Granholm touts ‘blockbuster’ partnership with Kellogg Foundation

DETROIT — Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced that “millions of dollars going to hundreds of fellowships” would soon bolster the ranks of Michigan’s public school math and science teachers courtesy of a $16.7 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced a new teacher fellowship program at the Detroit Science Center on Friday afternoon. (Photo by David Alire Garcia/Michigan Messenger)

The governor made the announcement at a Friday afternoon press conference at the Detroit Science Center alongside the presidents of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Granholm joked that the Kellogg Foundation is “one entity in Michigan that actually has money.”

The two-term governor laughed a bit, but no else did.

Pivoting from a week that focused on residual budget battles in Lansing and potentially deep cuts to public education statewide, Granholm emphasized a different source of funding for teacher training.

“We recognized early on as a state government that we were going to have to partner with the foundation community, the private sector to get things done,” she said. “You can’t do things in the way you always have, especially in a crisis.”

She added: “This is another example of it, but this is a blockbuster.”

Spread over five years, funding for the new Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellowship will enable 120 new teachers each year to complete a one-year masters degree program with a $30,000 stipend. Upon graduation, teachers will be required to teach for three years in “high need urban and rural schools,” according to Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

“That doesn’t sound like a very big number,” Levine said. “But let me tell you, in terms of its scale, that’s enough teachers to fill every math and science vacancy in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Benton Harbor and even make a major contribution to Detroit.”

The first class of fellows, who will attend graduate teaching programs at one of six Michigan universities, will be announced in the spring of 2011.

While the specific universities have yet to be named, the ambition of the initiative is clear enough.

“We want to transform teacher education in Michigan,” Levine, an expert on the effectiveness of teacher education programs, added. “We want to develop the model programs. the kinds of programs that will prepare a new breed of teachers.”

Granholm chatted with students from the University Prep Science and Math Middle School following the press conference. (Photo by David Alire Garcia/Michigan Messenger)

In fact, the new fellowship will require participating universities to match a $500,000 grant as well as commit to “redesign their teacher education programs in science and math within a 21-month time frame,” according to a press release from the Kellogg Foundation.

After the announcement, Chuck Wilber, Granholm’s senior education adviser, told Michigan Messenger that part of the fellowship’s goal is to improve the way teachers are currently trained.

“What Arthur (Levine) is doing here is he’s essentially saying to the universities, ‘We’ve got to do what you’re already doing, but we have to do it better,’” he said. “That’s not always an easy message, so we had to help those conversations happen.”

Wilber added that while the state’s job losses are well known, the skills employers are seeking for new workers — especially skills related to math and science — are not.

“It’s sometimes easy to lose sight of the fact that we are getting new industries in this state,” he said. “They’re looking for a different kind of worker with a different skills set.”

Sterling Speirn, president of the Kellogg Foundation, began his remarks by outlining the stark problem facing Michigan.

“Unfortunately, 468,000 children -– that’s 1 in 5 — are in poverty in the state of Michigan today. And as many of you know, our unemployment rate has already surpassed 15 percent,” he said. “We’re all too familiar with these alarming statistics, and we often ask ourselves: What is it going to take to change our future? I think today we offer a strong answer to that question.”

Levine also identified another problem the new fellowship aims to address: The state’s stubborn achievement gap.

“The need is large,” he said. “And the achievement gap … the difference in performance among students by their race, by their income, by their location, it’s large in this state.”

Granholm couched the initiative as a small part of a larger effort to refocus on education as a long-term solution to the state’s current economic ills.

“Education is a foundation to our economic strategy as we emerge from this very difficult, historic shift in Michigan’s economy,” she said.

Wilber, Granholm’s education adviser, emphasized that philanthropic assistance can help — but it can’t be a substitute for public funding.

“In the end, though, we have to scale these programs and sustain them by a public sector commitment,” he said. “The states that are beating Michigan economically are not the low-tax states that have dismantled their governments, they’re the states that have made investments, both public and private, in their citizens. That’s where success lies. That’s where we need to be in Michigan.”