School Dazed
Our schools aren't working for many reasons, but geography doesn't help
You probably know that Michigan schools aren’t working. In the vast majority of districts, the vast majority of kids aren’t doing as well in reading and math as they should be, which is dooming their futures.
There are many reasons for this, not all of which can be fixed by money, or bureaucratic and structural improvements, though both are needed. But there are things that can be done, and badly needed to be done. Recently. I told a very bright young woman working on a doctorate in education studies that she ought to consider a thesis redesigning the way public education is structured in this state.
I am not an education expert by any means, but having been involved in education, one way or another, for most of my life, I can note three areas that need significant change:
Michigan Has Too Many School Districts. As of last year, the state had 557 local school districts and 57 Intermediate School Districts, or ISDs. I don’t know enough about the ISDs to know if that’s too many or too few. But two State Superintendents of Schools have told me that there are way too many districts, and that around 300 would make far more sense and save all concerned money. So why don’t we do it?
Politics, of course. Clawson is a small community sandwiched between Royal Oak and Troy, that has its own school district of about 1,100 students, compared to 12,400 for Troy and 5,200 for Royal Oak. Both bigger districts can offer their students things the smaller Clawson district cannot. Why then, don’t they merge Clawson with either of the bigger districts or split the district between the two?
Among other reasons, that would eliminate the job of the Clawson school superintendent, and presumably destroy the Clawson Trojans football team more effectively than the ancient Greeks killed those other Trojans.
Bizarre District Boundaries: If you were from Mars, or some other sane place, you might assume that kids in Ferndale all would go to the Ferndale public schools. Well, some of them do, and others go to Hazel Park. Dearborn Heights students go to any of five different districts that service the town. Huntington Woods, where I live, doesn’t have its own district but sends its students to Berkley.
Why does Michigan not require school districts to follow the city (or township, etc.) boundaries? I have never met anyone, including presidents of the state board of education, who could tell me the answer.
Head Count Funding: Basically, how much money any Michigan school district gets depends mostly on how many bodies in seats they have on “count day.” That may sound like it makes sense, but how it works in practice is very different.
Earlier this year I finished a book I was writing about the Detroit suburb of Oak Park, a city of about 29,000 people. Oak Park kids living east of Scotia go to Ferndale schools, which are ranked mediocre-minus. Most kids in the north of Oak Park go to Berkley schools, which are very good. (Guess which part of Oak Park is growing and attracting the more affluent.)
Sadly, the Oak Park School District is one of the worst in the county. That’s partly because most of the students are not from Oak Park at all, but are often troubled Detroit students accepted as “schools of choice” pupils. They may be disruptive, but each of them comes with a more than $10,000 foundation grant from the state.
Oak Park’s school district needs that to stay solvent.
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Finally, fixing these three areas won’t “fix” the schools. But these things very much need to be fixed. Personally, I think this would be a perfect time to try massive and unorthodox repair, only in part because I am old and want to be surprised by something good. And our future, whatever it is to be, has to start with the schools.
Agree 100% on this. I once lived in Farmington Hills; my zip code was Farmington Hills; I paid taxes to Farmington Hills. But my school district? Clarenceville, because I lived on the wrong side of a street. This tiny island of a district with two elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school was a "legacy" I was informed, one much older than the FH district, and evidently that was reason enough for it to remain separate. Got lucky that my child was accepted through "school of choice" and allowed to attend the FH school at the north end of the street where all his friends went, at least for a few years until the quota of district children was reached, and they dumped mine back into Clarenceville, a shocking development for an impressionable middle-schooler. Gone was participation in orchestra and theater events and being taught by top-drawer educators. One of the worst experiences of my life was pleading my case with school and city officials only to receive a hard shutdown that "that's the way it is". Stupid, stupid, stupid - and a really cruel thing to do to a child.
I'm not an educator either, but I think eliminating half the number of districts in the state and the schools-of-choice option from state law is a good way to start. The latter empties out local schools that are perceived to be substandard and unsafe and drains the energy from neighborhoods where they are located (see Detroit). Meantime, schools like Oak Park High, which relies on students from outside the district to stay solvent (as you point out), are beset with crime that some parents say is imported by those very students. That may or may not be true, but what is certain is that we continue to get it wrong in Michigan. We spend too much money with very little return.