Convened by a set of foundation partners, Excellent Schools Detroit is a broad and diverse cross section of Detroit’s education, government, community, parent, and philanthropic leaders who are united in their commitment to ensure that all Detroit children receive the great education they deserve. We have developed a citywide education plan, which recommends bold steps so that every Detroit child is in an excellent school.
Who is participating? Partners include the City of Detroit, Cornerstone Schools, Detroit Edison Public School Academy, Detroit Public Schools, the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Kellogg Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the McGregor Fund, Michigan Future, Inc., New Detroit, New Urban Learning, The Skillman Foundation, Think Detroit PAL, the United Way for Southeastern Michigan, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Our citywide plan reflects months of discussions and deliberations by coalition members, as well as a series of six community meetings in November and December, youth focus groups, small group discussions with multiple stakeholders, and other outreach efforts. It is also is based on years of research about successful practices in districts such as New York, Boston, Chicago, Charlotte, and other cities whose reform strategies have been documented by extensive research, including the annual Broad Prize for Urban Education.
What are the goals of the partnership? By 2020, Detroit will be the first major U.S. city in which 90 percent of students graduate from high school, 90 percent enroll in college or a quality postsecondary training program, and 90 percent of enrollees are prepared to succeed without needing remediation. For students to compete in the 21st century, quality education beyond high school is the new norm.
Some think these goals are too ambitious, others think that we need to move more quickly. The reality is that when we reach these goals, we will have improved education faster than any other city in the country.
How will you accomplish these goals? We believe every student should be able to attend an excellent school. We have constructed a set of strategies to get us there faster than any other urban area. For example:
- Create high standards for all city schools and pre-K programs by creating an independent Citywide Standards and Accountability Commission to shine the spotlight on high-quality programs and call out low-quality ones.
- Publish easy-to-read annual report cards to help parents become “smarter school shoppers” and help all citizens hold programs accountable for results.
- Help coordinate and speed the opening of 40 new schools by 2015 and 70 new schools by 2020.
- Keep the heat on DPS, charter authorizers, and independent school trustees to make way for better school programs by closing failing ones.
- Give our students access to the best school leaders and teachers in the city, region, and country through an ambitious recruitment and development campaign.
- Build public support for making the mayor accountable for Detroit Public Schools. DPS needs unified authority to take the tough steps required to save the city’s largest school system from losing more students.
- Strengthen city-school-community partnerships that support children, through “community schools” that stay open evenings and weekends and offer health clinics, mental health services, counseling services, adult literacy, and other programs that support children and their families.
Are you dealing only with Detroit Public Schools? No. The plan addresses the needs of all school children in Detroit, whether they choose DPS, one of the more than 70 public charter schools, or the many independent schools now operating in the city.
What about parents? Our top priority is to make sure parents have good information about the quality of the schools -- so that they can be smarter and more demanding shoppers. Good information is just the first step. We’ll also be expanding our investments in groups such as the Detroit Parent Network, PTAs, and Local School Community Organizations (LSCOs) to help give parents the tools and the confidence to use information like this to help their children succeed.
What’s different about this plan? Detroit has had a lot of school reform plans, but this one is different in at least four ways.
First, there is a real desire for dramatic changes. The status quo has never been more indefensible. People understand that our students will be competing in a much faster-paced, technology-driven global economy, which puts a premium on high-level knowledge and skills. Low-skill, high-wage jobs are gone for good, and our schools must catch up with this new reality. There are many signs that Detroit is ready to act and rally around a common-sense set of ideas that can truly create more opportunities for children.
Second, this is the first plan that focuses on all the city’s schools, not just those run by DPS. Instead of trying to micromanage reforms within DPS, we’re actively nurturing the expansion of many quality options -- including inside DPS. Our focus is on students, not institutions. Every school should provide a quality education, period -- no matter whether that school is overseen by an emergency financial manager, mayor, school board, state agency, charter authorizer, or independent school board of trustees.
Third, we don’t have to start from scratch. Great schools here in Detroit and across the country are preparing all of their students for success in college and on the job. What we don’t have yet is an example of a city that’s created a critical mass of such schools so that every child is guaranteed a quality choice. We can be that city.
Fourth and finally, we’ll have to build the public support and political will to do some difficult things, including closing failing schools. That’s why our Excellent Schools Detroit coalition intends to stay together, expand, and push for all the needed changes. We can and will do a lot of this work on our own, like opening new schools. In other cases, we’ve pledged to work together to keep the pressure on policymakers and political leaders to do the right thing for children, such as having zero tolerance for persistently failing schools.
What will it cost? We project that implementing our recommendations will cost $200 million over the next 10 years. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the $1.5 billion spent every year on the city’s schools … and well within the collective budgets of coalition members.
How are you defining a “new school?” Our emphasis is not on facilities, but on what happens inside the building with the school program. For us, a “new school” is defined as a new school program, which consists of effective teaching and learning, a culture of high expectations, a strong and new leadership team, a new, rigorous academic curriculum, and a laser-like approach to student success.
Some of the new schools we are proposing might be in new buildings, such as those now being built by Detroit Public Schools with the 2009 school bond money or the private resources raised for new facilities by charters like Plymouth Educational Center, Henry Ford Learning Institute, University Prep, or Detroit Edison Public School Academy. Others will be located in existing buildings, replacing school programs that will be closed because of consistently low performance. In some cases, several new schools might occupy the same building, such as the nine new small schools that have been created within the Cody and Osborn High School buildings.
What is the mayor's role? We believe that the mayor should hold DPS accountable for improving its performance and be given the authority to get that done. We believe making the mayor accountable for DPS will provide the leadership and stability that has been missing. We know what doesn’t work: when authority is divided between the superintendent and school board and when the state takes control. It’s time for a third way.
Is this plan designed to undermine DPS and bring in a lot of new charters? Our focus is on students, not institutions. We want every school, no matter who runs it, to serve its students well. This plan is designed to foster excellence and not tolerate failure. DPS, like every other school operator, has every chance to improve its schools. The Emergency Financial Manager has made it very clear that DPS intends to compete very strongly to attract more students and families. But we also are not putting all of our eggs in one basket. We believe fostering the opening of new schools -- whether they are DPS or charter or independent -- is a faster way to get us to our goal.
How will this plan help the city? Great schools benefit the city in many ways. Families want to live in communities with excellent schools. Companies want to locate in communities with excellent schools.
Ensuring that every child is in an excellent school is a moral imperative … for them and for us. It’s also an economic necessity. High school graduates earn thousands of dollars a year more than dropouts and even having some college experience adds thousands of dollars more in annual earnings -- money that can help support a family and contribute to the local economy. According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, if the Detroit metro area had cut the dropout rate for the class of 2008 in half, we would have:
- $145 million in increased earnings
- $98 million more spending and $36 million more investing
- $417 million more home sales and $11 million more auto sales
These estimated benefits come just from a single class in a single year. Consider the huge multiplier effect when we decrease dropouts by this much over many years.
The gains go far beyond dollars and cents. Adults with more education are more likely to have a job, stay out of prison, head a two-parent family, own their own home, vote, volunteer, pay taxes, and be in good health. That’s the future we want for all of us.
What should parents expect to see from this plan? They’ll know that their child will graduate from high school and go on to college or a quality career training program without needing remediation. In many cases, existing schools will be strengthened. Schools that cannot be significantly improved will be closed to make way for the new, high-quality schools that will be run by the best school leaders and teachers in the city and country. That way, parents and students will have a lot more quality choices. Parents will get easy-to-read annual reports that help them make better choices -- pointing out very clearly which schools are succeeding and which are struggling. They’ll get more help to use information like this to become “smarter shoppers” and more demanding school partners. They’ll see the worst programs closed. In many areas of the city, they’ll also see their local school become the center of neighborhood life -- open evenings and weekends to provide services from health clinics to adult literacy classes.
What should teachers expect to see? Teachers say that more than anything they want to be working in schools run by skilled school leaders. We’ll be mounting a major campaign to make sure the best school leaders in the city, region, and country are working in our schools. We want to make sure that every school in the city is run by a leader who knows how to motivate and inspire, organize useful professional development, conduct fair and constructive evaluations, and create collaborative environments in which teachers are treated as professionals.
Teachers also will be working in schools that have more freedom to establish their own programs and schedules, provided they are accountable for gains in student learning. That means fewer rules and less red tape from central office. And they’ll know they can count on more non-academic support from city agencies, community organizations, and businesses -- from doctors to social workers to mentors.
What will students see? They’ll have to work harder. But by being prepared for college and careers, they’ll have a real chance at a successful future. They’ll be much more likely to find a program that’s relevant to them -- whether it’s traditional college-prep or something more specific like the arts or “green jobs,” or health and medicine. And they’ll be in schools that are much more likely to have great principals and great teachers.
How will the community have a voice about its schools if the DPS School Board is disbanded? Having many different factions fighting for control means no one’s in control. And we get the kinds of schools we’ve gotten, which has been a disaster for most students. So we need to find a better way. Having a single point of accountability for DPS -- the mayor -- will create more accountability, not less. As an elected official, the mayor is accountable to the public. With few exceptions, every city in which the mayor is accountable for schools has seen student achievement rise. Plus, parents have the ultimate voice by choosing the school to which they will send their child.
What will you use as the yardstick to define a failing school? Who decides this? Who makes the decision to close schools? The citywide Standards and Accountability Commission will develop the specific measures and publish annual report cards on each school and pre-K program. They’ll be looking at everything from reading and math test scores to graduation and college-ready rates, attendance and safety rates, student and parent satisfaction levels, and other measures of quality. Then, the Coalition and others will use “the bully pulpit” and other tools to put the heat on school authorizers to close chronically failing programs; those authorizers include DPS or the mayor, charter authorizers, and trustees at independent schools.
Will you involve parents in the decisions to close schools? How? Closing school programs, even if they’re failing, is a very difficult and emotional issue. We recognize that and will continue to get extensive input from parents every step of the way. Just by “voting with their feet,” parents play a huge role in determining which schools thrive and which have to close. And in many cases, when schools close, they’ll be replaced by one or more better academic programs in the same building. Closing a school won’t always mean closing the building.
The reform plan will cost $200 million. It may be a drop in the bucket, but we are already in a tough financial situation. Where will you find the money? Detroit spends about $1.5 billion on its public schools (DPS and public charter) every year, and it is currently making decisions about how to allocate spending in smarter ways. And collectively, the coalition’s four local foundations contribute millions more to the city’s schools. They strongly support this plan and will be making specific investment recommendations to their boards as we move into the implementation phase. We’ll also bring in additional investments from around the country. One of our goals is to make Detroit the center of educational excellence and innovation in the country -- the city where high-quality national partners want to be.
Who will lead this effort? A top immediate priority of our coalition, Excellent Schools Detroit, will be to create a formal organization, with its own board, which in turn will recruit an executive director. In the interim, the leadership of this coalition will continue to drive the work.
How will you measure your own progress toward achieving reform goals? The community will not have to wait until 2020 to see real progress.
By the end of 2010, we will have:
- Created a Standards and Accountability Commission to set citywide goals for every school and help parents make better choices for their children.
- Expanded Excellent Schools Detroit to advocate for the sweeping changes recommended by this plan.
- Secured commitments from national foundations and leadership organizations to come to Detroit.
- Initiated a citywide “community schools” effort to provide more non-academic supports to students.
By 2015, we will have:
- Published our 4th annual report card to help parents choose the best school for their child.
- Opened 40 new high-quality school options.
- Closed or replaced at least half the failing school programs in the city by pressuring DPS, charter authorizers, and independent school boards to act.
- Attracted and developed enough high-quality school leaders to open the new schools and turn around the failing ones.
Within the next few months, Excellent Schools Detroit will develop a more detailed set of actions and investments, which will include more specific timelines. We will hold ourselves accountable for meeting these goals and the community should as well.
Who will be on the Standards and Accountability Commission? Will members be elected or appointed? Defining the composition and exact role of this commission will be an early priority for the next phase of our work.
What can I do? The first step is to learn more -- about the current situation in Detroit’s schools and why we are committed to such bold and sweeping changes. This Web site has some information and more will be added in the future. We also will be developing more specific ways for parents and citizens to help going forward. Find out about these by signing up for action alerts on the home page of this Web site. And look for volunteer opportunities such as joining the DPS Reading Corps or contacting the Detroit Parent Network to join their efforts.
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