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Speak United Blog
Will Teach for America Come Back?
 Posted by TIME.com Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 2:16 pm
http://detroit.blogs.time.com/2010/01/26/will-teach-for-america-come-back/Teach for America, which came blazing into town in 2002 and promptly quit the city two years later, may be bracing for another shot at Detroit. “All eyes are now on Detroit,” says Ify Offor, vice president of new site development for the organization, which places college graduates and professionals in low-income school districts to teach for two years. “There's leadership that wants to take on this issue of education reform.” Offor says he has met with officials in Governor Granholm's office, along with the Detroit Federation of Teachers and the United Way. “Our goal is to simply make Detroit a center for education reform and Teach for America is an integral part of that reform, as the place to come to do the very best work,” says Michael Tenbusch, vice president of education preparedness at United Way of Southeastern Michigan. As for the union, Offor's aim is to ensure that relations get off on a better foot than they did last time, when the Detroit Public School was facing budget issues and beginning to lay off certified teachers—creating resentment toward TFA members who had not completed Michigan's long and arduous certification process. (Tenbusch of the United Way successfully pushed the Michigan legislature to pass a bill allowing for a quicker certification process in certain cases.) With the lack of support, Teach for America had no choice but to finish its two-year commitment until 2004 and then withdraw. If TFA does come back to Detroit, don't expect it to have a major impact. Start with the numbers: TFA had 35 teachers back in 2002. DPS employs a total of 6,000 teachers. Furthermore, TFA has a host of critics. Some contend that it's little more than a pit stop for Ivy League grads looking to boost their resume before moving onto their corporate careers. Former TFA teacher Nate Walker says that what he calls the organization's “number-driven” approach, which is focused on raising test scores, is too limited to deliver major change. Walker is one of many Detroiters working on alternative charter schools. His, called the Boggs Educational Center, would place more emphasis on having the kids create student portfolios and self-reflections, and apply skills taught in class to real‑life situations. “The models that we're working on, they build community,” says Walker. “We value kids for who they are and whatever they do regardless if they decide to go to Harvard or be a plumber.” Still, DPS needs whatever help it can get. Detroit's fourth- and eight-graders recently scored abysmally on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a standardized exam that measures math, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography and U.S. history. “As we look at the low NAEP scores for Detroit's children, it is clear that this is a problem that we can and must, in fact, address,” Offor says. “We look at Teach For America as one critical source of talent in helping to address this problem.” —Mariem Qamruzzaman
Mariem Qamruzzaman is a life-long resident of metro Detroit and a 2009 graduate of the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She has written for the Detroit Free Press, South Bend Tribune, and worked for Michigan Radio. Currently, she is freelancing and volunteering with non-profit organizations.
Labels: Educational_Preparedness, InTheNews, Michael_Tenbusch
Digital meet 'n' greet: Mike T.
 Click here to read the other posts in the Digital Meet 'n' Greet series."Walk faster." That's how my interview with Mike Tenbusch began. He had ten minutes between back-to-back meetings, a lunch to finish, more than his fair share of emails and phone calls to return and thousands of kids to graduate from high school. The only time he could squeeze in for an interview with me was while walking between meetings. And it was when Mike began to answer my first question that he stopped, mid-sentence, asked me to walk faster, and then promptly picked up where he left off. Mike is clearly a man with no time to waste. Mike is United Way for Southeastern Michigan's Vice President of Education, working to ensure that kids enter school ready and that they stay in school. He'll be the first to tell you that everything he does, he does with the mind-set of serving the kids first. It's up to you to decide if he's talking about the thousands of metro Detroit school-aged children that aren't getting the education he knows they deserve, or if he's talking about his three kids at home – the kids that he makes a point to eat dinner with and read to every night (along with his "lovely" wife), no matter how busy he is. And, just in case I haven't made it clear, Mike is very busy. Always has been... [continue reading]
Labels: DigitalMeetNGreet, Educational_Preparedness, Michael_Tenbusch, Ursula_Adams
Time for Detroit to follow Obama's lead on education
President Obama said Monday that he wants to close down 1,000 schools and reopen them with a new principal and staff in each of the next five years. Such a bold move is an extension of the game plan that the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, employed as CEO of Chicago Public Schools, in which he closed failing schools and opened new ones through a competitive process with higher standards and accountability. Duncan was in Detroit Wednesday at the United Way’s national conference, and talked about what states can do to win hundreds of millions of additional dollars to close the achievement gap. As part of the stimulus legislation, Duncan was given authority over $5 billion in discretionary funding– an astonishing amount of money in comparison to the $17 million that his predecessor had before him. It’s intended as a lever for transformation—not just “school reform”—and he intends to use it. [ Click here to continue reading] Labels: Educational_Preparedness, Michael_Tenbusch
Changing a can't do mentality
I bring this up in light of the firing of GM CEO Rick Wagoner, a generous supporter and friend of the United Way. The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial this morning by Paul Ingrassia, their Detroit Bureau Chief, who claims that two painful experiences in Mr. Wagoner’s early years shaped his decisions for years to come. The first was a strike regarding the amount of work done in an 8-hour shift at a metal stamping plant in Flint that lasted 54 days and cost GM $2.2 billion. The second was his decision to close the Oldsmobile line when he became CEO in 2000. By announcing his decision first instead of making a quiet buyout effort, he began a lengthy process that took GM four years to complete and cost $1 billion. The result, according to Ingrassia, was: There was a can’t do mentality that accepted too many brands, too many dealers and too many workers as immutable facts of life that could only be changed slowly and gingerly, if ever. When I read these words, I can’t help but think of the state of public education in our region, and whether five or 10 years from now the same will be said of our collective leadership: There was a can’t-do mentality that accepted too many failing schools, too many work rules, and too many layers of bureaucracy as immutable facts of life that could only be changed slowly and gingerly, if ever. Yes, we have made mistakes. And we have more than our share of pain. Teacher strikes. School closings. Takeover boards. How much longer will we allow the pain of our past to keep us from the promises of our future? Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, is coming to speak at the United Way of America’s conference in Detroit in May. He now has $5 billion in discretionary funding for states and cities that are doing the most to close the achievement gap. When he gets here, will he meet a group of leaders and teachers with a can-do conviction that we can close the achievement gap? The money is in his hands, but the decision is in ours. Labels: Educational_Preparedness, Michael_Tenbusch
Lessons from Bill Gates
Taking a page from his friend and fellow billionaire Warren Buffet, Bill Gates has begun writing an annual letter to discuss candidly the success and failure of his foundation’s grant-making efforts each year. Having spent more than $2 billion in nine years to transform urban education, he has arrived at some conclusions we would do well to take heed of. Click here to continue reading. Labels: Educational_Preparedness, Michael_Tenbusch
Pizza, fried chicken and grandparents in Taiwan
Dave Brandon, CEO of Domino's Pizza, tells a story about his company's efforts to add franchises in Taiwan. They did all of their research and opened their stores, but market penetration was well off projections. They couldn't figure it out. Parents loved the pizza. Kids loved the pizza. But not enough people were ordering it.
Brandon states, "We studied and researched it. We studied and researched it. And nothing changed. Finally, we realized that grandparents in Taiwan often lived with their children and grandchildren, and they were exercising veto power over the pizza choice. Turns out, grandparents didn't like pizza too much, but they do like fried chicken, so now all of our stores in Taiwan also sell fried chicken." Continue reading. Labels: Michael_Tenbusch, nonprofit_innovations
On pink slips and buyouts
I remember like it was yesterday the day my Dad came home in the summer of '81. He called us four kids into the living room to tell us that Ford had laid him off--but we were going to be OK. I didn't hear anything after the "but." I remember going up to my room and vowing that I would turn my paper route and lawn mowing money into groceries to provide for our family. It turned out my dad was right. He got a job teaching that fall at University of Detroit High again, and our family was fine. But the pain I felt that day, and the responsibility I assumed that day, would stay with me for a long time. Twenty-four years later, on June 26, 2005, I lost my own job unexpectedly. I called my wife from the office and told her the news. Read More >> Labels: Employee Voices, Financial Stability, Michael_Tenbusch
Stuck in TWWADI
What we face in Michigan is a dilemma faced by all 49 other states. Schools that have increasing numbers of kids in poverty have decreasing numbers in student achievement. But some schools are beating those odds, and the question is, how can we bring schools like them to scale? Click here to continue reading. Labels: Educational_Preparedness, Employee Voices, Michael_Tenbusch
Rally 'round the flag
I didn't make it to Grant Park in Chicago for Obama's victory celebration last week, but we had a celebration in church on Sunday that felt like the same thing. Our pastor had been challenging us for weeks leading up to the campaign to look at issues from a Biblical perspective and to vote accordingly. She didn't advocate for one candidate over the other, and I imagine that our church, like most of America, was pretty evenly split between the candidates. But five days after the election she was very clear: Obama's victory was a victory for racial healing in our country. Continue reading. Labels: Diversity, Michael_Tenbusch
Consensus is the opiate of the people
The dropout epidemic has been defined by John McCain and others as the civil rights issue of our time. Why then, do those of us fighting for that right spend so much time in conferences trying to get consensus on what to do? Continue reading. Labels: Educational_Preparedness, High_School_Turnaround, Michael_Tenbusch
She had my heart at that cleaning toilets part
Recently we brought a small bus load of 15 people on an Impact Tour of our work for the Venture Fund. On the 20 minute ride to Cody 9th Grade Academy, I painted a picture of what high-performing, high-poverty high schools look like, and then walked into the school to see how it would compare. It was amazing. Dr. Gabriela Gui, the school's infectiously enthusiastic leader, greeted us with smiles and a lot of high-octane energy. She explained that she is an immigrant from Romania: "I started out here as a substitute…No that's not right. I started out here cleaning toilets and sleeping in my car. But then I became a substitute, then a teacher, an assistant principal and a principal…I can tell you that the new Cody High School is going to be one of the best high schools in all of Michigan." Read more. Labels: Educational_Preparedness, High_School_Turnaround, Michael_Tenbusch
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