Photo courtesy of Vice

Earlier this year, Detroit Public Schools made an important step towards moving away from the failed model of the traditional public school district when it announced that it would convert 41 of its failing traditional schools into charters.  But since then, as the district’s financial overlord, Robert Bobb, handed over his job over to former General Motors executive Roy Roberts, the district has unfortunately stepped away from that sensible effort, handing off just five schools to charter school operators. Meanwhile the district still plans to shut down 20 of its schools, scaling back from an earlier plan to shut down as many as 71 of them.

But now, with yesterday’s announcement by Roberts and Gov. Rick Snyder that the worst-performing of Detroit’s traditional schools will be taken over by a state agency similar to the Recovery School District in Louisiana that has spurred reform in post-Katrina era New Orleans, there is a possibility that the Motor City can become the next sterling example of how to overhaul the worst that American public education offers. But Roberts and Snyder will have to actually do more than simply do a few quick fixes. More importantly, they must also be aggressive — both in timeline and in efforts — in order for their move to be a success.

Under the Snyder-Roberts plan, a state-controlled agency run by Roberts in partnership with Eastern Michigan University will take over 45 of Detroit’s failure factories, and then begin their overhaul. Under the model, students would attend school for 212 days instead of the traditional 180-day calendar, while principals would be given authority to hire and fire teachers. If a school gets back into shape within five years, a school’s principal (after consulting with a parent’s advisory council) can choose to remain under state oversight, transfer back to the Detroit district or spin off and become a charter school.

The concept sounds good. There is even the possibility that this new agency could bring in high-quality charter school operators to launch new schools, a move that could help give families more high-quality school options. By moving these schools away from the management of the spectacularly failing Detroit district and from under the district’s collective bargaining agreement with its American Federation of Teachers local, there is an opportunity to actually undertake the kind of radical overhauls — including the use of value-added data in managing teacher performance and assignment — that will be needed to give Motown kids greater opportunities for high-quality education. In short, the new agency could actually replicate the success of the RSD in New Orleans.

But the plan, as currently envisioned, is incomplete. Given that far too many children in the Motor City are subjected to dropout factories and worse, that just one percent of failing schools are successfully overhauled within a decade, and the failed history of state takeovers of traditional schools, incomplete is not good enough.

For one, longer school years and school days are not school reform solutions in and of themselves; the district still needs to address such matters as the amount of time teachers actually spend teaching students. Given the dearth of high-quality school leadership within the Detroit system, simply handing management power to principals is also no panacea. The new agency could solve that problem by teaming up with school reform outfits such as The New Teacher Project and the Broad Foundation to develop a corps of top-flight school principals. But Snyder and Roberts haven’t announced whether or not they have moved in that direction.

Let’s not forget the matter of improving the quality of instruction in these schools; just moving laggard instructors from non-management by the Detroit district to the school level won’t actually lead to improving student achievement. Whether Eastern Michigan’s ed school can actually take on the challenge of improving the quality of instruction in those schools remains to be seen. There is also no reason why Detroit should wait until the 2012-2013 school year to begin transferring those schools. In fact, Detroit could make the first step today by creating a separate division of the traditional district that replicates what is going to happen by next year.

Then there is the matter of Parent Power. Giving school-level parent councils a consulting role in the operations of the school isn’t enough. If anything, each of the schools under the Snyder-Roberts plan should have a board of directors with parents holding lead roles in governance and operations. The plan should also allow some form of Parent Trigger, giving the majority of parents the ability to push for more-radical measures if school performance doesn’t improve in any meaningful way.

The move by Snyder and Roberts is certainly worth watching and considering. It is an important step away from a traditional district model that has helped foster the kind of mediocrity in instruction, curricula and leadership that are behind the nation’s education crisis.

Photo courtesy of the New York Times

Monday’s New York Times report on the procurement activities of the charter schools run by the Cosmos Foundation, an organization connected to the Turkey-based religious movement led by Fethullah Gulen hits upon the issues of financial management discussed yesterday on Dropout Nation in its analysis of the similar problems faced by charter schools and for-profits colleges. And as that analysis pointed out, it is critical for the movement to think and act critically on ensuring that those issues are addressed both on the operational, communications and advocacy fronts.

The  issues regarding Cosmos in many ways seem to be much ado about not much: It has a penchant for using the H1-B visa system, bringing over teachers from Turkey and other countries with low credentials; but given that the nation’s credentialing system for teachers is rather meaningless in terms of ensuring teacher quality, the critique doesn’t stand scrutiny. And while the questions surrounding Cosmos’ contracting practices (i.e. favoring Gulen-connected vendors over outsiders) deserve a deeper investigation, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who wrote the piece didn’t even do something as simple as look at Cosmos’ filings with the Internal Revenue Service, which would shed some light on its fiscal activities. Essentially, the piece argues that charters aren’t subjected to enough scrutiny, an line of argument that has some factual basis; but it only does a good job of offering smoke and whispers instead of strong, thoughtful investigative journalism.

Yet the story and the polemic attacks against charters that will be spurred from this is once again proof that it doesn’t take a well-researched study or report to actually spur backlash against a sector or movement. Again, as the for-profit college sector has learned with last year’s release of the Government Accountability Office’s spectacularly inaccurate and incredible report on the sector, in education, bad studies and thinly-reported stories last forever and do even more damage than the verifiable facts themselves. Add in the nativist sentiment that has resurged in the last six years (a particular matter given Cosmos’ connections to the Gulen movement) and you have even more problems.

Given this reality, along with the real issues of quality and financial management that charters do face, the fact that few people can accurately describe what a charter school is, and the willingness of status quo defenders to play fast-and-loose with everything, charter advocates must continually push for improving teacher and curriculum quality, and more-strongly police its own ranks. This may even include creating standards and procedures for contracting and procuring services — rules that can easily be picked up from the private sector, particularly in the healthcare field — that would assure taxpayers that there’s no funny business going on.

This is not just true for the charter school movement. As companies such as News Corp. move into the education arena, they will face the anti-intellectually-driven skepticism of education traditionalists, who have little knowledge of economics and even less willingness to tolerate outsiders coming onto their playground. (Education Sector Managing Director Bill Tucker makes this point in the comment section of yesterday’s report.) Corporate education providers will also have to make sure that the quality of what they offer is better than what education traditionalists will tout, as well as team up with reformers and grassroots activists to push the compelling vision of reforming American public education. They must: The long knives are already out.

Update: The Cosmos Foundation issued a response to the Times story.