Giving Compass' Take:

• Erin Einhorn explains how a new school in Detroit will be built around a cradle to career approach to education thanks to funding from the Kresge Foundation.

• What are the advantages of this model? How can the long-term impact of the school on individuals and the community be measured?

• Learn more about the cradle to career workforce development model. 

The long-term vision for a new “cradle to career” school in Detroit is sweeping and ambitious.

When it’s up and running, the school coming to the campus of Marygrove College in northwest Detroit will be one of the first in the nation to serve everyone from babies to graduate students, simultaneously educating children, giving high school students the opportunity to earn college credits, and training teachers in an innovative new way.

The still-unnamed school, which was formally announced in a press conference at Marygrove College, is a joint effort between the University of Michigan, the Detroit Public Schools Community District and the Kresge Foundation.

It will be a very different kind of school — made possible with a $50 million investment from Kresge that the foundation says is the largest philanthropic investment ever made in a single Detroit neighborhood.

The school is major coup for the district, which gets a chance to demonstrate its ability to launch cutting-edge new schools even as it works to stabilize a long-troubled school system. It’s also significant for Michigan, which is trying to reinvent teacher training in the United States, and marks an important moment for Kresge as the institution leads the way in both early childhood education and supporting the neighborhood near Marygrove.

The district and the university will collaborate on developing a new engineering, urban planning, and business-oriented curriculum for the high school that will have a social change focus.

“It’s not just engineering with a math, science, tech lens,” Vitti said. “It’s about having a skill set to give back to Detroit as an engineer. … It’s thinking about what does this mean in the context of improving my community in a sustainable, long-term way?”

Read the full article about a cradle to career school by Erin Einhorn at Chalkbeat.