Detroit Free Press: Determined student defies the odds

In the national disaster of failing urban schools, Alecia McWilliams is at Ground Zero.
And she is amazing. More than a survivor, she is a remarkable success in circumstances that breed failure. She did not disappear from the school system, as so many children like her do. She persevered as she was shuttled between relatives and foster homes and more than 10 schools in 12 years.

And now, a month from graduating as valedictorian of an east-side charter school, Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences High School, she must be heard. Her experience, her commitment, can be building blocks for others.

"I remember specifically a friend of the family telling me: I don't know how you're going to make it without your mother," Alecia told me. "You're going to be pregnant at 16, you're going to drop out of school, you ain't going to do nothing with yourself."

What a message to give a child. But Alecia didn't crumble. "I could hear that in my ear the whole time. It matured me, and it motivated me to say, 'OK, I'm going to show you different. One day I'm going to have you speechless.' "

Alecia was 9 when her mother died from drugs and complications of HIV. Her father remains in her life but has struggled with his own demons.

So Alecia, now 18, found her self shuttled between temporary foster homes and a parade of aunts, uncles and grandparents. In fact, she tracks her life less in years than by the schools she has attended.

How easily Alecia's name could have been added to vast rolls of dropouts in Detroit, as her three older sisters were. But she kept going, pushed by her faith, her teachers and an aunt named Gwen.

"Life has not broken her," said Jill Thomas-Bowens, Alecia's English teacher. "A student like Alecia, all she needs is a chance and a few champions."

Her struggle will not end on graduation day, June 16. While Alecia carries a 3.95 GPA, her ACT score was just 17, and Thomas-Bowens worries about her needing to seek extra help in college and finding mentors.

She also needs enough of a financial aid package to cover tuition at Michigan State University, Wayne State University or Olivet College. She has been accepted at all three, but counselors have had to scramble to resolve a glitch in her assistance forms.

Faith will not let Alecia fret.

"I know I'm going to college," she said.

"Before my grandmother died, she taught me to believe in goals, God and the 91st Psalm," she said, referring to a Bible passage about faith. "It's not that I'm the smartest; I just have a goal, and I have God on my side."

There's a word for young people like Alecia: resilient.

They are the girls and boys who come to school already skilled at survival. Imagine the fortitude it takes for a child from a struggling environment to keep showing up, despite family histories of failure and friends who find it acceptable to quit.

Too bad most schools aren't equipped to leverage that raw skill set or to recognize how a hard home life doesn't steal or twist all the strengths of a child.

"If you just have somebody to listen to you, it makes you keep going," Alecia said.

Teachers have the desire to reach out, but few have the flexibility to take their eye off the demands of the classroom long enough to go deep with one child. But there are more Alecias out there, more building blocks for the younger children behind them.

They should be honored -- and they could be trained as citywide, on-site school leaders and mentors. They can be enlisted to help people who care retake a failing school system.

Sounds big, maybe even impossible. But don't tell Alecia McWilliams about daunting odds. Let her tell you how to beat them.

NICHOLE M. CHRISTIAN is an editorial writer. Contact her at 313-222-6456 or nchristian@freepress.com.

Detroit Free Press editorial: Should Michigan raise the compulsory school age from 16 to 18?

The real question is why are students leaving school before graduation? Although
I believe that as a community it is our responsibility to compel children to
attend school until graduation or at least to the age of 18, forcing attendance
without supporting the students' education and growth by attending to individual
challenges is a waste of time and educational dollars, and fosters frustration
in the student as well as the teachers. Knowing why a student needs to leave or
wants to leave gives us the groundwork to serve that student properly and
encourage success after high school.

Kathryn Bedikian, 44, Wyandotte, nurse-midwife, U-M Women's Hospital, and Wyandotte school board member

I agree that we should value education so much in Michigan that the dropout age should be raised to 18. However, before I would vote for this change, I would want to see how the state would pay for this. School districts are already pinching every penny. Trying to keep a 16-year-old in traditional school is futile and costly. There would need to be an alternative setting for these students so they could continue their education.

Patricia Kolodziejski Kilby, 55, Rochester Hills, teacher

Schools must offer different curriculums for different students. Some brilliant
kids quit at 16 because they are bored and others could stay until they are 25
and never get it. Readin', writin' and 'rithmatic are the basics needed to
function in our society; however, all kids need to get training to get a job.
Schools must offer something for all kids.

Bill Belcher, 67, Farmington Hills, mortgage loan officer

Keeping kids in school is a valiant goal, but if it means tolerating the
atrocious behavior of a virtual prisoner, it just isn't worth it. Every defiant
student poisons a classroom. Let them go their own way, and they'll often come
back to school anyway, more cooperative this time.

Daniel Propson, 29, Detroit, high school English teacher

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Detroit Free Press: Detroit ready to turn a new page

Changes aim to improve each classroom
BY CONNIE K. CALLOWAY • May 4, 2008

This is an exciting time for Detroit Public Schools.

Over the next weeks and months, educators, community leaders, teachers, staff and parents will review data to work on new educational designs to enhance rigor, relevance and relationships for our students. With the strong support of foundations and agencies, including the Skillman Foundation and United Way, we plan to have one campus ready to go for the upcoming school year.

There is a growing discussion across Detroit surrounding community-wide awareness and ownership of the need to create data-driven educational models that assure that our children will succeed academically and graduate with skills that will support the future growth and vitality of our city and region.

All of our principals now have complete reports on their schools' academic, demographic, student conduct, enrollment and graduation data. We've also created a glossary of terms to assure that all participants can use the Language of Achievement.

As an example, the data report for one of the schools we are reviewing indicates it is a high school that did not make annual yearly progress in English/Language Arts or mathematics. Its AYP history from 2004-05 to present shows that it has moved from Phase 2 to Phase 4, and its Michigan School Report Card history shows that this school has received a "D-Alert" grade in each of the three past years.

A more rigorous curriculum means increasing the level of challenge in our academic standards. Academic rigor incorporates competitive proficiency levels in language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, the arts and technology required for success beyond high school. Relevance is to better address the need of the employment market, to better prepare DPS graduates to enter the workforce at skill levels needed to move our city and state forward. Building sustained positive relationships between students and educators is key to increasing the graduation rate, maintaining student engagement, and course completion.

Our actions will significantly move Detroit Public Schools toward the AAA Schools model, where everyone is held accountable, is expected to add value, which will result in increased academic achievement for our students, thus positively impacting the communities we serve. This paradigm shift filters every school function through the lens of effective instruction, what is best for each child.

Models in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Providence and elsewhere are working and give hope for this initiative. Gov. Jennifer Granholm's proposal for smaller high schools, which aims to reduce the dropout rate and requires partners in the process, creates an opportunity for Detroit to step forward to submit multiple proposals for this funding.

Remember, the heart of instruction is what takes place in the classrooms of this district.

Teaching and learning are the most important business of DPS. Please take care of the children; they are our investment in our future.

CONNIE CALLOWAY is superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools. Write to her in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226 or at oped@freepress.com.

Detroit Free Press editorial: Graduate to solutions

Stop treating dismal graduation rates like a hot potato; all involved need to bite into the challenge
The children deserve better. The taxpayers are entitled to more. Society needs dramatically improved results. Everybody agrees this situation cannot continue.

And so the problem of staggering high school dropout rates, acute in Detroit but not exclusive to the city, can no longer be passed around like a game of hot potato. It's time for all the stakeholders -- and who isn't? -- to take a bite. Otherwise, we will continue to spend money without solving problems that just cost more money, because kids who quit school are the most likely to have children they can't afford and to end up in prison.

Think of Detroit Public Schools as a $1.3-billion enterprise and ask yourself: What enterprise would tolerate the utter failure of 22 of its 27 divisions, and for how long, without an urgent overhaul? Yet students in 22 of Detroit's 27 high schools are failing to meet minimum state benchmarks for progress. Three-quarters of the students who start high school don't finish.
And it has been going on for a long time. The social costs are beyond computing. There's no point anymore in trying to figure out who's responsible for DPS sliding into this mess. What's needed are urgent resolve and engagement. Michigan cannot afford thousands of undereducated, unskilled people in its largest city. The children entering the DPS system deserve to be on a track to productive citizenship.

The sound of change can be heard, at least, in DPS Superintendent Connie Calloway's candor about the district's failings and her call for smaller, themed high schools to replace the chronic failures.

But Calloway needs parental involvement, staff support and community allies.

Many potential allies met late last month at a two-day dropout-prevention summit cosponsored by the America's Promise Alliance, the organization founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, which chose Detroit to kick off a series of 50 summits nationwide on dropout prevention.
Summits aren't a solution, but they can explore policy initiatives for schools and community groups to push forward together.

Four that would help in Detroit and other high-dropout districts:

• Managing teacher morale: Calloway could blaze a trail if she agreed to bring the Detroit Federation of Teachers to the table now, at the outset of change. Teachers are the foot soldiers in this struggle. Surely they would all rather be working in successful schools. They have legitimate issues to raise, just as Calloway has legitimate concerns about losing certified and nationally recognized teachers to other districts or states.

• Put a spotlight on attendance: Starting in middle school, it's possible to spot a likely dropout just by tracking attendance patterns. Eighth-graders who miss more than five weeks of school have a 75% chance of dropping out of high school, but too many absences go unnoticed. Computerized attendance gives schools the technology to do better at tracking students, and more resources must also be invested in tracking them down when they are missing. Education officials need to devise a coordinated way to use attendance data to identify students headed for trouble before they hit high school. The data also will show which of the middle schools feeding Detroit's high schools are failing students, too.

• Personalizing freshman year: Ninth grade is critical. Students who start high school having failed math or English in middle school are especially at risk of dropping out. High school principals should be empowered to customize ninth-grade academics, providing early remedial intervention as part of a protective support ring. Ideally, a mentor -- a student, graduate, parent or staff member -- would be assigned, on the promise to help the student complete that critical first year. Sound outlandishly costly? Remember the cost of losing the kid to the streets.

One D, the umbrella group for six leading civic organizations in the region, will unveil an action plan at the Detroit Regional Chamber conference later this month on Mackinac Island based on findings from the dropout summit. It should include nontraditional engagement with students. What if, for example, local companies chose a ninth-grade class to adopt at one troubled school for a year? The relationship could be as simple as pairing students with adult mentors or committing to help educate students for future job opportunities.

• Expanded early college enrollment: According to a study by the Bill Gates Foundation, 75% of ninth- and tenth-grade dropouts blamed a lack of motivation and boredom for quitting school. What better incentives to offer than a chance to jump-start their earnings potential? Dropouts, on average, earn, $9,200 less per year than high school graduates.

Michigan has a number of early-college high schools up and running. They allow students either to take a college level course or simultaneously to earn a diploma and an associate's degree.
Increasing partnership between school districts and community colleges should be a legislative priority.

None of these ideas alone can move the needle. They are starting points. But nothing gets started at all without a broad-based commitment to end one of Michigan's greatest and most costly failings.

Detroit Free Press: Only a full-scale team effort can cure high school dropout rate

BY MICHAEL F. TENBUSCH • May 4, 2008

For the past 40 years, public high schools in urban America have been easy to understand.

To paraphrase Jack Nicholson, "Just think of any other business, and then take away accountability and reason."

The failure of urban high schools has taken a huge toll here in Michigan and in Detroit. One study revealed that there are 73 high schools in Michigan that have graduated less than 60% of their freshmen class for three straight years.

Twenty-two are in Detroit, 12 are in its suburbs, and another 40 are spread around the state. High school dropouts are eight times more likely than high school graduates to end up in jail, and 75% of all prison inmates are dropouts. Clearly, our failure to build high schools that work has forced us to build prisons.

It doesn't need to be this way.

Thanks in part to No Child Left Behind, in part to hundreds of millions of dollars invested by the Gates Foundation, and in large part to the pioneering spirit of those who rightly view this as the civil rights issue of our time, high-performing high schools have popped up in high-poverty areas of America in the last five years -- graduating 80% or more of their freshman classes, in stark contrast to the schools they replaced that had graduation rates ranging from 20%-40%.

We know what works. According to Mass Insight, which analyzed successful strategies in districts like Boston and New York that turned student achievement around, principals must be given control over the people, budget and programs in their buildings -- and in turn they must be held accountable for ensuring that their students meet high but realistic expectations.
Schools have been run on the "Friends, Family and Neighborhood Plan" for too long, and this arbitrary hiring and contracting process has led to an entrenched view of the inviolability of seniority rights. Both must change.

This is not to say unions are the problem. Instead, unions must be invited to the table at every turn, and they must embrace their role as agents of social change. In New York, the teachers union played a leadership role in creating the conditions necessary for success, and high school graduation rates across the city shot up 10% in just three years.

Schools must also partner with an educational intermediary -- that is, a nonprofit organization with a proven record of improving student achievement.

Finally, this work cannot be done one school at a time. Clusters of schools must work together in a collaborative and competitive manner to lift up best practices until excellence becomes the norm.

The end result is smaller, more personalized schools and classes with a safer and more effective environment for teachers and students.

Thus, the question is not how to turn schools around, but whether we have the will. Gov. Jennifer Granholm, in proposing legislation for the Schools of the 21st Century Fund, has answered the call. Dr. Connie Calloway, Superintendent of Detroit Public Schools, demonstrates daily that she is in her position to lead that turnaround. She talks candidly and consistently about the dismal student achievement rates in Detroit's general admissions high schools, and she is putting the people and resources in place to launch and execute a comprehensive turnaround plan.

The unions must play a leading role in that plan, and Virginia Cantrell, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, has the vision and fortitude to do this. Her members must support her, and research consistently shows teachers overwhelmingly have more job satisfaction working in high-performing schools than in the dysfunctional ones.

There is too much to gain, and too much to lose, to tinker around the edges any longer. We must get this done. We can get it done.

MICHAEL F. TENBUSCH is vice president for education preparedness at the United Way for Southeastern Michigan and a former board member of the Detroit Public Schools. Write to him in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226 or at oped@freepress.com.