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families and community

Art from Detroit students explores what it means to go to a neighborhood school

By • May 11, 2017
front of house with mural
Justin Boyd / Courtesy of Yvette Rock

There has been a lot of discussion over the past five months about school closures in Michigan. In January, we explored what the history of school closings in Detroit have meant for both kids and neighborhoods in our documentary We Live Here.

The week before we aired the documentary, the state’s School Reform Office released a list of 38 schools that faced closure at the end of the school year because of persistently low test scores. 

Gompers Elementary-Middle School in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood was one of the schools on that list.

Audio from family structure special

By Alex Wilson • Jul 22, 2013

Kurt Metzger, director of Data Driven Detroit, and Dr. Alford Young, chair and professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, on single parent families

Kathryn Edin, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard and co-author of Doing the Best I can: Fatherhood in the Inner City, and Kay Hymowitz, William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys, discuss whether or not marriage is a solution for low income families.

Do kids need dads? Exploring why family structure matters.

By Sarah Alvarez • Jul 16, 2013

We're rolling out a few programs and events all about how the American family is changing and how that matters for children who grow up in these families.

Next Wednesday, July 24th, we'll be meeting at the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti for an Issues and Ale event talking about the role of men in kids lives. (We refer to it in State of Opportunity shorthand as throwing out the question,"Do kids need dads?")