EDUCATION

EDUCATION, April 14, 2008

Much has been written and discussed over the past few years as to whether or not the Detroit Public Schools are adequately preparing its students for a productive future. As the school district loses more and more students, it is representative of not only its failure but also Michigan’s and Detroit’s. The Detroit public school system is failing its students, the City of Detroit, and the State of Michigan when it graduates only 25 percent of its high school students. This failure is emblematic of many of the problems facing the State of Michigan.
This failure of the public school system should infuriate parents, students, employers, and most importantly local and state politicians and school board members. At a time when Michigan is losing residents and has the highest unemployment rate in the country, you would think that the government, the private sector, non-profit organizations, and the citizens would try and work together and come up with some ideas as to how to reverse the current situation. However, this has not happened.
One suggestion might be the development of charter schools similar to those in California and particularly San Diego, High Tech High. The business community in San Diego realized in the late 90’s that it was seeing a decrease of college graduates that were proficient in science and math leading to a digital divide that was causing employment problems for the local community. The failure of students to have advanced science and math knowledge led to companies such as Abbott Labs, Avaya, BD Biosciences, Copley Newspapers, Qualcomm, Sun Microsystems, Tyco, Manpower, Inc., Cisco Systems, and San Diego Gas and Electric and others to create a charter school that would teach its students the importance of science and math and provide these companies its future employees. The business community recognized a problem and decided to try and fix it.
The business community and others in the area developed a model charter school program that has been promoted as a model of success by everyone from Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. High Tech High combats the twin problems of student disengagement and low academic achievement by creating personalized, project-based learning environments where all students are known well and challenged to meet high expectations. High Tech High schools attempt to show how education can be redesigned to ensure that all students graduate well prepared for college, work, and citizenship.
In its eight years of existence, High Tech High now encompasses eight schools (five high schools, two middle schools, and one elementary school) with 2,500 students. 100 percent of its graduates have been accepted to college. Students also participate in internships with local businesses to give them a head start in finding an area of interest that students can pursue as careers. For the 2006-2007 school year, there were over 3,000 applications for just 285 spots at the original High Tech High.
A charter school system that encompasses some of the ideas of successful charter schools such as High Tech High might be one of the ideas that save Detroit, Michigan and its economy. As the school district continues to fail its students, the city and state will continue to fall farther behind other states. There has to be long-term cooperation between the educational system in Michigan, the local business community, the local and state governments, as well as its citizens.
Michigan over its history has been home to some of the country’s greatest business minds. Whether Henry Ford’s development of the assembly line, Berry Gordy’s development of Motown, or Tom Monaghan’s idea of a delivered pizza in 30 minutes, entrepreneurs from Michigan have been at the cutting edge. However, too often over the past few years, our public schools have continued to fail and have not adapted to changes in the local community. The Detroit school board, the mayor of Detroit, the Detroit Federation of Teachers, and state lawmakers in 2003 decided not to accept local philanthropist Robert Thompson’s pledge of $200 million to support the creation of 15 new charter schools in Detroit. The Detroit Federation of Teachers believes that charter schools take money away from public schools since the students attending the charter schools no longer are enrolled in the failing public schools. Mr. Thompson partnered in March 2005 with the Skillman Foundation after joining forces with former Piston star Dave Bing. This example of the power that the educational special interests have in this state should be a warning to all of the residents of Michigan. Instead of fighting for the students, they seem to be fighting for the status quo of the failure of the current system.
Shouldn’t we expect that the state’s government, school boards and business community to be able work together to develop educated students? Doesn’t Detroit and Michigan need to have tomorrow’s leaders stay at home and help rebuild the state’s economy so that it is no longer at the bottom? The state’s business leaders, government leaders, and educational leaders have to work together in order to develop an educational system that will stop the current failure of public education. Detroit and the state of Michigan can’t afford to take the chance that they will continue to fail.