BY CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY

DETROIT FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER


The Detroit Public Schools, as we know it, could disappear in a few years.

A DPS action plan would charter up to 45 schools, close 20 and leave about 70 that include the best-performing schools, some newly constructed and a handful of special-education schools that are expensive to run.

The process already is under way with organizations invited to apply to DPS for charters.

With such a concerted effort to shrink DPS, local leaders, educators, politicians and taxpayers are debating a question: Is DPS worth saving?

Some families say, yes, even driving in from the suburbs for some DPS programs. They and others say charter schools, popular at the moment, offer no guarantee of academic success. Others say DPS, with a $327-million deficit, is beyond repair, and the district should convert fully to charters -- a type of taxpayer-funded school that is independently run. It's an important question crucial to the future of Detroit, which also is in debt and trouble, said Gary Miron, an education researcher at Western Michigan University.

"Is DPS worth saving? Certainly," he said. "The real question is, 'Are the odds of improving the situation going to be better with the alternative?' "

Roy Roberts, DPS's new emergency manager, told the Free Press he knows some say the district isn't worth saving.

"I am convinced that Detroit Public Schools can be saved," he said in a written statement, "recognizing that it could take a different shape and that everything is on the table."

Is Detroit Public Schools worth saving? Charter process sparks debate

Annette Lotharp drives each school day from Belleville to take her two children to a Detroit Public School on the west side.

At DPS's Foreign Language Immersion & Cultural Studies School, Derrick, 11, and Kira, 5, learn Mandarin Chinese. The school also offers French, Spanish and Japanese immersion.

Lotharp said DPS's thriving programs are reason enough to halt a plan under way that could convert about one-third of its schools to charters next year and to stanch a rising movement to convert the entire district one day.

"DPS has a lot of fantastic schools that are not being recognized," she said. "They need to be marketed more and supported."

A block away, charter school founder Doug Ross operates his new school that has an extra-long day -- 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

He holds the opposite view and said he believes DPS's financial and academic failures are just too great to overcome. The district should get out of the business of running the day-to-day operations of schools, he said.

Ross has founded several charter schools in the city, including University Preparatory High School, which graduates nearly all of its students. He said DPS leaders, and most urban superintendents, are failing students.

"Not a single district in America has been able to manage large numbers of schools, period," he said. "The answer is independently managed schools held to high standards of performance."

The divergent views frame an ongoing public debate about the future of DPS.
With a plan already in place to charter about one-third of the district, some are asking: Is DPS worth saving?

Continued at: http://www.freep.com/article/2011053...0311/1001/news