Summit rallies support against dropout epidemic

The failure of high schools has taken a huge toll on our state. A recent Johns Hopkins University study revealed that 73 high schools in Michigan have graduated less than 60 percent of their freshmen class for three straight years.

The problem is serious and it's not just an "urban" issue. Only half of the schools identified as troubled are located in larger cities, including 22 in Detroit. Another 12 schools are in Detroit suburbs, and 40 others are scattered around the state in small towns, including districts with strong financial support.

Listen to the standard line and you would believe money is a central barrier to school transformation. The real issue is one of public will.

Changing public will

One D partners New Detroit, the Detroit Regional Chamber, and the United Way for Southeastern Michigan are working to change public will around the issue of dropout prevention. In April 2008 the group hosted its first Dropout Prevention Summit and Retreat, in partnership with the America’s Promise Alliance, Skillman Foundation and the Detroit Parent Network, to create a broad and deliberate response to the unacceptably high dropout rates at high schools around the region.

More than 300 people attended, including Turnaround Teams from each of the 35 high schools in Southeastern Michigan that had been identified as “dropout factories.” The teams were made up of parents, principals, union representatives, faculty members, students and school support staff, as well as corporate, community and faith-based partners. Interested business and foundation leaders were invited to the summit to explore opportunities to fund some of the better ideas that emerged.

Summit keynote speakers included Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Connie Calloway, superintendent of Detroit Public Schools, David Hecker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, Michigan Chapter, and Michael Flanagan, state superintendent of schools.

The first day of the summit featured school district and community leaders from Boston and New York who have successfully boosted student achievement and attendance in their high schools. The local school teams spent the second day of the summit developing their own turnaround solutions.

The Action Plan

Summit attendees are now working to solidify Turnaround Teams for each school. Turnaround Teams will be working throughout the summer of 2008 to develop funding strategies and secure national vendors to help execute Turnaround Plans for each of the region’s schools with unacceptably high dropout rates.

If you are interested in learning more about the work of the Turnaround Teams or becoming involved, please visit www.OneD.org for more information.

Pictures, PowerPoint presentations and podcasts from the Summit are posted on the Web site, along with information on how to sign up for weekly Turnaround Updates. A summit video will begin airing soon on Comcast channel 22 in Detroit.

Serving on a board of directors of a nonprofit is a unique opportunity for young business professionals to give back to their community while advancing their careers.

Nonprofits are required by law to have a volunteer board of directors. The board of directors has the ultimate responsibility for the proper management, strategic direction and overall well being of the organization. Boards hire and oversee the chief executive. Research clearly demonstrates that nonprofits with talented and engaged board members are more successful in achieving their mission.

Business professionals are highly sought after to serve as board members because of their workplace experience and management skills. Marketing, public relations, finance, project management and strategic planning (to name a few), are skills nonprofits sorely need. Most professionals take these skills for granted, but they are valuable to nonprofits. Also, the board experience offers young professionals opportunities to grow or diversify their skill sets.

Serving on a nonprofit board allows you to give back to a cause you value, while developing leadership and team building skills, providing management oversight and, most importantly, networking with many other business professionals volunteering in the same capacity.

Nonprofits, faced with increasing accountability standards and performance expectations, actively seek skilled, committed professionals to serve on their boards.

Here are some tips on joining a nonprofit board:

• Start by studying the roles and responsibilities of a nonprofit board of directors
• Look for opportunities on the board of a nonprofit whose mission you are passionate about
• Identify a management role on the board that matches your professional skills and experience
• Remember that nonprofits are uniquely different from businesses largely because of their mission (rather than profit) focus

In order to promote board service, United Way for Southeastern Michigan and Lawrence Technological University have joined forces to offer a series of low-cost workshops to help people become effective board members. The program is called BoardWALK, and includes a series of seven workshops, each covering a key area of board management.

Sessions are offered monthly on Lawrence Tech's Southfield campus. Topics range from legal accountability to strategic planning to financial oversight. For more information on the BoardWALK workshop series, visit www.uwsem.org/boardwalk.

Consider this your invitation to join us.

Professor Lindman is director of the Center for Nonprofit Management at Lawrence Technological University, a program of the Graduate College of Management, offering graduate education and community outreach programming focused on advancing professional leadership at charitable, nonprofit organizations. For more information, email lindman@ltu.edu

Leadership Next welcomes editorial submissions and other contributions from its members. If you are interested in sharing your talent, please e-mail Julie.Updyke@LiveUnitedSEM.org.

Volunteer Spotlight
Leadership Next creates meaningful community impact

As volunteers with United Way's Leadership Next program, we partner with residents and community organizations interested in improving the physical and social qualities of their respective neighborhoods. And while impacting the region is our primary goal, Leadership Next also provides us a number of opportunities to grow personally and professionally, and to learn about other organizations, communities and initiatives.

We had a chance to experience all of this and more when we helped the Grandmont Rosedale Development Corporation in April with a community revitalization project. About 25 volunteers put shovels, rakes and others tools to use while rejuvenating Stoepel Park, on Detroit's west side. We helped ensure that 600 area kids have adequate ball fields for their summer little league season.

Tom Goddeeris, executive director at GRDC, thanked the group for its contribution to the project, and also provided an overview of his group's work in the community.

Leadership Next would like to thank all of the volunteers who worked through the dreary, drizzling morning at Stoepel Park. The fields looked great after you were done. For those who missed the event, don't worry, more opportunities to make a difference are on the horizon.

We will continue to increase our involvement and seek to engage in similar projects across the region regularly, so stay tuned. Through these efforts we are confident that Leadership Next will make communities stronger and enhance the vibrancy of our region.

Check out videos and pictures from the morning!

Upcoming Events
Leadership Next helps with tour for new home buyers

Leadership Next wants to increase home ownership rates across our region.

We are committed to helping United Way for Southeastern Michigan make progress in the financial stability focus area of its Agenda for Change, and one of the ways we will do this is to provide key resources to potential homeowners.

We know that buying a starter home (or even a dream home) can be overwhelming. That is why Leadership Next is teaming up with City Living Detroit, Preservation Wayne and Detroit Young Professionals to assist consumers who are interested in taking this major step through MI City Home Toolkit.

MI City Home Toolkit is a six-part series that launches June 14 and runs through October. Each month, organizers stage a tour of three homes in one of six featured Detroit neighborhoods, and includes an opportunity for participants to meet the homeowners in those neighborhoods. Other event highlights include opportunities to:

• Meet homeowners and hear firsthand what it's like to own or rehab a historic Detroit home
• Talk one-on-one with Realtors, contractors and mortgage brokers to learn more about making smart purchasing and renovation decisions
• Learn how to take advantage of home buying incentives like NEZ property tax discounts, historic tax credits and more

The events are free, but space is limited, so go to www.micityhome.com to reserve your spot today.

Kurt's Corner
Another look at dropouts

The issue of dropout prevention has moved to the forefront of the educational component of United Way for Southeastern Michigan's Agenda for Change. This is not a signal that we value early childhood education any less or that our grade-level reading initiative, Operation ABC has taken a back seat. In fact, graduation rates are clearly tied to the availability and quality of early childhood education opportunities and Operation ABC is alive and well as grade-level reading is a predictor of high school completion and post-secondary education success.

I have chosen not to get into the conflicting measures of graduation and dropout rates. Such discussions tend to end up as arguments around the actual number and the methodology used, thus avoiding an honest discussion of the real issue – we have a problem with children not completing high school. While we know that a high school degree is not all one needs to succeed in the new knowledge-based economy, it certainly opens possibilities that will never be there without the degree.

This column looks at several sources of data to provide additional context to the issue.

The first represents a different take on dropouts. The Census Bureau, in both their Decennial Census and the new American Community Survey, provides a special tabulation for 16-19 year olds. Combining answers to questions on current enrollment and educational attainment, they are able to describe their current educational situation.

Data from the 2006 American Community Survey provides a good news/bad news scenario. While the number and percent of 16-19 year olds not enrolled in school, and not having graduated, decreased between 2000 and 2006 across the region and in each county, the numbers remain much too high. While we would like to see the number reduced to zero, we know that will most likely not occur. Nevertheless, we can certainly lower the numbers in our region – 13,763 or 6.1 percent of all 16-19 year olds.

Table 1. Enrollment / Graduation Status of 16-19 Year Olds in Southeast Michigan, 2006

Several points are clearly made by the data in Table 1.

• While each of the four UWSEM regions has more than 2,000 youth in this situation, the share of total youth varies from a low of 3.6 percent in Oakland County to a high of 10.7 percent in Detroit.
• Current enrollment shows the same trend in reverse – the highest rate (90.2 percent) is in Oakland County, while the lowest (80.1%) is in Detroit.
• Non-completion rates are shown to differ by gender, though the pattern is not consistent. While Oakland County has similar male/female rates, the share of non-graduates in Macomb and Out-Wayne counties is higher for females. Detroit reverses this trend as 12.4 percent of males, and 8.9 percent of females, 16-19 years of age have not completed high school and are not enrolled.

These results drive home the need to invest in our urban school districts. We must assume that the vast majority of non-graduates in Detroit are African American, and Latino. The plight of the African-American male has been documented annually in the National Urban League’s State of Black America report. They are underrepresented in colleges and overrepresented in the judicial system. The same case may be made for Latino males. While we recognize many of the social and policy factors that drive these discrepancies, we also know that education is a significant factor in reducing them. Access to quality education – from pre-school through high school – is essential for success. We must invest in our poor, urban neighborhoods where disinvestment has led children to see little hope; where education is not seen as a path to success.

UWSEM, through its funding priorities in educational preparedness, seeks to solve complex social issues. There is no more complex an issue than that of changing the culture around education and seeing to it that every child in southeast Michigan has equal access to high quality education, and each neighborhood provides the parental and community supports to ensure success.

Take Action Now
Be smart with your stimulus check

Economic stimulus checks began hitting bank accounts this month and many families are deciding how to best use the added bump to their incomes. We’ve come up with 10 options for spending your rebate check.

The options that follow could help you and your family move closer to financial independence by getting rid of debt, paying for an education or meeting vital basic needs.

1. Pay down debt. Debt is one of the biggest obstacles to financial independence. Give serious consideration to paying down credit card or student loan debt. Americans have doubled their debt over the past decade to $2.5 trillion (this excludes mortgage-related debt). The sooner you eradicate your debt, the sooner you can build assets, which will put you on the road to financial stability.
2. Apply toward mortgage principal. Consider making an extra payment to your principal. Although the short-term benefit may seem small the impact over 30 years could result in noticeable mortgage interest savings.
3. Avoid fees and get your whole check. If you don’t have a bank account, avoid cashing your rebate check at check cashing outlets that aren’t affiliated with a financial institution because they will charge high fees that eat into your rebate. Wal-Mart is offering the opportunity to cash your check for free at their stores and no purchase is necessary. Once you do this, you should also consider our next option...
4. Get banked. More than 28 million Americans do not have a bank account and an additional 44.7 million are under-banked, hindering them from becoming financially stable. If you are one of millions without a bank account, consider starting a savings account with your rebate. If you have a bank account, consider directing some or all of your rebate toward beefing up your rainy day fund.
5. Start (or add to) your child’s college fund. Individuals who are college educated are likely to make $1 million more in their lifetime than those with only a high school diploma. Help your child attain a full education and be better prepared to succeed in life.
6. Build you retirement nest egg. If you plan to stop working at some point you need to put money away. The money you invest in your retirement today is going to carry you even further down the road when the interest in your investment grows. Consider a Roth IRA or other investment vehicle.
7. Further your education. Have you been thinking about finishing a degree or receiving training in a different career field? Use your rebate toward that goal and in turn you can increase your employability.
8. Support others in need. If you have all you need, consider helping others thrive by donating some of your rebate to United Way.
9. Update your home. A home is a person’s greatest financial asset, so it’s important to keep it in good condition. Many home improvement stores are offering discounts if you use your rebate check toward merchandise.
10. Take advantage of retail savings. Once you have carefully covered all of your savings, investing and charitable giving bases consider taking advantage of discounts retailers are currently offering to consumers in hopes of getting some of their stimulus cash. National and local retailers are offering discounts, gift cards and other incentives to get you to shop. Now may not be a bad time to take advantage of the extra buying power to get clothes for the children or an item you really need.