Coalition supporting Detroit schools a step in the city’s road back

Detroit native La June Montgomery Tabron is the president and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek.

 

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation commends the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren's in beginning a process and committing to an overdue conversation designed to ensure that school-aged children in Detroit receive high quality education. This is a critical step in Detroit’s continued recovery.

With the formation of the CFDS last fall, we’ve observed the collaboration of stakeholders in education, policy, philanthropy, the business community and parents, all dedicated to educating children from kindergarten to the 12th grade. This collective process exemplifies our shared faith in Detroit, benefitting the state of Michigan and requiring an alliance of diverse perspectives and experience in providing a holistic solution to educating our children.

Common sense education practices and policies should always be community-based and connected to family engagement efforts that mobilize voices, resources and solutions. The Kellogg Foundation applauds increased collaboration to improve the competencies and effectiveness of everyone who works in early child development and in K-12 schools – including early learning centers, government systems and business. All are essential if families and young children in Michigan are able to access to high-quality education.

As a statewide and global funder, the Kellogg Foundation understands some of the CFDS recommendations will command state-level policy change, while others will require the highest levels of community engagement and systemic change. Our grantee partners, including CFDS Steering Committee members New Paradigm for Education, United Way for Southeast Michigan, M.O.S.E.S., Black Family Alliance and Excellent Schools Detroit, equally value community input and collaboration, and share our core mission to serve vulnerable children and families to facilitate education reforms.

But this process requires more than shared values. We recognize barriers to educational opportunities based on race or income also inhibit the success of children and their families as they have in Detroit. An infrastructure developed to eliminate these barriers is critical to ultimately help break the cycle of poverty. There must be equity in funding and resources without regard for politics and accountability for quality is key.

I’m a proud product of Detroit Public Schools, representing the norm of my generation, not the exception, and I lament the district’s tragic decline. I also recognize this is an opportunity to elevate the value of, and accessibility to, quality early childhood education and its inextricable link to the success of K-12 education. We all embrace school models with the highest educational standards and pedagogy, yet we must be relentless in heralding a new era of education for schoolchildren in Detroit that enables students to learn at their respective grade levels and beyond from quality educators and, ultimately, cultivates an expectation of success.