Sunday, October 24, 2004

Q&A with John Engler

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Former Gov. John Engler orchestrated the state takeover of Detroit Public Schools. He first pitched reform in 1997, proposing a takeover plan for Michigan's failing public schools, singling out Detroit and other districts that flunk testing and drop-out standards.

After that plan stalled, and two other versions later, the state finally took control of the district in 1999. Engler fell out of the spotlight after leaving the governor's office in 2002. He currently is the president of the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington D.C.

Five years after the state takeover, Engler talks about the reform and whether it has led to progress.

Q: In 1997, 1998 what were you looking at primarily when you said the state had to seize control of the district? Was it low test scores?

A: Something to give these kids a chance. It was stunning there was such a passive acceptance of a lousy school system by the community leadership. In fact, there was more interest in a few union jobs and a few people with positions and titles than the 160,000 kids that were in the district.

There was a fight to preserve the status quo, but when they talked about the status quo they were talking about their jobs and ... I guess to what extent something can be described a perk or benefit.

Q: Was it low test scores and the drop outs or was it the litany of stories coming out about corruption with the spending of the 1994 construction bond and the kickbacks to school board members?

A: It's the kids. Frankly, I think it would be a hard question if someone was taking kickbacks in a high-performing district. Maybe we need to try that. (He laughs) In all seriousness though, I think clearly what was happening around the bond issue was merely the latest, but it was not so much about personalities. ... We knew that more than half weren't even graduating, but these were called graduates in the Detroit Public Schools and they couldn't make it. And so everybody was trying to figure out how do we remediate the problems. Here you've got a district, which was one of the higher spending districts in the entire state of Michigan, performing so poorly that its graduates were in immediate need of remediation in order to go to the next level.

Q: Where do you think we are now? Do you think progress has been made?

A: I think progress was being made. I was impatient with the pace of progress but I remember Dr. (David) Adamany (interim CEO of the district) counseling that it was going to take time because he said there was just simply nothing there. There were no systems. They didn't even know what they didn't know. It was that bad. .... It was a crazy system.

Q: As you look at it today though, do you think it worked?

A: Look, I think there has been great progress. I think the buildings are cleaner and maintained. .... Some of the basics are being handled. So you can say from just a fundamental level that is better. Clearly, around that time there were other movements. The charter school movement helped. The public school choice movement helped. All of these things have added opportunities for kids and parents to get a better education either where they are or at some other location.

I think we've made some progress. I don't want for a moment though to think we are anywhere close to where we need to be, and this is the problem I have so often: people have been so conditioned to accept poor performance that any sort of glimmer of hope, any sign of improvement is seized upon as 'aren't we great, aren't we doing it now.' And we are not. We are not close to where we need to be. And this is not a Detroit-only problem. I thought at the time Detroit was among the more acute cases in the country, but there are a lot of other systems.

Q: You talked about charters and school choice, some make the argument that at the time Detroit was going through this reform the climate prevented any real progress. How can you improve the district when the kids are draining from the district and money is tied to each student?

A: They should lose children and the district should be smaller because they are doing a poor job. We won't buy cars from a company that doesn't make good cars. We won't buy consumer goods from a company that makes poor products. |

They still have a lot of overhead and infrastructure. ... Detroit is one of the very few districts around where less than half of the money spent on schools ever got to the classroom. ... At one point (district CEO Kenneth Burnley) had made some significant gains there. ... I think they still have more non-teaching personnel than a lot of places. I think that's moved slower.

Q: Their argument is how do you improve when there are nearby charters just opening up.

A: And for the same money, they are hiring a staff and paying for all their overhead and paying for their building too. ... That is like shooting the messenger a little bit. Why are the parents so deeply unhappy they are willing to take the risk on a charter school, which is a start-up school. Although today they are getting a little more tenure and experience ... Why would someone do that, leave the schools? ... They are not losing those kids to other schools inside Detroit. Most of them are being lost, the minute anybody gets any income to get out of Detroit they do, if they've got children of school age.

Q: Should there have been a moratorium on charters?

A: No. That's not the way the world works. Let me take a time out from the competition for five years, 10 years while I get better so hopefully when we start competing again I am able to compete. That's not the way it works. You either compete or you perish. How many former car companies used to call Detroit home? Everybody should stop making cars so theirs can get better for a few years?

Q: Is a school a business?

A: Absolutely, it's a business. The business is the children and their education and that's a real serious business. That is part of the problem, people think 'Well, it's just the schools.' Well, no it's more than the schools. It's where our children go for an education and they can't fail. ... I use the auto industry as a metaphor because it's something people in Michigan understand, people in Detroit understand. But you have parents who work in the auto manufacturing ... They are trying to figure out how can we improve this process to get a better product. How do we get this much more quality, this much more strength, this much more whatever? And you go to the schools and they are offended when you ask them how many kids came to school today. They don't know. I mean it's an absurd situation.

I think they've got to become child-focused and understand if a child is in school or not that matters. If a child is on time or not, that matters. If a child's teacher is in the classroom and credentialed, that matters.

Q: In November Detroiters are going to vote and choose whether to go back to an elected board or an elected board that shares power with the mayor. Where do you think Detroit should go next?

A: I am not there, and I am not in a position to comment on the ballot proposal. I just don't know. I think the mayor should be in charge of the schools simply because everybody does know who the mayor is and they can hold the mayor accountable. If it takes changing mayors every four years in order to try get the schools better, then I think we should start down that road. I think Mayor Kilpatrick has a deep interest in the schools. But if he is not specifically accountable for them, it is going to be hard.

Q: Do you think Kilpatrick can do this?

A: I don't know, but I am telling you that around the country the mayors who are becoming viewed as successful mayors have made education a top priority. There's no quality of life in the city without good schools. ... There aren't going to be jobs without good schools. There aren't jobs for high school drop outs, at least the kind of jobs that are going to support them and allow them to have a family. ... There are not jobs in manufacturing for people who can't read well and can't compute.

Q: In this debate, you are remembered as the man who stole the vote in Detroit. How do you feel about that?

A: I am very proud of what we did to try and help the children of Detroit. One of the problems (is) fewer than 20 percent of the voters actually have kids in the schools. So in effect, what you've got is a bunch of adults having a political fight where the kids are ignored. Who is going to speak up for the kids? In the case when the state acted, it was clearly a case of where we cared more about the children of Detroit than some of the people who had been elected to serve them.

Q: Did folks underestimate the degree of outrage that was created? Did it create so much resistance, distrust that it was counterproductive?

A: It never came up because no one cared about someone's political feelings. What the focus was in the Legislature from Democrats and Republicans ... was about the kids. And I am grateful for the people who were able to put the kids first and not be worried about some political games.

Q: Is losing the right to vote a political game? In the African American community, folks have died for that right.

A: Again, the proposal had a five-year point and now we are going back, and as I said I don't know too much about the ballot proposal so I don't have an opinion on that. But it has provided a period of stability. ... They've done basic things that weren't being done. Even the harshest critic has got to say, 'Yes, well that's right these things were done. And yes, these things are better. But I am still unhappy.' ... I should back up and clarify one thing. The right to vote wasn't lost. I mean everybody votes in presidential, gubernatorial and legislative elections, and this was a set of decisions made by elected officials. There is no guaranteed right to vote when it comes to a public school system. The public schools are created by the Legislature. There is no fundamental right at stake there.

In the case of the city of Detroit schools, we arguably were in violation of the Constitution because what we were providing was free and public but it wasn't under any stretch of the imagination called education. I just think that throughout this debate, even here today, there is not enough concern about the kids. How can any community leader in good conscience look the other way when half the kids don't graduate. Bill Cosby needs to come and spend a week in Detroit talking to parents. He is communicating in a way now that frankly I couldn't or very few others could. What he is saying has great, great importance.

Q: Do you have any regrets?

A: We should have done it earlier. I think that would have been helpful.

Q: Do you think the district should be broken up into a more manageable system?

A: I think it's possible that it should. ... I think increasingly, education will come to be viewed as what is actually taking place in a school building, where there is a principal, there are teachers and there are students. If we are going to be focused on the kid, that all takes place in the building. That the administrative stuff really ought to be kept to a minimum ... and the resources ought to get to the building.

Q: How would you rank this issue of the success of Detroit schools in importance to Metro Detroit and state.

A: It's the first, second and third most important issue for the city of Detroit's future. You can take a lot of trips around the world and talk about business, but until you've got a school system that you can be proud of your message is always going to be undercut.

Q: Overall, how do you feel about the last five years?

A: I feel we've made progress. I've been impatient about the pace of that progress and reform. I think it's fragile. You easily could go backward and that would be catastrophic for the children of Detroit. I would just let the mayor run the system. ... I think there's no need for an elected board. We may get a board that looks like the city council of Detroit. That's a scary thought.

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