EAA (Update: The Broad Point of View)

Detroit Free Press Local commentary

Giving Michigan’s children a path to success begins with education authority

By Eli and Edythe Broad

   Education is the single greatest factor in a child’s chance to achieve their full potential.

   We both attended Detroit Public Schools, and we credit our education as the foundation of our success. At Eli’s alma mater, we endowed Michigan State University’s business and graduate school, and we have invested millions in Detroit Public Schools, funding teacher recruitment and training.

   We were heartbroken and outraged when we learned that the worst 5% of high schools in Michigan in recent years were failing 90% of their students. Fewer than 10% of students in those schools could read proficiently, and none was proficient in math. How can Michigan recover from its crippling economic setbacks if it doesn’t have a homegrown educated work force?

   We are proud to have joined with local foundations like Kellogg, Kresge and Skillman and Gov. Rick Snyder to support the creation of the Education Achievement Authority, a new statewide system of schools charged with dramatically transforming the state’s lowest performing districts.

   The EAA opened in September with more than 10,000 students attending 15 public schools in Detroit. The academic baseline was staggering. Only 2% of students were proficient in math — none in the sixth grade — and only 18% were proficient in reading. Ninety-five percent of students are low-income; 99% are students of color.

   In the EAA, students attend a 7.5-hour school day, 210 days a year — compared with six hours and 180 days in the typical Michigan public school. That extension alone equates to an additional six years of schooling for a student who starts in kindergarten. Each student has received a tablet computer and learns at his or her own pace. .

   In five months, 22% of students have made more than a year of academic growth in math and 27% have advanced a year in reading.

   These successful results should not be limited to only Detroit schools. We support the smart expansion of the EAA when it has the capacity to add schools statewide that are failing the majority of their students.

   There is a battle brewing in Lansing, with legislators debating whether to make this new system of schools permanent. The only question that should be asked is: What is best for students?

   Legislators will further weigh whether to provide these schools with the same level of funding that neighboring public schools receive. It is unconscionable that students attending an EAA school should be shortchanged even a dollar. Every student deserves an equal chance to learn and to receive the same resources.

   Over the course of the debate, legislators may become sidetracked by issues such as the motives of foundations like ours. We are motivated by only one goal: to provide an equal opportunity for every child in Michigan — regardless of family income or background — to receive a world-class education. And we want to ensure that public schools remain public.

   There are powerful interests that want to cling to the longstanding school system. But legislators must ask how well that system served students. We are lifelong Democrats, but when it comes to educating our children, our leaders must be party blind.

   We hope our resources can serve as a catalyst to jump-start the conversation, to demonstrate that success is possible, and to fight for the students who have been abandoned by a broken bureaucracy.

   We cannot sit idly by and watch another generation of students shuffle through a failing system and drop out or graduate without the skills to land a solid middle class job, without the critical thinking skills to be informed voters. Our children deserve better.

   Eli and Edythe Broad are founders of the Broad Foundations. Eli Broad is founder of KB Home and SunAmerica.

Eli Broad

Edythe Broad