KALAMAZOO (WKZO AM/FM) — The Kalamazoo Promise is closing in on another milestone. Director Bob Jorth gave Kalamazoo School Trustees a snapshot last night of where the one-of-a-kind scholarship program stands and what they are doing to improve it and expand it.
He says so far they have spent around $87-million on tuition for over 4,600 students to go to college or trade school.
He suspects that before the end of the year that they will pass the $100-million dollar mark and have put over 5,000 students through the process.
He says it’s showing results. KPS, which is considered to be a high-poverty urban school district is enrolling kids in college at a rate that is close to a well-to-do suburban district.
The students may have a leg up because they have the money for tuition, but they have to go through the same admissions process as any other student, and if they don’t have the grades and the test scores, they won’t be accepted.
Jorth says while the college graduation rate for schools that are comparable to Kalamazoo is normally around 22%, 35 to 40% of all Promise scholars graduate with a degree. Jorth says one of his goals is to improve on that statistic. Another is to contact students who failed to graduate and to see what they can do to get them back in school.
He says another goal is to work with the community to see how many graduates from the program they can retain in Kalamazoo, or bring back to town once they graduate. That will mean finding jobs here.
Jorth says while the Promise is so unique that there is very little data to compare it to other scholarship programs, they are collecting as much data as they can on the Kalamazoo experience.
The Upjohn Institute is also closely evaluating and studying the program for others who may try to duplicate it. They will certainly have the numbers to tell them what works and what does not.
