Found this interesting article on Yahoo.com,
and you thought we had issues, read this and we are in good shape compared to Detroit.
From Yahoo.com:
Detroit tries to turnaround failing school system
By COREY WILLIAMS, Associated Press Writer Corey Williams, Associated Press Writer – Thu May 21, 3:31 pm ET
DETROIT – Just like the auto companies that fuel this city, struggling Detroit schools are undergoing a painful restructuring to avoid complete failure and bankruptcy.
Next fall, 29 public schools will close, another 40 will be restructured, 900 teachers and staff will be pink-slipped and 33 principals fired. A former FBI agent also has been brought in to ferret out corruption and fraud. And a request has been made to declare the district a "special presidential emergency."
The changes were ordered by Robert Bobb, who was appointed emergency financial manager of the district in January by the governor. He has one year to correct a $300 million budget deficit, improve test scores and address a graduation rate that's among the nation's lowest.
Without his intervention, Bobb said, the district "would have gone into the abyss and the biggest losers would have been students and their parents."
The drastic measures that Bobb is pushing through don't come easy. This week, a parent left a community meeting in tears because of Bobb's decision to close Elmdale Elementary, which has low enrollment.
"Don't close this down," Eleanor Marcilis pleaded for the school her two children attend. "I don't understand it."
The fortunes of the school district have plunged along with those of the city, which is emerging from an embarrassing sex scandal that landed a former mayor in jail and also has some of the nation's highest unemployment and home foreclosure rates.
Abandoned homes and derelict buildings abound. Less than 1 million people now call Detroit home, leaving fewer students in classrooms.
Enrollment has plummeted more than 50 percent since 1997, from 175,168 to 95,000. The drop in students between 2003-2007 alone cost the district $291 million in state per-pupil funding.
Many moved to more stable, suburban districts. About 500 of the 1,000 non-district students in Dearborn Heights District 7 are from Detroit, superintendent Jeffrey Bartold said.
"I think parents who sometimes come are mad that their local schools are closing," Bartold said.
When deciding which schools to close, Bobb and his staff looked at the age and condition of the buildings, as well as how many students attend them. Academic performance also was taken into account.
Elmdale was meeting performance standards, but didn't have enough students to justify staying open.
Detroit's schools have been plagued by mismanagement, lack of oversight and corruption, which has cost the district millions of dollars. Officials at one school asked parents to donate trash bags, light bulbs and even toilet paper.
The district spent millions on a new Cass Technical High School, considered a model for 21st-century urban high schools. It has tough admissions standards, a college preparatory curriculum and has enrolled many of the top students in the district.
But 35 other schools were closed during the 2007-2008 school year to cut costs as enrollment dropped. Some of those buildings, though boarded and locked, became targets of thieves and vandals and added to neighborhood blight.
During a recent visit to a city high school, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan described Detroit as "ground zero" for education and said that "Detroit is New Orleans two years ago without Hurricane Katrina."
Bobb has asked Duncan to help get the school system "placed under a special presidential emergency declaration" to get federal funding for infrastructure and curriculum.
Duncan did not commit to the request, but said the district could be eligible for federal Race to the Top Recovery Act money if it is willing to make the necessary changes.
Detroit's dropout rate is considered among the nation's highest, while one national report last year listed its graduation rate among the country's lowest at just over 25 percent. The district disputes that number, but has no figures of its own.
Safety also is a concern. A 16-year-old student was shot to death last year near his high school. Two other students and a non-student were wounded. Two non-students were wounded during a February shooting inside another high school.
Other urban school districts have similar troubles, but Detroit rarely seems to improve, said Amy Wilkins, spokeswoman for The Education Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based instruction advocacy group.
"We've seen good stuff happening in New York City, starting to happen in Washington D.C. and Atlanta, but the lack of movement in Detroit is disturbing. There is not that feel that it's getting better. Not yet."
Replacing staff to making administrators accountable is a start, she added.
"We can't tolerate the intolerable," Wilkins said. "The status quo often serves the adults very well and the children very poorly. Everybody still gets their paychecks no matter how badly the students are doing."
If Bobb has his way, that will end in Detroit.
"We make one bad assumption about public education in that we assume that everyone who enters ... really has a desire to take children to the next level, that they in fact like children. You cannot make that assumption," he said.
Some principals leading schools that have shown little or no improvement in test stores or other academic achievement are being shown the door, while those doing well are getting more responsibilities and tougher assignments.
Bobb is putting together a master education plan that calls for improving technology and updating classrooms. Curriculum also is being reviewed to make sure students are getting what they need in reading, writing, math, science and other programs, Bobb said.
Bobb, 63, has quickly carved out a reputation as a "no-nonsense" administrator and has made it clear that anytime a penny of the district's money is touched, it has to be approved by him.
His 30 years of executive management experience include a stint as District of Columbia State Board of Education president. Bobb also served as deputy mayor of Washington, D.C., the District of Columbia's Homeland Security adviser and city manager of Oakland, Calif.
Bobb is considering a run for Oakland mayor when his one-year, $260,000 contract in Detroit ends.
Part of the blame for the school system falls on politics. An elected school board had been running the district, including the hiring and firing of superintendents, until Bobb's appointment.
"He has the resources to do everything that this district needs to do, and he does not have the political fallout because he is not an elected official," said Joyce Hayes-Giles, who resigned from the board earlier this month and supports Bobb's appointment.
The board's days could be numbered as some, including Duncan and Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm, push for the mayor's office to eventually run the district.
Mayor Dave Bing has said he would take on that responsibility, but Detroit voters in 2004 overwhelmingly turned down a proposal to hand over that power to mayor's office.
