EAA (U[date: John Covington Chancellor, Education Achievement Authority)

Critics of the EAA are relying on outright falsehoods

   If you want to know why so many Detroit schools have been allowed to fail for so long, look no further than the heated efforts by some politicians and their allies to kill the Education Achievement Authority of Michigan (EAA) an innovative new approach to education in Detroit that is showing promising results.

   The most dishonest part about their campaign is their use of misrepresentation and, in some cases, outright fabrications, to make their case, even after they have been informed that they are wrong.

   For instance, in his column in the Free Press last week, state Sen. Bert Johnson continues to repeat the complete falsehood that the EAA received $12 million in loans from the “cash-strapped Detroit public Schools.”

   What the EAA did was go to the Michigan Finance Authority (MFA) to borrow $12 million through the MFA’s State Aid Note Program. Every year, the MFA arranges loans totaling $600 million to $700 million for some 250 school districts all over the state to help them work through cash flow issues. This was one of those routine loans to help us work through a cash flow issue. If the loans are a sign of a lack of “leadership and fiscal competence,” as Johnson says, then is the same true of the other 250 school districts that availed themselves of the program?

   Not a dime of DPS funds was involved. The loans were routed through DPS because the EAA is not codified in state law as a school district. It was a pass-through.

   In fact, DPS was paid processing fees of more than $168,000 just to process the loans, which are being repaid on schedule with deductions from EAA state school aid funds. The fact that these naysayers have attempted to turn this normal transaction done to make sure children received a quality education into a negative is ridiculous.

   Equally false was John-son’s assertion that “a dozen Teach for America members walked off the job” at Pershing High School. That never happened. But he and others continue to put that out.

   He pooh-poohed the fact that five months into the school year, 22% of students made more than a year’s progress in math and 27% advanced in reading. The point of the statistics, of course, is that students who have been consistently failed by their old school are now showing real progress in a short time.

   Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who visits schools all over America, visited an EAA school recently and liked what he found there.

   The EAA has replaced the old “one-size-fits-all” model of education with a new student-centered approach that works with each student individually. Students now advanced when they display mastery of a subject. They do not advance just because they have sat in a seat for nine months.

   If these critics have ideas for improving what we are doing in the EAA, we are eager to hear those ideas. If they want to offer creative ideas for building on what is happening, we are all ears.

   But we are not about to shut down the EAA and go back to the old model that has failed these children for years, no matter how many falsehoods the critics may spread. Our children deserve better than that.

   John Covington Chancellor, Education Achievement Authority