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Michigan Future secures $13M for Detroit schools

Thursday, March 04, 2010

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Education, Government, Non Profit, Oakland County, Wayne County

Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Detroit, Ferndale, Hamtramck

Michigan Future is bringing a 21st Century education to more high school students in Metro Detroit with its new Michigan Future Schools initiative.

The Ann Arbor-based think tank has lined up $13 million in grants from four local foundations to get the initiative off the ground. The principal goal of the new initiative is to "figure out how to connect urban high school students to the economy of the future," according to a blog post written by Michigan Future's president and co-founder Lou Glazer.

The effort will target creating new, small high schools in the city of Detroit and its surrounding suburbs. Previous local priorities of who runs the schools and where they're located will take a back seat to establishing schools that provide a high-quality education.

"It's al about the kids," Glazer says. "What matters to me, and I assume everybody else, is the quality of the school not the form of governance."

Michigan Future Schools has made a commitment to its funders that revolves around the number 85. That means Michigan Future is aiming for at least an 85 percent high school graduation rate, with 85 percent of those graduates enrolling in college and 85 percent of those enrollees earning a college degree.

The students targeted are both economically disadvantaged and minority students in the central city and its inner-ring suburbs. Each new school, which must take students from the city of Detroit, is expected to handle up to 500 students. So far seven new schools have been funded. The goal is to create 35 new high schools in eight years. That means the effort could reach 17,500 kids annually.

"It's a big number," Glazer says. "The whole purpose is to do this on a big enough scale that it changes the system."

Source: Lou Glazer, president and co-founder of Michigan Future
Writer: Jon Zemke

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