DETROIT – It’s no secret that most Detroit children live in poverty, and very few are able to read as well as they need to. Experts say that if children aren’t reading well enough by third grade, their chances of catching up are very small indeed.
For years, test results have shown that close to nine out of ten third graders in Michigan’s largest city can’t read at grade level, meaning their chance for a better life is fast disappearing.
Various in-school solutions have been tried, without much success, and the pandemic set many kids back even further.
As a judge involved in school desegregation cases once told me, “you can have the best curriculum in the world, but when (children) go back to a house without books and parents who don’t encourage them to read, they lose any progress they make.”
But for the last eight years, a new community-based program called Brilliant Detroit has been accomplishing wonders.
Cindy Eggleton had a long career as educational preparedness director for United Way when she realized conventional approaches weren’t working. So with some seed money from a couple of philanthropists she knew, Jim and Carolyn Bellinson, she took a massive pay cut, and started a program that now has neighborhood-based hubs in, at last count, 17 fully dedicated houses in neighborhoods across the city that have worked with more than 10,000 children and their family members.
The key, she said, lies in being asked by a community to come in, listening to what people want, and involving adults as well as children. “We provide a safe space for families to learn and grow,” one of their volunteers said in a promotional video.
“Everything is done with, by and for neighbors,” said Ms. Eggleton, Brilliant Detroit’s CEO. Within the last eight years, Brilliant Detroit has created “kid success” neighborhoods and reached thousands of children and their families. “We’ve seen an average increase in three reading levels in our tutoring programs,” she said.
While Brilliant Detroit is principally aimed at reaching children between birth and age eight, it does more than that. The key, she said, was to involve parents and the entire community.
Jasmine Mahone is one example. She was an unemployed mother in her late twenties when she came across Brilliant Detroit soon after the program began. She didn’t have a high school degree and was looking for a place that would help her earn a GED.
That wasn’t their primary purpose, but they gave her that –and a lot more. “This program is not a program – it is a vessel to your heartbeat,” she said. “I found love, knowledge and understanding and the opportunity to make a difference in my community,” she said.
Her four children, who range in age from seven to 14 have all been through the program, which she said has made a huge difference in their success level; her two oldest children are themselves working with Brilliant Detroit and trying to help younger kids.
What’s more, it has given Mahone, now 32, a job; she is now the eastside outreach specialist for Brilliant Detroit, and also a new outlook on life. “They empowered me to use my creativity and skills.” With the program’s approval, she started a group for adults called “Brilliant Minds,” which gives parents a place to let off steam, increase their parenting skill and “learn to do so many things the right way.”
Brilliant Detroit is not the only program working to help Detroit children; another complimentary one, Great Start Collaborative, focuses on making families functional for the benefit of their children. No one program may be an answer for all children, much less all of society’s ills. But Brilliant Detroit seems to be making a difference. While reading levels in Detroit Public Schools are still appallingly low, the number of third-graders reading at adequate levels inched up over the past year from nine to 12.4 percent.
And in what may be the most sincere testament to the program’s success, Eggleton says she’s being deluged with inquiries from people in other cities, states, and other countries who are interested in duplicating the program — “even from as far away as India,” she said.
For the past few years, she’s concentrated her efforts on trying to make sure Brilliant Detroit is firmly grounded, economically and otherwise. In the future, however, she’d like to be able to find the time to help the program grow and thrive in other communities as well.
In recent years, education experts across the nation have focused on STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Math – skills in the belief that is where the jobs of the future will be.
That may make sense. But it is hard to imagine anyone successfully managing STEM skills if they cannot even read.
(Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
