I recently read Alana Semuels’ Atlantic article, “The Town That Decided to Send All Its Kids to College,”, about Baldwin, a small town in Michigan with significant economic challenges:
Baldwin is the county seat of Lake County, where 27.9 percent of residents live below the poverty level, according to census data. That’s the second-highest poverty level in the state of Michigan. Just 8 percent of people living in Lake County have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 25 percent of the state of Michigan.A group of dedicated residents developed the Baldwin Promise, a program providing "middle-dollar" scholarships up to $5,000 per year for 4 years to every single graduate of Baldwin High School regardless of merit or need. Raising the scholarship money was an obvious obstacle for the Baldwin Promise team, but according to Semuels, the key to the program was really about changing the story being told in the community. “The Baldwin Promise… is more than just $5,000 a year for four years of college. It brought with it a complete change in how the town viewed education.”
Take a look at how the Baldwin Promise leadership team helped to shape and reinforce the vision of attaining a college education within the community:
- “When 5-year-olds enter Baldwin Schools, they’re tasked with creating an image of themselves, wearing a mortarboard, made out of construction paper. Those faces, black, white, and brown, are pasted onto a giant banner, “College begins with Kindergarten,” in the elementary school’s main hallway.”
- “In the past, elementary-school teachers wouldn’t really speak about college… But now, students learn about opportunities outside Baldwin from the time they start elementary school all through middle school and high school.”
- “Ayana Richardson, an effusive, put-together woman with two master’s degrees who runs the high school’s College Access Center… instituted Decision Day, a big assembly where seniors walk out into an auditorium and announce where they’re attending, to cheers.”
Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit writes, “There’s something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they’re by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief.”
Michelle Miller-Adams is an associate professor at Grand Valley State University who studied the promise scholarship movement. Her research indicates that promise scholarships can bring together a community and make it pull together in ways it never has before. She explains that, "The pool of money serves as a catalyst for a lot of other things.” “At least as important is that messaging: ‘We believe in education, we’re going to support our youth.’ That’s just as important as the money itself.” To some, the promise is just a “wrapper,” a way to simply market the idea of college. But in Baldwin, that wrapper is a big deal. That’s because it comes with the knowledge that the community is pulling for you."
There are powerful lessons from the story of how the Baldwin Promise team recognized what communications needed to occur, and how they helped to embed that shared vision into the community. Their efforts went beyond offering a solution ($5,000 scholarships to high school students), but reached to the heart of how these students and the community they live in can go from college ambivalence to a culture that values and supports higher education. In our own change environments, do we understand how to support the entire change community with clear, urgent and consistent messages?
Adam Dibble
"It Takes A Community To Change." leadershipYES. 8/19/2015
and make sure to read:
"The Town That Decided To Send All It's Kids To College" by Alana Semuels. The Atlantic. 8/18/2015
and
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. Random House. 2012
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