Thomas Pedroni, an associate professor of education at Wayne State (at right above), says the emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools used "innovative facts" recently to overstate the district's latest MEAP test performance.
In a tough post at his Detroit Data and Democracy Project site, Pedroni writes:
If the proficiency gap between Detroit’s children and the Michigan average is any indication, our children have only fallen further behind these past four years.
That contrasts with a claim by Roy Roberts (pictured at left) during an "Education Nation Detroit Summit" that was excerpted by NBC News on March 22, as the professor summarizes:
DPS had surpassed the Michigan state average in 14 of 18 categories measured by the state’s student proficiency test, the MEAP. Applause and accolades followed Roberts’ pronouncement. . . .
The day’s take-home message was clear -- Roberts and his staff were finally turning the corner with Detroit’s long-suffering schools. . . .
It turns out, according to the Michigan Department of Education, that DPS did not outshine the state in 14 of 18 MEAP categories. The actual number was somewhat lower -- zero. DPS trailed the Michigan average in proficiency in all 18 categories. And not just by a bit -- by more than 10 percentage points in the two science categories, and by 20 or more in the other 16. . . .
The MEAP numbers . . . show that the Detroit Public Schools have fallen even further behind the state average since gaining an Emergency Manager in 2009. . . . The hardest hit have been our youngest test takers—those who have spent most of their school years under emergency management -- our third, fourth and fifth graders.
Pedroni, who presents state data and two bar charts to illustrrate his analysis, specializes in this type of scrutiny as a scholar of curriculum studies and what he calls "critical education policy sociology." An online bio leaves no fuzziness about his views:
My current research examines educational and social inequality in relation to the post-welfarist educational policy complex of Detroit.
The outspoken professor takes aim at a secondary target in an "Important Editorial Note" below his post, which says its content was rejected by the Free Press as a guest commentary after a response from Roberts. Pedroni accuses the paper of "obstruction."
Update
Professor Pedroni comments in an email to Deadline Detroit: "I don't view myself as an opponent of the EM. I just want us to have an open well-rounded debate about such important issues."
