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In Michigan, there is no true system that holds schools and districts accountable for their continued failure.  Other than losing students to charters schools and other districts, failing schools face no consequences for their performance.  The federal NCLB measures and the State standards continue to allow the same old performance out of our lowest performing schools.  For all the problems associated with NCLB, it at least attempted to put in place a system to hold all schools accountable.  The effort in our legislation is to create a failing threshold, that no schools should fall under.  So finally a school will be accountable for making serious reforms and changes in their individual school in order to need meet the failing threshold.  A school, including its staff and parents, would be notified of the school's performance prior to falling into the failing criteria.  If a school did meet the failing criteria, it would be a candidate for a major restructuring effort led by either the local district, staff or a state turnaround expert.  The intent of plan is to give districts and leaders plenty of time to take measures that will lead to increased student achievement.
   A school fails to meet state and federal standards for a varierty of reasons.  Every school has its own issues and circumstances.  It is important that we tailor individual solutions to the individual issues in a school and its relationship with its local district.  Our underperforming schools are not meeting the needs of our students.  The statistics need not be reviewed to understand the affects of poorly performing schools have on our state.  We need to free up the staff to implement innovation and a new school culture. 

Stay tuned for another installment.....