Jerry Mendoza Grosse Ile High School’s Teacher of the Year Ann Scheibner joins her biology students as she watches their classmates illustrate work on the chalkboard. Grosse Ile ranked highest in 2000- ’01 Detroit News report card of 88 school districts in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Livingston counties.

How schools stack up

Grosse Ile district jumps full grade, leads 87 others

By Jodi Upton / The Detroit News

    Grosse Ile moved to the head of the class among Metro Detroit school districts in the 2001 Detroit News School Report card.

    The island school district in southern Wayne County topped 87 other districts in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Livingston counties.

    “Well, I guess I can come into work on Monday,” said Grosse Ile superintendent Peter Dion. “I’m excited about this.”

    The News, which published its first school report card in the 1999-2000 school year, grades districts on 12 key education factors, including test scores, teacher experience, class size, accreditation and drop-out rate. It is the most comprehensive analyses of area school districts.

    Spending is not an overriding factor in the formula; neither is a community’s wealth a guarantee of success.

    Among the highlights this year:

* No district that got an “A” in 1999-2000 dropped below that category on the new grade card. But three districts that got B+ ratings last year — Northville, Rochester and Clarkston — got “As” this year. There are more As partly because five districts in Livingston County were added, expanding the curve.

* The Westwood, Wayne-Westland, Highland Park and Richmond school districts slipped from Ds in 1999-2000 to this year’s “F” group. Meanwhile, New Haven and Van Buren, both of which got “Fs” last year, made it out of the cellar on the new report card.

* A few districts saw fairly dramatic changes, such as Richmond in Macomb County. In most of those cases, falling test scores pushed the districts’ scores lower. In a few other cases, increasing test scores were enough to bump a district to a higher grade. Romeo, also in Macomb County, is an example: It jumped from a C in 1999-2000 to a B+ this year.

Making the grade

Educators say the best of all 88 Metro Detroit districts graded by The Detroit News have:

* Small class size
* High spending per student
* Low dropout rate
* High state test scores
* High average ACT (college admission) score
* A mix of new and experienced teachers
* High state high school test score
* Accreditation by the North Central Association
*Improving trend on yearly state tests

Based on those factors, The Detroit News scoring determined these districts as the best and the worst:

The “A” districts
* Grosse Ile
* West Bloomfield
* Troy
* Grosse Pointe
* Novi
* Bloomfield Hills
* Northville
* Birmingham
* Avondale
* Farmington
* Rochester
* Clarkston

The “F” districts
* Lincoln Park
* Richmond
* Pontiac
* Highland Park
* Hamtramck
* Wayne-Westland
* Westwood
For all districts’ grades, see our database