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Detroit district high school students who are two or more grade levels behind in reading will receive cash gift cards as an incentive to attend after-school tutoring sessions.
The amount of money on the gift cards and other details are still being worked out by officials in the Detroit Public Schools Community District. The initiative was included in the district budget approved by the school board in June, and is expected to begin during the school year that begins Monday.
It sprang out of a discussion in a school board finance committee meeting, said Board member Misha Stallworth. As the committee discussed spending literacy lawsuit money on early-grade students, Stallworth said she raised questions about incentives and how to support literacy improvement at the high school level. (Proceeds from the lawsuit settlement aren’t funding the student incentives.)
“When we think about this literacy lawsuit and the origins of it, the question that was coming to mind for me is, how do we focus on those students that kind of missed out on some of the changes that younger students have been able to benefit from,” Stallworth said in an interview with Chalkbeat.
Detroit Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told Chalkbeat in an email that paying high schoolers to attend tutoring is important to overcome the “negative impact emergency management had on student achievement.”
State-appointed emergency managers controlled the district from 2009 until 2017. Plaintiffs in the literacy lawsuit had argued emergency management created poor conditions that made it difficult for students to learn to read. That claim was confirmed in the settlement.
Board member Sonya Mays, who chairs the finance committee, said she is willing to try innovative ideas to address literacy and high rates of chronic absenteeism, two pressing issues in the district.
As of spring 2024, 53.9% of eighth graders read two or more grades below reading level. That figure is 5 percentage points lower than the previous year, according to district data.
Gabrielle Groce, a district high school English teacher, said she hopes that paying high schoolers to attend intervention sessions will improve literacy skills.
“I just want, especially our Black and brown kids, to be able to succeed,” Groce said. “If this helps them, or helps push them to be better through literacy, then I’m 100% on board with it.”
How the district can create the biggest chance for success
District officials are still working out details like how much students will be paid and who will offer the sessions. The district will likely offer the program at each high school through their academic interventionists, Vitti said.
These details could determine the success of the program.
Mattie Morgan, a great-grandmother of a sixth grader and a high school freshman, said she believes the program could be popular with students, but she wonders if they will stick with it as time goes on.
Elizabeth Birr Moje, the dean of the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan, said there is always a risk with external incentives – students doing tasks for money instead of for their own satisfaction – that a participant will do what they need to get the incentive without engaging in deep learning.
But Moje believes this plan is a pragmatic approach because it gives some students who would otherwise have to work a chance to earn an income while improving their literacy skills.
If the program also has exciting activities, social interaction, and opportunities for students to see growth in their reading skills, it can help keep students engaged, she said.
Moje said it’s also important who teaches the course. DPSCD has not yet decided whether an external provider or internal staff will offer the sessions. However, Vitti said the intervention will utilize the Orton-Gillingham approach, a multi-sensory method of teaching literacy.
“The best outcomes from tutoring are high-dosage tutoring offered by a trained tutor, and preferably a certified teacher, and that’s just for general tutoring. So if we’re talking about helping someone who really needs those reading supports, then they’re really going to need to have people who know what they’re doing and not simply volunteers.”
She hopes the district ensures intervention is tailored to the needs of each student, recognizing that not all students struggle with the same issues. For example, a ninth grader reading at a seventh grade level would likely not need phonics instruction because they already have an understanding of reading concepts.
“A program that only focuses, for example, on foundational skills is probably not going to meet the needs of most of the students, but it certainly won’t meet the needs of all of the students. By the same token, a program that would only focus on high level comprehension skills may not meet the needs of all of the students,” Moje said.
Groce, the teacher, also wonders if transportation could be an issue. She recalls some students who didn’t get to school because they didn’t have a ride.
Incentive program supports students who need to work
Teenagers are pulled in different directions when combining school and work responsibilities, Stallworth said. But if they can’t read well, she said it will impact their ability to work jobs that can sustain them and their families as adults.
“It can be tough to have them feel comfortable, motivated, and to be able to balance their time in terms of their economic needs to go to courses or additional literacy support, things outside their typical classroom schedule,” Stallworth said.
Morgan’s great-granddaughter, who is entering high school, talks about wanting to get a job to make her own money. Morgan agrees that financial incentives would benefit high school students like her great-granddaughter who would otherwise look to find another job.
Moje likes that the program rewards students’ efforts and willingness to improve their skills, rather than rewarding them based on predetermined academic outcomes. She said children who aren’t performing on grade level often stress about doing well in school, and they don’t need to be made to feel worse.
“We’re really investing in children who, for whatever reason, haven’t had the opportunity to learn literacy at the levels that you’re going to need for happiness and success in society,” Moje said. “It’s recognizing that young people have other things to do in their lives, and some of them may actually need the income.”
Alex Klaus is a summer intern at Chalkbeat Detroit.
