By Dave Murray | dmurray@mlive.com 
on October 01, 2012 

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In this Sept. 23, 2011 file photo, John Becker, a fourth grade teacher from DC Prep Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., top row center, reacts after he was acknowledged by President Barack Obama as he stands with educators and students as he speaks about No Child Left Behind Reform in the East Room at the White House. States and local governments have the primary responsibility for education in the United States. But the federal government gets a big say, too, by awarding billions in aid that often has strings attached.AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – President Obama’s School Improvement Grant program should be overhauled because it works on the assumption that educational improvement can come from market-based reforms, “forcing schools to run like corporations,” according to a new report from a union-backed think tank.

The$3 billion Obama plan “assumes that strong external threats motivate teachers and principals to improve, that standardized test scores are reliable measures of student performance, that meaningful, sustainable changes can be spurred by competition, and that outcome-oriented accountability reforms can effectively interrupt historical patterns of low performance,” reads the report.

“In other words, the policy assumes that the only barrier to success in the past was a lack of motivation and incentive, and that the best form of motivation and incentive is money.”

The report was produced by the National Education Policy Center, with funding from the East Lansing-based Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice and the Ford Foundation.

The work, which includes recommendations for changes, was produced by Tina Trujillo of the University of California-Berkley, along with Michelle Renée of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. Model legislation to carry out the changes was completed by Tara Kini.

RELATED: Read the full report.

RELATED: Read the sample legislation.

Under the federal plan, schools can choose from four reform models.

In the transformation model – the least aggressive and most frequently adopted -- districts would address developing teacher and school leader effectiveness by adopting new teaching strategies, extending teacher planning time providing operating flexibility and support.

In the turnaround model, a school replaces the principal and at least half of the staff and adopting new teaching methods.

In the restart model, schools close a school and reopen it under the management of a charter school operator, required to enroll any former student.

Or, districts could close the school and disperse students to other buildings.

There are 28 Michigan schools targeted by the federal government, with six in Detroit, five in Grand Rapids and two in Saginaw. Michigan districts are getting grants of between $5.4 million and $606,000.

The researchers said the “market-based character of turnaround policies diverts public attention from fundamental questions about adequate, equitable funding and the insidious effects on schools of socioeconomic and racial isolation."

Trujillo and Renée said standardized test scores are not a reliable measure for student growth and “are only a snapshot in time.” They said tests “are even more problematic as a measure for whether a turnaround was successful or not, because test scores ignore social, civic and broader academic aspects of schooling.”

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The authors recommended six changes:

-- Increase state and local spending on public education, distributing money based on poverty and racial isolation.

-- Focus turnaround efforts on improving the quality of teaching instead of changing a school’s structure. That includes recruiting and retaining quality teachers and giving schools the authority to enact “intense, dramatic improvements.”

-- Engage a community cross-section – teachers, students, parents and community organizations – in planning and enacting turnaround strategies. That includes meetings held at times and locations that parents can attend and that provide free childcare and simultaneous translations for community input.

-- Surround schools with comprehensive, wrap-around supports to stabilize schools and communities. That includes partnering with community-based groups that provide non-academic assistance tied to health, nutrition and social services.

-- Use multiple measures of effectiveness beyond test scores that reflect the multiple purposes of schools. That includes creating indicators of school progress in setting academic, social and democratic goals for students.

The recommendation includes measuring student preparation and aggregating the data by race, family income, language statue and student access to “highly credentialed, experienced teachers.”

It also includes measuring a school’s “democratic effectiveness tracking the degree to which schools engage members of the public in school governance and improvement planning. Also examine whether schools make transparent certain information and decisions about schools’ budget, resources, and programs.”

The recommendation also includes supporting SIG schools” to track their progress toward non-test-based goals in order to bring energy and resources to bear on those student and community outcomes that are not easily monitored through standardized tests but that nonetheless represent meaningful goals for public education and equity oriented reform.”

-- The group also calls for supporting ongoing, systematic research and evaluation of turnaround schools.

That includes soliciting research and evaluations from multiple points of view -- including teachers, students and parents – “to better understand what schools gained and where they experienced challenges when attempting to turn themselves around.”

The University of Colorado-based NEPC is backed by the Ford Foundation, the Great Lakes Center, and the National Education Association, according to the organization's website. The Great Lakes group is funded by the National Education Association and the union branches in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Email Dave Murray at dmurray@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter@ReporterDMurray or on Facebook.