In Kalamazoo, The Children Are the Future (And the $$$ Stands With Them)
You Must Read This NYT Mag Article about the KALAMAZOO PROMISE by Ted C. Fishman. You Must! You will get kind of weepy, but not in an exploitive way! There is plenty of real talk in this piece also! Lots for everyone. PLEASE READ.
The Kalamazoo Promise is a promise that was made by anonymous donors to pay for college tuition for all Kalamazoo high school grads (there are approx. 500 per year):
“Back in November 2005, when this year’s graduates were in sixth grade, the superintendent of Kalamazoo’s public schools, Janice M. Brown, shocked the community by announcing that unnamed donors were pledging to pay the tuition at Michigan’s public colleges, universities and community colleges for every student who graduated from the district’s high schools. All of a sudden, students who had little hope of higher education saw college in their future. Called the Kalamazoo Promise, the program — blind to family income levels, to pupils’ grades and even to disciplinary and criminal records — would be the most inclusive, most generous scholarship program in America.”
Five-hundred kids have graduated from college because of the program since then. Fishman takes a look at how the city plans to make that number keep growing. A++.
So making higher education free for everyone increases college enrollment? Who knew.
I mean in most places all you have to do is Work Hard and you’ll get in, regardless of your race or SES. Right?
The small town neighboring mine when I was in h.s. had a similar scholarship. Only a few thousand people population though. Still, very cool.
WV has a similar program, also called the Promise Scholar program. WV students who meet a certain GPA standard receive free tuition to state schools. It’s been available for several years now, but there is talk of instituting a sort of “payback” where students would be required to remain in WV for a certain number of years or pay back the tuition since brain drain is a serious issue here.