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All schools shown on these maps participated voluntarily in the Good Schools: Making the Grade initiative. Learn more about how we grade schools here. Grants shown on the map were made in 2009.
MSU takes reins at Good Schools Resource Center
DETROIT — Groans and “been there” nods spread among the crowd of 80 or so school administrators at the March 19 launch of The Skillman Foundation’s Good Schools Making the Grade Resource Center at YouthVille in Detroit.
The speaker, James Warnock, from Research for Better Teaching in Boston, was making a point about letting go of instructional practices that don’t work. This group can relate. They have let go of practices that didn’t work and prejudices about Detroit schools to make their own schools examples of success amidst an often-failing system.
More about Making the Grade |
| The Good Schools: Making the Grade initiative has, in the past four years, developed and implemented an application process to identify and recognize Good Schools in Detroit. Schools are invited, on an annual basis, to participate in the application process that uses nine indicators of student and school success to help identify Good Schools. Michigan State University provides technical assistance to the program through the Good Schools Resource Center. The Resource Center provides technical assistance to schools throughout the application process and coordinates application submission and site visits. |
YouthVille Detroit |
| YouthVille is located at 7375 Woodward Avenue in Detroit’s New Center area. Visit www.youthvilledetroit.org for information on programs, or www.youthville.msu.edu for information on MSU’s Detroit partnerships office. |
“You don’t always have a chance to get out of your building, your head is in your work,” said Sharon Lawson, principal of Pasteur Elementary School in Detroit. “It’s good to look up and see what other good schools are doing. It makes you want to go back and spread the inspiration and positive feelings.”
The YouthVille child development center offers a wide range of after-school activities for ages 11-19 and houses many community support organizations, including MSU’s Detroit University outreach and engagement offices. The center’s red brick-walled conference room with its modern exposed ventilation system added an air of “now” to the mostly upbeat conference. The seminar marked the launch of MSU’s stewardship of the Resource Center, previously run by Marygrove College.
“There are so many good things already going on,” said Barbara Markle, Good Schools Making the Grade Resource Center director and assistant dean for K-12 at MSU College of Education. “We are honored to serve as a resource to strengthen that and hope to see many other schools come on board before we’re done.”
Markle’s co-directors, Shirley Jackson and Gloria Waters, who have offices at YouthVille, will handle day-to-day operations.
Markle said the goals for that first meeting were to introduce the Resource Center to the teachers, principals and administrators it will serve and begin the task of making the center a meaningful resource. Building what she called “a robust community which shares information not only about how the educators handle challenges, but also about how the students are doing.”
Markle cited MSU’s large College of Education and vast resources as reasons MSU is a good choice to run Skillman’s Center.
“Our size alone allows us to tap into resources others don’t have,” she said. “Michigan State has a deep well of experience in education and we are very clear about the importance of education in the city of Detroit. We know how it relates to education across the state.”
Those resources also include College of Education involvement in urban areas throughout the state as well as student-teaching internships in Detroit.
Markle envisions a central location for information, including polling results from teachers and administrators about what is and isn’t working and a place where each of the schools can come for help with their specific concerns as well. During the second year of the two-year grant, Markle said she hopes to shift the priority to focus on setting content expectations, “ushering in reform that has already begun.”
— By Pat Hartley, a Huntington Woods-based freelance writer
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The Skillman Foundation's Board of Trustees approved more than $1.7 million in Good Schools: Making the Grade grants. Read more here .
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