EAA (Update: Mackinac Policy Conference 2013)

Nearly $60M raised to help Detroit students

ROCHELLE RILEY

   MACKINAC ISLAND — The Michigan Education Excellence Foundation announced Thursday that it had raised $59.7 million of its $100-million goal and garnered two $10-million challenge grants that not only will fund the Educational Achievement Authority school system, but will pay for community college scholarships for every Detroit child who graduatesthis year.

   “It’s about the kids. That’s the way we need to start this. It’s about helping these kids grow,” said Gov. Rick Snyder, who said he made multiple visits to EAA schools. “This is a big deal, changing the lives of those kids.”

   Snyder also announced $10-million challenge grants from the Bloomberg and the Eli Broad foundations.

   A crowd of education, government and philanthropic supporters cheered the funding success and the idea that the EAA, the system of schools designed to help students in failing schools catch up to their peers, could become the vehicle for wholesale change in the way Detroit educates children and trains future workers.

   And the district could become a catalyst for what Excellent Schools Detroit President Dan Varner termed co-opetition, a blend of cooperation and competition.

   He said the city’s portfolio system of schools requires three things to improve: a common enrollment system, a common data system with apples-to-apples comparisons of performance no matter where a child goes to school, and common professional development, which could be developed by businesses years faster than varied school officials and unions.

   The biggest difference in the EAA and other schools is that it eliminates grade levels and instead teaches children based on their learning levels.

   “Movement is based on mastery not on the amount of time you sit in a seat,” said EAA Chancellor John Coving-ton.

   At the beginning of the school year, 18% of the EAA’s students entered the district proficient in reading (at their old grade level based on MEAP tests). As of two days ago, Covington said, 56% of the EAA’s students, for instance, demonstrated growth and improvement in reading, some as much as two years.

   Steve Hamp, former vice president and chief of staff of Ford and chairman of the board of the New Economy Initiative, who helped announce the funding news, said this pilot will work because of scale.

   “This really is the first time I’ve seen an educational architecture that can deal with the kind of incredibly difficult circumstances and remediation challenges that these children have,” he said.

   The education excellence foundation will support three efforts: the EAA, the Detroit Scholarship Fund and Excellent Schools Detroit.

   The EAA, a controversial model that has been used in other cities in need of major education reform, is the latest effort to improve learning for Detroit children who have been in a failing, declining system for at least 30 years.

   It sparked controversy when announced as a repository for the state’s failing schools because it acquired only 15 schools — all from the Detroit Public Schools, the state’s largest district.

   But the district is expected to be temporary, and perhaps a guidepost to change how all schools operate.

   “True school reform takes time,” said Carol Goss, president of the Skillman Foundation and chairwoman of the EAA board. “But within the first two years, we fully expect to begin to see very strong indicators of progress.

   “At one school, the principal reports that 60% of the children (who came from) grades kindergarten, first and second grade did not recognize any letters of the alphabet or recognize the numbers one through 10 at the beginning of the school year. Don’t we all have a responsibility to try to change this trajectory? We are doing this. We have to do this. This presents the best opportunity to change and improve educational outcomes for all of our children and by doing that improve their lives.”

   Contact Rochelle Riley: rriley99@freepress.com  

Beneficiaries of the Michigan Education Excellence Foundation funds

   • The 15-school Educational Achievement Authority, which teaches children by learning level rather than grade.

   • The Detroit Scholarship Fund, which will guarantee any Detroit student graduating from a Detroit school in 2013 a two-year scholarship to one of five community colleges in southeast Michigan.

   • Excellent Schools Detroit, a coalition of education, government, community and philanthropic leaders that is rating all Detroit schools and is working to assure that 90% of children graduate high school, 90% of children go to college, and 90% become prepared for career training without remediation.