(No caption)
Many Detroit students are being harmed by an education strategy intended to help them -- school choice.
In a five-article special report from Bridge Magazine and Chalkbeat, Chastity Pratt Dawsey and Erin Einhorn chronicle the disruption that choice has brought to homeroom 8B at Bethune Elementary-Middle School in northwest Detroit, where the 31 eighth-graders who report there had attended a total of 128 schools between them, an average of more than four each. Five had been to seven or more schools, and only three had stayed at Bethune for their entire K-8 journey.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has long advocated school choice.
The results are not good:
This kind of enrollment turmoil has a debilitating impact on schools, dragging down test scores, exacerbating behavioral issues, fueling dropout rates, and making it more difficult for all children to learn — not just those who are on the move.
In short, it’s a major — but often unrecognized — reason why improving urban schools has become one of the most intractable problems facing American cities.
School choice, a policy that lets students transfer freely to charter, magnet or a traditional school in another district, taking their per-pupil funding with them, was intended to set up competition between districts, driving excellence through free-market forces. But for many students, it has turned school into a merry-go-round of buildings. As the publications note:
In Detroit, there are many reasons why schools are in crisis. There are overcrowded classrooms and buildings in poor condition. There are children experiencing trauma at home, unable to find a quiet place — or a reason — to do their homework. But spend time in almost any Detroit school, and educators will tell you that perhaps the single most significant factor standing in the way of children’s success is this: Students don’t stay.
By the end of their eighth-grade year last spring, one-third of the students in Homeroom 8B had arrived at Bethune only that year.
8/ This school is not alone. Data analysis from WSU profs @sarahlenhoff and Ben Pogodzinski found that a quarter of Detroit kids change schools every year; in elementary schools, it’s one-third. (They found similar numbers at district and charter schools).
— Erin (@erinleinhorn) October 2, 2018
Bridge Magazine graphic from Twitter.
