Education Trust–Midwest

LANSING, Mich. (November 19, 2012) - The Education Trust-Midwest is Michigan’s only statewide, nonpartisan advocacy, research and policy center focused on one central question: What is best for Michigan’s students, particularly our low-income and minority students? This question guides all of our work at Ed Trust-Midwest – and it is what brings me here today to discuss House Bill 6004 on the EAA. Thank you for taking time today for this important discussion.

Ed Trust-Midwest supports research-based, data-driven strategies that boost student achievement for all children, while closing gaps for low-performing students.

We are hopeful about the potential of the EAA to provide high-performing schools to children in the city of Detroit.  Indeed, we were the first organization in Michigan to publicly call for the implementation of the state’s first recovery district, which eventually became the Education Achievement Authority.

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Amber Arellano is executive director of the Education Trust-Midwest, a Royal Oak-based school advocacy group.

The group has served as a watchdog, focusing on efforts to improve urban education and closing the achievement gaps between white and minority students.

Education Trust-Midwest was a leading voice in calling for the state to raise its standards for Michigan Education Assessment Program exams, once accusing the state of "lying" to parents because students needed to get as few as 40 percent of questions correct on some tests to be deemed "proficient."

Arellano is concerned that the state is change standards again on how schools are deemed needing to be placed in a category where they would get extra assistance for improvement.

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ROYAL OAK, Mich. (October 22, 2012) - A study released today shows some positive gains for the first class of Michigan students to be in school since the adoption of the Michigan Merit Curriculum, which was designed to ensure all high school students have access to rigorous coursework. The results also show that the MMC did not create an explosion of the high-school dropout rate, as was feared by some when the merit curriculum was first passed in 2006.  And, scores improved for many students in ACT testing, the national college admission exam.

Today’s results, compiled by the Michigan Consortium for Educational Research from data on 70,000 Michigan public high-school students, also found that the MMC seems to have had a very positive effect on the ACT performance of top quartile students. For bottom quartile students, there was no impact of the MMC on two ACT subjects (science and reading) and a slight negative impact on ACT math and writing.

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The Oakland Academy in Portage has fulfilled much of the bold promise of the Michigan charter school movement. The elementary school, run by the nonprofit Foundation for Behavioral Resources, routinely exceeds state averages in math and reading.

But in the northeast corner of Michigan, a more troubling portrait of charter quality emerges. Students at Alpena’s Bingham Arts Academy are mostly poor and white. The school ranks in the bottom 13 percent in student performance – well below even other low-income schools.

Bingham is run by Mosaica Schools, an out-of-state charter operator approved to run more charters this fall despite a troubling record in Michigan. Five of its six schools were ranked in the bottom 33 percent of public schools last year. Two Mosaica schools were closed amid concerns about their “academic and financial viability,” state records show.

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ROYAL OAK, Mich. (September 20, 2012) - Teachers, like all hard-working professionals, want to get better.

Last year, for the first time, every Michigan public school was required to measure teacher performance using four rating categories. The idea was that by expanding the range of ratings most districts use, teachers would get more individualized assessment and feedback on their strengths and weaknesses -- and appropriate professional development -- to help them improve, and in turn boost student learning.

It hasn’t worked out that way.

An Education Trust-Midwest survey of large Michigan school districts found that more than 99 percent of teachers were rated effective or highly effective on their 2011-2012 performance evaluations. Only 0.2 percent of teachers surveyed -- that's 2 in every 1000 teachers -- were rated ineffective.1

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