In one of the lowest-performing districts in the nation, students have been using outdated textbooks for nearly a decade.
In 2010, Michigan adopted the Common Core State Standards, which, among other expectations, require more reading and writing based on texts and math instruction that emphasize concepts over rote procedures.
But the 48,000-student Detroit district never fully updated its materials to match, according to a recent audit of its curricula. Its reading textbooks, for example, date to 2007, according to the Detroit News. That means Detroit students have been taught out of books that are not aligned to state goals or tests. Nor have teachers had access to materials that support some of the standards’ goals.
The Detroit school system has been in a state of administrative and financial dysfunction for years. It only returned to an elected school board in January 2017, after having experienced a series of emergency managers, as well as the rise and fall of a state-run “turnaround” district that included many of its schools.
