As you may be able to tell by now, I have been an advocate of school choice, and unique options that are sometimes outside of the traditional school model. Detroit is in dire need of options in education, and time is quite obviously critical.
As this type of news arrives I will post it for those who may share my interest.
LANSING, Michigan (March 14, 2012) – The third-annual Excellent Schools Detroit “Report Card” ranks charter schools as some of the best options for parents in the city. The report card was released last week.
Excellent Schools Detroit (ESD) is an organization made up of a broad and diverse coalition of Detroit’s education, government, community, parents and philanthropic leaders who have developed a citywide education plan to help ensure that all Detroit children are in an excellent school by 2020. As part of this effort, ESD annually collects information on school performance and publishes a report card that looks at every school in Detroit and the inner suburbs – traditional and charter schools, as well as some private schools.
“We are publishing this third-annual report card to help Detroit parents better understand how well schools in the metro area are performing,” ESD said in its report.
The centerpiece of the report is a list of “Area Schools With the Best Results.” ESD highlighted a group of 24 schools that “have the metro area’s best reading the math scores over the past three years.” Among that group of 24 schools are nine charter schools (eight of which are in Detroit, and one in Hamtramck):
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
• Detroit Service Learning Academy
• Detroit Edison Public School Academy
MIDDLE SCHOOLS
• Martin Luther King Jr. Education Center Academy
• Detroit Merit Charter Academy
• University Preparatory Academy
• Hamtramck Academy
HIGH SCHOOLS
• Henry Ford Academy
• Cesar Chavez Academy High School
• University Preparatory Academy
ESD also compiled a geographic breakdown of the best schools in Detroit, breaking up the city into seven areas. Charter schools also fared extremely well in this part of the study. While charter schools make up 35 percent of all schools in the report, they represent 46 percent of the top schools by geographic area (looking at the top five schools in each part of the city by grade).
In one part of Detroit – the northwest sector – the No. 1 elementary school, middle school and high school are all charters.
“We applaud and support the outstanding work that Excellent Schools Detroit is doing, and this report card is an excellent tool for parents,” said Dan Quisenberry, President of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies (MAPSA), the state’s united voice for charter schools. “It’s no surprise to see so many charter schools on their list of the best-performing schools. When parents look at charter schools in Detroit, they’ll find innovation and quality, and they’ll see a number of schools that might be the right choice for their family.”
The entire report card can be found online at www.excellentschoolsdetroit.org.
The Michigan Association of Public School Academies (MAPSA) has been the unified voice of the public charter school movement in Michigan since 1996. MAPSA represents more than 110,000 students, 5,000 teachers, dozens of authorizers and more than 50 education service providers working in 255 public charter schools in the state. MAPSA assists the state’s public charter schools in their mission to deliver achievement, choice and accountability through advocacy, communications, technical assistance and professional development services. For additional information, please visit www.charterschools.org.
