This is a really interesting study of the community of Kalamazoo, Michigan, where a group of anonymous donors back in 2005 announced that they would pay full college tuition for every Kalamazoo public school student who graduated from the district’s high schools, at any of the state’s public colleges and universities. “The Promise,” as it called locally, has had a range of effects on the local community.

From the very beginning…[Superintendent Janice Brown], the only person in town who communicates directly with the Promise donors, has suggested that the program is supposed to do more than just pay college bills. It’s primarily meant to boost Kalamazoo’s economy. The few restrictions — among them, children must reside in the Kalamazoo public-school district and graduate from one of its high schools — seem designed to encourage families to stay and work in the region for a long time. The program tests how place-based development might work when education is the first investment.

“Other communities invest in things like arenas or offer tax incentives for businesses or revitalize their waterfronts,” says Michelle Miller-Adams, a political scientist at the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, which is located in the city.

Read more

Here’s a thoughtful essay by Texas Chicana anthropologist and journalist Cecilia Ballí, reflecting on the trajectory of San Antonio mayor’s Julian Castro’s political career.  Julian and his brother Joaquin are the twin sons of single mother and longtime Chicana community organizer Maria del Rosario “Rosie” Castro.  The Chicana por mi Raza Project writes that Rosie “served as president of the Bexar County Young Democrats and as vice-president of the women’s division of the Young Democrats at the state level. She ran for city council in 1971 and finished second out of four candidates on the Committee for Barrio Betterment slate. She earned a MA in environmental management from the University of Texas-San Antonio. Castro was also instrumental in making San Antonio shift from electing City Council members at-large to creating districts.”

But about Rosie’s boys, Cecilia Ballí writes:

In 1995, as a freshman at Stanford, I watched two Texans two years above me land the highest number of votes in the race for student senate. They were identical twins, no less, a fact that made for a catchy story in the school paper (“Twin Senators Not Two Close for Comfort”) and a portrait of the smiling, newly minted politicians clad in khakis and polo-style shirts, sitting back-to-back on the floor of the Stanford Quad. It seemed Julián and Joaquin Castro had grasped a critical lesson my sister and I had learned running for our junior high student council: Being a twin pays in politics because it doubles your publicity and votes—and people love twins.

Read more