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The Detroit Public Schools has been under the control of an Emergency Manager or Emergency Financial Manager for many years. The first Emergency Financial Manager, Robert Bobb, actually left the school district in a bigger financial hole than when he arrived. He was replaced by Governor Snyder by an auto industry marketing and sales guy, Roy Roberts. With Public Act 436 kicking in this past week, the law which thwarts the will of Michigan voters who struck down the previous Emergency Manager Law in last fall’s election, Roberts now has complete control over the school’s academic program once again (he had it for over a year then lost it after the November election.)

Roberts is very proud of his work and went on national television to tell the world that the Detroit Public Schools are back and, not only are they back, they are kicking some serious academic ass, surpassing the state average MEAP scores in a majority of categories. Here he is on NBC’s Education Nation Detroit Summit last week:

ROBERTS: But the key is, the academic side that you talked about, this past year on the state testing MEAP test, every grade in the Detroit Public Schools increased and improved and, in 14 out of 18, did better than the state average. That’s what it’s all about.

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It turns out that it’s complete bullshit. Dr. Thomas Pedroni at the Detroit Data and Democracy Project blog analyzed the test scores for the Detroit Public Schools, both with the EAA schools included and without them. What he found is that, simply put, Roy Roberts is lying. Boldly lying you might say. Detroit Public Schools are not outperforming the state average in 14 out of 18 categories. In fact, by and large, they aren’t even making gains: