Welcome to our two of the truth with Sherwin Hughes, got a bunch of esteemed gentlemen in
the studio.
I'm going to do some introduction.
You guys know Al Keith, who is the CEO of Milwaukee College Prep.
Welcome back to the program.
Al.
Get it.
Thank you.
We also have Mr. Anthony McHenry.
It's your first time with me.
It's your first time meeting, isn't it, Mr. Henry?
You are the CEO of the Milwaukee Academy of Sciences.
Welcome to the program.
We have to be here.
Then we also have our buddy, our friend.
We go way back like four flats on a lack, Collestin Morgan from City Forward Collective.
Welcome back to the program.
Collestin, how are you?
Doing pretty good, man.
I have a focus on education on this show because what is the use of being an African-American
man in this city and not focusing on and doubling down on education because without it,
I would not be here.
In fact, I wouldn't even be close to this microphone nor would you all want me close to
this microphone.
And I was inspired by something fairly recently because, you know, we have these things.
They're kind of annoying.
Nobody really wants to participate in them.
They're called elections.
And there's a lot of Democrats that are running.
This is not going to be a partisan conversation, but I do want to introduce this topic as
something that can have an impact on our community.
And a lot of the people that are running for the highest office in the state do not like
a program that has borne fruit for our community.
Collestin, I want to start with you.
What do you think the real opposition is to parents having options other than public schools?
Let me qualify that by saying this.
Every other parent exercises options and where they want to send their kids to school.
They may move out of state.
They may send their kids to a private school.
They may exercise all sorts of very inconvenient things so they can have that school choice.
But why do you think there's so much opposition when the parents and the students look like
us?
You know, I think the politics have been caught up to the reality, right?
I just turned 40.
When I was a kid, we were at the inception of all of these programs, right?
Dr. Fuller was my super intended.
I started at a Milwaukee public school.
I ended at a private school, you know, every family on my block had a story like that.
And we're now 30 or 40 years into this.
You look at the polling.
You talk to people on the street.
You're as likely to find somebody whose kid is outside of Milwaukee public schools is inside
of Milwaukee public schools yet the political conversation, especially, you know, we're not
going to get partisan here.
Especially on one side of the aisle hasn't caught up to the on the ground reality.
This is a city where most families aren't taking their kids to school down the block.
In many cases, that school down the block just isn't getting the job done in the way
that it needs to.
It's important.
I'd say it's essential that all of our families, especially our black families, have access
to the right set of options to find the right fit for their kid.
That could be that school down the street that could be a school across the court.
It could be a private school.
It was for me.
It could be a public charter school like these two gentlemen run.
And that with us today, you know, the point is we all need to find that right best fit.
And that requires giving us the power to make that choice.
Anthony, if people are unfamiliar with the Milwaukee Academy of Sciences, what is your
focus?
And do you think that there is anything unique about your curriculum that hits marks that
maybe other public schools do not?
Sure.
Milwaukee Academy of Sciences in its 26 year of existence.
We were founded by a gentleman by the name of T Michael Bolder, who was the president
of the Medical College of Wisconsin.
And he started the school essentially because of the thousands of matriculates coming into
the medical college year less than 1% were individuals who look like you and I from the
city of Milwaukee.
And so he wanted to do something about it.
And so he started a public independent charter school with a STEM focus in hopes that he
can develop a school where kids have a love of the sciences.
And that's what we've created.
We're a kindergarten through 12th grade school, serving a population that is 99% in African
American, 97% of those young people are economically disadvantaged, again, STEM focused.
And one of the unique things about our school is that we are through trail, but we're actually
serving kids from across the city.
Last year we had individuals from 31 different zip codes.
We provided school bus transportation to 27 different zip codes.
And that's really an effort to make sure that our young people can stay with us over
the continuum of the time that they're in their K through 12 educational experience and
really creates a unique opportunity for us to have a long lasting impact on those young
people even beyond high school.
They tell us that children who live below the poverty line, they can't learn because
they're poor and poverty and of course being black makes it impossible.
This is why the test scores are so low and there's nothing that we can do and we need
more money, of course, and we get more money because the kids are poor and poor kids can't
learn.
And of course they're black and then they get together in the school and then they can't
read and they can't do math.
Do you find that to be true at the Milwaukee College Prep?
Because that's what they're telling us, it's absolutely false.
I mean, Milwaukee College Prep was built on the belief that we are not awed by the challenges
of reality.
Right.
So that's what it is, whatever is happening outside of our school doors, we stop
at nothing to provide intentional supports, intentional programming to make sure our kids
are successful.
I mean, it's very clear in all of our metrics and all of our achievements.
I mean, you look at the four and five star results on the DPR report cards, you look at
our forward numbers, you look at our amazing map growth that we just saw come out of our
winter map.
It's very clear.
All kids can and want to learn at MCP, we make sure that we stop at nothing to make sure
that's possible and that that happens.
Collective, how does city forward collective work to support these institutions and institutions
like these?
I know that you guys provide a lot of details, a lot of statistics and a lot of data and
that's the root of how we want to maybe reshape and reform education, but let's give some
information about what city forward collective does and how you guys help support education
in the city.
Yeah.
So I think it starts by exactly what we're out here, you're talking about the truth,
the reality, the good and the challenges, right?
The fact that we got families in our community that are trying to do right by their kids.
We've got educators, you know, both of these schools, I could name, you know, we could
have brought a half dozen other school leaders into the city that are trying to do right
by the students that they're serving every day.
And we also have to be honest about the reality that we're not as a city where we need to
be and in fact, in some real important ways, especially for our black students in Milwaukee,
we're actually moving in the wrong direction.
And then after we confront that truth, we can't sort of sit and admire it.
We can't just wallow in it.
We got to take action.
And so the things that we try to do, we try to bring that information forward, right?
Having conversations like this, we're in constant dialogue with our school leaders.
What do you need?
How can we support you?
What are the ways that we can put wind under yourselves to make sure that the good work
that you're doing is reaching more students and families?
We work directly with parents and families too.
I've been on this program and other places talking about the work we do to give families
information.
You're going into beginning of year or parent-teacher conferences and here's some questions
you can ask your child's teacher.
Here's some ways to make sure that you know where your students at and where they should
be against performance.
Right?
It's going to take all of us as a community to lift up our kids.
And I don't think there's any more important work that we could be doing than exactly that.
So that's how we at city for a collective try to fill those gaps.
Education shouldn't be political because the way I look at it, we are training the future
workforce of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and of the world, and that shouldn't be political.
But policy is very important.
Do you, Colless, and the city for a collective get involved in the policy making?
Because we know that good policy can have tremendous benefits.
Bad policy is like a worst-case scenario.
So to what, I guess, extent to you guys involved yourself and ask you each of this same question,
how do you involve yourself in positive policy that can impact students' lives?
Well, one of the things that we can do at city for a collective, we're not, because we're
not running schools, we can speak in those spaces, right?
We can call out when we see good things happening, but we can also call out when we see challenges
happening last year or two years ago now, when the Department of Public Instruction lowered
expectations for students, we had something to say about it, a lot to say about it very
loudly.
And we're not apologetic about that.
As Al was laying out earlier, we think all of our kids can learn.
They're going to learn to the level of the expectation that we hold for them.
And when we have a challenge, the answer isn't drop the bar.
The answer is, let's get them the support that they need to get to that bar.
When we saw our schools that were suffering in some cases from a 50% funding gap, same
students, in many cases, same family, same household.
One kid was going to an MPS school, another kid was going to a public charter school in
seeing a 30, 40, 50% funding gap.
We said that's unequal, that's unfair.
And then we worked with our school leaders, we worked with our parents.
We helped to build a coalition to say, we've got to do something about this.
And that's where we saw some of these gaps begin to close.
Now, there's still more work to be done there.
I don't want to say that the job is done.
But part of our work is to be in constant conversation of our community, listening to all
of the stakeholders.
And when we see issues that require attention or action to call them out, but not just
to call them out to make noise, to call them out to get something done.
Al, when the Department of Public Instruction, so this is policy related.
And they lower expectations, it's not a good thing because now you can show your students
are doing way better even though technically they may not be doing better.
So it does not make it a little bit easier for your institution to show improvement in
your students.
So when the DPI, let's say they lower expectations or they change the terminology, do you follow
suit with that or Milwaukee college prep, do you have your own set of kind of immobile standards
for your students?
Absolutely.
So let me just address the very first question.
No.
Make life easier.
It doesn't make what we do easier.
It actually makes what we do harder.
Because now we have a very inconsistent set of data, very inconsistent trend of data
that we have to try to follow and use to kind of project where we are headed.
MCP, we've stayed very true and tried and true to the metrics that we pay attention to
that give us the idea of our kids well, our kids growing, are they moving in the right direction
towards college and beyond.
And so we focus on the hard things, the very hard and objective metrics, attendance,
culture metrics, our kids engaged, our families engaged.
We look at hardcore achievement numbers.
We stay very true to what has been proven to work at MCP regardless of what's going
on outside our four walls and our four campuses.
And so in short, no, it actually makes our lives harder beyond the being able to follow
the data.
It just communicates a different set of standards, I think, to the public and to the community.
That it's okay to change standards just to make something look sound feel good and that
just makes the entire journey of education, the entire mission that we have more difficult.
I think leaders like Mac, leaders like Collestin at City for Collective that fight for consistency
and metrics consistency and data and consistency in the bar.
I mean, the bar just has to be the bar.
We talked about that before, Sherwin.
The big thing that's happening here that I have the hardest and the biggest issue with
is that there's not a consistent bar for what is good enough for our kids in the city
of Milwaukee.
And the school leaders at MPS outside of MPS that are fighting for that, I think, those
are the people that need to be loud and at the front of what's happening here.
Our Keith is here, Collestin Morgan is here, Anthony McHenry is here.
I'm going to say a break when I come back, I want to start with you, Mac, because that's
what they call you.
I'm going to call you Mac as well.
As a matter of, let's just say school policy because I do want to have a focus on policy.
You know, these kids that you teach, they're black kids and they don't behave.
You got to expel them.
You got to suspend them all the time because I mean, that's what the district does.
And if the district say, oh, these are very bad kids and their behavior is often, we
got to suspend them and we got to expel them.
I want to know how you address, how all of you address behavior issues because they tell
us because I see the statistics and Collestin, I know you collect that data as well.
It is just, it's abysmal, the disciplinary scenarios and then how the schools respond,
which I think is like anti-intellectual, how we're responding to discipline problems.
So we're going to talk about that on the other side.
You're listening too forward together for kids, I'm your host, Sherwin, he's don't go
anywhere.
We'll all be right back.
Welcome back to the program.
We've got Collestin Morgan in studio, Anthony McHenry and of course, our good friend,
Al Keith and they represent everything from Milwaukee, college prep to the Milwaukee
Academy of Sciences and of course, city forward collective, Mr. McHenry, I want to start
with you about the discipline issue because there seems to be this prevailing wisdom that
low income black children are so incredibly disturbed that they just must be kicked out
of school and suspended and expelled and we look at the numbers, especially coming out
of the Milwaukee public school district and I use that because that's our benchmark flag
ship example with a multi-billion dollar budget and the suspension and expulsion levels
for black students is it's abysmal and your student body is 99 plus percent, well that
be 100 percent, but majority African-American, how do you deal with discipline issues in
school?
Yeah, Sherwin, I would first say that schools in my opinion don't necessarily have a
discipline problem, what they have is a hope problem, what they have is a dream problem,
what they have is an engagement problem and so when you lack those things, you're going
to see discipline negative behaviors increase and so our approach is to ensure that our
kids have really strong relationship with our educators, we believe that it's the responsibility
of our staff, our teachers in particular to build really strong relationships with our
kids, not vice versa, we believe that it's their responsibility to ensure that kids are
learning, not vice versa and so what that does, it creates a really different relationship
in fact, the partnership in kids education and when kids know that you believe in them
and when you're holding kids to really high expectations, more often not they're going
to rise to the occasion and so we spend a lot of time not only monitoring academic
data but also data around joy in our building, data around student engagement, you see in
every classroom throughout every day, you see people in and out of the classroom and
what they're looking for is student engagement, are they on task?
When students are on task, behaviors are down and so we're monitoring and measuring that
every single day of the school year to ensure our kids are engaged and then the joy factor,
we're trying to create a school where kids want to come to school even if circumstances
are challenging outside of the school building and so we do a number of different things to
make school exciting for kids so that kids not only want to come but that they want to
be there each and every day and because we focused on those things we see our suspension
numbers going down, our exposions are close to zero and so we're just continuing with the
work of building really strong kids and so we have a model where I like to say we're
a high quality school that functions like a social service organization, we're providing
we have around supports in the school to ensure that the kids can be the best version
of themselves.
In fact, we have individuals hired on our on our staff that their entire responsibility
is to build strong relationship with kids, help them deal with pressures and challenges
and trauma that they're faced with outside of our school building so that they can be the
best version of themselves when they're at school.
And I think that might get lost in the shuffle a little bit because a lot of folks just
stay focused on testing and test scores and academics and you know those kind of measurables
but if there are social issues or familial issues that could be what is impacting that
child's performance and the fact that you all are intentional in dealing with and addressing
and hopefully solving some of those issues so a child can get back to actually learning
and performing.
I was going over some data yesterday because I mean that's what I do and there's a number
of different occupations and professions that are that have labor shortages and these labor
shortages are getting worse as time goes on.
There's one in particular where it is considered critical and it's critical here in Wisconsin
and that is people wanted to be teachers and wanted to be educators.
Now how do you how do we recruit more teachers?
So some of your students right now I've actually talked to some of your former students
that are now educators how do we encourage young people to see black young people to see
teaching as a profession and how do we retain them because the demand for teachers especially
for African American teachers is only going to increase as cities and towns become even
more majority black and brown.
So how do we recruit teachers and also the impact of children having teachers and educators
that look like them?
Yeah.
Big question.
I think the best answer and most clear answer I can give regarding that is access.
We've got to provide access and opportunity for people in the community, people that
look like us that look like our children to move into the profession and so we partner
with organizations like city for collective on the policy side to work with you know through
licensure and compliance barriers but more so internally we have different programs where
we actually build and pour into our own staff, our educational assistance, some of our
own staff, our non-teaching staff give them opportunities to engage in certain programs
with schools around the area and also grow toward that profession of educator and so be
intentional about what we do with our resources, how we allocate a lot of that towards developing
and building our own and providing access to the profession to not just our internal staff
but also the families, the communities, I mean it's very common for volunteers to come
into MCP and end up leaving and trying to put fill out an application to be an educational
assistant because they know of the different programs and the different pieces that we
put in place to be able to guide them toward being able to be a teacher here at MCP and
so I think it's you know the big question or the big answer here for a lot of these is
access opportunity and so providing that access, providing opportunities to move into the
profession is going to allow us to be able to put more people that look like us, look like
our kids in front of them.
Collested, is there any proof or truth to a black child that has a black teacher performing
better?
Is that just conjectures, that's just myth, is there actually something?
No, that's, there's a solid evidence based on this when students have to see themselves
reflected and the teachers and the leaders in their building, they do perform better,
right?
There is a sense of you know when you can see something it makes it more attainable,
it makes it more real.
There are real ways in which sort of shared lived experiences and that you know race is
one important factor of that, but also just share backgrounds, people who come from the
same community, all of these things matter in terms of giving our kids access to the
visibility and the sense of experiences that they need to be able to see their future
and see different paths to their future and I know both of your schools do you know
amazing things to help students even in their own educational journey begin to see a path
in which they can come back and help others through their educational journey and I think
it's some of the most important work that we can do because we got to build the community
that we want to see for us, for ourselves here in Milwaukee.
Anthony, I want you to expand on that.
How do you guys prioritize making sure that there are teachers of color and black teachers
that are instructing black students?
Yeah, it's a significant priority for us, for the reason that Collesson just mentioned.
There's all type of data out there that suggests that black kids do better when they have
the presence of black educators and black teachers.
And that also suggests that all kids do better when they have diverse teachers as well.
So I just want to highlight that.
And so because that data is out there, we need to respond to that.
And so three years ago, we put an initiative out to increase our number of black teachers
by 40% and I'm really proud to say that under the leadership of our talent acquisitionist
Jennifer Barry, we was able to do that in two years.
Now we're over 50%.
But again, it goes back to what Al said, being intentional about it and creating access
for individuals.
And so right now we have a number of different programs that are trying to bring not only
blacks into the education profession, but also black males into the education profession.
And so it's really good to see former MA as students that are now in our building serving
as educators and role models for our young kids.
And then we've also, as Collesson mentioned, we've created a workforce development pipeline
program specifically around the education space because we have so many of our young people
who recognize the importance and the impact that their teachers are having on them.
And so they want to do the same thing when they become an adult.
Anthony, do we have to widen our scope when we are looking for teachers?
Because I think that traditionally it's been someone who is pursuing a four-year degree
in education, someone who's getting a master's degree in education, like those are going
to be our educators, but should we look like in professions, maybe someone who has been
an accountant, been a lawyer, maybe they're retired, should we start like opening our
eyes wider to see potential educators in folks who maybe never thought that they could
be an educator, but their real world experience and their diversity could be a benefit in
the classroom?
Absolutely.
Those individuals who have those skill sets are potential great teachers, right?
The one thing that they just have to have is a love of children and a belief that all
children can learn.
And then they take those skills that they learned in the for-profit world and bring those
to the education space because we need those talented individuals in our school buildings,
helping our young people be the next generation of accountants and engineers.
And so there are some organizations out there like T4 America that that's part of their mission,
is to find individuals that are pursuing other careers or in other careers and then bring
them into the education space.
If people want more information about the Milwaukee Academy of Sciences, where do they
go?
How do they find out more?
Yes, as long as you know our name, you can find out information on us.
Go to MilwaukeeAcademyAsscience.org.
You'll be able to see our outcomes, what we're doing, where we're going as a school community.
You'll be able to see postings about openings for the upcoming school year.
So again, MilwaukeeAcademyAsscience.org.
Miss Al Keith, how do people find out more about Milwaukee College Prep if they want to
potentially enroll their children or even volunteer?
Yeah, very similar.
If you know Milwaukee College Prep, you can find it obviously very visible on all of our
social medias, Instagram, Facebook, Google, but if you want to go directly to the web
page, it's miowcollegeprep.com, lots of information on there for enrollment for the upcoming
school year.
We have a hiring fair coming up at the end of the month as well and so anyone who's willing
to come on in and interested in joining this amazing work, this amazing mission and amazing
place.
Feel free, please come on down and get acquainted with some of our amazing leadership,
some of our amazing staff and look forward to seeing some of you guys out there.
Collestin, people want more info about City Forward Collective and all the wonderful
work that you guys do in supporting these educators and all sorts of other initiatives.
Where do they go?
How do they find out more?
I'll make it through for three.
You can visit us on our website, www.cityforwardcollective.org.
I'll put a plug in for families.
I know it's school enrollment season.
If you're trying to find information about schools like Milwaukee Academy Science, like
Milwaukee College Prep, like any of the other options that are available to your families.
We've got a school finder map and a set of resources for parents.
Just click on four families right at the top of our web page.
You can also find us on social media, CFC underscore MKE is our handle and most of the
platforms.
Collestin, Anthony, I thank you guys so much, not just for being here, but for the work
that you were doing that really is making major improvements in our community and making
people's and children's lives so much better.
You guys are welcome back anytime.
Appreciate it, man.
Appreciate it, Sharon.
You are listening to the truth with Sherwin Hughes on 1-1-7 if him don't go anywhere, I'll
be back shortly.