Aug 8, 2008 4:33 PM
Subject: T.A. Workshop for School Turnaround Proposals
Mailed-by: uwsem.org
Please join us this Tuesday, August 12, at 8:30 at the United Way for a technical assistance workshop if you are interested in completing an application for high school turnaround. This is a great opportunity to walk through the application process and proposal.
FREE PARKING is available at the parking structure located at 1001 Woodward (at State Street). You must enter the parking structure off of State, which is a one-way street. Please take a parking ticket and remember to bring it into the meeting with you. It must be validated before you leave the United Way building to ensure that the cashier does not charge you a parking fee when you exit the structure (please note that United Way can not cover parking expenses for any other parking lot other than the one located at 1001 Woodward.
A copy of the School Turnaround Proposal can be downloaded at www.oned.org, and more information about this grant is included in the Crain's article, below.
Please confirm your attendance by email annette.grays@uwsem.org or by phone 313 226-9419 with your plans to attend the T.A. Workshop. I look forward to seeing you.
Mike
Michael F. Tenbusch
Vice President, Educational Preparedness
United Way for Southeastern Michigan
1212 Griswold Street
Detroit, Michigan 48226
w (313) 226-9437
f (313) 226-9324
3:01 am, August 3, 2008
Groups seek funds to raise high school grad rates
By Sherri Begin
United Way for Southeastern Michigan has launched an effort to raise $10 million to help low-performing high schools in the region improve their graduation rates.
The agency and the Detroit-based Skillman Foundation have contributed $1.5 million each.
The AT&T Foundation today is to announce another $1 million grant to the Greater Detroit Education Venture Fund, bringing the total investment to $4 million.
The three organizations plan jointly to pursue additional grants to reach the $10 million mark, said United Way CEO Michael Brennan.
“If we are going to compete as a country in this global society, we have to have a workforce that's ready,” said AT&T Michigan President Gail Torreano, a United Way board member and chair of its Educational Preparedness Council and of the Greater Detroit Education Venture Fund.
Given the needs of Southeast Michigan, AT&T's employment of 12,000 people in Michigan and the AT&T Foundation's launch last spring of a program aimed at strengthening student success and workforce readiness in the U.S., the investment made perfect sense, Torreano said.
“When you look at issues of current and lifetime income, health disparity, incarceration rates, literacy rates — all of that leads to the fundamental foundation that education is one of the key drivers of both economic and emotional and physical success,” said United Way CEO Michael Brennan.
The aim of the program is to turn around the 30 or so Southeast Michigan high schools labeled as “drop-out factories” in a 2007 Johns Hopkins University study because of their graduation rates of 60 percent or less.
The schools are in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties.
The goal is to increase graduation rates to 80 percent or more of entering students within five years of the program's launch in the 2009-2010 academic year, Brennan said.
“There's no question there's a crisis, particularly at the high school level in Detroit,” said William Hanson, director of communications and technology at Skillman.
The plan is to implement best practices that have worked in Boston and New York and other parts of the country by working with nationally known educational intermediaries to create smaller, more personalized learning environments.
United Way plans today and Tuesday to host a group of nationally recognized intermediary nonprofits at Lawrence Technological University so the target high schools can meet them and learn more about their work.
Many of the intermediaries, which include EdWorks, First Things First and the Institute for Student Achievement, have garnered past funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Brennan said.
Administered by United Way, the Greater Detroit Education Venture Fund will make annual grants of $320,000 directly to the intermediary partners of larger high schools and $80,000 to smaller high schools with 500 or fewer students.
The grants would be renewable for up to five years and are being made to intermediaries to keep them accountable, Brennan said.
The 30 or so “drop-out factories” in metro Detroit will compete for the dollars, he said, by demonstrating leadership support and readiness within the school and a partnership with a proven intermediary.
United Way has invited the schools to submit a turnaround proposal to qualify for funding, Brennan said.
With $10 million in hand, the fund expects to begin making grants for turnaround efforts at six large high schools of about 1,500 to 2,000 students or more in the 2009-2010 academic year, Brennan said.
The plan is to break those six schools into smaller schools of 500 students or fewer to give students a more targeted and personalized approach. The smaller schools could have an academic focus more geared to students' abilities, such as math and science or arts, he said.
The intermediaries also would help implement best practices such as site-based management of academic performance and instruction and stronger and more targeted relationships with the student population that would help those schools increase their graduation rates to 80 percent within five years, Brennan said.
The program will entail a year of preparation to get schools lined up for the turnaround work scheduled to begin the fall of 2009, he said.
“We certainly hope that with a clear demonstration of local private funding ... it will put us in a position to attract national foundation funds for the Venture Fund,” Brennan said.
Sherri Begin: (313) 4460-1694, sbegin@crain.com
© 2007 Crain Communications Inc.
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