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Kalamazoo’s Education Gene

by Richard Cole
May 16, 2010

I hope President Obama doesn’t miss the most important point he could make at his June 10 commencement address to the students of Kalamazoo’s Central High School.

The commencement address, no doubt, will attribute at least some of the academic success of the school’s graduating class to Kalamazoo’s unprecedented program that promises free college education to every student who graduates from high school there. That makes it easy to see why this widely heralded “Kalamazoo Promise” would be a major part of any national report on the president’s Kalamazoo visit.

But as important as it is, the Kalamazoo Promise is far from the whole story.

I like to think the anonymous philanthropists who funded the Kalamazoo Promise drew some of their inspiration from hearing about the reported success of the Michigan Education Trust. MET, which also has a connection to Kalamazoo, began in the mid-1980s as America’s first pre-paid college tuition program. It allows parents to buy tomorrow’s tuition at today’s tuition rates, and that fact alone changed the dinner table conversation for many Michigan families.

There is no doubt that MET has had a significant impact on tens of thousands of Michigan families over the past two decades. The last report I saw suggested that something like 98 percent of all MET kids — Michigan kids who grew up knowing their college tuition was paid in advance — went on to college. No surprise there.

One would think that the Kalamazoo philanthropists who came up with “the Promise” certainly knew about MET’s influence. They also must have recognized that for a significant number of Kalamazoo families — families struggling to make ends meet in the face of a rapidly changing economy — the likelihood of finding extra money in their budgets to prepay college tuition was entirely out of the question. At the same time, these philanthropists most certainly recognized the need for their community, once again, to develop the local talent needed to help retool an economy reeling from the loss of yet another industry — this time the international pharmaceutical industry. Do you remember Upjohn?

At the site of what was the original Kalamazoo Central High School, on the corner of Westnedge and Vine, is the building that in 1986 became the Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center (KAMSC — pronounced “kam-see”). The KAMSC building, today called “Old Central,” was renovated and the labs were equipped by Kalamazoo’s Upjohn Company, then the region’s largest employer. (In 1990 I wrote a book called Giant Eyes about KAMSC. Upjohn paid me to write this book as a sort-of cookbook to help other math and science centers get started across the country.)

With West Michigan’s once-prosperous paper mills shutting down in the 1970s, Upjohn PR executive Dick St. John began to recognize that his company’s upcoming 100th anniversary might provide an opportunity to make a difference in the education of Kalamazoo area kids who could no longer rely on the mills for employment. Once again, a community leader had stepped up to make sure that opportunity to advance public education wasn’t missed. Maybe it’s a community trait in Kalamazoo that whenever there’s a problem, some leader steps forward to suggest that the solution might rest in better education.

St. John proposed that Upjohn CEO Ted Parfet steer a major contribution into a plan to create a new kind of regional, high-technology high school in Kalamazoo. Parfet stepped up with $2 million in Upjohn money, and KAMSC was born.

As Kalamazoo’s most famous broadcaster, WKZO radio’s late Paul H. Aurandt, would say thousands of times throughout his career: “Get ready to hear ‘the rest of the story.’”

As I mentioned, the philanthropists who funded the Kalamazoo Promise have chosen to remain anonymous. I don’t have a clue who they are, but I can tell you this much. On the Westnedge-facing wall of the Old Central building is an historical marker. One would think that any local philanthropist who would be inspired to fund the Kalamazoo Promise would have seen this historical marker many times. Either that or you’d have to believe that the commitment to public education is so deeply embedded in Kalamazoo’s gene pool that it’s just second nature for that community to try to solve problems through education.

The historical marker states:

Near here, in 1858, Kalamazoo’s first high school was opened. Fifteen years later, the right of the school board to levy taxes to support a high school was challenged. A unanimous decision of the Michigan Supreme Court, rendered by Justice Thomas M. Cooley in 1874, affirmed an opinion of Kalamazoo Circuit Judge Charles R. Brown that upheld this right. As a result, the way opened for free high schools in Michigan and also in other states.

My hope is that when President Obama visits Kalamazoo, he’ll take the time to make the pilgrimage over to touch this historical marker at the original Kalamazoo Central. The marker memorializes one of the most important milestones in the history of America’s unique system of free public education. Its existence there suggests that Kalamazoo’s innovative “Promise” for a free higher education for all of its residents is the direct descendent of an earlier innovation: free, tax-supported, public high school.

If a case could be made that a community has a genetic structure, I have to believe that a cultural geneticist looking for the education gene would find it in the DNA of Kalamazoo. After all, it would be difficult to put together a list of America’s most significant education innovations without including the Kalamazoo Promise of free higher education (2005) and the Cooley Decision (1874), which established a community’s right to use tax dollars to provide a free high school education. And both of these breakthroughs touch Kalamazoo Central High School directly.

My hope is that in his enthusiasm for acknowledging the role of the private philanthropists whose generosity is offering promise and paying dividends to the kids of Kalamazoo, the president won’t ignore Kalamazoo’s deep historical commitment to free public education upon which the Kalamazoo Promise was built.

This is a great story of public and private interests joining together in one location spanning three centuries with one common purpose — to build a better future through private interest in public education. It’s a story that began with a few pioneer taxpayers in a small west Michigan school district who overcame the arguments of a United States senator, Charles E. Stuart, who sued them to prevent his hometown from using tax dollars to provide a free public high school education.

And it’s a story that goes on today in Kalamazoo — a community that will someday be known as the place that pioneered the idea that it serves a public purpose for all of our children to receive a free public higher education.

My hope is that President Obama, in his enthusiasm for commending the achievements of the present day graduates of Kalamazoo Central High School, doesn’t miss the chance to share with them — and with America — the important role Kalamazoo has played, and continues to play, in our rich history of free public education.

And, as another transplant Chicagoan, Kalamazoo station WKZO’s late Paul H. Aurandt — otherwise known as America’s Paul Harvey — would say, “Now you know the rest of the story.”

In addition to serving as professor and chairperson of the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Retailing at Michigan State University, Richard Cole is co-founder of Michigan’s Next Governor Project (see August Dome feature).The opinions expressed reflect his individual viewpoint and not that of the university.