I have a piece up at Eclectablog today that is creating some shockwaves in the education community. Michigan Republicans have created a "school district for misfit schools" called the Education Achievement Authority that is comprised of the worst-performing schools in our state. At this time, they are all located in Detroit but there is legislation pending to codify it into state statute and make a statewide district.
The EAA has been controversial from its inception because, rather than putting extensive resources into reimagining and reconfiguring these schools which are largely in areas of intense poverty, they are doing it on the cheap. At least half of the teachers are first-year teachers and half of those are from Teach for America whose teachers receive a scant five-week training course before being put into a class room.
Special education students are being woefully short-changed, the teachers and students are not in a safe environment, and the administration places extraordinary demands on the teachers but does not give them the resources to allow them to succeed.
In an interview that I did with Democratic State Rep. Ellen Cogen Lipton, she described all of this in vivid detail. She also talked about how her efforts to get proof that this educational experiment was working were rebuffed by EAA administrators forcing her to spend thousands of dollars of her own money to actually FOIA the information!
She is in the process of suing the State Board of Education on behalf of special ed. students whose needs are not being met in violation of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Over the past two months, I have been speaking with EAA teachers. The result is a post I published yesterday titled "Education Achievement Authority teachers speak out on abuse of students and the failure of the EAA". In it, I reveal intimate details of just how catastrophic the situation is and the unbelievable degree to which we are failing the Detroit students in EAA schools. Most shocking are the descriptions of physical abuse of students witnessed by the teachers I spoke with.
Here is an excerpt. You can read the whole thing HERE. I encourage you to share this widely, particularly with those in the education community.
Over the past couple of months I have been reaching out EAA teachers to learn more about their experiences. Several of them agreed to speak to me on the condition that I protect their identity. This is critical since retribution against teachers that speak out by EAA administrators is common knowledge. For example, former EAA teacher Brooke Harris was fired after speaking out on behalf of the students at her school, something I have
written about in the past.
I spoke with several teachers, some of whom came to the EAA through the Teach for America program. What follows documents the outrageous and frightening situation in the EAA schools. I am keeping the gender of the teachers, which schools they work in, and any other identifying information hidden so that these teachers will not be fired for speaking to me. Every quote and statement, however, are real and the teachers represent both elementary schools within the EAA as well as high schools.
[...]
I asked the EAA teachers that I spoke with to tell me about their experience and why they were willing to speak out at this time. One teacher put it this way:
"It’s been really rough," they said. "My first year there it was very chaotic and this year is just as bad. There’s been no consistent discipline structure. I honestly worry about my kids."
"You’re actually worried about them not being educated well?", I asked.
"It’s that," they replied, "But it’s also that the culture of our school is detrimental to learning. We’ve changed our teaching model twice this year and we’re going to change again in February. Our discipline structure went from, before school started, 'We will not suspend children, you must keep them in your classroom, write them up, and we’ll deal with them' to me seeing kids coming out of the discipline office with bruises. I’m honestly worried."
"So they’ve moved to a more stringent disciplinary approach then?" I asked.
"I’ve actually seen my discipline coach slap a kid across the face."
These reports of physical abuse were echoed in a comment left by an EAA parent on Detroit Free Press article on the EAA (now archived and unavailable):
DPS was much better than the EAA. How can you take the lowest performing schools in a low performing district and hire uncertified teachers with five week of training and pass out computers and expect the student to teach themselves...I have witnessed the physical and verbal abuse of children and the ill-treatment of parents.
In addition to these disturbing reports regarding physical abuse of students, teachers also report a systemic lack of discipline and security at all school levels within the EAA.
"It’s dangerous for kids to come to school," one teacher at an EAA elementary school told me. "We’ve found drugs in the school. We’ve found weapons in the school. We have a metal detector that doesn’t even work, nobody checks anyone on the way in."
The security problems are exacerbated by ridiculously large classroom sizes, something that's only getting worse due to teachers leaving in droves. According to one teacher I spoke with, the classroom they teach in is about to go to almost 50 students. This is despite the fact that a quarter of the students have left the EAA system, a dramatic drop that reflects the dissatisfaction of the students' parents with the education their children are receiving.
"One of the things that really has pushed me to speak out is that I learned from another teacher recently that I’m about to get another ten students in my class which will take me to almost 50 kids," the teacher said. "Another teacher quit and, instead of hiring someone to replace them, they are just redistributing their students to all the other teachers. So, it’s just me and all these kids with no help, no paraprofessionals. It’s just dangerous. Beyond being able to educate that many kids at once all by myself, I’m not confident I can keep them safe from each other. They don’t fit in the room, there aren’t enough chairs, it’s not okay. I have this knot in my stomach and I’m worried sick and stressed out because of it."
Alone in a class of nearly 50 students with no student teachers, no paraprofessionals, and little support from school administrators when children act out violently. And many of these teachers are in their early twenties. The ones from Teach for America -- roughly a quarter of the teachers in the EAA -- had a scant five weeks of training before they were assigned to a classroom full of kids.
Another teacher confirms this assessment.
"The way that they’re treating the students is terrifying," they said. "We’ve had multiple fights where no security has actually shown up. They’re not suspending students so I’ve been hit by a kid before and nothing has happened. Another teacher has been hit numerous times and nothing has happened to the child who did the hitting even though he was very clearly identified. He is still at school today.
"I’ve never felt this worried about going to school," they continued. "I'm well aware that most of my kids would protect me and they have before, but they shouldn’t have to. That’s the role of discipline. But, at the same time, I afraid to report a kid because I’ve seen disciplinary officers hit them and I’ve reported it and nothing has happened from the state.
"I’m at my end where I can’t be part of this organization that is abusing children both educationally and physically."
[...]
The State of Michigan's Education Achievement Authority website describes the EAA this way:
The Education Achievement Authority of Michigan is a new public system of schools whose mission is to fundamentally improve public education in Michigan.
Education Achievement Authority schools are creative, innovative learning environments that provide students a quality education. They offer struggling students the opportunity to catch up to their peers around the state and receive the education they need to succeed in college or a career after high school. The system opened in September 2012 with 15 of Detroit’s lowest-achieving schools, which were identified by the Michigan Department of Education as schools with the greatest need. [...]
In the Education Achievement Authority classroom, students are divided into small focused learning groups and each student has his or her own computer. [...]
In addition to the individualized attention, Education Achievement Authority schools have a 7.5 hour school day and 210 school days per year, which means nearly 1,600 hours of instruction annually (Michigan requires just 1,098 hours). These instructional hours put our students on par with countries such as Japan, China and Singapore, enabling them to achieve on a level with their international competitors.
Almost none of this is true. Rather than creating a world-class school district with proven teaching models, excellent resources, and superior teachers, the EAA is a second class school district that has somehow managed to be inferior to the failing districts it replaced. At least half of its teachers are first-year teachers and half of them are TFA teachers who have had a sum total of five weeks of training before they are put into an EAA classroom. While the TFA teachers that I spoke with are amazingly dedicated young people who love their students and want nothing more than to be educators, the fact is that this is supposed to be a school district designed to lift children trapped in a terrible education situation to a level where they can compete with any student in the state. A district like that should be employing well-trained, highly experienced teachers who are well-compensated for their expertise, given the resources they need to succeed, and treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. None of this is true of the EAA.
Rather than every student having "his or her own computer" as the EAA's website boasts, there aren't enough computers to go around in the classroom. To add digital insult to injury, classroom assignments meant to be done online simply aren't available to large numbers of EAA students who simply do not have the internet at home, much less a computer with which to access it.
This failed system, one which manipulates data to give a distorted impression of its "success" and refuses to answer questions of state legislators, is being targeted for expansion across the state of Michigan by Republicans. It should not only NOT be expanded, it should either be completely overhauled with new leadership, expanded resources, and more input from education professionals or it should be abandoned entirely. As it stands now, it is a failed experiment. Worse yet, it is doing more harm than good and increasing the number of Detroit children who we can only describe as a "lost generation". They are students who will forever be handicapped by the embarrassingly inferior education they are receiving from the State of Michigan. And that is something we all own a piece of.
Thanks for reading.