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DPS enlists private firms to overhaul 17 high schools

Ohanian Comment: Interesting to see Edison listed as "having a proven track record of raising student achievement." Plenty of cities would disagree.

However, Detroit is in such dire straits one has to think they must try some extreme policies. This is a school district in collapse sitting in a city in collapse. I wonder if they're going to do anything about all the burnt-out shells of buildings that fill the city.

Marisa Schultz

Detroit -- Declaring an "academic emergency," Detroit Public Schools emergency financial manager Robert Bobb today announced the hiring of four private education firms that will immediately help overhaul 17 failing high schools.

The outstate firms have a proven track record of raising student achievement, Bobb said, and they will be held accountable if they don't improve the test scores and academic culture at the schools. District officials touted the overhaul as the largest of its kind in the nation.

"We have not been making the grade," Bobb said at a press conference at Central High School, where a student was shot in the hallways less than five months ago. "The 20,000 students at these 17 schools have, to this point, not been placed in an environment to be successful."

Calling the 11th grade Michigan Merit Exam test scores for the 17 high schools "abysmal" and "shameful," Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Bobb's chief academic and accountability officer, said swift action is needed to ensure all children can succeed.

The educational organizations overseeing the restructuring are New York-based Edison Learning, Cincinnati-based Ed Works [Their website doesn't work for revealing their backers.], New York-based Institute for Achievement and Washington-based Model Secondary Schools Project (The Model Secondary Schools Project was initiated with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 for the development of eight small high schools in eight urban school districts across the country. Their website is hard to decipher.). They were hired under multiyear and "several-million-dollar" contracts, funded with the $20 million in federal stimulus money DPS set aside for restructuring efforts, Bobb said.

The schools that will be targeted for the fall are Central, Crockett, Henry Ford, King, Western, Cooley, Denby, Finney, Kettering, Mumford, Southeastern, Pershing, Detroit Tech, Southwestern, Cody, Northwestern and Osborn.

All have new principals, but it's unclear which teachers at those schools will stay, an issue that will be addressed with the Detroit Federation of Teachers, Bobb said.

"If we are going to hold individuals (principals) accountable for the results in their buildings, they should have the authority to choose the people who come to work with them in these buildings," Bobb said.

— Marisa Schultz
Detroit News
2009-07-10
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090710/SCHOOLS/907100430/DPS-enlists-private-firms-to-overhaul-17-highs-schools

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