Douglass Academy Redux

Last week we spoke about an incident at the Frederick Douglass Academy, an all boys school in Detroit, where many of the students walked out during class time to protest conditions at the school. It turns out that about 50 of the protesters were suspended for their actions.

The suspensions are right and just. Schools need order as much as the general society or they cannot function, and we stand by what we said last week. We doubt that all involved really believed in what they were doing. But that doesn't mean that we cannot or should not have a certain sympathy for the students over their concerns, either. If their complaints are legitimate, then something needs to be done to rectify the situation.

Among their issues are teachers supposedly abusing sick time, a lack of textbooks, and the reassignment of a former principal. One parent asserted that her son received an A in a class where the teacher was absent 68 days and gave no final exam; he was graded high for simply showing up, she alleged. If true, these matters are irresponsible and unprofessional and should be dealt with severely.

The Detroit Public Schools assured the community, through their spokesman Steven Wasko, that any teacher who abuses sick leave with be reprimanded. But the troubles with the DPS go much farther than such rather simple abuses of privilege such as that. One of the seniors who participated in the walkout laments that he could not answer a single question on the placement exam for Bowling Green State University in Ohio (although he's been accepted there just the same). But if that's the case, it surely seems unfair to act as though the Douglass Academy, itself and alone, is to blame for his academic struggles. By your senior year, if you can't "answer a question on there", as the student says, on a college placement test, then there's more problems than only the ones you've faced in your high school years.

Which isn't to say that his academic issues are entirely his own fault. While we have a difficult time believing that any given student could not have learned anything at all no matter what schools he's attended (it seems doubtful that after 12 years of education he could not answer any question on the BGSU exam), the troubles at the Frederick Douglass Academy seem to demonstrate a problem far deeper than anyone's senior year of high school can illustrate by itself. The problems likely reflect long term and deep seated issues within the Detroit Public Schools, along with the urban social issues inherent in cities such as Detroit. The Detroit Public Schools are in a bind not entirely of their own design. They are trying to educate in, well, not the best environment. This is only made worse when they mismanage what they have, academically and economically.

So it appears that the troubles at Douglass Academy are little more than a dot on the map. They run deeper than a first glance may tell. It leaves us to wonder what, if anything, can really be done in the short term. The current students at Douglass Academy may simply and unfortunately be stuck. What that bodes for the DPS and her students in the long run remains to be seen. But the forecast is certainly cloudy.