Section » Michigan Schools
Improving College Graduation Rates
At Michigan Future, Inc. we believe that investments in higher education are the single best thing the state can do to grow a high prosperity economy. It is the best asset we have to grow a knowledge-based economy.
In the Twentieth Century we built one of the best public higher ed systems on the planet when it didn’t matter so much to economic growth. This century when it does, we have been disinvesting in it with state support declining by thirteen percent since 2000. Real dumb!
Our support for higher ed is unwavering, but it does not mean that we don’t also think there is room for improvement. In particular, except for those with highly selective admissions, our colleges and universities have low graduation rates. Its a national problem, but one we need to address.
The higher ed graduation rate is about half. And maybe more worrisome is, that despite far more enrolling in college, the proportion of adults with either a two year or four year degree nationally has been stagnant for about three decades at around one third. The Boomers, Generation X and the Millennials, so far, have about the same proportion of college grads.
Can we do better? I think so. My optimism in large part is based on the big improvements we are getting in new urban high schools here and around the country. A decade ago hardly anyone believed we could create open enrollment urban high schools that could get graduation rates of 90% and college attendance rates of 90%. Better results than many suburban high schools.
The typical response of urban high school educators is to blame k-8s, parents and the community for high dropout rates. There isn’t anything we can do with kids who are so behind. But, of course, we now know there is something that high school educators can do that get far better results. It starts with educators taking responsibility for student achievement.
All too often this blaming others is what you get from higher ed officials when you raise their low graduation rates. Its the students and/or the high schools fault. Which, of course, raises the question “why are you enrolling so many students you believe you can’t educate?”
Its time for college and university educators to take responsibility as well for student achievement. I think, just like with urban high schools, once they do we can get big achievement gains.
Introducing Michigan Future Schools
Today we officially launch Michigan Future Schools (MFS) as an initiative of Michigan Future, Inc. It builds on the work we have been doing for the past decade or so to figure out how to connect urban high schools students to the economy of the future. Its goal is to create new high schools at scale in Detroit and its inner ring suburbs to substantially increase the number of low income and/or minority students attending high quality schools.
MFS starts with grants from four local foundations of more than thirteen million dollars that will allow it to help launch seven new high schools over the next three years. MFI and its funders are committed to raising the funds to reach its goal of thirty five high schools in the next eight years. Schools will be chosen through an annual competition.
The three core principles of this initiative are unique:
1. We don’t care about the form of governance. All the ideological wars between public, charter and private school advocates are irrelevant to us. We will work with any school as long as it has a high likelihood that it will prepare all its students for college. MFI expects that all students enrolled in the high schools it supports will succeed in college. It has committed to its funders that at least 85% of each school’s students will graduate from high school, of those graduates at least 85% will enroll in college and of those who enroll at least 85% will earn a college degree.
2. We don’t care about where the school is located. It must be open to students from the city of Detroit, but the schools we will support do not have to be located in the city.
3. We will only work with new schools. We think new schools have a far better chance of creating the kind of culture and teaching and learning that lead to high student achievement than trying to transform failing schools.
All of us who have been involved in designing MFS are really excited about its possibilities to make a big difference. We are aiming for nothing less than creating an alternative high quality network of high schools that will compete with low quality high schools no matter who operates them!
For more information see the Michigan Future Schools page.
Bissell, Part II
Nancy Crawley quotes Upjohn Institute economist George Erickcek in her column on Bissell. George, who is one of the best thinkers I know on economic development policy, says in the column
“I for one am not willing, without a stronger fight, to say production simply can’t be here…. To say simply we give up, we’ll just keep the intellectual capital, will not produce the number of jobs we need.”
The core belief we have at Michigan Future is that what happens to manufacturing employment, except at the margin, is not in our control. Anymore than it was in the government’s control at the turn off the last century what happened to farming. Despite massive government support for farming – which is still going on – only two percent of Americans earn a living on a farm today compared to something like half at the turn of the last century.
To us, the same is now happening in factory work. Globalization and technology have substantially reduced the need for American factory workers. Those forces are stronger than government – particularly state and local government. So no matter what we do the trends of factory work shrinking as a portion of the American and Michigan workforce and that factory work is no high paid will continue.
This is not a value judgment. But reality. If there were a way for the state to recreate a high wage factory based economy we would support it. There isn’t! The state for decades has tried every lever it has to keep factory jobs. Its been economic development priority one for decades. We have been fighting hard. But the levers we have are too weak to overcome the fundamental transformation of our economy.
Will there be factory jobs in Michigan in the future? Of course. But not enough to drive our economy as it did last century. Will they be as high paid as the past? No. Should government continue to fight for those jobs? Sure.
But the new reality is the only way Michigan will regain its status as a high prosperity state is if we make the transition to the growing part of the American economy, which is knowledge-based. Bissell is on that path. Unless more of us get on that path we will be one of the poorest states in the country.
New High Schools Grants
Michigan Future, Inc. (MFI) – through its Michigan Future Schools initiative – is now accepting applications to make grants to help start two new small high schools in the fall of 2011. To apply download a copy of the Request for a Proposal here.
The focus is on providing a high quality education to primarily low-income and minority students in Detroit and its inner ring suburbs. Our focus is on quality, not governance or location.
The Michigan Future Schools initiative is designed to work with traditional public school districts, charter schools and private schools. We will work with schools located south of Twelve Mile Road and east of Telegraph. Schools must be open to students from the City of Detroit. We will only work with new high schools. And only with schools that we believe have a high likelihood of meeting our student achievement expectations.
MFI expects that all students enrolled in the high schools it supports will succeed in college. It has committed to its funders that at least 85% of each school’s students will graduate from high school, of those graduates at least 85% will enroll in college and of those who enroll at least 85% will earn a college degree.
We Couldn’t Have Said it Better
Once in a long while you read something that you could have written word for work. That is the case for me and today’s Free Press editorial. Worth reading and take a look at the terrific charts as well.
The editorial is titled: Graduate to a Smarter State. With a subtitle of Michigan’s economic future depends on helping more residents get college degrees. That’s the basic belief that underpins all of Michigan Future’s work for a decade or more.
The editorial presents data that the states with the highest incomes are those with the highest proportion of adults with a four-year degree. That talent – not taxes – is what is driving prosperity.
As we say in every presentation, Michigan’s fundamental problem is that we are thirty fourth in college attainment. Nothing else comes close!. If we don’t improve in education attainment we will be one of the poorest states in the country. In an industrial economy you could be prosperous with relatively low education attainment. No more!
So that means that preparing, retaining and attracting talent becomes the economic growth priority for policy makers. Not getting taxes right, picking industries or winning the next competition for a factory. Do all those things well and not concentrate talent here, we will continue to get poorer compared to the nation.
Transforming Education IV
In writing the three previous Transforming Education posts – in the pursuit of being brief (apparently the rule for blogs) – I have skipped topics I think are important. So here in summary form are my thoughts on some other topics that are part of designing a k-12 system that increases the number of high quality schools (without regard to governance or location) and decreases the number of low quality schools.
• Philanthropy has become a major enabler of particularly urban schools. They too should make a commitment to only fund (also without regard to governance or location) quality schools or start ups that have been vetted for the likelihood of being high quality and only work with high achieving enablers.
• I’m not a big fan of imposing all sorts of intermediate goals/metrics. Without remediation should be the standard and let the schools figure out how to get there. There is no one right way to get high student achievement.
• If we use standardized tests for the performance metrics we need to use the NAEP and ACT. All the state stuff is not rigorous enough as we learned from the most recent NAEP results.
• The goal is every student leaving each school ready for the next level without remediation. But there needs to be a difference between that goal and standards that trigger consequences.The closing standard should be chronically among the worst performing schools. And the standard to earn the right to open schools should be a substantial improvement over what exists in a community today.
• We are going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the right governance of DPS. What matters more is not who governs, but what are the rules for whoever governs. The most important of which is if you do not turnaround a failing school after a few years, it will close. No option!
• I’m skeptical we know how – anywhere in the country – to turnaround failing schools. But the only chance you have is if you have no union (like New Orleans) or contracts that allow for quality educators to be in school on a long term basis with lots of flexibility on how to deliver teaching and learning. So dealing with hiring, bumping, work rules etc. needs to part of the plan if we are to have any chance of improving low quality schools. I sure wouldn’t open a school without that kind of union agreement.
• I am not a big fan on imposing inputs (community schools, themed schools, longer days, longer hours, etc.) Let the schools and their enablers figure out what approach they want to take to get to the standard.
• We need to care far more about parents being good shoppers, than “good” voters.
• We need to construct a system of producing reliable, real time data aligned with our goals that is open to qualified researchers from any organization.
Transforming Education: Policy Framework
In my last post I suggested that all schools should be held accountable for a “every student meets a without remediation at the next level ” standard. That leads to the question “what levers do we have to make that happen as quickly as possible?
My answer: close chronically failing schools and grant the ability to open new schools only to districts, authorizers and education management organizations who have created high student achievement schools. This means that there are clear consequences for performance at the school and the enabler (my term for districts, authorizers, etc.) level.
Enforcement should be entirely governance and location neutral. Same carrots and sticks for charter schools and traditional district schools as well as same treatment for schools no matter where they are located (urban, suburban or rural).
Getting the standard right and designing a reliable process for closing low quality/opening high quality schools trumps by orders of magnitude anything else we might do to get better schools. We need to get the standards, sticks and carrots right and enforced!
This, of course is very different from the policy approach we have been trying for years. Which has been a combination of (1) trying to fix chronically failing districts (mainly Detroit) with state threats and edicts and (2) letting the market work with charters and choice. Neither has worked well.
If we have learned anything over the last three decades it is that outsiders can’t change districts. We should stop trying. Rather we should impose accountability standards on them that are the same as other enablers. If they meet the standards they get rewarded, if they don’t there are sanctions.
We need to accept that over the long term, we don’t have to fix failing districts to meet the goal of every student attending a quality school. What the state needs is an entire system that is rigorous about closing failing schools and only opening new schools that have a high likelihood of high student achievement.
In terms of letting the market work, what we have ended up with is greatly expanded choice for parents and students, but not much, if any, improvement in student achievement. What those – including Michigan Future – who were early supporters of charters didn’t appreciate is that most charters are operated to get customers. Very few are student achievement driven.
If parents shop – as they do – for attributes other than student achievement (safety, discipline, close to work, nice facilities, etc.) you get schools that give the customers what they are looking for.
The last decade of education reform should have taught us that neither centralized planning/edicts nor reliance on the market gets high quality teaching and learning for most students. Instead the levers that have the best chance of working are a combination of choice, a variety of school operators and enablers, and centralized standards that are enforced. No matter how your school is governed, where it is located or how many students you enroll the rule should be: low student achievement, you are out of business.
Transforming Education: Quality Standards
As bad as the current results are from our entire k-12 education system, I’m optimistic that we can get big gains in student achievement. My optimism is based on a decade of progress made by schools here and around the country in student achievement – primarily in new high quality urban schools.
These are the students many thought high education achievement was not possible. Think again! We now know that all students can meet high standards. There simply are too many schools around the country getting high graduation rates, high college attendance rates and test scores that look like all but high income suburban high schools to ever believe again that some kids can’t learn.
This innovation has been made possible here by a combination of state policy that provides parents and students the choice of attending schools (both charter and public outside of their home district) and Michigan foundations’ substantial and growing funding for creating more high quality schools.
Its not all peaches and cream. Greatly expanded choice has a mixed record. Most charter schools and schools in traditional districts who are taking students from other districts are low quality schools. Not much better, if at all, in terms of academic achievement than the schools students come from. But there are terrific schools that have been created because of expanded choice – both charters and schools operated by traditional districts.
The challenge going forward is how do you design a system that get far more students across the state (not just urban) enrolled in high quality schools. Getting the standards right is the first step. What is the level of student achievement we want to hold all schools accountable for?
My answer: students leaving a school able to move to the next level without remediation. So leaving preschool/early childhood programming ready for kindergarten, leaving elementary ready for middle, leaving middle ready for high and leaving high school ready for college.
Its a tough standard that most schools cannot meet today. But without remediation is probably the single best predictor at all levels of a student’s ability to ultimately develop the skills she will need to succeed in an increasingly knowledge-driven economy.
Once we build a consensus on the standard and a reliable, real time, data system that allows us to measure compliance with the standard we can then begin to build policy and accountability systems that allow us to better meet that standard.
• Copyright 2009 • Twitter: #michiganfuture