Flanagan: Schools Must Take Responsibility for Improvement

Gongwer News - 9/9/08 - The Department of Education has a network of assistance programs for schools that are not able to meet federal improvement standards, but school officials, particularly those in schools not receiving federal at-risk funds, have to take the leadership to turn their performance around, Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan told the State Board of Education at its meeting Tuesday.
During a presentation on the services the department has available for schools, Mr. Flanagan said the department has become the scapegoat for many who are not seeing sufficient improvements in the state's schools, but he said the department does not have the resources to help all schools.
And he said the state needs the authority to at some point pull the plug on the schools it is assisting if they are not able to make progress.
"Ultimately there needs to be an understanding at the district level that there's all kinds of opportunities to turn it around but ultimately it's up to you to turn it around," he said.
At some point, the state also needs to be able to pull the plug on a school that is not making improvements, he said.
"At some point there needs to be something beyond that (further assistance). Otherwise we're just enabling a whole generation of kids to be in a school that is not achieving for six, seven, eight years."
The department also, however, needs resources to be able to provide assistance to more schools, Mr. Flanagan said. For the most part, the schools receiving the most assistance, no matter where they stand in meeting federal adequate yearly progress requirements, are those schools that receive federal Title I at-risk funds.
In 2007 there were 219 non-Title I schools that did not make adequate yearly progress, compared to 139 Title I schools not making AYP. "The 139 were the ones that receive the support," said Betty Underwood, director of the Office of School Improvement.
The current budget did provide the department three additional staff who Ms. Underwood said were developing strategies to reach those non-Title I schools that are not meeting federal adequate yearly progress standards.
"We feel grateful that we had the three spots compared to the cuts in the other departments, but it's a drop in the bucket," Mr. Flanagan said. "Look at the hundreds of schools compared to three people."
"It seems like we need to find a more comprehensive approach to solving those issues, which is not something MDE can do by itself," said board member Reginald Turner (D-Detroit) "It's a major budgetary issue at the state and federal levels."
John Tomlanvich, executive director of the Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators, said his association is providing scholarships to allow some principals at non-Title I schools to attend the same programs open to the leaders of the Title I schools.
The ISDs are also working with the department to develop the assistance programs for those schools that need improvement.
Mr. Flanagan said other professional organizations need to reach out to provide similar assistance, either scholarships or programs, to their members.
Pointing to a presentation to the board by Wyandotte Public Schools on improving mathematics scores, Mr. Flanagan said districts cannot use lack of resources and large class sizes as excuses for not making improvements.
Mr. Flanagan and school officials said they receive toward the bottom of the per-pupil funding range. And mathematics teacher Joanna Secco said the school is averaging between 28 and 35 students per class.
"There are so many districts that are well below that class size," Mr. Flanagan said.
High school Principal Mary McFarlane said the district has been able to maintain more than 97 percent of students passing algebra II despite having announced that as a graduation requirement in 2006 effective for the class of 2008.
Ms. Secco said the key has been the teachers working together to develop programs that help them gear the classwork to the needs of the students. "You have to know your students," she said.
The department has also changed the assistance it provides to districts. Where before the department had a variety of programs and schools could choose which might help them, officials now use program auditors and coaches to help schools identify their needs and direct them to the services that will likely help them improve, said Ms. Underwood.
She said in many cases schools had been choosing more attractive programs rather than those that would truly create some change in school performance.
And the coaches are now all trained through a program at Michigan State University so there is some uniformity in how those programs are provided, Ms. Underwood said.
SCHOOL REPORT CARDS: The board changed the "No Change" designation on school report cards to "Maintained". Officials said some read the category as meaning students learned nothing during the year, rather than that they had the same level of performance as they did the prior year.