In Wayne County $729,675,152.78 in Federal Stimulus Money Went to K-12 Education

As A2Politico revealed in a February 23, 2012 post: The amount of stimulus funding send from Washington, D.C. to Washtenaw County between 2009 and 2011 is a staggering $767,218,458 million dollars, the 4th largest amount given out within the state. That’s $2,222 dollars for every resident of the county. It’s also significantly higher, per capita, than the national average of $1,645 per U.S. resident and $1,725 for every resident of the state of Michigan. The state of Michigan got a total of $17 billion dollars in stimulus funding over the same period. Ingham County walked away with $7.6 billion dollars in recovery funding and Wayne County received $2.4 billion dollars in federal money.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services led the list of U.S. agencies that were top givers to the county. Over the three years during which the Obama administration has been trying to pull the country back from the brink of an economic Depression, the Department of Health and Human Services poured a total of$215,386,684 million dollars into recovery projects. Click on the amount, though, and you will see that the recipient of all but about $9.9 million of that money went to a single recipient: The Regents of the University of Michigan.

In Wayne County, conversely, federal stimulus money given out during the same period went to support K-12 education.

Between 2009 and 2011, the Detroit Public Schools snagged over $200,000,000 dollars in federal stimulus money given out by the U.S. Department of Education. It was the single largest chunk of stimulus funding given to any school district in Michigan. Much of the money went to Title I programs, a 1965 act aimed at improving the academic achievement of the disadvantaged. According to Title I, “The purpose of this title is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments.”

During the same time period, Wayne County received a total of over $2.4 billion dollars in federal stimulus funding from the Obama administration. The majority of that funding—$729,675,152.78 in stimulus funds—went to K-12 education in Wayne county, including the Detroit Public Schools, dozens of charter schools, as well as other Wayne County K-12 school districts. Unlike the Detroit Public Schools, where the majority of the $200,000,000 went to Title I programs, in other Wayne Country districts the recovery stimulus funds went toward education technology, programs and services.

Detroit-based charter schools also received millions for Title I programs. The largest amount in recovery and stimulus funding to a charter school for Title I programs went to César Chávez Academy High School. The school received a total of $2.37 million dollars in stimulus funding between 2009 and 2011. The six branches of the Blanche Kelso Bruce Academy in Detroit received $880,983 in federal stimulus funding for Title I programming for the charter school’s almost 500 students in grades 5-12.

One measure of whether Title I programs and funding have a positive impact on a student population is to measure the high school graduation rate of the students. So did the $200,000,000 in stimulus funding from Washington, D.C. have a measurable impact on the graduation rate of students enrolled in the Detroit Public Schools?

DPS Officials would say yes. In February of 2011, then Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert C. Bobb announced that DPS had reached a 62 percent graduation rate, the highest since state began new cohort methodology in 2007. The dropout rates for black males and females also fell between 2009-2011, to 23 percent for black males in 2010, down from nearly 33 percent in 2008; and to 14 percent for black females in 2010, down from 20 percent in 2008.

“Thanks in part to aggressive academic improvements and school leadership restructuring, we are pleased that DPS has reached the highest graduation rate since the state launched a new cohort formula in 2007,” Bobb said in a February 2011 release to the media.

The graduation rate of the Detroit Public Schools has been a bad news buffet for the national media. In June of 2008, NPR’s Celeste Headlee reported: “The state of Michigan doesn’t have the country’s lowest graduation rate. That honor belongs to South Carolina. But Detroit ranks at the bottom of the 50 largest school districts with less than 25 percent of freshmen going on to graduate. Many state education officials dispute the report’s findings.”

One year earlier, in June of 2006, USA Today, in a piece titled, “Big-city schools struggle with graduation rates,” reported that: “Students in a handful of big-city school districts have a less than 50-50 chance of graduating from high school with their peers, and a few cities graduate far fewer than half each spring, according to research released on Tuesday….Among the nation’s 50 largest districts, the study finds, three graduate fewer than 40%: Detroit (21.7%), Baltimore (38.5%) and New York City (38.9%).

DPS officials have set a graduation rate goal of 98 percent by 2015. It’s either a terribly ambitious goal or pie-in-the-sky promise made by officials accustomed to having hyperbole go unquestioned. Of the 50 largest school districts in the country, of which Detroit is number 11, Fairfax County, Virginia, the 14th largest school district in the U.S., has a graduation rate of 82.5 percent. Ann Arbor, meanwhile graduated 87.5 of its highschool seniors in 2008. The same year, Ypsilanti Public Schools had a graduation rate only slightly higher than the Detroit Public Schools, with 66 percent of seniors graduating and Willow Run Public Schools saw fewer than 50 percent of its seniors graduate.