Michigan students need high-quality literacy programs

Kary Moss ACLU

A new study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation reports the very disturbing information that only 31 percent of all Michigan students and only 19 percent of low-income students are reading proficiently in fourth grade in 2013.

While policy-makers and education advocates have been enthusiastically supporting early childhood education initiatives, the state’s $1 billion surplus provides an opportunity to take on the equally critical challenge of making sure that there exists a high-quality literacy intervention program in every school so that early investment is not wasted.

We must be strategic, rather than continue a hit-or-miss approach as one district after another enters financial distress.

Despite the wealth of resources available in our magnificent public universities, the state has no literacy intervention strategies to meet the compelling need for highly qualified teachers, particularly in literacy and mathematics instruction at the lower grades, and in disciplinary literacy instruction at the upper grades. Part of the problem is the lack of expert voices working with state policymakers who can accurately evaluate high-quality literacy intervention programs and the cost of an adequate education.

Instead, the modus operandi has become to take the lowest-performing and poorest districts and turn them over to for-profit charter operators regardless of that charter’s track record of success in helping districts with significant need.

In Highland Park, for example, where 90% of eleventh graders are not reading proficient, the state turned over the entire district to The Leona Group, LLC even though in the 2011-2012 school year, Michigan’s Leona schools performed between the 2nd and 47th percentile of schools in the state. Similarly, in Muskegon Heights, the state turned the district over to Mosaica Education, which has been plagued by an exodus of teachers.

It is time that the state convene a blue-ribbon commission of literacy experts to identify the most important elements of such a program, and then for impartial experts to determine what it will cost. That work should then drive decisions about which charters are qualified to take on these districts and schools as well as determine what is needed in traditional public schools to create a literacy-rich environment.

Reform efforts would be woefully incomplete if policymakers will not take on the tough questions involving the school financing system. Currently, children in our poorest communities are relegated to learning in unsafe, unhealthy and poor conditions because those schools depend on local property taxes to fund capital improvements. Academic research shows that building quality affects student and teacher health, attendance, performance and teacher turnover.

If the state continues to ignore this fundamental flaw in the system, the deficit situations – which are very much on the Governor’s mind -- are unlikely to be resolved. Well over a year after Mosaica had taken over Muskegon Heights schools, for example, the Public School Academy reported a deficit of $550,000 because the district could not secure a loan for capital improvements.

We cannot afford to ignore the tremendous human and economic costs of failure. The Michigan League for Public Policy reports that nearly 400,000 working-age adults lack a high school diploma or equivalent and that one in every 12 Michigan adults lacks basic literacy skills. The Alliance for Excellent Education reports that for some 46,300 students not graduating from Michigan high schools in 2008, the state has lost $2.2 billion in household wealth, $12.3 billion in lost wages; $750 million in incurred health care costs; and $126.5 million in remedial training costs.

It is certainly not a new concept that the ability to acquire an education is a basic human and civil right. However, we are at the cusp of a new era in which the state’s willingness to provide a decent public education for low-income students has never been more at risk. The time is now to take some doable and reasonable steps that can achieve bipartisan support and have a real impact.

Kary Moss is executive drector of ACLU of Michigan. Its education advocacy project is currently representing children in the Highland Park District who assert a 'right to learn to read.'