multisensory Education who keeps tabs on state policies related to dyslexia, said just including the word “dyslexia” in Michigan law offers hope that the state will join what she called a national wave of reforms.

“It’s good that states are even talking about it,” she said. “Dyslexia is prevalent. These students are in our classrooms, and what are we going to do about it?”

With plan to pay off lunch debt, Whitmer seeks an end to lunch shaming in Michigan schools

2020-02-07T17:04:29+00:00

The stories pop up regularly across the nation: A student is denied lunch, or forced to eat a peanut butter sandwich, because of an unpaid school lunch debt.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wants to end that practice. She’s proposed creating a $1 million fund in Michigan that will pay off the lunch debt of students whose parents haven’t paid their bills. The proposal would also bar schools that receive money from this fund from stigmatizing students who have lunch debt.

It’s a small part of her education budget proposal, but it could go a long way toward ending what many describe as lunch shaming, as schools get tougher on students who have debt. Chalkbeat reported that a growing number of districts nationwide have established policies to end lunch shaming and that some states have passed legislation with the same goals.

Lunch shaming is getting greater scrutiny as stories about students who’ve been shamed, like an Alabama boy whose arm was stamped with the words, “I need lunch money,” gain widespread attention. It’s raised concerns about students being punished, and publicly criticized, because their parents haven’t paid their lunch bills.

State Sen. Jim Ananich, who introduced a bill in December called the Hunger-Free Student Bill of Rights, told the Associated Press that some schools require students to wear a wristband, perform tasks on behalf of the school, or accept a substandard meal if they can’t pay for their lunch. The language in his bill, which would end such practices, is similar to what Whitmer included in her proposal.

Just this week, an 8-year-old boy from Washington state made national news for raising more than $4,000 to pay off the lunch debt for students at his school and six other schools, according to CNN. The boy raised the money by selling keychains he had made.

There have been other stories. In October, MLive reported that several Applebee’s restaurants were holding fundraisers to donate a portion of their sales to pay off lunch debt. A foundation associated with Mitten Brewing did something similar months earlier.

Meanwhile, some school districts nationwide have attempted to address the lunch-shaming problem. But it came with some surprising results in at least one district. When Denver Public Schools announced in 2017 it would guarantee a full meal to all students, regardless of whether they had the money to pay, the amount of debt from unpaid lunches soared.

Whitmer’s proposal would allow schools that forgive student lunch debt to be reimbursed through the $1 million fund.

There will be some strings attached to the money, of course. Schools would be required to adopt policies “to prevent public identification or stigmatization of pupils who cannot pay for a school meal,” according to the language in Whitmer’s proposal.

Those policies would forbid:

Requiring students who can’t pay for a school meal or who owe a meal debt to wear a wristband or handstamp.
Requiring students who can’t pay for a school meal or who owe a student meal debt to perform work to pay for meals.
Requiring a student to dispose of a meal after it has been served because the student is unable to pay for the meal or owes a meal debt.
Communicating directly with a student about a debt, unless the district has not been able to contact the parent or legal guardian.
Discussing a student’s debt in front of other students.

Gov. Whitmer looks to bounce back from a tough budget battle with a funding boost for Michigan’s most vulnerable students

2020-02-06T19:09:02+00:00

Fresh off a bruising battle over boosting education funding, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is coming back with a plan to add more support for Michigan’s most vulnerable students — without adding a new tax.

Whitmer’s proposed investment in schools would be the largest in two decades. She framed it as a “first step” toward the major funding overhaul that education leaders have been demanding for years. Michigan has one of the nation’s largest funding gaps between low- and high-poverty districts.

The governor is asking lawmakers to increase base per pupil funding by between 1.8% and 2.8%, with larger increases going to districts with lower current funding levels. Her proposal would also increase special education funding by 4% and boost funding for students from low-income families by 11%, adding to an overall increase of 5% to the state’s nearly $16 billion education budget.

It’s far from clear that Whitmer’s ideas will get the traction needed to become law in the GOP-led state legislature, which largely ignored her last set of recommendations. Michigan governors traditionally kick off the state budgeting process by outlining their spending priorities, but the budget is ultimately shaped and passed by lawmakers.

Whitmer’s education proposal is smaller than last year’s, which assumed a massive influx of revenue from a proposed gasoline tax. Republican lawmakers, who control both chambers of the state legislature, shut down the tax and built their own budget, which included a 2% increase in state education spending.

“The revenue pie was expanding in the last budget” proposal, said Craig Thiel, research director for the Citizens Research Council, a nonpartisan think tank. “This time, there’s no tax increase.”

Last year, Whitmer proposed a $120 million boost to special education; the legislature agreed to add $60 million. This year, she’s pushing for $60 million. A proposed increase for at-risk students was scaled down, too, from $102 million last year to $60 million this year.

With no tax increase on the table, education advocates predicted that this proposal would be better received by Republican leaders than the last one, which was historically contentious.

“It seems like they’re listening, which is really good,” William Miller, executive director of the Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators, said of GOP leaders. “Last year’s budget process was really difficult, and I don’t see the same thing happening this year.”

Michigan’s education community has been building a case for a drastic overhaul of the state’s school funding system. Report after report has painted a troubling picture: Over the last 20 years, overall funding didn’t keep up with inflation, while test scores stagnated below the national average.

“While we cannot correct decades of underfunding overnight, particularly in the area of education, this budget builds on last year’s budget to provide additional funding,” Whitmer said in a statement.

Whitmer is counting on a projected 0.5% decrease in student enrollment statewide, which frees up money in the state budget. Chris Kolb, Whitmer’s budget director, said the budget proposal also relies on $178 million in cuts to “non-critical services” in various departments of state government.

State leaders remain divided over whether new revenue will be necessary to improve schools.

“Our education plan should recognize all children deserve an opportunity for success, no matter where they live or go to school,” said Rep. Shane Hernandez, the Republican chair of the House appropriations committee, in a statement. He added: “All of this can and should be done without asking Michigan taxpayers to pay more money.”

A study of the cost of education in Michigan concluded that meeting the needs of students would take a major new investment — $3 billion, by one estimate.

Gilda Jacobs, CEO of the Michigan League for Public Policy and a former Democratic state senator, said in a statement that the state is still struggling with the aftermath of business tax cuts passed in 2011 under former Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican.

“All roads lead back to revenue,” Jacobs said.

Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, applauded Whitmer’s proposals, but said in a tweet that he would wait for the legislature to weigh in.

Excited and encouraged by @GovWhitmer education budget. Moves us closer to equity but we will see how the Legislature responds. It’s time for voters, beyond Detroit, to hold elected officials accountable to equitable funding (equal funding would even be an upgrade).
— Nikolai Vitti (@Dr_Vitti) February 6, 2020

You can read more details on Whitmer’s budget proposal here. Some of its key elements include:

A shift to a weighted model of funding that sends additional money to students with the most need, such as English learners, students from low-income families, or students with special needs.
Up to $250 for each educator in the state to pay for classroom supplies that they often buy with their own money.
$42 million in new funding for free preschool for 4-year-olds from low-income families in areas with low literacy levels and high poverty rates.

How GM’s big $1 million donation will improve the reading skills of 500 Detroit students

2020-02-03T17:14:49+00:00

Big books used to intimidate Makayla Link. So did big words and big paragraphs.

But that was in ninth grade, when she was reading at the seventh-grade level. Today, as a senior, she has caught up — a feat she credits to Beyond Basics, a literacy program that on Monday got a big boost in funding.

General Motors has donated $1 million to the program, which provides intense tutoring to high school students in the Detroit Public Schools Community District.

It’s the largest single donation to the literacy effort. And it brings Beyond Basics to halfway toward its goal of raising $6 million this year. Overall, it helps meet a three-year, $33 million fundraising campaign goal.

The new cash comes during a time of crisis for the district and many other schools in the state and nation that are struggling with data showing large percentages of students aren’t reading well. In the district, just 28.5% of the students last year met college readiness standards in reading and writing. That compares with 55.4% statewide.

“This is a silent epidemic in America,” Pamela Good, president of Beyond Basics, said during a news conference Monday morning at Mumford High School. “It is killing the futures of our children. It is not just Detroit. It is Michigan and it’s across the nation.”

After benefitting from the program for more than a year at Mumford, Makayla found herself enjoying reading.

“It felt kind of weird, how I can read big books,” said Makayla, who is 17. “Big books used to scare me.”

For the Detroit district, the money is allowing 500 more students to benefit from the tutoring, up from 300.

Beyond Basics has 50 tutors in schools across the district. The goal is to expand that number to 300 over the next three years.

Donating to improve literacy is something every business in the city should be able to support, said Mark Reuss, the president of General Motors.

“No student should have to struggle with basic reading and writing,” Reuss said.

Detroit Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said the Beyond Basics program is a leader in the field of literacy and has shown strong results in getting students to grade-level reading.

“They’re not just working with students for the sake of working with children. They’re actually moving the needle,” Vitti said.

Sophomore Deont’E Mays, 16, said his reading skills were “not really good” when he entered the program, which helped build his confidence and improve his reading. Now, he wants to pay it forward and help tutor younger students.

“It’s a really nice program.”

Is Michigan’s big bet on third-grade reading too small to make a difference?

2020-01-29T18:49:53+00:00

Michigan is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to improve literacy as part of its tough new third-grade reading law.

But the architects of the law now say that’s not nearly enough money.

“I’ve come to that realization,” said Amanda Price, a former Republican state representative who was instrumental in passing the controversial law and remains one of its most prominent defenders.

Price’s concerns add to a longstanding criticism of the law: that the state isn’t investing enough money to actually improve student literacy.

Researchers agree that students who still struggle to decipher text in the third grade tend to continue to struggle through the rest of their K-12 careers and are less likely to graduate.

Michigan’s new law, called “read by grade three” by officials and “read or flunk” by others, was passed in 2016 in response to stagnant third-grade reading scores.

Amanda Price

The “flunk” part of the law — a requirement that schools hold back third-graders who fall too far behind in reading — has gotten the lion’s share of public attention. Critics say retention is emotionally damaging and that students from low-income families will be disproportionately affected. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, just announced that her administration will partner with philanthropies to help families apply for exemptions to the law.

Florida and New York City invested heavily in strengthening instruction for struggling readers when they passed their own third-grade reading policies. Both saw their scores improve. New York City used the money to put struggling readers in smaller classes and give them access to methods of instruction tailored to their needs.

But Michigan, where fewer than half of students are proficient in reading, has spent much less proportionally than those places on new literacy policies.

Over the last five years, Michigan spent roughly $192 million on policies targeting early literacy, from literacy coaches for teachers to summer school for struggling readers.

That may sound like a lot of money, but it only adds up to $89 per student per year divided among Michigan’s 430,000 students in grades K-3.

By contrast, Florida spends about $154 on early literacy per K-3 student per year, and it has a lower poverty rate for young children than Michigan.

“I think it’s enough to make a dent, but not enough to get us where we need to be,” Nell Duke, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies how children learn to read, said of the state’s spending on literacy.

A lack of funding has become an issue in other states experimenting with third-grade reading laws. Educators in Alabama have warned that the state’s law could become a “train wreck” when it goes into effect in two years, in part because the state hasn’t yet found funding for literacy-related teacher training.

Some aren’t convinced that it will take more money to help kids read. Beth DeShone, executive director of the conservative advocacy group the Great Lakes Education Project, said schools should be able to improve reading instruction without spending more money.

“We should be looking at systemic problems that get in the way of student learning, like ensuring current spending is focused on what really matters, ensuring our teachers are properly equipped in the classroom, and finding out why more of the current funding isn’t making it directly into the classroom to support teachers and students,” she said.

DeShone’s organization supports holding students back if they struggle to read — the most expensive part of the law in per pupil terms. Depending on how many students are retained — one estimate puts the number at between 2,000 and 5,000 — the cost could be between $16 and $40 million per year.

“If you’re talking about holding back two or three thousand kids, that’s $30 million that you could be using for evidence based interventions,” said Dean Elson, chief knowledge officer for Reading Partners, a national nonprofit that places reading tutors at schools.

To be sure, even critics of the law acknowledge that the threat of retaining students has put literacy on the front burner for state policymakers.

“The amount of sunlight that this law has placed on this subject is unheard of around any topic that I can remember,” said Adam Zemke, a former Democratic state representative who helped design the law but ultimately voted against it over concerns about retention.

“I definitely think the law has helped,” he added. “Is it sufficient in terms of funding? I don’t think it is.”

Duke has argued that the money spent on holding kids back would be better spent on evidence-based efforts to improve literacy.

For instance, Michigan has already spent $50.5 million on the literacy coaches, but Duke pointed to a study showing that this strategy is effective when there’s one coach for every 14 teachers.

“We are nowhere near a 1 to 14 coach-to-teacher ratio in the state,” she said.

For years, the state instructed districts to spend additional money on third-grade reading. With students set to be retained for the first time this year, districts may be diverting funds from other programs to help students avoid being retained.

Katharine Strunk, a professor at Michigan State University and who is studying the costs of the law, said school districts are likely “spending additional dollars to implement the law on things like literacy curricula, assessments, and services.”

In some cases, districts are going far beyond complying with the new law.

In Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit where 40% of students are English learners and 74% are economically disadvantaged, administrators began focusing on literacy before the law was passed in 2016. They used federal funds to build a “kindergarten catch-up” program, essentially hiring their own literacy coaches to focus on reading instruction in the early grades.

Dearborn, which has 21,000 students, isn’t expecting any to be held back under the third-grade reading law. Only 30 scored below the minimum score of 1253 last year, and they would all have qualified for various exemptions allowed in the law.

Jill Chochol, Dearborn schools’ executive director of student achievement, said new funding directly connected to the law is only playing a small role in the district’s efforts.

She added that those efforts didn’t come without other costs.

After spending more money on reading, “we have less money to put new roofs on, repair boilers, and update some of our buildings,” she said.

Editor’s note: Jan. 29, 2020: A previous version of this story included an enrollment count for the Dearborn district. It has 21,000 students.

Report: ‘Our children deserve better,’ starting with a dramatic increase in how Michigan funds its vulnerable students

2020-01-23T15:04:59+00:00

Michigan should dramatically increase funding for students from low-income homes by 100%, and provide a financial boost to property-poor school districts that struggle to keep up with their wealthier peers.

Those are two of the main recommendations made in a report released Thursday morning by The Education Trust-Midwest, a Royal Oak-based education research and advocacy organization.

The report adds to a growing discussion in Michigan about how to properly fund schools. Multiple major studies in the last few years have concluded that the state’s system is inadequate and inequitable. The findings haven’t led to major changes. Last year, lawmakers rejected Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s attempt to move toward a system that would pay schools more for students who are more costly to educate.

The report, which also recommends the state spend 75% to 100% more on students who are English language learners, says Michigan should learn from other states. In Georgia, for instance, schools receive 2.5 times more funding for students who are learning English.

“Our children deserve better,” Amber Arellano, executive director of the organization, said in a statement. “Our employers are demanding better. Other states are doing better.”

The report acknowledges that Michigan already provides some additional funding for needy students. For instance, the state spends 11.5% more on students from low-income backgrounds. But that additional money, which this year added up to $960 more per student, “is well below what is recommended by research,” the report says. There are a handful of key recommendations in the report. Michigan should:

Provide funding based on student needs. Currently schools receive a flat rate per pupil, with a small amount of additional money going to some populations.
Provide more money to less wealthy districts, which would help many urban and rural schools.
Ensure dollars are used well to improve student experiences and outcomes.
Be transparent about the system’s design and monitor the funding districts actually receive.
Provide transparent data on how much money is going to schools.

To read the full report, see below.

I witnessed the struggles of Detroit students. Now I want to chronicle their journeys.

2020-01-14T21:17:11+00:00

My student, a high school sophomore, was multiple reading levels behind. She needed a great deal of support.

She was kind, sweet, and quirky. She was obsessed with singer Ariana Grande. But she was also being bullied. I was a tutor, hired by an agency to work in a Detroit school. I had little training or experience working with youth, and I felt ill-equipped to truly help her.

The experience taught me a lesson. So much of the public discourse surrounding education in public schools focuses on what’s happening to students like the one I was tutoring. Too little time is spent asking them what they think about their circumstances.

But I want to ask those questions, and that’s why I’m thrilled to begin a new role at Chalkbeat Detroit. I’ll cover the Detroit school district and work to give a stronger voice to those who have the most at stake: students, teachers, and parents.

The time I spent tutoring and my new job have given me an opportunity to reflect back on my experiences. My education story took place miles away from where my pop-star-loving student grew up.

Eleanore Catolico, far right, with friends at a National Honor Society ceremony.

I attended an academically rigorous, parochial high school in suburban Detroit. My parents, who were immigrants from the Philippines, ingrained in me that academic achievement was the key to surviving in America. Each day in the classroom, I felt the pressure to outperform my peers.

When I was 15, I remember crying after I got a B on an essay in American literature, my favorite subject. I felt I had something to prove. I was burdened by academic stress throughout my college tenure.

Looking back, my student’s struggles mirrored mine as a teen girl. I was eccentric, shy, and also bullied. I had a difficult time making friends and battled low self-esteem. But my school provided me with the resources and critical support needed for me to overcome my personal obstacles. So many students in Detroit’s main school district don’t have those options.

I am joining the Chalkbeat Detroit team at a crucial point in the history of the Detroit Public Schools Community District. After nearly a decade under state-appointed emergency managers, Detroit’s main school district is in the midst of rebuilding. District leaders have overhauled the curriculum and showed improvements in the latest test scores. Superintendent Nikolai Vitti is pushing for equity in school funding and holding meetings in Detroit to address how to manage the district’s deteriorating buildings.

Michigan’s third-grade reading law is in full effect this year as districts rally to prepare students to pass the state’s standardized exam or else possibly be held back a year.

The outcomes of these efforts to improve urban education in Detroit could have long-standing, dramatic consequences.

I come to Chalkbeat Detroit with a strong background in working with community members to develop stories. Most recently, I was the civic reporter for 101.9 FM WDET, Detroit’s public radio station, covering city government.

I hope to produce stories that help Detroiters understand the impact of district policies on schools, teachers, students, and their families.

Most of all, I want students to tell me their stories. I want to document their struggles but also their stories of empowerment and resilience.

Schools are the lifeblood of neighborhoods. To improve our coverage, I hope to help our bureau chief Lori Higgins and reporter Koby Levin develop innovative and concrete ways to reach new readers, with a focus on broadening our audience to include students and parents. We don’t want them just to be the subjects of our stories, but participants that help shape our coverage. Chalkbeat Detroit is for these communities too, not just policymakers and experts.

This work only matters if you are there to guide us along the way.

Please reach out to me at ecatolico@chalkbeat.org or to the whole team at detroit.tips@chalkbeat.org. Our journalism is stronger when our stories are inclusive, diverse, and working toward influencing the local civic debate on urban education.

Education group wants Michigan to spend millions to create literacy equity fund

2019-12-18T23:54:46+00:00

A prominent group of education leaders wants the legislature to immediately allocate extra funding to schools with a higher percentage of poor students. It’s the first step in what the group says will be a comprehensive plan to reshape how Michigan pays for education.

The first set of recommendations from Launch Michigan, a nonpartisan lobbying group, calls for a system that “funds children based on their needs,” echoing the language of experts and politicians who have advocated an overhaul of the state’s 25-year-old method of funding schools that mostly doesn’t consider the needs of students, regardless of the challenges they face.

The group recommends that the state immediately create an equity fund that would support literacy instruction in districts with more students who live in poverty or attend geographically isolated schools.

The group’s eventual goal for the state: to reach the funding benchmarks set by the Michigan Finance Research Collaborative, a group of experts that proposed a sweeping overhaul last year to the funding system that could require a $3.6 billion investment.

As Launch Michigan begins work on transforming its ideas into more specific policy proposals, key questions are still unanswered.

“Where is the money coming from?” asked Craig Thiel, research director for the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a nonpartisan think tank.

The report acknowledges the need for additional school funding but doesn’t specify how that problem should be resolved. It comes in the wake of a fractious budget fight centered on whether the state should raise taxes to pay for education or road repairs. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s budget proposal would have made changes to the education budget that jibe with the Launch Michigan recommendations, but it was shot down by the Republican-controlled legislature.

Raising money for schools for next year’s budget could be equally difficult. The state still hasn’t figured out how to pay for badly needed road renovations, which is one of Whitmer’s top priorities.

“The equity fund is a fine idea; however, it is going to need funding, and we have already seen that the state legislature is unwilling to increase funding for schools in any meaningful way,” Michelle Miller-Adams, a senior researcher at the W.E. Upjohn Institute, wrote in an email.

Launch Michigan also calls for a number of changes to the state’s education policy, including:

An expanded school accountability system with escalating interventions for chronically failing schools.
A single school rating system that reconciles the existing school rankings with A-F letter grades approved by the legislature last year.
Additional higher-quality teacher training on literacy instruction.

Supporters of Launch Michigan hope that it is a broad enough coalition to convince legislators to give school policy a second look. The group’s 20 members include leaders from teachers’ unions, education groups, and business associations.

The recommendations are based in part on a survey of 17,000 teachers.

This is not the first group of policy heavyweights to push for changes to Michigan’s school system, which has faced stagnant funding and test scores for two decades. Numerous reports — 800 pages’ worth — have come to similar conclusions in recent years, arguing that the state needs to change its approach to school funding.

Chris Wigent, president of the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators and a member of Launch Michigan, is eager to push forward.

He joined the group because “number one, it’s to fundamentally change the way we fund schools,” he said.

Scroll down to read the full report.

Have concerns about your Detroit school building? Here’s a chance to share your story.

2019-12-17T23:47:35+00:00

Cold water the color of Earl Grey streamed through the ceiling of Virgil Mason’s 10th-grade English classroom. The teacher was apparently used to it: She caught the water in a garbage can and kept teaching.

Mason shared the story of what he calls the “great tea fall” at a Student Story Slam hosted this summer by Chalkbeat and 482Forward.

Here’s a chance to share yours. As the district seeks help to make badly needed repairs to its facilities, Chalkbeat would like to hear from you. How are conditions in your school building affecting students and teachers?

Please click here or scroll down to fill out the form.

Mason, now a student at the University of Michigan in Dearborn, said he doesn’t want any Detroit student “thinking that’s normal — debris, losing you books… mold.”

Yet school facilities problems are all too common across Detroit. District and charter schools operate in buildings that are often decades old and badly in need of repair. The bill for the district alone is projected at more than $500 million, an amount that is growing rapidly.

The district is developing a plan to cut costs and more efficiently use its school buildings, but it doesn’t have the money to make all the necessary repairs.

We hope to use some of your feedback in a story, but we won’t identify any respondents without asking them first.

Researchers: Detroit could become a national leader in pre-K

2019-12-12T22:09:35+00:00

As cities across the country expand their preschool offerings, Detroit is at the front of the pack.

A new report awarded the city a gold medal for a program that provides free, high-quality pre-K classes to 4-year-olds from low-income families. Only two other cities — Seattle and San Antonio — received a perfect 10 out of 10 from researchers at the National Institute of Early Education Research.

The ratings reflect the high standards of the Great Start Readiness Program, a statewide, state-funded system that has expanded over the last decade. Lead teachers in the program are required to have bachelor’s degrees; teacher-to-student ratios are among the best in the country; and providers are subject to a wide range of quality controls.

Crucially, the ratings also account for the number of students enrolled in the program. Researchers found that 42% of eligible 4-year-olds are enrolled in Detroit — a total of 4,200 kids.

That number is still too small. Other reports have highlighted the need for expanded access to early education in Detroit, where few students enter kindergarten ready to learn. Gaps in access are even larger for less rigorous childcare programs and programs for younger children.

Quality early childhood education has been shown to help prepare students for kindergarten, especially if they come from low-income families.

The report — the 2019 Assessment of City Pre-K Programs — looked at 40 large cities nationwide. In the last edition, Detroit only got a silver medal.

GG Weidenfeld, an assistant research professor at NIEER and Rutgers University, said the city’s rating improved because researchers got access to more accurate enrollment data.

“Last time it was much harder to collect data,” she said. “This round, there’s a lot more going on in Detroit.”

Mayor Mike Duggan recently reiterated his promise to expand the program to every child in Detroit. Weidenfeld said Duggan’s staff helped NIEER experts access more accurate data.

If Duggan is successful, Weisenfeld said Detroit would become a national model.

“Sometimes cities expand access without thinking about quality,” she said. “We’re excited to see what happens. We’re hoping Detroit becomes the next city to really tackle universal pre-K.”

Report: Detroit faces the most challenges to keeping kids in school. Schools can’t fix the problem alone.

2019-11-25T20:55:16+00:00

How bad is Detroit’s student chronic absenteeism problem? Wayne State University researchers have identified eight conditions — such as poverty, unemployment, and even cold temperatures — that are strongly correlated to chronic absence, and the city leads all other large metropolitan areas in having the worst outcomes for almost all of those conditions.

The findings come with a key takeaway the researchers hope will prompt action: Schools alone can’t solve the problem of getting students to school every day, said Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, an assistant professor in the college of education at Wayne State University. And, the findings come during a critical time as the Detroit school district invests heavily in a number of efforts designed to get students in school.

Citywide, across district and charter schools, about half of the students are chronically absent — meaning they’re missing 18 or more days during the school year.

Lenhoff said what’s needed is a more coordinated effort that brings together policymakers, school district officials, charter school officials, community organizations, and community members.

Without it, the work being done by schools is “unlikely to make the huge difference we need to make,” Lenhoff said.

There is already a community-wide effort, called Every School Day Counts Detroit, focused on improving attendance in the city. Lenhoff said that effort includes the Wayne State research team, school districts, and several community organizations, such as the Brightmoor Alliance, that are tackling attendance problems. But it needs more involvement from city officials and policymakers, she said.

Lenhoff is one of the four authors of the report, called “Detroit’s Uniquely Challenging Context For Student Attendance.” The others are lead author Jeremy Singer, Walter Cook, and Ben Pogodzinski. It’s a continuation of a series of research reports this year that examines issues related to education in the city, including attendance and mobility.

The researchers looked at a number of factors that could impact chronic absenteeism to come up with the eight identified as having a strong correlation:

Percentage of adults with asthma
Rate of violent crime per 1,000 residents
Residential vacancy rate
Unemployment rate
Poverty rate
Racial segregation
Population change from 1970-2010
Average monthly temperature

Adult asthma rates may seem like a strange factor, considering we’re talking about children. Lenhoff said there was limited data on child asthma rates across all of the communities studied. But the report notes that the adult asthma rates “may reflect the degree to which students are more or less prone to asthma themselves.”

They also looked at large metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more to see how Detroit ranks. The city ranked at the top for adults with asthma, violent crime, unemployment, poverty, residential vacancies, and population change. Detroit ranked second for segregation and third for average (cold) monthly temperature. Lenhoff said she didn’t expect the latter to be a factor.

“Students who walk or take public transportation to school may be particularly impacted by inclement weather, including extremely cold temperatures, snow, and rain, as research has shown that such conditions can create barriers to attendance,” the report said.

Meanwhile, the rate of residential vacancies is a factor because many of those vacant homes are abandoned and unsafe properties that students must walk by in order to get to school. Also, racial segregation, the report said, “may reflect a history of disinvestment and racial discrimination at the root of … barriers to attendance like poverty and blight.”

By far, the city also has the worst rates of chronic absenteeism among the 33 communities studied, with a rate of 47.80%. That is followed by Milwaukee with 38.20% rate and Philadelphia, with a 31.80% rate.

Chronic absenteeism in the Detroit school district is about 63%, down from 70% the year before. The district has pushed to place attendance agents in every school. Lenhoff said many charter schools also have high rates of chronic absenteeism.

Read the full report below:

This veteran educator and advocate will head a $50 million effort to educate Detroit’s youngest students

2019-11-20T21:15:15+00:00

Decades after Denise Smith ran a home-based child care center, she’s returning to Detroit to lead a project designed to transform the city’s education offerings for young children.

Smith was named the first director of Hope Starts Here, a $50 million effort to expand child care in Detroit and improve existing programs, a spokesman announced Wednesday.

“The fact that 28,000 Detroit children lack access to quality child care is just one measure of how far we have to go,” Smith said in a statement.

Backed by the Kresge and W.K. Kellogg Foundations, the Hope Starts Here initiative has focused in its first two years on supporting existing child care programs. (Both foundations fund Chalkbeat.)

Smith comes on board as the initiative breaks ground on a $15 million early childhood center at Marygrove College that will complement a new K-12 school on the same campus.

Smith spent the last decade leading various early childhood initiatives in Michigan, including:

Executive director of Flint Early Childhood Collaborative and Educare-Flint
Vice president for early childhood, Excellent Schools Detroit
Director of Great Start to Quality, the state’s child care rating system

She said her experiences as a parent and as a caregiver for her nine-year-old niece have convinced her of the importance of early education.

“Once you’ve seen the difference that having opportunity can make in the trajectory of a child’s life you know what’s possible,” she said in a statement. “Yes, it’s hard. But it can be done. Now we have the right pieces to take the limits off of children’s lives in Detroit, and we can do it early.’’

‘I just have to work hard for it.’ As Detroit students settle into their first semester of college, these programs provide needed support

2019-11-15T18:47:56+00:00

She’s scheduled office visits with her professor. She’s asked the teaching assistants for help. She’s dropped into the math learning centers.

But still, despite excelling in her other classes, Marqell McClendon has struggled in the low-level math class she’s taking during her first semester at Michigan State University.

“Sometimes when I’m in class and I’m learning, some things start to feel familiar from high school and I’m kind of like, ‘I learned this already but I don’t really understand it.’ And I don’t know why I don’t understand it because it looks familiar.”

So she’s finding help any way she can — watching educational videos online and, when the work seems impossible, approaching strangers in her dorm and asking them for help.

It’s an unfamiliar scene for McClendon, the valedictorian of her graduating class at Detroit’s Cody High School who’s used to students coming to her for help. Now, the tables are turned. She describes it as “bittersweet.”

Marqell is among a group of recent Detroit high school graduates Chalkbeat is following through their first year of college, for a series highlighting the complex dynamics that make it difficult for students from disadvantaged communities like Detroit to complete college.

The challenges students face — academic, financial, social — are why so many colleges have turned to programs that help ease the transition, from summer bridge programs that provide academic and social support during the summer between high school graduation and the beginning of college to similar programs that operate during the academic year.

The programs differ in structure, content, and length, but all reflect hope on the part of the colleges that giving first-generation students and underrepresented students extra support will pay off in terms of increased graduation rates.

Nationally, only 60% of students who enroll at four-year institutions earn a bachelor’s degree within six years. That is the average for all students — the six-year college graduation rate is much lower for black students (40%), Hispanic students (55%), and low-income students (49%).

Meanwhile, one study found that a third of students whose parents had no college experience dropped out after three years of school, compared to 26% of those whose parents had some college education and 14% of those whose parents had bachelor’s degrees. First-generation students are often at a disadvantage because their parents struggle to help them navigate college life.

Closer to home, nearly half of graduates from Detroit’s main district who make it to college must take remedial courses. For charter schools in the city, it ranges from 32% to 75%. Taking remedial classes comes with another set of challenges. It can be discouraging, particularly for students used to excelling in high school. But it can also be costly, given the students often are paying for classes that don’t count toward college graduation.

At MSU, McClendon is taking advantage of one such program that is geared toward students studying in the university’s College of Natural Science. Called the Charles Drew Science Scholars, it arms students – most of them from underrepresented communities – with intense academic advising, academic coaching, career advising, and a connection to a tight-knit community. At last count, 72% of the Drew students graduate from college in six years.

For McClendon, the Drew program has given her something she wouldn’t have gotten on her own: a small community of peers and adults she can turn to for help.

“They can actually cater to our individual needs,” McClendon said.

She may need it to get through her math class, which she must pass to get into the upper-level math she needs for her biomedical laboratory science major.

The first big test came when she took her midterm exam in mid-October. Walking out of the room that day, she wasn’t sure whether any of the work she’d put in would pay off in the final score.

This year, Chalkbeat reporters in Newark and Detroit are examining whether students from struggling schools are prepared for college — and whether colleges are prepared for them. Catch up on the Ready or Not series here.

***

Michigan State University freshman, Kashia Perkins, left, catches up with her “big sister” and MSU student, Kai Brown, on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019 on the MSU campus.

It was mid-afternoon on a drizzly Wednesday afternoon in Mount Pleasant, and inside Ronan Hall, the students in the first-year experience seminar class were peppering a couple of guest speakers with questions about loans and credit. But when the conversation turned too heavily toward credit cards, Marceil Davis interrupted.

“By and large, these are first-generation college students,” Davis, the teacher of the class, said from his seat in the back of the room, where he’d been observing while the guests spoke. “One of the worst things we can do, on top of loan debt, is to add credit card debt.”

It’s an important piece of advice, given that more than a third of college students report having credit card debt of $1,000 or more, according to a survey released earlier this year.

But in this class at Central Michigan University, the students are getting guidance from people like Davis, an academic advisor with a program at the university that is aimed at ensuring students like the ones in this class – either first-generation students or those from low-income families – can successfully navigate their freshman year.

“We’re Pathways,” Davis told the students. “We’re a little more up in your business. The reason we do this is to set you up for success.”

The Pathways to Academic Success program is funded by a state grant. Multiple other Michigan colleges run similar programs through the grant. At CMU, the program helps about 150 freshmen each year.

Demetrius Robinson, a recent graduate of the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy in Detroit, is one of them. He said being part of the program provides distinct advantages for students.

“You get that experience that a lot of other students miss out on,” said Robinson, whom everyone calls Meech. “They don’t have the academic support, the academic advisers that we have or the resources we have available to us. I can come in here any given day and go… to the Pathways office and sit and get any kind of help I need.”

Mary Henley, the director of Pathways to Academic Success, poses for a photograph inside her office on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019, at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant.

Mary Henley, director of the Pathways program, said it has four goals: helping students increase their grade point averages, advance their academic standing each year, increase their acceptance into their major, and graduate.

“Those sound like very simple goals,” Henley said. “But we get students on campus, they get through high school and they do really well and they come to college and it’s a culture shock. We are there to help students like Meech navigate. He was a superstar in high school and you come to college and all of a sudden you’re starting over.”

Robinson, an extrovert, is already making a name for himself. He cuts hair and helps students with fitness training, something he’s been doing for years thanks to his family’s fitness business. He’s become involved in campus organizations, and recently became certified as a campus volunteer through Pathways, which will allow him to lead or assist with campus tours for prospective students, as well as participate in panel discussions for those touring the campus.

But like any first-year student, Robinson has faced challenges. He can cite times when he’s struggled to meet his professors’ expectations.

“I do what’s asked, but when I get my papers back, sometimes it’s like, ‘Dang, I thought I did everything,’” he said. “I’ve come to this realization that … I’m putting out my best work … but it isn’t enough.”

He’s dealt with it by talking to his instructors. He’s found them receptive to providing feedback. They’ve told him how he can improve his grades. Now, he said, he has a road map to finishing the semester with strong grades. He hopes to end up with mostly As and Bs, but said a C is possible.

Central Michigan University freshmen, from left, Demetrius Robinson Jr., 18, Nic’Quan Webb, 18, and Keegen Williams, 18, complete worksheets during their first year experience class on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019 in Mount Pleasant.

That his professors have been willing to help is surprising to Robinson.

“These professors actually do care and they do try to help you. Not just me. They help all students in the class.”

Henley, the Pathways program director, understands the challenges her students are dealing with. She was one of them decades ago, when she arrived on the CMU campus as a freshman in 1979. She struggled not only as a black student coming from Flint to a predominantly white institution, but also as a first-generation student.

“I’m able to offer students who are coming here the way that I did a smoother path,” Henley said.

***

Lately, Kashia Perkins has been mulling a decision that could dramatically alter her future.

When she arrived as a freshman at Michigan State University in August, she was on a path toward a degree in human biology.

Now, she’s not so certain.

Her biggest concern? Whether an undergraduate degree will be enough to land her a good job.

“I definitely would need to go to medical school. I wasn’t sure if medical school was for me.”

Perkins raised the prospect of switching to MSU’s nursing program with Kai Brown on a recent afternoon. Brown, who like Perkins is from Detroit, is herself majoring in human biology and is planning to go to medical school to become a surgeon. She urged her younger classmate to think hard before making a big switch.

“I’ve been in that space where I considered nursing and not medical school as my route,” Brown said. “You have time to decide if that’s your idea of what you want to do with your life.”

The two became connected through a university program called Big Sister Little Sister, which pairs incoming freshmen with older students who can help guide them through their first year. Brown, who graduated from Detroit’s elite Cass Technical High School, is a senior at MSU.

For Kashia, it’s a reversal of roles. She’s used to being the big sister. The one setting the example. The one her younger siblings look up to.

Now, she’s the one looking up.

“I thought it would be nice to have somebody who has college experience who could mentor me,” Perkins said.

Brown wishes it was something she’d done as a freshman at MSU. She lived in the same building that held most of her classes, so she recalls feeling isolated — from the university as a whole, but also from the African-American community.

She and Perkins were only recently paired, so they’re still getting to know each other. Brown is mentoring two other freshmen. All three little sisters are majoring in science.

“It’s important to have a mentor, especially in college, and especially for someone who may be a first-generation student,” Brown said. “It’s not always easy trying to lead your own way. So, sometimes, you might need someone to lift you up when you need it.”

Perkins is involved in several other activities, including a dance team. She said being involved helps with time management, because the frequent responsibilities force her to keep track of the school work she needs to get done.

Like McClendon, her toughest class at MSU is a low-level math class. But Perkins reports doing well academically overall. She’s also enjoying being on her own for the first time.

“It’s helping me become more independent,” Perkins said.

And two weeks after that initial conversation with Brown about her major, things were starting to firm up for Kashia. She’s now decided to stick with the human biology major for now.

“This is what I’ve always wanted to do,” Perkins said. “I just have to work hard for it.”

***

Kashia Perkins, a freshman at Michigan State University, poses for a photograph on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019.

The Drew Scholars program at MSU began 40 years ago as part of an effort to increase the number of underrepresented students going into science fields. The program takes in about 75 students annually, with the main criteria being strong high school grade point averages and strong performance on the SAT and/or ACT, with particular attention paid to math scores.

Well over 90% of the students involved in the program return for their second year at MSU, officials say. While similar programs also report positive results, it’s hard to make sweeping statements about the effectiveness of such efforts at colleges and universities because they all take different approaches.

Jerry Caldwell, the director of the program, said math is emphasized because all of the degree programs in the College of Natural Science require at least a semester of calculus. Drew students are required to live in Rather Hall during their freshman year, with nearly all living on the same floor as the program offices.

The residential piece is a crucial part of Drew Scholars, Caldwell said. The goal, he said, is for students to become part of a community and to feel connected to students with similar academic interests.

“This is a place where students can get lost,” Caldwell said, referring to the large campus that enrolls nearly 40,000 students. “It’s very important that they have a connection to something or somebody. We’re here to help them navigate that environment.”

McClendon already has benefited from a key part of the program: a requirement that students meet with an academic adviser three times each semester during their first year. During her first session, McClendon confirmed her suspicions that it would take her five years, not four, to earn her degree.

“It made me realize it’s a lot of work I have to put in,” McClendon said. “But it kind of got me mentally prepared for what I should expect.”

Students also must take a seminar class during their freshman and sophomore years, taught by Caldwell. Among the key principles of the first-year class: professionalism, connecting with faculty, time management, the teaching and learning process, community connections, and health and wellness.

Students are assigned an older student as a mentor, and there are a number of activities that bring alums of the program as well as professionals to campus to share their experiences. That’s how McClendon connected with a woman, a physicist, she hopes can be a professional mentor.

“It’s important to get those connections early because I may run into someone that can actually give me, like, a glimpse of what I think I want to do in the future,” McClendon said.

Central Michigan University Academic Advisor, Marceil Davis, talks to students during the first year experience class he teaches.

She learned how beneficial the program could be by listening to Antoine Douglas, who the last two years was a college adviser at Cody and is now working toward a master’s degree at MSU. Douglas helped her get into the program, and on the day she moved into Rather in August, he looked back at how it influenced him, a first-generation student who came to college knowing little.

“I was that kid that moved in that day, six years ago, and I was like, ‘What the heck?’” Douglas recalled. “The Drew program got me together. It shows you how to be successful. I can sing their praises all the time, because they got me through.”

With experience from the program to draw upon, McClendon is learning to advocate for herself. That’s how she ended up approaching strangers for help with that difficult math class. One night in particular, she was at a point where she thought she was in danger of failing. She figured, “I don’t have anything to lose.”

So she walked up to a young man who was studying in the common area of her dorm. And she asked him to help.

“He actually sat there for about an hour and a half and he helped me do my math homework and he helped me study for a quiz,” McClendon said. “He even told me that if I ever need help, I can just come knock on his door. It’s just nice that you can just run into people that are so willing to help you.”

Later, when she took her midterm exam, McClendon earned a B. But that’s still not good enough for someone who in high school was used to earning all A’s.

“That mindset kind of makes things better for me. It just makes me work a little bit harder.”

This story is part of a partnership with Detroit Public Television. It was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

Despite another last-place finish, Detroit fourth graders make big math gains on rigorous national exam

2019-10-30T04:02:50+00:00

The nation’s education report card finally contains a sliver of good news for Detroit.

Fourth-graders in the city district scored significantly higher this year on the math section of a rigorous national progress exam than they did in 2017, the last time the test was administered.

But the city’s schools still have a long way to go: Compared to other urban school systems, the district once again ranks dead last.

“It’s great to see that there was an uptick,” said Amber Arellano, executive director of EdTrust Midwest, an education research and advocacy group. “That’s cause for what I would call a sober celebration.”

Education leaders took the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress as a sign that improved teacher pay and new curriculums are beginning to pay off for the district, which is still recovering from a near-bankruptcy and a state takeover.

“With only one year of implementation, our fourth-graders quickly showed that they were ready and able to tackle at-grade-level curriculum,” said Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, who was hired to run the district in 2017, adding: “Our work here is just beginning.”

The scores alone don’t prove that Vitti’s reforms caused fourth-grade math scores to improve. NAEP results can be affected by economic trends, changing demographics, and other forces unrelated to education.

Still, Vitti pointed to the district’s promising performance on the most recent Michigan exam as further evidence that a turnaround is underway.

The district’s performance on the NAEP stayed flat or improved in virtually every category. Fourth-grade math scores improved by 6 points, a change researchers said was statistically significant. Fourth-grade reading scores saw no significant change, but in another bright spot, reading scores for fourth-grade English learners increased by 14 points.

“It’s not easy to move NAEP scores by 6 points in two years,” said Peggy Carr, associate director of NAEP. “Take a look at what they’re doing in math and see if there’s any way to extrapolate what’s going on [to other subjects and grades].”

Reading and math scores for eighth-graders remained flat, even as reading scores fell in 13 other cities. But there’s no question that the test scores are a good sign for the district. The last time the test was administered, the math scores dropped significantly.

“These are the greatest gains that Detroit has seen since it started taking the assessment,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council for Great City Schools, in a statement released by the district. “In addition, Detroit held its own at the 8th-grade level while the nation was going down. Detroit’s gains show real promise for the city school district and its kids.”

The NAEP, which is funded by the federal government, is considered one of the most rigorous exams in the U.S. Unlike most state exams, there are no consequences attached to the results, meaning there is no incentive for schools to teach to the test.

The tests were administered between January and March of this year. They were entirely digital for the first time, so the scores were reported roughly six months quicker than usual.

Since 2003, NAEP has compared scores from large school districts where most students are people of color or qualify for federal lunch subsidies.

Detroit has ranked at the bottom of the list every year since it began participating in the city rankings in 2009. That ranking doesn’t include charter or private school students in the city.

Detroit’s low rank is unsurprising given the district’s fraught history: declining enrollment, near-bankruptcy, and years of state control.

Detroit’s child poverty rate — 55% — compounds those challenges. Researchers consistently find that poverty correlates with lower test scores. The urban districts that consistently top NAEP’s rankings typically have lower child poverty rates than Detroit.

Still, there is no reason to think that Detroit can’t close the gap that separates it from other large cities with high poverty rates. Places like Duval County, Florida, where Vitti was formerly superintendent, regularly outperform big city averages.

“We are properly acknowledging our improvement but not celebrating it because our children deserve so much more,” Vitti said.

Here’s how Detroit ranked among urban districts on the four tests:

Want to help children dealing with trauma? Listen to them.

2019-10-25T01:29:50+00:00

The audience had just heard two wrenching tales of Detroit children dealing with childhood trauma: a 9-year-old boy who witnessed his father kill his mother, and a 14-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by an aunt’s friend.

And afterward, during a panel discussion on the stage of a theater at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Detroit school counselor Quan Neloms made a sobering point: Those tales were not surprising.

“We deal with stories like that every year. We find ways to instruct those students, to help them to achieve,” said Neloms, a counselor at Bow Elementary-Middle School. Neloms recently transitioned from teaching to counseling in part because he’s dealt so often with children struggling with trauma and understands its impact on the classroom.

A recurring theme among the experts who spoke during the NBC News Learn event Thursday was this: Children dealing with trauma need help, but they also need adults to hear them.

“We need to learn to listen,” said Jason Wilson, founder and CEO of The Yunion, a Detroit nonprofit that services children and families. He said what children need most is to be able to “express themselves without condemnation.”

Issues related to childhood trauma, chronic absenteeism, teacher morale, and lack of opportunities took center stage during a wide-ranging discussion about education. Much of the event was centered on education in Detroit, though the audience also heard from people like Terry Dangerfield, the superintendent of the Lincoln Park Public Schools District in Wayne County.

That district, the audience learned, has sought to train staff to better meet the needs of students dealing with trauma through its Resilient Schools Project.

“We were missing the boat,” Dangersaid of the district before it began investing in addressing trauma. “There are humans … we were failing to meet their needs.”

A significant number of the children served in the early childhood centers run by Starfish Family Services are dealing with trauma, said Starfish CEO Ann Kalass.

“It’s really about creating an environment that is compassionate, understands what trauma is, that recognizes it and can respond to it. It’s a journey,” she said.

Earlier this year, Chalkbeat wrote about a program at one of those early childhood centers that uses an approach called reflective supervision. The method has been used in the mental health field to help therapists and clinicians work with their supervisors to process their feelings about the difficult situations they see in their work, and at the Starfish center, it helps staff deal with the trauma their students face.

During a panel discussion about chronic absenteeism, the audience learned that more than half of the children in the city meet the definition of chronically absent, meaning they’ve missed 18 days in a typical school year. It’s a problem both district and charter schools are dealing with.

Rev. Larry Simmons, who heads up the Brightmoor Alliance and is part of the Every School Day Counts initiative, said students who are frequently absent are less likely to graduate on time and more likely to get into trouble.

He said the problem needs to be addressed from a young age, when children are in preschool. Several people on the panel made the point that the entire community must be invested in improving attendance, from school staff to parents to community groups.

“You can’t do it without us,” Simmons said.

The Detroit school district has seen a decline in its rate of chronically absent students. During the 2017-18 school year, it was 70%. It declined to 62% during the last school year.

Ines de Jesus, senior fellow at Attendance Works, attributed the decline to the work that has been done since the 2017 arrival of Superintendent Nikolai Vitti. He’s invested in ensuring that every school has an attendance agent and positions, such as deans of culture, that are designed to improve the climate in schools.

“It takes everyone coming together to move the needle on attendance,” de Jesus said. “I see that movement.”

Detroiters woke up before 3 a.m. to insist on a constitutional right to literacy. Will judges agree?

2019-10-24T21:14:05+00:00

They came by bus and plane to a small courtroom in Cincinnati, most hoping a three-judge panel would do something big: rule that access to literacy through better schools is a fundamental right protected by the U.S. Constitution.

But though two of the judges, both appointed by Democratic presidents, appeared sympathetic, one asked the question that worries Michigan leaders: “How much would it cost to fix the Detroit schools?”

“What do you want us to do in that regard?” asked Judge Eric Clay of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, almost perplexed. “Where would the money come from?”

Advocates for Detroit’s public school students want Clay and two fellow judges to overturn a U.S. District Court decision that dismissed the case brought by civil rights attorneys on behalf of several former and current Detroit students.

Plaintiffs argue that Michigan, which controlled the Detroit district for years, allowed it to deteriorate so badly that there weren’t enough books, teachers, or furniture, creating an atmosphere where learning to read was nearly impossible.

Putting a dollar sign on any sweeping remedy, argued plaintiff attorney Carter Phillips, was premature. The case hadn’t even gotten to trial before U.S. District Judge Stephen J. Murphy III dismissed it and its argument that access to literacy was a fundamental right.

“Grant them that right and there will be many hours devoted to what that remedy is,” Phillips said. He said the best remedy could be crafted later, after the case proceeds through additional phases.

The exchange was one of several in the lightning-fast question-and-answer hour, during which the three judges peppered Phillips and Ray Howd, the attorney representing the state of Michigan.

How the judges rule could have a sweeping impact not only in Detroit but nationwide. Though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on similar cases over the years, it has specifically avoided a definitive ruling on whether citizens have a constitution-protected right to an education.

The Detroit case has drawn nationwide attention from scholars, activists, and economists who see the case’s potential to expand the universe of rights.

Advocates for the students were cautiously optimistic following the hearing.

“We were really pleased with the questions from the three judges,” said Mark Rosenbaum, one of the civil rights attorneys who brought the case against the state of Michigan and the state board of education.

The case has drawn national and local attention, with more than 100 people traveling in two buses from Detroit to the hearing. They left for Cincinnati at 3 a.m. and carried signs outside the courtroom reading “Keep Open and Rebuild Our Schools.”

For all that was at stake – an emotional debate about educational equity, race, and state control of a minority district – the arguments inside the courthouse lasted just one hour and were well-mannered and academic.

The appeal will be decided by two judges appointed by Democratic presidents and one by a Republican, following Murphy’s dismissal of the case last year. He was appointed by former President George W. Bush.

The lawsuit claims the state grossly underfunded Detroit schools — that they were schools “in name only.” Murphy was sympathetic to the arguments but dismissed the case, ruling there is no constitutional right to literacy, citing educational cases that went to the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1970s and ’80s.

Rosenbaum and the plaintiffs hope that subsequent legal cases, including the one from 2015 that legalized same-sex marriages, would expand the court’s view of education as a fundamental right and return the case to Murphy for a possible trial.

Of all the cases he has seen, Rosenbaum said the Detroit case, and the conditions in the Detroit schools, was the “most egregious” in the nation. They found that some classes had just five books for 28 students, chairs for 37 in classes of over 50, and not enough teachers, forcing students to watch movies or educate themselves.

As Phillips, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, told the three-judge panel, “you had eighth graders teaching eighth graders” in the district.

“When you hear the arguments on both sides it just reminds you how the school district was deteriorated and how many children were lost in the process, from an educational point of view, from a literacy point of view, from a civil rights point of view,” said Detroit schools superintendent Nikolai Vitti, who attended the hearing.

Vitti said the district is improving and some of the conditions have been remedied since the lawsuit was filed in 2016. Students have textbooks, teacher pay has improved and fewer subs are leading classes. But much work has to be done. The district needs an estimated $500 million in repairs to its buildings – money it does not have, Vitti said.

“We just have to get this right moving forward,” Vitti said.

Hearing the case were Clay, appointed by President Clinton, a Democrat; Jane Branstetter Stranch, appointed by President Obama, a Democrat; and Eric Murphy, who joined the bench this year after Republican President Trump appointed him.

The judges peppered the lawyers with questions, asking how this case differed from prior ones in a timed format where each side got just 15 minutes to speak. Attorneys for the students and the state both came in for hard questions.

After Howd, an assistant Michigan attorney general, pointed out that the state didn’t always control the Detroit schools and that it no longer does following a 2016 restructuring, Judge Stranch pointedly disagreed with his reasoning.

Stranch told Howd she was “struggling” to understand his argument that this district’s ills from years ago were no longer its responsibility. “They (the state) enabled that activity to go on,” she said.

And after Howd alluded to the impact that poverty can have on learning during an exchange identifying who was to blame for poor performance, Stranch interjected that those students from disadvantaged backgrounds were the ones who most need adequate support.

The exchanges with Stranch pleased Rosenbaum and his team.

“She got it right,” he said.

But it’s hard to speculate how an appellate court will rule based on oral arguments, because they had difficult questions for all sides.

Howd did not comment afterward and the Michigan Attorney General’s Office said it does not comment on pending litigation.

Should the plaintiffs prevail, it could open the door to similar suits across the country. Murphy, the Trump appointee, asked Phillips whether the question was already “settled” by a Texas case from 1973 that upheld that state’s laws on school funding that lead to disparate funding.

Phillips said it did not and pointed to a new vein of legal thought expanded by the same-sex marriage case: that by denying the right to marry, the government was “stigmatizing” same-sex couples.

By not providing the necessary environment that would allow students to become literate, the government was doing the same to them, Phillips said.

“We are saying you are now stigmatized for all time … because you were not put into a position to read,” Phillips said.

Afterward, one of the plaintiffs felt relief as he stood on the steps of the federal courthouse in Cincinnati.

Jamarria Hall, 19, graduated from Osborn High School, one of the four schools that existed in deplorable conditions, according to the lawsuit. He came to the courthouse after flying from Florida, where he’s attending college, and taking a bus from Detroit.

Hall finished second in his class at Osborn High School and had the best SAT score in his class, he said. But that wasn’t good enough to get into the colleges he wanted and when he got to Tallahassee Community College, he had to take remedial classes “for things I should have learned in third or fourth grade,” he said.

“I know it’s not my fault,” he said. “It was the system I was in.”

Mike Wilkinson is a reporter with Bridge Magazine.