Editorial: Detroit has an opportunity to produce high-quality schools

Excellent Schools Detroit is a broad and diverse cross section of Detroit’s education, government, community, parent, and philanthropic leaders who have developed a citywide education plan to help ensure that all Detroit children receive the great education they deserve. Participants include Michael J. Brennan, Michael Tenbusch, and Kelly Major Green, United Way for Southeastern Michigan. To learn more, visit www.excellentschoolsdetroit.org.

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From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100311/OPINION01/3110352/1008/Editorial--Detroit-has-an-opportunity-to-produce-high-quality-schools#ixzz0hv6VVVwy

The city's education leaders -- both public and charter -- have come together on a revolutionary plan that could rid Detroit of failing schools and assure that 90 percent of school children graduate and go on to college. We hope it will win overwhelming community support.

Today the city's major players in education, from Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb to the Skillman Foundation to charter pioneer Doug Ross, will announce the details of the plan to close failing schools, replace them with high-quality schools and engage parents on the need for rapid and radical education improvement. The plan breaks down the barriers that have existed between traditional public schools and charters, and presents both with an ultimatum: Improve or lose support.

Bobb said as much in an interview with The Detroit News on Wednesday, noting that if the Detroit Public Schools doesn't fully buy into the reforms, the district could lose most of its students.

The plan is designed in part to attract long-sought-after national foundation funding to improve some of the worst schools in America. The coalition's leaders are setting the first citywide standards for both charter and traditional public schools.

Their new bar is a 90 percent graduation rate, with 90 percent of the graduates going on to college or trade school, and 90 percent of them not needing remedial training when they get there. It's ambitious, considering that more than 45 percent of current Detroit students don't graduate now.

It will take a huge commitment from a lot of people to make this plan work, and everything must go right. Here's what must

happen:

• The keystone is turning over responsibility for Detroit's schools to the mayor. Supporters say they will try to get a proposal on the ballot this fall that would dissolve the elected school board. If voters don't pass it, the plan will fail. Skillman Foundation President and CEO Carol Goss says she will not work with the school board. That is telling for a foundation president who has tried to help the school district for more than two decades. The state Legislature and Detroiters themselves must take responsibility for settling the governance question.

• Success also depends on recruiting good teachers to Detroit. Goss and others are recruiting Teach for America to bring its highly trained and motivated young teachers to Detroit, but faces opposition from the Detroit Federation of Teachers. The union must understand that if it doesn't climb aboard the reform train, its jobs will disappear. Bobb said Wednesday that schools where teachers block reforms will be replaced with charters or private academies.

• About $200 million is being planned to fund new charter and new Detroit Public Schools that meet the coalition's high standards. The habitual opponents to school closings must step aside. "We're saying, anyone doing business in Detroit needs to meet a high education standard," Ross said Wednesday. "Any charter operator that is not outperforming the Detroit Public Schools has no justification to remain open." A new group is in the works to pressure Detroit Public Schools, charter authorizers and the state to finally make good on closing chronically failing schools.

• Nothing works unless parents and the community support the movement. Parents must decide they will no longer tolerate schools that deny their children the education they need to succeed.

National foundations such as Soros and the Obama administration are expressing first-time interest in rebuilding Detroit education. This plan should help convince them the city is ready to change, that it is willing to shut down failing schools, and that it is able to sustain a commitment to reform.