Vitti urges Michigan leaders to see what Detroit schools are doing

Detroit Public Schools Community District Superintendent Nikolai Vitti has a message for much of the state of Michigan as well as for his district’s parents and other stakeholders.

Come see what Detroit is doing, Vitti urged in his annual State of the Schools address Thursday night.

“There are visitors across the country, superintendents, constantly coming in to learn what we’re doing,” Vitti said. “It needs to happen in Michigan.”

The usual narrative, Vitti said, of Detroit schools being the worst in the state, or even the nation, or that the state’s scores are being dragged down by Detroit? That narrative has been flipped on its head, he said. Reform is essential, he said, but other districts in Michigan should be looking to learn from what Detroit is doing.

“The conversation shouldn’t be, well, we need to change Michigan’s education because of Detroit being the problem,” Vitti said. “The data is not indicated. Now, (it’s) what do we learn from what DPSCD (has done) in the last 10 years that can be scaled, around recruiting teachers, around using one-time money for facilities and developing teachers, around core curriculum, around intervention, around training teachers.”

Nine years ago, for example, 59 schools were designated for the highest level of state academic support, meaning they either were performing in the bottom 5% in the state or, for high schools, had a graduation rate below 60%. Now, 25 schools meet one or both of those two criteria.

Vitti did not declare the work over, however. Several times during the speech, he highlighted the work left to be done, with attendance, test scores, and graduation rates.

But with many of those same data points, Vitti said, Detroit is on an upward trajectory, while the state averages are dropping. That means while the rest of the state is going backward in some areas, Detroit is still finding ways to move forward, he argued.

A Michigan Department of Education spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The district has closed the gap between its data and the state averages, most notably on graduation rates. Five years ago, Detroit’s graduation rate was 16 percentage points below the state average. In the 2023-24 school year, the most recent year of available graduation data, it was just 5 points below, although the state average did increase from 80% to 83% during that time.

Early literacy is an area where Detroit’s students are finally starting to show growth, even though their overall scores still are low.

The percentage of students in grades three through seven testing proficient on the state test (or for seventh grade, the PSAT exam) has risen 4 points since the 2016-17 school year, from 11% to 15%. That represents roughly an additional 820 students testing proficient, which Vitti said Thursday goes beyond whether students can read, but how they can apply what they have read.

In that same time frame, for the same group of students, the state average dropped 5 percentage points, from 46% to 41%.

In grades three through eight in math, Detroit has grown five percentage points over the last nine years, while the state average has dropped two points.

“The point here is we’re doing something better and different, and the trend is disciplined,” Vitti said. “Now we’ve got to celebrate that while we continue to narrow that gap and exceed the performance of the state. It is sustained, continual work.”

New Detroit Board of Education President LaTrice McClendon said in her remarks ahead of Vitti’s that the work is not done.

“We have made progress, but we still have a great deal of work to do,” she said. “Our district has come a long way but the needs of our students remain significant. And the expectations we set for ourselves must continue to rise.”

She said the moment was not for “comfort” but for “clarity.”

“There is no finish line for public education,” McClendon said. “Not for Detroit, not anywhere.”

Vitti attributed Detroit’s literacy growth in large part to the district’s embracing of curriculum rooted in what’s known as the science of reading, a way of teaching reading that aligns with how the brain learns to read. Detroit was an early adopter of the science of reading, which starts with a heavy dose of phonics but also emphasizes vocabulary and reading comprehension.

The Michigan Legislature passed two literacy laws aimed at pushing districts toward the science of reading, but it fell short of a strict mandate. The Michigan Department of Education is now lobbying the legislature for a requirement that districts must only use programs from a list vetted by the state for their strength in teaching the components of the science of reading.

Vitti said after his speech he would support such a mandate.

“Yeah, the state should say: ‘These are all curriculum that would be sufficient at being at grade level,’” Vitti said. “‘And here’s the list, but you got to pick from the list.’”

The state has published such a list, but it is only a recommendation that districts use programs from that list. Grant money is also available to choose a program from the list, adding an incentive for districts looking to make a change.

Vitti said the push from the Michigan Department of Education, now led by new State Superintendent Glenn Maleyko, the former Dearborn Public Schools leader, is an example of “visionary leadership” that he said has been lacking.

Vitti said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been supportive of education, but he would like to see more reforms. He pushed whoever becomes the next governor to look at both the need for more aid and more equitable funding, going to those most in need, and to look at reforms of the system, not just one or the other.

“I think you can’t just hold everyone accountable,” Vitti said. “I always talk about, for every degree of accountability, there has to be a degree of support, and you got to balance the two.”

Prior Republican governors and legislatures have emphasized accountability measures, while Democrats have focused more on funding, he said.’

“And I think it actually needs to be a balance of the two.”

jpignolet@detroitnews.com