DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – Detroit’s public school district has launched a program that will pay each student $2,000 for completing a 40-hour tutoring program, allowing the students to make $50 an hour.

The school board needs to approve the program at today’s meeting or else student payments would be capped at $1,000.

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According to district documents, students would work with trained teachers and academic interventionists for one hour a day, four days a week for 10 weeks.

“The District recognizes that many students must work after school jobs,” the district stated in the memo distributed to the school board. “In order to support our students and recognize their need to earn money, the District will provide students $2,000 if they complete the 40 hour tutoring program.”

The first session began Nov. 11 and then a second session would begin in January. Students can only participate one time. The district believes more than 400 high school students will participate. The participants will be paid via a gift card.

“The Detroit Public Schools Community District is excited to announce the launch of our High School Paid Tutoring Program,” said Chrystal Wilson, the school district spokeswoman, in an email to Michigan News Source. “Designed to support our students’ academic journeys, this initiative offers tutoring from Orton Gillingham trained educators. This is a new program, it launched on Monday 11/11 with the first tutoring session.”

The Detroit school board approved in June accepting a $94.4 million settlement from the state Legislature that was in the state’s K-12 budget this year. The settlement is from a 2016 “right-to-read” lawsuit filed by former students who claimed they weren’t provided a minimum level of education while attending Detroit schools.
Just 11.7% of Detroit third-grade students were proficient in reading in state testing in 2023-24. The state average was 40%.

The district rated 44% of its teachers as “highly effective” and 50% as “effective” in 2023-24. Those were the two highest of four categories in the evaluation system. Just 6% of teachers were rated as “minimally effective” and statistically 0% were rated as “ineffective.” The district rated 5 of the 1,272 teachers that were evaluated last year as ineffective.