DFER Michigan
Michigan now has a dedicated voice for education reform
Education in Michigan is failing.
In recent reports, including December's National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Michigan's education performance is declining to new lows.
We are at a crossroads in Michigan and now is the time to act.
Systematic reform and innovative approaches are the essential ingredients towards solving this state's most serious issue.
Michigan Democrats for Education Reform recognizes that a unified effort is required to provide Michigan families with better opportunities for quality public education, while improving the state's chances of winning up to $400 million dollars in "Race to the Top" federal funding.
Join us in our effort to put political posturing aside and fight for our children's future in Michigan.
From Our Blog
It's The Teacher!
January 6, 2012
By Harrison Blackmond, DFER Michigan State Director
My views about education are, like many others, informed by my own experiences. Born the son of a black sharecropper in rural Alabama near the end of WWII, I attended segregated schools for most of my early years of education, including the first three. And, my teachers in Alabama were all black, all female. The remainder of my primary and secondary schooling was in low income, mostly black communities in Cincinnati, Ohio. All of my teachers in Cincinnati were white and mostly female. I had both good and bad educational experiences in Alabama and Ohio. The one thing these experiences had in common was that those experiences, both good and bad, were determined by the quality of teachers I had. No surprise there.
What is surprising is that the good teachers I had overcame all the "social and economic disabilities" a student like me brought to class with him. My parents were typical of most black families: uneducated or under-educated. My father had no education and could not read or write. My mother had a fifth or sixth grade education. So she could read and write, but knew little about how urban education systems worked. We were very poor, living on the largess of the landowners where we lived in Alabama and on welfare most of the time in Cincinnati. I worked at school and after school from seventh grade on. My experience was not atypical. Most of my classmates had similar stories. Some of us succeeded against great odds. The ones who did succeed educationally did so because there were teachers along the way who encouraged, inspired, and demanded our best.
Not only did the good teachers know their pedagogy and subject matter, it was clear they cared about whether we learned or not. Our social and economic circumstances did not matter. They expected us to learn in spite of our circumstances. No parental involvement, no problem; students on welfare, no problem. Good, dedicated, and highly qualified professional teachers can successfully educate children regardless of their circumstances. I've seen it happen first hand. The problem is, good, dedicated, and highly qualified professional teachers are few and far between. But that need not be. We can identify teachers and future teachers with those qualities and provide incentives for them to teach in schools in distressed communities. (See DFER's Ticket to Teach proposal.)
Charter school expansion must include quality requirements
December 12, 2011
(From The Grand Rapids Press, December 10th, 2011)
By Harrison Blackmond and Amber Arellano
As the Michigan Legislature prepares to vote on sweeping education legislation that will remake public education in Michigan -- especially in its poor neighborhoods -- we call on our state leaders to make one central question their guiding light in their vote: What is best for our students, especially our disadvantaged students?
That question is at the heart of our organizations. It also should be the driving question in policymakers' decision-making on whether to support lifting Michigan's charter school cap without the addition of thoughtful language that will ensure any expansion of schools would be an expansion of quality charter schools.
Our organizations are agnostic about school governance. Indeed, we strongly support the expansion of high-quality school choices for Michigan students, especially African-American, Latino and poor children. Too many of them are tragically underserved by both charter schools and traditional public schools.
In fact, research shows overall, Michigan's charter school and traditional public school achievement mirror one another: some schools are terrific; many more are mediocre to bad; and some are abysmal. After 17 years of state policy that has given little consideration to quality, it's clear charter school expansion alone will not improve our state's education system -- or close our achievement gap. We need quality charter expansion.
Some charter school advocates say this legislation is a civil rights issue. We agree. As a state, Michigan has failed consistently to provide high-performing schools to our poor students and children of color. That's our fault, the adults of Michigan, not the fault of students. Other states demonstrate that low-income children can and do perform at dramatically higher levels when adults educate them at dramatically higher levels.
With Our Kids' Futures at Stake, ALL Michigan Public Schools Should be Held to High Standards
December 2, 2011
Better charter school oversight needed
October 19, 2011
DFER Michigan State Director, Harrison Blackmond, weighs in on charter school legislation in Michigan
September 29, 2011
• University charter school authorizers would no longer be held to an authorizing cap of 150 charter schools;• Community colleges would be allowed to authorize charter schools outside their geographic boundaries;• Charter schools could be developed in districts that have had a graduation rate of 75% for the last three school years;• Charter schools would be exempt from property taxes;• Charter schools would not be required to abide by a district's collective bargaining agreement.
I had hoped that the Senate would consider legislation that would not only remove the cap on university authorized charter schools, but would put in place safeguards so that no child becomes the victim of a failed charter school experiment. I had hoped that the Senate would put in place strong accountability provisions that would require that authorizers issue charters only to those operators who have a solid track record of educating the kinds of students they will attract or those who can demonstrate that their education approach is grounded in sound research and stands a strong likelihood of successfully educating children. No child should be subjected to unsound, untried and unproven educational approaches and methods.
It is not enough that authorizers say they will close bad schools after three to five years. What happens to those children during those years and after the school is closed? What affect will those three to five years of inadequate or nonexistent education have on hundreds, if not thousands of children? Who will be held accountable for the decision to authorize a charter for such schools? What are the consequences?
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