About the book: “Early childhood programs, if designed correctly, pay big economic dividends down the road because they increase the skills of their participants. And since many of those participants will remain in the same state or local area as adults, the local economy benefits: more persons with better skills attract business, which provides more and better jobs for the local economy.”

The ournewhaven.org website describes the Promise this way: “Never again will our children fail to go to college for financial reasons. With Yale as primary donor, we promise full tuition for 18 in-state public colleges and partial tuition for 17 private colleges in CT.”

The site goes on to explain that to qualify for the New Haven Promise students must have a 3.0 GPA and 90% attendance in high school, along with a positive disciplinary record and community service.

This is not exactly the “college for all” premise of most Promise-type programs. In Kalamazoo, the only requirement for receiving a scholarship is a minimum of four years of enrollment and residency within the Kalamazoo Public Schools district and graduation from a district high school.

In response to my raised hackles, a good friend (and an intelligent one, too) wrote, “What is so wrong with having some minimum requirements for a free college education – to show that you are serious about your education and will try to make the most of a precious gift?” This is a natural response, but it fails to capture one of the most exciting elements of the Kalamazoo Promise and similar universal, or near-universal programs:

It is precisely those students who are not on a college track who stand to benefit the most from such a program. If a student who is struggling academically sees that post-secondary education is accessible to them — not just to their higher-achieving classmates — this provides a tremendous incentive to graduate from high school and go on to gain a certificate or associate’s degree — and possibly later a bachelor’s degree. Even a small measure of post-secondary attainment, such as completion of a short-term training program offered by a community college, will enhance that student’s employment options and earnings, not to mention strengthen the local workforce.

So here’s to sending smart, successful poor kids to college on Yale’s dime, but I’ll take the promise of college for all any day.

-The post-Promise increase reversed more than a decade of year-to-year declines in enrollment.

- KPS is one of only a handful of school districts in Southwest Michigan (and the only sizable one) to have experienced any enrollment growth this year. Public school enrollment was flat for the region as a whole.

- Comparable districts in the state continue to decline in enrollment — for example, Battle Creek Public Schools’ enrollment fell by over 7 percent, while Grand Rapids Public Schools and Detroit Public Schools took comfort from enrollment declines that were smaller than expected (this is what counts for good news in Michigan).

The enrollment numbers suggest that the Kalamazoo Promise and the very real process of school improvement that it helped to catalyze has made the district “stickier,” giving families a reason to come — and stay.

While a skeptic by nature, I felt that Kalamazoo Central had a good chance of winning the Race to the Top Commencement Challenge. Of the six finalists, only two were typical high schools, rather than charter or magnet schools, and the other served a largely affluent suburban area. Central’s video was a bit rough around the edges, but clearly had been produced by the kids themselves and had some dramatic (even wacky) touches that were both meaningful and endearing.

The decision has a lot to do with the Kalamazoo Promise, but more important, it is about what the Kalamazoo Public Schools district has done in response to the introduction of the scholarship program four-and-a-half years ago. Against the tide of shrinking state funding for public education (thank you, farsighted Michigan State Legislature), and in a community where far too many children grow up poor, Kalamazoo has made a commitment to preparing every student for success in college. We have a long way to go (see future blog postings on the challenges we face in making the Promise a reality for everyone), but we are on our way. Thank you, Mr. President (and advisers) for recognizing our journey.

I HEAR THAT… students are using their Kalamazoo Promise scholarship as leverage to seek financial aid from other, non-KP eligible schools. A KPS senior applying to the University of Chicago told the financial aid office there that she already had a full tuition scholarship at the University of Michigan and that, if they wanted her in the Windy City, they would need to match that. I don’t know what the response was, and I have heard that she will be staying in Michigan, but kudos for trying! The high-school students tell me that lots of kids are doing this.

More complete demographic data is available on the website of the Upjohn Institute http://upjohn.org/promise/index.htm Later this year we will have our first data examining the proportion of students using the Kalamazoo Promise who were classified as economically disadvantaged (i.e., eligible for free or reduced-price school meals) during their time in KPS.

Even in the first year of the program, with the grandfathering allowed, there was a clear shift in the direction of greater socioeconomic balance at the middle school level. There is no hard evidence about what this means (e.g., test scores, promotion, etc.), but I do want to share what I heard second-hand from a teacher at Milwood Middle School who claims that it is markedly easier to teach this year because of the greater diversity in her classroom and the presence of a sizeable minority of middle-income students.

At the time the Kalamazoo Promise (KP) was introduced, KPS middle schools were already at capacity, a situation that had resulted in some 6th graders attending a middle school and others remaining at their elementary schools. With the expected enrollment growth from the KP, it was clear that a new middle school would need to be built. In May 2006, KPS voters approved a millage request that paid for the construction of two new school buildings, the district’s first since 1971.

Linden Grove middle school opened in Fall 2009. During the 2008-09 school year, a task force worked on redrawing middle- and high-school boundaries in order to identify the students who would attend the new school. The high-school redistricting was optional, but it made sense to restructure those boundaries in light of the new middle-school boundaries. In both cases, the task force proposed — and the school board approved — boundaries that sought to spread the district’s low-income population more evenly across the four middle and two high schools.

Prior to the redistricting, the low-income enrollment figures ranged from 52% at Hillside Middle School to 84% at Milwood Middle School. Not surprisingly, the perception of the schools varied, with middle-class parents far more enthusiastic about sending their children to Hillside. There was also a gap (albeit a smaller one) between the high schools, with low-income enrollment of 64% at Loy Norrix and 53% at Central. The redistricting plan will shift the low-income enrollment over time as follows (the results will not be immediate, as students currently enrolled were allowed to stay at their schools; parents also have the right to send their child to another school in the district if they provide their own transportation). But theoretically, the plan was designed to achieve the following shift:

Why does this matter? One answer is that there is a great deal of evidence about the benefits of integrating schools by socioeconomic status (see my book, pages 88-90, for a summary of this argument). This research, however, focuses on elementary schools where students mix more readily than in the higher grades. I have not seen any research on the impact of socioeconomic integration at the middle- or high-school level (but would be interested in knowing if there is some). The real reason it matters is that if KPS is serious about attracting and retaining middle-income families and high-achieving students at all socioeconomic levels, it cannot afford to have only one mixed-income middle or high school that is perceived as most desirable. As middle-income students and their families are dispersed throughout the district, it can be expected that both the reality and the perception of all the middle and high schools will improve.

The much harder part of the task lies ahead. The district’s elementary schools are deeply unbalanced in terms of their low-income population — with 29% at Indian Prairie at the low end, compared to 97% at Edison and Washington Writers Academy at the high end — and redistricting is desperately needed here. Such efforts tend to be deeply unpopular, with families angered when their children are uprooted from their existing schools or asked to attend a school further away from home. And in a year when KPS once again needs to turn to the voters for a millage, no immediate action on elementary school redistricting is expected. Hopefully, the administration, board, and community will summon the courage down the road to undertake this critical step in strengthening the district in the interest of all children.