Some schools to get funds to
boost kids' reading skills
by Diana Dillaber Murray, Oakland Press, August 14, 2002
Some Oakland County schools may be able to win as much as $400,000 to
teach children to read.
Michigan will receive more than $186 million over a six-year period to
distribute to schools under the federal Reading First Program, which is
part of the No Child Left Behind project.
This year, Michigan will receive $28.473 million from a total of $900
million approved by Congress for schools nationwide.
Districts are waiting to hear how much they will receive. Grant recipients
will be announced soon, said Matt Resch, spokesman for Gov. John Engler.
The funds will go to schools where a high percentage of students ages 5-17
are from low-income families. Some districts have several schools that are
eligible.
Pontiac Schools Superintendent Walter Burt, said Tuesday that the money
will be a boon to his district.
"We have made an application, and we have a number of schools we have
identified that would be specifically eligible for the grant. We are
waiting to hear," Burt said.
"It will allow us to update textbooks and instructional material and
software. I am very pleased about it. As we know, most of the district's
budget is spent on personnel, and urban schools often don't have available
money to purchase needed textbooks and instruction supplies to support the
curriculum and especially to bring it up to the level that is required
now."
Engler, too, is excited about the funds.
"Michigan's efforts to teach each child to read well in the early
elementary years just got even better," he said.
When schools submitted their proposals for funding, they had to indicate
how the money would be used to ensure every child will learn to read by
the end of the third grade.
According to federal guidelines, the schools that receive funds are
required to use the money to select and administer screening, diagnostic
and classroom-based instructional reading assessments to determine which
students may have reading problems.
The
schools also are required to provide professional development in reading
instruction for special education instructors, as well as kindergarten
through third-grade teachers.
In addition, the state Department of Education is required to contract
with an independent organization to conduct a five-year, rigorous,
scientifically valid, quantitative evaluation of the Reading First State
Grants program.
This evaluation must identify the effects of specific activities carried
out by states and school districts on improving reading instruction,
according to the governor's office.
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Joshua's Journey:
Diagnosis and Decision
by Todd and Karen Schulz, Lansing State Journal, August 18,
2002
Joshua's hair was so dark and thick you could see it on the ultrasound
monitor before he was born.
It was beautiful. It was soft. It was everywhere.
Today, it's gone. So is half of his brain.
Joshua Michael Schulz was born on Feb. 15 with a brain condition most
people have never heard of. He suffers from hemimegalencephaly (HME), a
disease that prevented the right side of his brain from developing
normally and triggered constant and potentially life-threatening seizures.
It was immediately clear that Joshua's journey would be one with many
hurdles.
Three weeks after Joshua's birth, still reeling from the disturbing
diagnosis, we found ourselves huddled in a hallway at Children's Hospital
of Michigan in Detroit. We'd made a pilgrimage to see Dr. Harry Chugani,
one of the world's top pediatric neurologists and an HME expert. After
waiting overnight and most of the next day, the diminutive doctor appeared
seemingly from nowhere.
Chugani quickly looked at our baby, held his MRI film to the fading light
filtering through the window and ushered us outside the intensive care
unit where Josh lay sleeping.
As the commotion of medical activity buzzed around us, Chugani led us to
one side of the hall and quickly delivered a jolt:
Surgery was likely Joshua's only hope to live seizure-free, or perhaps to
live at all, Chugani told us matter-of-factly.
Anti-seizure drugs would be tried first, he said, but if the drugs
couldn't control Joshua's seizures - and in 95 percent of the cases they
don't - our baby would be headed for surgery.
We were stunned. To that point, surgery had been mentioned once and then
only as a distant, last-ditch possibility.
"Are you talking about removing part of his brain?" Todd asked as he,
Karen and Joshua's grandmother Marti Kenel struggled to understand the
news.
"Yes," Chugani replied plainly. "It is likely the only thing we can do to
stop the seizures."
Chugani's prediction was right. Three months to the day after his first
seizure, Joshua, 14 pounds and a day shy of 13 weeks old, underwent a
complete hemispherectomy, a radical procedure performed on fewer than 50
children nationwide each year.
From the second we received Joshua's diagnosis, the spectre of surgery
dominated our lives, tested our faith and started us on a journey we never
planned and cannot predict.
A beautiful baby
We missed the first seizure. Joshua was 1 day old when it happened for the
first time at Lansing's Sparrow Hospital. He was in the healthy newborn
nursery when the nursing staff witnessed a brief seizure. His chin
twitched. His left arm extended and was firm.
Joshua was whisked to the neonatal intensive care unit, where he suffered
his second seizure. We missed that one, too.
Sam Schulz, 5, asks his parents about Joshua while his younger brother
endures a seizure late one night. Parents Todd and Karen try to comfort
Joshua during his seizures, but there really is little they can do. Sam
became the family's seizure spotter, alerting his parents about Joshua
with the phrase: "Seizure here, seizure here."
Joshua looked so fragile, so peaceful, in his incubator when we visited
him for the first time in the neonatal unit. He was hooked up to monitors
to track his respiration, heart rate and oxygen levels. His tiny body was
dwarfed by the equipment. The incubator kept him warm, although he wore
just a diaper and undershirt.
In nearby incubators, six other babies lay with assorted monitors and
tubes and machines whirring about them. In a hospital ward populated
mostly by premature babies, Joshua looked robust at 8 pounds, 6 ounces.
In the early evening hours of Feb. 16, with Joshua resting comfortably
nearby, a neurologist told us an MRI scan of Joshua's brain indicated a
serious abnormality. A good chunk of half of his brain had failed to
develop. It would not develop. Controlling Joshua's seizures would be our
biggest challenge. Our son would be delayed developmentally.
The brief meeting ended and the neurologist left. We sat alone in a small
office with images of Joshua's brain on a computer monitor. Karen, still
in a wheelchair after her C-section, began sobbing. Todd hugged her and
tried to reassure her: "It will be OK."
Neither one of us, of course, knew if that was true.
We've replayed the scene a thousand times. But, six months later, we still
cannot recall the neurologist uttering the word "hemimegalencephaly." We
heard more familiar terminology: abnormal brain development ... seizures
... unknown cause.
There was something terribly, critically wrong with our son. And we were
helpless to fix it.
Joshua was first prescribed phenobarbital, a common anti-seizure
medication given to people with epilepsy. The drug seemed to work, but it
made Joshua very sleepy.
After six days - and no additional seizures - Joshua came home Feb. 21.
Todd hung a banner on the front porch that read "Welcome home Joshua." We
ordered pizza for dinner, a tradition we'd established on the first nights
home with our other children. We wanted it to feel the same. It didn't.
While relieved to have Joshua home, we nervously waited for him to
experience a seizure. Because we hadn't seen his earlier seizures, we
didn't know what to expect. Would he shake? Twitch? Foam at the mouth?
Turn blue?
On March 4, about one week after Joshua came home, we witnessed our first
seizure. It wasn't as scary as we'd anticipated. In fact, it took two days
to figure out that Josh's subtle, but severe, symptoms were actually
seizures.
Josh startled, a feeling we imagine is a bit like waking up with the
sensation that you're falling out of bed. His tiny body stiffened, his
eyes bulged and his face flushed as an electrical storm flashed in his
brain. Ten to 12 seconds later, it happened again. And again. And again.
On average, this pattern of startling and relaxing would continue for
about five minutes. Sometimes, it lasted up to an hour.
The seizures were medically defined as infantile spasms, one of the most
damaging types of seizures. Joshua's seizures raged for the next 10 weeks.
It was excruciating to watch and wait. Five minutes is an eternity when
there is nothing you can do to help your child. We held, caressed and
comforted Joshua, forever wondering if he was in pain.
Friends and family seemed curious about Josh's seizures, yet afraid to
witness them. Armed with good intentions, many greeted us with grim faces
and spoke in reserved tones.
But after seeing Joshua - and his seizures - everyone marveled at how
"normal" he looked. As for the seizures, the relieved expressions and
comments people shared with us spoke volumes. Joshua was not something out
of a horror movie. He was a beautiful baby with a seizure disorder.
Prayers for Joshua
Dr. Chugani estimates HME strikes in about one of 200,000 births. The
condition is characterized by the enlargement of one side of the brain -
the right, in Josh's case. Often, HME is accompanied by frequent, early
seizures that are difficult to control.
HME is sometimes genetic, but can occur in isolated instances. We have no
family history of seizure disorders and specialists believe Joshua's
condition is an isolated case. Doctors don't know why HME happens, which
probably will always trouble us.
Why was Joshua the one in 200,000? We were good people who'd made all the
right decisions during Karen's pregnancy. Why had God done this to our
son? To us?
Our two older children - Sam, 5, and Maddy, 3 - were born healthy. But
Karen's pregnancy with Joshua was filled with complications.
The biggest came at about six months when a routine ultrasound detected a
potential problem in the baby's brain. After further testing, we were told
the baby had hydrocephalus - water on the brain. We devoured everything we
could read about hydrocephalus. The baby, which an amniocentesis found to
be a "chromosomally normal male," might require a shunt to drain excess
fluid from the brain. We were devastated.
We turned to prayer - at all hours of the day and night, alone and with
friends. Our pastors from Robbins United Methodist Church - Marty Debow
and Jeff Nunham - and others came into our home to pray with us. We were
strengthened and comforted by those special meetings, where everyone
gathered around and held us, placing their hands on Karen's very pregnant
belly while they prayed for healing and strength.
We prayed before, during and immediately following Joshua's birth. His
name was circulated on prayer chains at churches across Michigan - and the
nation. The power of prayer was tangible to us. It helped us through this
trying experience.
Our lives changed when Joshua was born. And while we wish no family ever
had to experience what we are going through, we believe all things happen
for a reason.
We frequently recall the advice of one doctor who worked with Joshua at
Sparrow: "Take your baby home and treat him as you would treat any baby,"
Dr. Padmani Karna said. "Read to him, play with him, love him. Your other
children have taught you patience. Joshua will teach you more."
The choice
So what did HME mean for Joshua? For our family?
For Joshua, the seizures were exhausting. He would fall asleep for hours
after a typical seizure. The medications had little impact for weeks,
although they did cause extreme drowsiness.
The disease was exhausting for our family, too. Joshua's seizures, medical
appointments and regular physical therapy punctuated our daily lives
already busy with both of us working and parenting our two older children.
The strain grew as Todd returned to work, following the MSU basketball
team around the Midwest and eventually to the NCAA Tournament in
Washington, D.C. We worried constantly about Joshua - and whether the
attention he required was taking a toll on our two other children.
A revolving door of family and friends helped tremendously at home while
Karen took maternity leave from her job as a communications consultant for
the Michigan Education Association. Grandparents, aunts and uncles filled
in while we stayed with Joshua at the hospital, or when we escaped for a
much-needed trip to the YMCA or grocery store.
Samuel, our preschooler, developed a wonderful sensitivity to Joshua. He
sang to his baby brother during seizures. "Big brother's here," Sam tried
to assure him. He also became an expert seizure-spotter.
"Seizure here! Seizure here!" Sam would holler when he witnessed the
beginning of another episode.
Madeline, no longer the baby in the house, adjusted, too. She enjoyed
helping with daily activities such as baths and feedings. She learned to
help with physical therapy and to hold Joshua even though his back and
neck arched a lot, a situation therapists hoped would be relieved with
surgery.
As Joshua grew, we noticed differences between the left and right sides of
his body. He opened and closed his right hand, but his left hand was
usually clenched in a fist. He learned to suck his right hand and thumb
when he was about 9 weeks old, but the left arm usually just hung by his
side. Joshua rarely cried or smiled, nor did he coo or make other baby
noises. He couldn't follow moving objects with his eyes.
We enrolled Joshua in Ingham Intermediate School District's Early On
program, which provides special education services to children from birth
to age 3. Physical therapist Jane Thomas taught us how to stimulate Joshua
in ways that would encourage him to use his left hand and arm. In her
weekly home visits, she taught us how to improve his trunk and neck
control.
Joshua's prognosis was unclear. Developmental problems were certain, but
the range of possibilities was wildly unpredictable. We could have a son
with relatively minor learning disabilities, or one who was severely
mentally disabled.
Chugani and others wouldn't speculate about Joshua's future.
"I don't want to know if he'll ace the spelling test in the second grade,"
Karen told Chugani during one visit. "I want to know if he'll be in second
grade."
Chugani answered: "I think he'll be in second grade. Will he go to high
school or college? I don't know."
If we chose surgery and it was performed early, Joshua's remaining brain
tissue - if healthy and relatively unaffected by the seizures - could
learn some of the right-brain functions. But there were no guarantees.
As the weeks passed, it became increasingly clear we were headed for
surgery. Medicine slowed but did not eliminate the seizures. Joshua seemed
increasingly uncomfortable during the seizures. Medical tests, including a
23-hour video-monitored EEG - during which Karen and Todd had to stay
awake - and MRI and PET scans, indicated the seizures were affecting the
healthy half of his brain.
On Josh's best days, we saw as few as three episodes, although they lasted
longer. They were changing in other ways, too. At times, his eyelids,
nostrils and lips twitched rapidly.
Without intervention, and a permanent end to the seizures, the chaotic
right side would begin to damage the left side we desperately hoped was
still healthy. As Chugani put it: "The right side will try to take the
left with it."
In late April, a surgery date was finally set. The right half of Joshua's
brain would be removed on May 16. The news brought more relief than alarm.
Finally, we could do something to help our son.
We couldn't afford to wait. Not for medicine. Not for a miracle. Surgery,
as radical and risky as the procedure appeared, was the only hope.
Contact Todd Schulz at 377-1051 or
tschulz@lsj.com.
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School choice law
may not help children in districts with tight space
by Duke Helfand, Los Angeles Times, August 17, 2002
A key feature of a new federal education law intended to give 3.5 million
poor children a chance to attend better public schools this fall cannot
succeed in urban districts that are strapped for space, educators say.
The "No Child Left Behind" law, touted by the Bush administration as a
remedy for ailing schools, promises students from low-income families the
opportunity to switch from troubled campuses to better ones close by. But
many large districts lack the classroom seats to accommodate the
transfers.
In Los Angeles, for example, nearly 230,000 youngsters qualify for
transfers at public expense, but the district might have as few as 100
seats available.
Similar shortages are expected to limit access to top schools in New York,
Chicago, Baltimore, Sacramento and other cities.
School administrators and others say the new decree will not level the
playing field as intended for low-income students in more than 8,600
struggling schools identified by government officials.
"There are no empty seats in the best public schools," said Diane Ravitch
,an education researcher at New York University and a assistant secretary
of education under former President Bush. "If you don't have any choices,
then it's hollow."
In fact, some educators believe that the failure of large school systems
to deliver choice for legions of poor parents could give new impetus to
the private-school voucher movement, which recently wasreinvigorated by a
U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Some parents who know of the transfer program are dismayed that they may
be unable to take advantage of it.
"It's upsetting. I'd like to have the best for my son," said Elva Garcia
Mills, whose son Daniel attends Belmont High School, one of 120 Los
Angeles campuses that students theoretically can leave this year. "Some
schools are better than others."
Officials with the U.S. Department of Education acknowledge that crowded
school systems might need several years to comply with the law. But they
expect districts to make a good faith effort this first year.
"Our goal here is to change our understanding of how public education is
delivered," said Eugene Hickok Undersecretary of Education. "This will be
the first time that federal education policy speaks directly to parents."
The idea of letting parents choose better public schools grew out of a
political compromise in Washington.
The Bush administration early on favored giving low-income families
vouchers to pay tuition at private schools. Democrats balked at the idea
for fear vouchers would drain money away from public schools. The two
sides settled on offering public-school choice.
Then, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that a voucher program in
Cleveland allowing students to attend private parochial schools at public
expense did not violate the Constitutional separation of church and state.
Both sides in the case predicted that the decision would trigger a
national push for vouchers, charter schools and other forms of school
choice. If public school choice falters, that could fuel the voucher
movement, some educators say.
"It's a very sensitive issue," said Dennis Van Roekel, vice-president
elect of the National Education Association, the country's largest
teachers union. "When people criticize what currently exists, their
solution is to say we need to take children somewhere else. That is not a
solution."
The public-school transfer option is part of a sweeping education law that
President Bush signed last January. It also requires states to test
students annually and schools to have "highly qualified" teachers within
four years.
Several large urban districts call the new requirements on teacher quality
and school choice unrealistic.
Critics say the school choice provisions put a financial burden on
districts, which must pay for transportation, tutoring and other services.
Others point out that many school systems and states allow students to
transfer to their choice of schools and programs.
All of the under-performing campuses affected by the new law landed on the
federal list because they failed adequately to raise test scores for two
years running.
Districts are supposed to give priority to the lowest achieving children
from poor families at these schools. But large urban districts have an
enormous number of children in that category.
In Chicago, for example, officials have just 2,800 openings for 125,000
eligible low-income elementary students from 179 schools.
So the district is offering transfers to just 29,000 students at 50
campuses. Parents will learn next week whether their children get to move.
The new law presents small rural school districts with another set of
problems. In far-flung communities, students must travel great distances
for better schools. Children in one Wyoming town, for example, face a
70-mile commute to the nearest school in their district.
Administrators say that losing even a few students from a small school can
skew test scores. And school officials worry about the economic fallout in
small towns with shaky economies if families move to be closer to better
schools.
These concerns weigh on Don Middleton, superintendent of the Clear Creek
School District in the Rocky Mountains about 35 miles west of Denver.
Middleton is notifying parents of the 200-student Georgetown Elementary of
their option to transfer to another campus about 15 miles away in Idaho
Springs. But Middleton also is urging families to stay in Georgetown, a
tourist stop on Interstate 70 midway between Denver and Vail known to
locals for its historic buildings and its looping railroad.
"I have trouble getting teachers in a place like Georgetown," Middleton
said. "I just don't understand the concept of abandoning a school in
places where communities are distant and towns are different. I don't see
it's a viable alternative."
Some educators say local officials should consider more creative options
such as running multiple schools in the same buildings or of offering
education over the Internet.
"If the public school systems have their heart in this provision, which
they don't, they would be coming up with imaginative forms of choice in
their districts," said Chester E. Finn Jr., an assistant secretary of
education in the Reagan administration and the head of the Thomas B.
Fordham Foundation, a private Washington think tank.
"What we see all over the country are districts basically trying to get
out from having to comply in any serious way," he said.
Most school districts won't know the actual impact of public school choice
until they hear back from parents in the coming weeks. But a handful of
school systems have set their rosters, and they say interest has been
lukewarm.
About 2,300 students were eligible in the Howard County Public School
System of suburban Baltimore, for example, but only 63 students' families
asked for transfers, district officials report.
In the nearby Baltimore City Public School System, 30,000 students
qualified but only 347 students' families asked for new schools.
Still, Baltimore has just 194 open seats. And that means that more than
100 students who seek transfers will not get the opportunity.
Officials in both districts say that parents want to keep their children
off buses. And, they believe, most families are satisfied with their local
schools.
"You want to live up to the letter and spirit of No Child Left Behind as a
school district," said Baltimore Supt. Carmen Russo. "But in the long run,
the answer to this is that all of our schools have to be better so no one
has to flee them."
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Edging around
Proposal A: House-passed bill would add to inequities, property taxes
Grand Rapids Press, Friday, August 16, 2002
State House members, dazed perhaps by a pre-Christmas rush to get out of
Lansing, almost unanimously last December voted through a school-finance
bill that could be a large lump of coal for Michigan property-taxpayers.
Senators are under increased pressure from school groups now to take up
the bill, but they should be in no hurry to do so.
Although the bill has the look of a minor technical change in the state
school code, it has serious implications for two primary goals of Proposal
A, the voter-approved 1994 landmark school-tax reform law. Proposal A
sought to reduce schools' reliance on the property tax and to narrow the
spending gap between high- and low-property value school districts.
The bill, proposed by Rep. Doug Hart, R-Rockford, would expand the uses
that could be made of school "sinking funds," which are accounts that
schools currently may use for such objectives as buying real estate for
schools or building or repairing schools. Boards may ask voters for a
property tax of up to 5 mills to create a sinking fund.
Under the Hart bill, sinking funds could be called "infrastructure
investment funds" and be used to pay for anything for which schools
currently can sell bonds. Besides constructing and repairing buildings,
bonding purposes can include acquiring or updating computers; improving
and equipping sports fields, libraries and playgrounds; and buying school
buses and furniture.
Officials of several Kent County school districts -- Rockford, Grandville
and the Kent Intermediate School District -- have argued for this relaxed
definition of sinking funds, contending that it would save them the cost
of selling bonds and paying interest. The Legislature obviously shouldn't
stand in the way of schools curbing expenses, but neither should it permit
schools to violate what very clearly is the spirit and promise of Proposal
A.
The loosened restraints on sinking funds would encourage school districts
to make greater use of them. Currently fewer than one Michigan school
district in five has a sinking fund, typically funding it with a tax of
less than 2 mills. With adoption of the Hart legislation, many more
districts would go for the 5-mill maximum, which could be in place for up
to 20 years. Millage elections would become more frequent and more
routine. The temptation for some schools to shift some operating expenses
into the sinking-fund categories might be irresistible. Increasingly, the
line between capital and operating expenses would become blurred as
sinking funds -- traditionally a source of long-term funding for capital
needs -- are used to finance short-term purchases.
Also, in returning schools to a larger reliance on the property tax, the
bill would retreat from the great progress that Proposal A has made
against financial inequities between school districts. In the property
tax-dependent days before Proposal A, huge differences existed even
between neighboring school districts in the amount of money they could
spend per child -- all because of the value of each district's property
valuation. Now, with school operating funds coming entirely from the state
and based mostly on the sales tax, 92 percent of school districts are run
on essentially the same revenue. That is a major achievement and one of
the greatest gains of Proposal A.
Legislators ought to consider, in particular, the implications of the Hart
legislation for urban school districts, Grand Rapids among them. Those
districts typically have the hardest time passing millage proposals.
Indeed, none of Michigan's large urban school districts is among the 91
districts that presently have sinking funds. The inequity implications of
expanded reliance on the funds are easy to see.
The Hart bill passed the House with the votes of all of this area's
lawmakers except for Rep. Barbara Vander Veen, R-Allendale, who was
absent. In the Senate, an essentially duplicate measure was introduced
last year by Sen. Kenneth Sikkema, R-Wyoming. Both bills were sent to the
Senate Education Committee, where they are now. But while Mr. Hart has
announced no change in his thinking, Mr. Sikkema is among the many who are
reconsidering the legislation's potential effects.
Indeed, the potential consequences of the legislation are such that no
further action should be taken this year. The Legislature has only five
scheduled session days left. That's hardly time to deal responsibly with
anything having the dimensions of what Mr. Hart has proposed. Mr. Hart
should be among those saying so.
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Education summit
set to tackle urban ills
Nationally known figures to convene at State Theatre
by Margarita Bauzá, The Detroit News, August 18, 2002
Almost half of all adult Detroiters can't write a letter or read the
instructions on a bottle of medicine.
Almost a third have not completed high school.
Like many urban centers across the nation, the home of the vast majority
of Metro Detroit's African-Americans faces an educational crisis.
A host of nationally known lecturers, educators, scholars and political
activists will address urban America's educational problems at a national
education summit Tuesday at the State Theatre.
The summit, sparked by a Detroit News series "The Cost of Segregation" and
hosted by the Wayne County Community College District, also will address
other issues that plague American cities, including unemployment, poverty
and incarceration.
Perhaps nowhere is the concern so high as in education, seen by many as
the link to several other social ills.
"You've got a situation in not just Detroit but in all urban areas where
kids come to school with a lot of societal baggage that suburban kids
don't have," said John Telford, who taught at Detroit Public Schools for
10 years. He now coordinates a program that involves parents in their
children's education.
"Urban areas have been struggling for many decades to overcome some of the
handicaps of illiteracy, unemployment, segregation and concentrated
poverty. They render the educational process for teachers and
administrators more difficult."
Educational shortcomings are a leading component of this new sort of
segregation -- not one supported by laws as much as differences in
opportunities, said Manning Marable, a Columbia University professor and
founding director of the Institute for Research in African American
Studies. Among his concerns:
* Forty-seven percent of Detroiters are functionally illiterate, according
to a recent government report, "The State of Literacy in America." The
2000 Census showed that more than 30 percent have not completed high
school.
* About 44 percent of Detroiters between the ages of 16 and 60 are jobless
and are not seeking work, according to statistics from the U.S. Labor
Department.
* Nationwide, the overwhelming majority of the 5.4 million Americans in
the criminal justice system are minorities or poor, Marable said.
In addition, 4 million former convicts living in the United States have
forever lost their right to vote, excluding them from the democratic
process. Convicts' criminal records will disqualify them from receiving
student loans and therefore, probably a higher education.
Detroit is far from an all-black city. Some 12 percent of Detroit's
950,000 residents -- or 116,000 -- are white, while 82 percent are African
American.
"For people of African descent, for Latinos, for the working poor, the
unemployed, the democratic dream has been largely denied to us," said
Marable, who will attend the summit. "The new barriers to democratic
access have no signs that say 'white' or colored.' "
Parental shortcomings
Curtis Ivery, chancellor of the Wayne County Community College District,
began planning the summit after reading "The Cost of Segregation," a
series of News articles in January that documented what Metro Detroiters
pay for their sharply divided living patterns. The price, the stories
showed, was much more harsh for blacks, who are concentrated in the
economically stressed inner city.
"I thought (Detroit News Publisher and Editor) Mark Silverman was
courageous to confront those issues head on," Ivery said.
Ivery, with sponsorship from The News and WDIV Local 4, assembled a panel
of scholars to discuss the problems and offer public policy initiatives
and long-term solutions that would tackle those problems.
"We want to go beyond the rhetoric and implement policies that make sense
and policies that are pragmatic," Ivery said. "We need measurable goals,
and we need someone to hold us all accountable."
Parent Carolyn Miller, whose son is in the seventh grade in the Detroit
school system, said she hopes the summit addresses basic problems like
those that plague her son's school. They range from poor discipline and
curricula to, in some students' cases, a poor family life.
Miller says her son often can't take books home and complains that
teachers spend most of their time just trying to get kids' attention.
"They don't have books in certain classrooms," she said. "I haven't seen a
reading book yet. How can kids learn if they can't take books home? Some
kids go home and there's no one there either."
Parental involvement is a critical shortcoming in Detroit schools, said
Chief Executive Kenneth Burnley.
"Many of our students start kindergarten one or two years behind because
basic things didn't happen at home, because someone didn't read to them
since they were born," Burnley said. "Those children might have not been
talked to using grammatically correct English. Those conditions often
result in children beginning school with about 2,000 less vocabulary words
than their peers."
"These problems are socio-economically driven," he continued. "People who
tend to have more financial means have more success in school."
Burnley, who attended Detroit schools and the University of Michigan,
hopes the conference focuses on solutions.
"The urban environment is what it is because of what society has done to
itself. It's an economic thing more than any other single thing," he said.
"What the country is trying to do is get away from the finger-pointing and
get more into solutions. To do that, we need to understand what the
challenges are and face them clearly."
Solutions elusive
Another Detroit native, Judge Greg Mathis, is a product of both the
state's criminal justice and education systems.
Mathis, who spent a year in jail as a youth, later became a national
success story after an encounter with a caring judge that led him to pass
a high school equivalency test. He then finished college and law school
and became a judge himself.
Elected to Michigan's 36th District Court in 1995, Mathis is the star of
Warner Brothers' "Judge Mathis" TV show and a committed civil rights
activist who is dead-set against vouchers that would take money out of
public schools.
"There's a struggle between vouchers and public school funding, schools of
choice and charter schools," Mathis said. "Education is the civil rights
issue of the day. These arguments and debates are healthy because they
will help find solutions to our struggles to educate our children."
Perhaps the issue affecting education most is the nation's economy, Mathis
said. While education budgets are cut, prison budgets grow.
"I say it takes a village to raise an educated child -- but it takes
financing to sustain the village," Mathis said.
Aside from defending educational funding, proposed solutions are varied.
Columbia's Marable believes solutions should center around providing
amnesty to prisoners, so they can expunge their records after three years,
exercise voting rights following incarceration and permit them to get
financial aid for college classes.
"We have a punitive model that destroys opportunities and accelerates the
processes of crime and violence," Marable said.
Maria Hinojosa, an urban affairs CNN correspondent who has written
award-winning books on youth and gangs, said it's hard to understand why
education is leaving more people behind.
"I grew up in a neighborhood in Chicago where everybody pulled for each
other," she said. "The feeling was that you were a collective.
"Now you have entire grades where kids are just left behind. The fact that
this exists is the greatest contradiction -- that the wealthiest country
in the world has a problem educating its own."
You can reach Margarita Bauza' at (313) 222-2069 or
mbauza@detnews.com.
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