For Labor Day we have a “back to school” version of WestSouthwest with two perspectives on the Kalamazoo Promise.
In June the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research released a report on the benefits of the scholarship program for students of the Kalamazoo Public Schools. Two of the study’s authors, Tim Bartik and Brad Hershbein, said their study showed that students in KPS are now more likely to get a college degree. The benefits were spread across demographic groups.
But the director of Western Michigan University’s Walker Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnic Relations says the Promise can only do so much. Tim Ready wrote a post for the Brookings Institute’s Social Mobility Blog called Free College is not Enough: the Unavoidable Limits of the Kalamazoo Promise. Both of the interviews originally aired in July.
