More bad news from Michigan this week, and this is probably the worst in a recent streak of negative press.  Detroit’s high school graduation rate is dead last among the 50 largest U.S. cities at 24.9 percent.

The findings of the report, issued by a group called America’s Promise Alliance, weren’t particularly surprising to me.  I still can’t forget the Detroit Public School (DPS) billboard that shocked my wife, Akanke, and I when we first moved to Michigan from Nashville in 1999. 

The billboard said:  “‘C’ IT NOW, OR WE’LL SEE YOU THIS SUMMER – Sponsored by Detroit Public Schools.”

What’s up with that?  The school board paid thousands of dollars for an outdoor ad that encouraged mediocrity in a failing school system.  And what was their tactic? Threaten students with summer school when they are in need of help, and probably should be getting in some extra study time. 

This is a terrible message to send to kids when you should be promoting the positive benefits of a good education.  Summer school is a good thing.  It is designed to aid students who aren’t doing well and need extra attention. 

Akanke and I felt insulted on behalf of the students.  We immediately began volunteering in a weekend academic program that helps high school students improve their math and verbal skills.  Someone had to make sure some of these kids got a chance at a decent education.  It was obvious to us that the school system wasn’t doing it.

Not much has changed over the years, and if anything, Detroit Public Schools (DPS) have gotten worse.  The experience at DPS is so bad that most parents and students have given up. 

There was a great deal of controversy last year when Education Week tagged Detroit with an almost identically dismal number, 25 percent, in its study of high school graduation rates.  Clearly both reports indicate that three-quarters of the students who enter the city’s high schools as freshmen will either leave the district to earn a diploma elsewhere, or they will drop out of school before graduation.  Imagine what it would look like if 75 percent of the students at your high school just got up and walked out.

In 2006, around 200 students did just that at Detroit’s Mackenzie High.  Fed up with dirty bathrooms, leaking roofs, and a lack of textbooks, students left class and demonstrated outside the building.  Instead of showing sympathy for the teenagers, police took 32 people into custody, charging one of the students with inciting a riot, and eight others with disorderly conduct.

Detroit police used force in May 2007 to break up a peaceful protest outside Northern High School.  Officers subdued students with pepper spray, and twisted a teacher’s arms behind her back as she was being arrested.  Mackenzie and Northern were two of the 29 schools closed by DPS late last year due to declining enrollment and budget concerns.

Conditions vary widely at DPS high schools.  Model institutions, like  Lewis Cass Technical High School (Cass Tech), benefit from state of the art technology, extra funding, and the best teachers.  Others, like Mackenzie, can’t scrape together enough money for books and toilet paper. 

But even students at some of the city’s best schools have been complaining.  In December 2006, when layoffs and budget cuts threatened to end some programs at the Duke Ellington Conservatory of Music and Art – an elementary school – students and parents staged a demonstration outside the school.  10 year-old Dominick Woolridge asked The Michigan Citizen newspaper, “Without our music and arts teachers, how can Duke Ellington be a performing arts school?”  In May 2007, Cass Tech students protested district-wide school closings with a walk out of their own.

The members of Detroit Summer’s Live Arts Media Project voiced their dissent in a different way.  The youth-led popular education arts and media program produced a Hip Hop audio documentary called, “Rising Up From the Ashes: Chronicles of a Dropout”. 

Young people interviewed friends, family members and each other presenting a frank discussion about conditions at DPS and the often complicated reasons that students drop out of high school.  Original raps, spoken word pieces and songs lament a high school culture that feels more like prison.

Perhaps the bad report cards, declining enrollment and student protests will finally get some much needed attention at DPS.  After news of the America’s Promise Alliance report hit stands this week, new school superintendent Connie Calloway announced that the district will close five of the city’s worst performing high schools and replace them with smaller, more innovative programs.  The schools will be remade from the bottom up.  Principals and staff will be removed, school names will be changed and new programs will be instituted to help slow the exodus of students.

It remains to be seen whether Calloway’s plan will be effective enough to expand throughout the district, but drastic measures are long overdue.  Detroit can ill afford to keep accepting failing grades from its public school system if there is any hope of attracting new business or keeping residents in the city.

Hopefully, the school’s administrators will finally get the message.  If not, Detroit students and parents may have to purchase a billboard in front of the school administration offices that reads, “FIX OUR SCHOOLS NOW, OR WE’RE OUT OF HERE!”