Educators should count on data

Staying ahead of the numbers can help schools save critical programs

Today I read this headline in the Detroit Free Press: “School districts study enrollment drops.” The article talked about how school officials in Southfield and Romulus have created committees to study their shrinking student populations and to consider the ramifications. Will they have to close schools? Eliminate programs? Re-purpose their buildings? How can they cut staff while still guaranteeing good student outcomes?  

If you focused only on daily news reports, you’d think that Detroit and other urban districts were the only ones losing students—and the valuable state grant that comes with each pupil. We here at the Detroit-Area Community Information System have done an analysis of public school student enrollment across 83 districts in the tri-county area. We know that districts like Detroit, Southfield and Romulus aren’t the only districts in trouble…and the trouble didn’t just sneak up on us.

While we can blame the current recession for some of this loss, the demographic changes started occurring long before 2001. Our population—particularly younger families—has been moving from our urban core to the suburban townships, while births have been dropping across the region since 1990. Detroit births dropped by nearly half between 1990 and 2007.  For many southeastern Oakland County communities, only about one in five households have school-aged children.

More recently, 46 districts experienced decreased enrollment since 2005. A total of 53,053 students have left public schools in the tri-county area (2/3 from Detroit) in the past three years.  There were actually 36 districts that gained population (one held constant), but they accounted for an increase of just 11,170 students. *

Charter schools were the winners in each county, adding 743 students in Macomb, 1,214 in Oakland and 7,618 in Wayne.  The net for our area is a loss of 32,308 students in the last three years!

It’s great that districts are now trying to be pro-active as they face serious declines in their student populations. But this is also a teachable moment for us statisticians. It’s time we made data more available to school officials, city planners and policy makers. It may feel like our public schools are now being hit by a tsunami, but it’s really a tidal wave that has been a decade in the making.

 

* Our data came from the Center for Educational Performance and Information

Detroit Economic and Social Development Doesn’t Have to be a Big Gamble

World Series Of Poker Final 2009: Joe Cada Becomes Youngest Ever Champion Aged 21

Last week, we rejoiced when Joe Cada, a 21-year old from Chesterfield Township, won the World Series of Poker Championship in Las Vegas and brought home $8.55 million. One week later, 22-year old Tim Conrad from Taylor won the eighth annual Yahoo! Rock Paper Scissors World Championship in Toronto, taking home $7,000. Just think, the Detroit area is $8,557,000 wealthier today than it was eight days ago and all it took was two people playing games of chance.

I’m happy for this two-man kick for our economy, but of course, we don’t want to depend on chance to spawn economic growth and social development. That’s why we here at the Detroit-Area Community Information System (D-ACIS) are committed to making data available to everyone from block club captains to urban planners. Instead of playing guessing games, our legislators, planners and policymakers can rely on current, trustworthy data to budget for basic services and predict future needs.

Just last month, the Urban Institute selected Detroit to join only 33 other cities that are creating sophisticated, accessible data-sharing networks to help citizens and governments address community problems. Together, the cities form the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership that tracks vital information, including births, deaths, crime, health status, educational performance, public assistance and property conditions. As a member of NNIP, D-ACIS will also be able to compare data with other cities facing similar problems.

Good data can take the guesswork out of planning for the future. Some things just aren’t worth the gamble.

What is D-ACIS?

Two metro-Detroit based grantmaking organizations – The Kresge Foundation and the Skillman Foundation – have partnered on funding an initial three-year, $1.85 million grant to City Connect Detroit, which will coordinate the build-out and operation of the proposed Detroit-Area Community Information System.

The new, independent data center will collect, analyze, and disseminate detailed information about neighborhood conditions related to health, housing, education, employment, environment, crime, and safety.  This shared knowledge will help metro-Detroit area stakeholders make coordinated, evidence-based planning, program and policy decisions, and united their efforts to improve the quality of life for residents of southeastern Michigan. 

City Connect Detroit is well positioned to incubate D-ACIS, which will create a comprehensive data warehouse of regional data; provide targeted support to foundations’ neighborhood level change initiatives; and create convenient, user-friendly access to data and information for community stakeholders.