Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Monday, September 25, 2006
Can Dayton pull off the “big promise?”
After studying the Kalamazoo Promise for a week, I can tell you this much:
—It’s a fascinating experiment, a great idea and, so far, already a remarkable success in many ways.
—It’s going to be a great challenge for Dayton to match its success.
The tough question for the community, and for the wealthy individuals and foundations who might fund the program, is whether the potential benefits would be worth the significant costs.
Some questions that might help them work through it:
—What is the goal?
The mere fact that the Dayton Promise is being pushed by an anti-sprawl group signals that this is as much about issues of economy and development as it is about education.
The economic dimension is important in Kalamazoo, too. Their plan has attracting smart people to move to Kalamazoo as a primary goal. Scholarships for their kids are the bait.
If Dayton also wants this — and from the initial meeting I attended it was clear the proponents of this idea do — they may have to ask themselves hard questions about whether the proposal on the table right now is enough. One import to Kalamazoo quoted in my story today says Dayton’s plan likely would not have attracted her to move the way the Michigan plan did.
If the program doesn’t motivate people to move here, is it still worth doing?
—How can the program be held to a manageable size?
Kalamazoo is about half the size of Dayton and it’s school district is about a third smaller than Dayton Public Schools. The scholarships there are available only to graduates of the public school system.
Dayton proposes a program open to all city residents who graduate high school, no matter whether they go to public or private school, in the city or not. That scope is well beyond what they’re doing in Michigan. It could mean Dayton’s Promise could have up to twice as many kids as the Kalamazoo Promise.
—What will the costs be?
Kalamazoo is estimating its costs at $10 to $12 million a year when it is up to full speed. Those are huge numbers. For a self-sustaining program, it may need as much as a quarter billion dollar endowment.
If Dayton’s program is significantly bigger, as the proposal seems to suggest, its costs could be even higher, even with the more limited scholarship amounts.
I’m guessing the expanded eligibility is designed to make the program more attractive to powerful potential funders who support charter and private schools.
Supposedly, Kalamazoo has three billionaires backing its plan. Dayton doesn’t have that much philanthropic firepower, but it does have a lot of well-heeled potential donors to call on. Keeping them all happy may require fancy footwork.
Will the eligible schools currently planned be enough?
Do all Ohio state universities have to be in the program to make is a real draw, the kind that might actually improve the economic fortunes of the city? Does Ohio State, Ohio’s biggest and best college, have to be one of the options? Should Miami University, a top state school less than an hour away, be included?
How all these questions are answered may very well determine the success or failure of any Dayton Promise.
Make yourself an unofficial adviser to the project. How would you tell the proponents of this idea in Dayton they should craft the program to give it the best chance to work?
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Scholarship plan aims to mirror Michigan’s success
By Scott Elliott
Dayton Daily News
Steward Sandstrom moved to Kalamazoo, Mich., for the Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
For a man accustomed to tossing his extra money into savings accounts for a first-grader and 15-month-old, the free college educations that Kalamzoo offers allows Sandstrom to pursue another dream.
“Now I might be able to buy a Harley. I won’t have to spend it on tuition,� he said.
Grassroots Greater Dayton, an anti-sprawl group, hopes its version of the Kalamazoo Promise will have a similar effect — drawing smart, education-minded parents to breathe new life into a city in economic decline.
Anonymous donors there contributed millions to turn the city into “promise land,� as some newbies call it — a place where all school district graduates are guaranteed a free education at any state college.
Grassroots Greater Dayton hopes to raise enough for its own promise — up to $20,000 for Dayton school district residents who graduate from any public or private high schools to attend one of 10 local colleges.
Sandstrom, who left Iowa to become the president of the Kalamazoo Chamber of Commerce, said the Promise is brilliant.
“Work force is the most critical need of towns this size in the Midwest,� he said of the city of 72,700 people. “What an effective work force development tool this community has. And think of what it says about the way community leaders invested in the community.�
When Jack, his first-grade son, is about 13, Sandstrom wants to roll up the driveway on the Harley of his dreams.
“That would be just at the point when words like “coolâ€? and “dadâ€? don’t go together anymore,â€? he said. “I hope for maybe a week those words can come back together.”
Paula Norder cares deeply enough about her son’s education to move her family from their Portland, Ore., home of 10 years to a Midwestern city she had visited just once for a Nirvana rock concert years ago.
The more she learned about the Kalamzoo Promise of free tuition the more she liked the idea of moving to western Michigan. She put in for a transfer with her company and the Norders moved in July.
“I never completed my degree and I know there are opportunities for which I am not as competitive as the next person,� she said.
Norder wanted her first-grade son to be assured of going to college.
“The degree really gives you an advantage,� she said.
Local proponents would seek to mirror Kalamazoo’s success attracting newcomers like Norder and Sandstrom.
The city, a little less than half the size of Dayton, last November launched a scholarship program that offers full tuition to any state school for all students who graduate after spending their entire school careers in the city’s public schools. Partial scholarships are available for those with fewer years in the district.
The goal was to bring new families to the city, injecting energetic, upwardly mobile parents into the city’s work force while at the same time providing opportunity and hope to the city’s children.
It’s working, said Bob Jorth, executive director and the only employee of the Promise.
“The kids are very aware of the Promise and they now want to finish high school,� he said. “It isn’t just any scholarship that could motivate the kids like this. It’s that it sounds too good to be true, and it isn’t. It’s all carrot and no stick.�
The program is funded by anonymous individual donors — there are rumored to be five wealthy contributors — at a cost of about $2 million this year and eventually reaching up to $12 million annually. Since the Promise was announced, the city has seen a huge jump in school enrollment, a rise in home prices, new families from 30 states and more than 90 percent of last spring’s graduates attending college this fall.
“It’s an incredible thing that this much has happened in just 10 months,� Jorth said.
Last week, Grassroots Greater Dayton said it was in the final planning stages for its proposal and that it hoped to start fundraising in November.
The proposal for Dayton is different than what Kalamazoo offers. The scholarship would not be for full tuition in all cases. It would offer $5,000 a year up to $20,000 for four years. And it would be good at 10 local colleges only, not statewide. The schools are the University of Dayton, Wilberforce, Central State, Wittenberg, Antioch, Kettering College of Medical Arts, Sinclair, Wright State, Clark State and Edison.
But Dayton’s plan, targeted for 2008, would be open to more kids — any high school graduate who lives within the city school district, even if they attended a private or charter school.
With less money and fewer college options, the question is if Dayton’s plan would have the same broad appeal.
“That’s a reasonable gamble on Dayton’s part,� Jorth said. “It’s still got the “wow� factor.�
Norder said she thought Dayton’s plan might be better at keeping families in the city than attracting new families. She said she still would have considered Kalamazoo if its program had Dayton’s limits, but much less strongly.
Jorth said he’s been contacted by other cities about copying the Kalamazoo Promise, but that Dayton is farthest along. Cincinnati also is considering a program in partnership with two Kentucky cities.
Norder said Ohioans should go for it.
She doesn’t know what her six-year-old son will want to do after high school, but she likes knowing that he will have options.
“If he wants to be a doctor or a lawyer, it’s just phenomenal that he could go to a great place like the University of Michigan for pre-law or pre-med, have that paid for and walk into graduate school without a student loan,� she said. “And if he wants to study music or history or something else, there will be a state school and he can get a degree in whatever his heart desires.�
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The Kalamazoo Promise: Signs of success
How dramatically can a college scholarship program affect a city? Consider what a 10-month-old Promise program has done in Kalamazoo, Mich.:
Move-ins: New families from 30 states and 50 other Michigan communities have relocated to the city.
Housing: Through Aug. 1, home prices and home sales both were up 6 percent over the prior year while in the region prices were up just 1 percent and sales dropped 4 percent.
Enrollment: It’s up by more than 900 this fall — twice what was estimated — a gain of nearly 10 percent in a school district that had lost 2,000 students over 10 years.
Transfers and dropouts: In 2004, 265 students left the district between the first and second semesters. Last year, just 21 left.
College: Of 400 graduates eligible for the scholarships, 350 used them for college this fall and another 21 went to college by other means.
Local Impact: Of those 350 scholarship users, 70 percent enrolled at the local state school — Western Michigan University.
Minorities: Nationally, 57 percent of black high school graduates went to college in 2005. Last year, 82 percent of black male grads in Kalamazoo went to college using the Promise and 93 percent of black females.
Sources: Kalamzoo Promise, Greater Kalamazoo Board of Realtors, Kalamazoo Public Schools
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