Columns

Jack Lessenberry

‘We Will Not Let You Fail’

December 2, 2011

DETROIT — If those currently debating charter school reform in the Michigan Legislature want to really do it right, they might want to spend some time picking the brains of Doug Ross.

Possibly the best thing that has happened to the battered and reeling Detroit Public Schools in recent years was the fact that Ross got beaten — badly — when he tried to run for governor.

Thirteen years ago, Ross, a former state senator and state commerce director, tried for the Democratic nomination for governor. Unfortunately, party regulars threw their support to a particularly uninspiring candidate named Larry Owen.

Flamboyant attorney Geoffrey Fieger got into the race, spent millions of his own cash and pulled off an upset victory. And Doug Ross was left with those who cared about policy and who, a generation earlier, had been fervent supporters of Adlai Stevenson.

The year after his defeat, Ross dusted himself off and decided to turn his attention to education. Even then, it was clear that the Detroit Public Schools was failing to do the job of educating kids.

So he founded a new, nonprofit institution called New Urban Learning, which began a charter called University Preparatory School, aimed at African American students in Detroit.

“We had a philosophy of changing the culture,” Ross told me last week. “Changing the culture and changing expectations, where we say to these kids: ‘We will not let you fail.’”

That approach was scoffed at by some. How were poor, African American kids from Detroit going to relate to a white guy from affluent Birmingham with a graduate degree from Princeton?

The answer turned out to be…pretty darn well. University Prep School turned out winners. Today, there are seven New Urban Learning charters in Detroit. They take all comers — not just the elite. Last year Ross said University Prep students had a 95 percent graduation rate. What percentage go on to higher education?

“One hundred percent,” he told me.

“All of them. We don’t let them graduate until they have at least two offers of post-secondary possibilities.” For more than half, this means traditional, four-year college or university; for the rest, either community college or higher-end vocational education.

Liberal Democrat Doug Ross, like Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, knows there is no shame in being a highly skilled — and highly employable — welder or plumber.

Michigan public schools traditionally hate charters, since they drain state resources — primarily, the per-pupil foundation grant — from them. But Roy Roberts, the new emergency manager of the Detroit Public Schools, may have remembered that old Gillette commercial in which Victor Kiam proclaimed he was so impressed by their razor blades “that I bought the company.”

Three months ago, the Detroit Public Schools bought Doug Ross instead, hiring him to be both “chief innovation officer” for the troubled district and also in charge of the 14 charter schools currently run by the district. (Ross continues, at least for now, to wear a third hat; he is still active in New Urban Learning.)

He knows that if Detroit’s public schools are to survive, they have to be fixed in a hurry. Eight years ago they had more than 150,000 students. That is down to 66,000, and Ross told me “the decline is accelerating.” Less than three months after joining the team, the new chief innovation officer is still in the process of making recommendations to Roy Roberts.

The emergency manager’s main job is to get the schools’ mushrooming deficit under control. But Ross thinks he knows a big part of the educational solution. He doesn’t think every school can be saved. But he wants to give those schools that are saved wide autonomy to come up with their own formulas for success.

“Over the past 30 years, not a single large urban district in America has had any meaningful success using a centralized approach,” he said. Detroit Public Schools has been notorious for hide-bound, inefficient bureaucracy that could rival that of the old Soviet Union — and was about as successful.

What’s needed is schools that use innovative approaches to create student success. That happens, he added, when you implant in the breast of all students that drive to make something of themselves. He noted that the vast majority of kids from affluent suburbs like his own Birmingham have that drive, constantly reinforced by their parents. Maybe only a third of urban kids do.

But Ross says his University Prep Schools have helped awaken that drive by creating a culture of high expectations. To what extent he can make his ideals reality in Detroit is yet to be seen.

The legislature seems determined to allow virtually unlimited charter schools everywhere, and it’s not clear what impact that will have. Doug Ross turned 69 this year, and knows he is no longer likely to achieve higher elected office. But he says, “I would like to be able to say that my most meaningful work is yet to happen.”

Anyone who cares about the future has to hope he is right.

Veteran journalist and national Emmy Award winner Jack Lessenberry teaches at Wayne State University, serves as Michigan Radio’s senior political analyst and writes regularly for several publications. He also serves as The Toledo Blade’s writing coach and ombudsman and is host of the weekly television show Deadline Now on WGTE-TV in Toledo.