Promise program Part 2: The goal is to get students ready for college
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By Sheena Dooley | Monday, December 24, 2007 |
KALAMAZOO, Mich. — College was never a maybe for Donte Hudson.
The Kalamazoo 12th-grader has known for awhile that he wants to enroll at Michigan State University or the University of Michigan to get the education he needs to become a biomedical engineer. But the question he kept coming back to was how to pay for it.
His dad already worked several jobs to support his family. Two of his five sisters would already be in college. Hudson hoped maybe one of the schools would offer him a football scholarship; otherwise, he would have to take out loans and work to pay for college.
And then in November 2005, an announcement came. A group of anonymous donors had agreed to put every graduate of the Kalamazoo School District through college.
“It doesn’t impact what I wanted to do, but it helps me be able to do what I wanted to do,” Hudson said. “It lifted a weight off my shoulders.”
Called the “Kalamazoo Promise,” it provides college-bound students with a scholarship to pay for all or part of their tuition and mandatory fees, depending on how long they’ve attended school in the district. It’s led other communities, including Davenport, to consider implementing similar programs.
The intent was to make the city a center for education while revitalizing the economy. By having more students earn college degrees, city leaders expect to attract more businesses to the area. At the same time, it would attract more families providing the city with a larger tax base and tighter housing market.
But, so far, leaders say the Promise has yet to have a big effect on the economy. Where they have seen the payoff is with the school district.
After decades of declining enrollment, Kalamazoo schools took in hundreds of new students in the past two years, prompting the district to build two schools and hire 100 additional teachers. Students are staying in school, and hundreds of people and businesses have volunteered their time and services to see to their success.
At the same time, a dialogue opened up between area colleges and the school district as they confronted the task of developing programs to help prepare the first several classes of Promise for college. Before, many students hadn’t even considered college as an option and were not academically prepared.
“People think the big deal is the money,” said Bob Jorth, executive administrator of the Promise. “But the big thing is getting kids ready to use the Promise. It’s leading to a better overall education system in the region because there is an incentive to retain students.”
Lost jobs and students
When the announcement of the Promise came in November 2005, school district leaders in Kalamazoo expected to see more students flock to the district. They just didn’t know how many would come and when.
As the city lost thousands of manufacturing jobs over the past two decades, the schools have seen the number of children it enrolls drop. With hundreds of fewer students to serve, the district took a financial hit that amounted to millions of dollars in state funding. To offset the loss, the district laid teachers off and cut programs.
Michigan, like Iowa, bases the amount of money it gives schools on their enrollment.
Now, three years into the Promise, enrollment in Kalamazoo schools is up by 1,200 students, a majority of whom are elementary-age. The new students generated $9.6 million in new state dollars for the district, giving it the resources to reinstate some of the previously cut programs.
Some of the money also went to hire 100 new teachers the district needed to handle the influx of new students.
“Pre-Promise, (the district) lost 250 kids a year,” said Von Washington Jr., principal of Kalamazoo Central High School. “Now we are only showing gains. To shoot up 1,000-plus students was unheard of. We are the only urban district showing gains in Michigan.”
Prior to the Promise, many schools in the district had far fewer students than they were built to hold. But with enrollment on the rise, that extra space quickly disappeared, and the district asked taxpayers to fund a new elementary and middle school. Officials broke ground on the two this year, marking the first time they had done so in 30 years.
In addition to its growing pains, the district also had to deal with an outpouring of people wanting to volunteer in the schools. That task was handed over to Kalamazoo Communities in Schools, a separate nonprofit group that worked with schools before the Promise.
The group coordinated hooking volunteers up with schools in the district. More than 51,000 hours were donated last year, which is more than double what it was three years ago.
“The Promise has been a phenomenal catalyst for mobilizing the rest of the community,” said Pam Kingery, executive director of Kalamazoo Communities in Schools. “We did this kind of work prior to the Promise and the needs were the same, but the stakes and the opportunities with the Promise have gotten our community excited, and they want to be a part of helping students capitalize on this gift.”
Students focus on school
The morning after leaders announced the Kalamazoo Promise, Lisa VanLoo met with students who were failing classes. It was the first time the guidance counselor at Kalamazoo Central High School had a good argument for them to raise their grades.
“I finally felt like I had ammunition to give them hope,” VanLoo said.
Educators in the district say the Promise has changed students. They now have the guarantee of a payoff if they complete high school. They became more focused in the classroom and fewer leave, they said.
“It’s like an attitude adjustment,” said Linda Lee, an English teacher at Kalamazoo Central High School. “They just seem to understand that this is the first piece of the puzzle, and they have to lay the foundation.”
In the past two years, Kalamazoo schools graduated more students than they did prior to the Promise. The year the program was announced, the district’s four-year graduation rate was 48 percent. Last spring, it jumped to just more than 53 percent.
And more of those students were headed to college, with the number applying to college increasing by 8 percent in the first two years.
“Now there is this sense of worth because their community believes in them,” Lee said. “They are the chosen ones, and they have to live up to that.”
For some students, moving onto college has been a struggle because it’s something they weren’t planning on doing.
Leaders unveiled the program in November, giving the first class of Promise graduates six months to figure out their post-high school plans. Some lacked the credits they needed to graduate. Others didn’t meet the requirements to get into a four-year school and needed remediation to help them catch up. A number were the first ones in their family to go to college and didn’t know what awaited them.
“We can be (accused) of setting kids up for failure if they aren’t prepared,” said Washington, the Kalamazoo Central High School principal. “If you can’t use it, it does you no good. We have to make sure they are college-ready.”
Preparing students for college
To help the first several classes of Promise users, the school district expanded its credit recovery and tutoring programs. Kalamazoo Valley Community College developed a transitions class for high school students, helping them explore various career choices. It also expanded its offerings of a second class for first-year college students that equips them with needed skills to succeed.
“There were a number of students who were underprepared,” said Mike Collins, vice president for college relations at the community college. “That was a result of them never having anticipated they would have this opportunity. Will it get better over time? We absolutely believe it will.”
At the same time, Western Michigan University stepped up its efforts to help incoming Promise students. The college, which is in Kalamazoo, developed a voluntary mentorship program for freshmen. It pairs them with upperclassmen or graduate students, who meet with them weekly to keep tabs on how they are doing.
College staff also works with the students, providing them with mid-term grades, monitoring their performance and connecting them with other outreach programs on campus. The first fall semester after the Promise came into being, 25 students signed up for the mentorship program. That number has grown every year since, said Martha Warfield, director of Western Michigan’s Division of Multicultural Affairs, which oversees the program.
The two local colleges combined serve more than 60 percent of Promise students, according to figures from the UpJohn Institute for Employment Research.
“There were a vast number of kids that don’t have a path,” said James Bosco, coordinator of the Promise for Western Michigan University. “We are trying to respond to that. We don’t have the recipe yet, and we may never. But we are trying.”
In addition to helping the first classes of Promise graduates successfully make the transition to college, the school district is also looking to help the students who are years away from finishing high school.
Tim Bartik, a Kalamazoo school board member, said the board recently hired a private company to review what students are being taught and how that aligns with what the state says they need to know. The district also set up committees to develop social and academic expectations for students from the time they are born until they turn 18 and graduate from high school.
“Are more people holding us to task now?” said Alex Lee, a spokesman for the school district. “You bet they are. But we wouldn’t trade these problems for anything in the world.”
By the numbers
11: The percent of increase in students Kalamazoo Public Schools have seen since the Promise was unveiled in 2004.
$1.5 million: The cost of the Promise for this year’s fall semester, in which two classes of graduates are receiving the scholarship.
59: The percent of 2006 Kalamazoo Promise graduates who started their freshman year at a community college and returned for a second year. Nationally, 50 percent to 55 percent of students at two-year schools return.
85: The percent of 2006 Kalamazoo Promise graduates who started their freshman year at a four-year college and returned for a second year. Nationally, 70 percent to 75 percent of first-year students return.
Sheena Dooley can be contacted at (563) 383-2363 or sdooley@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
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