Sh-h-h. Snyder state update left out 75% drop in reading proficiency in Flint

Three Januarys ago, Gov. Rick Snyder described a River of Opportunity all Michiganders could enter as long as the state improved third-grade reading proficiency.

“One of the important metrics in someone’s life on the River of Opportunity is the ability to be proficient-reading by third grade,” he said in January 2015. “How have we done? We were at 63% in 2010, and we are at 70% today. … But 70% doesn’t cut it.”

Snyder and his administration didn’t cut it either, apparently ignoring the reading mission the same way they ignored the Flint water crisis: Third-grade reading proficiency in Flint, where Snyder allowed the water — and children — to be poisoned by lead, dropped from 41.8% in 2014 to 10.7% last year.

That’s a nearly three-quarters drop.

Read it again: That’s nearly a three-quarters drop in third-grade reading proficiency among children whose lives were affected by lead poisoned water during the Flint water crisis.

“We’re in crisis mode,” said Flint school board vice president Harold Woodson.

But, he said, the crisis didn’t begin with the water crisis and won’t end unless state officials take seriously how poverty, which is rampant in Flint and other districts across Michigan, affects children.

“We were able to put a nurse in all of our elementary buildings and we’re investing more in looking at the behavior of the children,” he said. “But the impact from the lead might not manifest itself for another year or two.”

The reading proficiency problem isn’t limited to Flint. Third-grade reading proficiency dropped statewide from that 70% Snyder boasted about in 2015 to 44% last year.

In Detroit, where thousands of children also have been victims of lead poisoning caused by massive blight abatement and renovation of homes, third-grade reading proficiency dropped from 11.7% three years ago to 9.9% this year.

Makes me wanna holla, throw up both my hands.

To be fair, some of the drop in reading proficiency can be partly attributable to higher standards and a new, more difficult, online exam that was put in place in April 2015 so Michigan students can better compete with students from other states, said Michigan Superintendent of Education Brian Whiston.

"We'd still be at 70, but with lower standards. That's a piece of it." He said the score also include students for whom English is a second language.

"We expected it to drop to 50 (%) statewide," Whiston said.

That doesn't explain all of Flint, where third-grade reading proficiency dropped from 41.6% in 2014 to 18.7% in 2015,a 45% drop in the first year after the poisoning.

Last year's proficiency measured 10.7%.

Whiston said he wasn't aware that the proficiency had dropped that low.

"That's not acceptable," he said. "I certainly think that some of the (drop in proficiency) could be due to it (lead poisoning). But some of it could be stress. I'm certainly disappointed that it's at that level. These families have gone through a lot of stress. So I wouldn't be surprised to hear things dropped considerably."

What also isn't acceptable is the state not putting into place three years ago a program to monitor and continually assess the development of the poisoned children.

The Flint Community Schools has implemented a multi-tiered system of support to address academic and behavioral needs, School Board president Diana Wright said, adding that the district saw an increase in behavioral problems since the poisoning.

"I do believe that something needs to be looked at in regards to how that may have affected those kids, their learning of the basics of reading and math."

Whiston said the state has been working to put nurses, social workers and special ed services in schools. But that is not every school, and state funding, which advocates and officials across the board said wasn't enough, can only go so far.

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha and others who have worked with the children for years are helping to lead a massive public-private effort, funded by the city’s community foundation and aided by Mott Community College, to change the future for children up to age 5 for the foreseeable future.

But in Flint — where they just created a registry last week to keep up with and assess damage to children poisoned by the water and where pipe replacement is still not complete four years after the first complaints of brown water and rashes — no one has been really monitoring the development and well-being of the poisoned children.

As I've said many times, somebody ought to go to jail for all the things that have been done to the Flint children. The governor's spokesman declined to return a phone call and text Monday.

The children have been hit with many different things, said state Rep. Sheldon Neeley, D-Flint, who represents Flint and surrounding areas in the Legislature: It could be the unknown from what happened to our water resources changing the trajectory of their lives and the absence of school funding for low- to moderate-income areas.

"But what I'm worried about is that we’ve mandated that kids have to be proficient in third grade," he said of the Legislature. "If not, they have to be retained. I’m very concerned about that, especially with those kinds of results. I'm concerned about how young people are going to be emasculated and held back rather than getting them the help they need to be proficient.

"Many of us have been here waiting on our fairy godfather in the form of a governor to come and save us, riding in on a chariot of government and it’s not going to happen.

"So everybody has to pick up a piece and overcome these great challenges because they’re just going to grow because we don’t want communities of color to become a part of a permanent underclass."

To that end, Neeley said he's opening a virtual library, a family literacy center, on Feb. 23, with computers and literacy coaches to help parents help their children.

"There's a long way to go," he said. "The psychological impact of this has gone unchallenged. This community is traumatized and the state has not dealt with the trauma and even though the state says the water is safe to drink, no one is going to drink the water."

And if we're not careful, and keep our eye on the children, even as people are stepping in to help a new generation of kids, we must not forget those for whom time did not stand still.

Contact Rochelle Riley: rriley99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley. Rochelle will sign copies of her book "The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery" at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Michigan State Museum, 409 Circle Drive., East Lansing, MI. For more information, visit here.