The Skillman Foundation

People power the education system.

People in the classrooms and school buildings, in the community and neighborhoods, in district offices and at school board meetings, in the capital and legislative chambers, and in corporate and philanthropic board rooms. Across multiple roles, institutions, and approaches, people are working to transform Michigan’s education system.

These people are engaged in an education system with deeply entrenched policies, practices, resource flows, power dynamics, and mindsets that influence what change is believed to be possible and how it unfolds. Shifting these dynamics requires a shared vision for the education system and the collective will to make necessary changes.

We need more than gap-filling and workarounds. Poor policy and patchwork policy—including how we fund public education and out-of-school learning opportunities—severely limit how the education system operates. There is no single solution for the multiple challenges experienced in Detroit’s education system. Instead, communities and policymakers need structures that enable them to diagnose, design, and implement education policies to reshape the system.

Real, transformative change that delivers on the promise that our education system will give every young person the foundation they need to forge their own future starts with listening to those who are least served today. Detroit is the epicenter, where the fault lines in our education system are most evident and where visionaries have been on the ground creating the solutions.  

Detroit youth, educators, parents, and community organizers have needed insights and answers that will benefit our education system statewide, yet policy decisions are generally made without their input.

Those impacted by policy decisions and those charged with making and implementing decisions are working hard to make change. But so much more can be done with intentional relationships, collaboration, and shared purpose—the ecosystem for equitable education policy change. Mending the disjointedness and divisiveness would allow for substantial, sustainable change.  Our People Powered Education strategy leverages The Skillman Foundation’s grantmaking and other resources to strengthen the ecosystem of people catalyzing education policy change to accelerate systemic transformation. As an organization that works in service of Detroit youth, we work with a commitment to racial equity and justice. We will learn and rebuild together, centering the voices of those most proximate to redesign education systems with Detroit youth, for Detroit youth.