Last year, the Detroit school district spent about $32 million from its literacy lawsuit settlement to hire more staff to support students learning to read, reduce class sizes in early grades, and pay for tutoring.
Some of the investments are already paying off, said officials in the Detroit Public Schools Community District, or DPSCD. Students in classrooms with academic interventionists and kids who read with in-school tutors showed more improvement on average on the district’s literacy assessments than their peers, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said during a board finance committee meeting in November.
The district’s spending on those initiatives account for about one-third of a one-time $94.4 million settlement in the 2016 federal “right to read” civil rights lawsuit…