Once upon a time in public education, when all schools were neighborhood schools and attendance was a matter of which side of the boundary lines you lived on, families like Marilyn Williams’ would have been rare indeed. The mother of two teenage daughters just two years apart, Williams’ daughters don’t just attend different classes, but […]
Detroit
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links
“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers” — Alfred Lord Tennyson, 19th century English poet * What’s going on inFinland? The Center forMichigan is engaged in a statewide round of community conversations on how to improve K-12 education. Our outreach coordinator, Courtney Thompson, tells us that in sessions so far, one nation keeps cropping up for praise: […]
Posted inTalent & Education
At Wayne State, easy to get in, difficult to get out
Since LaQuanda Pratt enrolled at Wayne State University three years ago, many of the African-American students she shared classes with are gone. Some left the college because of family difficulties, Pratt recalled. Some ran out of money. Others couldn’t cut it academically. “A lot of students aren’t prepared,” said the 20-year-old psychology major from Detroit. […]
Posted inTalent & Education
A Wayne graduate and the class of whenever
The new year brought a new milestone in my life. I graduated from Wayne State University, with a master’s degree in communications/journalism. That fact, possessing a Wayne State degree as an African-American student, makes me something of a rarity, as Bridge’s coverage of the struggles of African-American students at Wayne makes clear. As expected, my […]
Posted inQuality of Life
Detroit neighbor losing population, too
Everyone in Michigan is familiar with the population decline in Detroit and population stagnation in state overall. Put negative population trends are not contained to Detroit’s or Michigan’s borders. Right across the river from Detroit, Windsor, Ontario, is seeing its own population drop — a fairly significant one it appears in this mapping tool based […]
Posted inTalent & Education
Reading champs point to early prep
Now in its 16th year, Island City Academy was founded as an independent charter school in Eaton Rapids, a small town about 20 miles south of Lansing. Thomas Ackerson, its principal, said the school was born to institute a back-to-basics program that ran counter to the educational trends of the time. “The original idea was […]
Posted inMichigan Government
Big township bank accounts draw concern, defense
We all know Michigan’s local governments have been struggling because of a plunge in tax revenues caused by the Great Recession and the housing collapse, not to mention shrinking state revenue-sharing payments. Or do we? A controversial new study by Isabella County Administrator Tim Dolehanty claims there is, in fact, an “embarrassment of riches” at […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Trading business pinstripes for another kind
First things first: The photo making the rounds of social media, the one with Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel “Matty” Moroun sitting gape-mouthed, eyes upturned, as though someone has just gut-punched him, is not the moment Wayne County Circuit Judge Prentis Edwards dropped the bomb. Video clearly shows that when Edwards told Moroun that he and […]
Posted inQuality of Life
O, brave new world that has such people in it
Considering the works of William Shakespeare have been performed everywhere from Central Park to American prisons, the production of “The Tempest” entering its final weekend at Detroit’s Park Bar doesn’t qualify as particularly strange. But the story of how it came to be is one that anyone interested in economic development or the nurturance of […]
Posted inSuccess
Fencer helps Detroit youth parry problems
Keith Carr, 16, doesn’t talk like most of the other boys at Advance Technology Academy in Dearborn. He uses such words as “en garde” and “marche” and “balestra” – all terms he’s learned as a promising fencer. Athletically built with a wide smile, the high school junior says he hopes to fence in college, where […]