The Skillman Foundation

In his book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities, Andre M. Perry explains “there is nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can’t solve.”

People have the tendency to think about education in personal terms. A student’s personal effort. A teacher’s skill in the classroom. A parent’s expectations of their child. But when it comes to an individual’s success, so much is dependent on the system of supports and opportunities they have. You can be a high-achieving student in a school that doesn’t have the resources to offer advanced placement courses. You can be a struggling reader who doesn’t have access to tutoring. You could be a teacher who hasn’t been given ample coaching on a new technology you’re now expected to use. You could be a parent who proudly hung your kid’s “all-A” report cards on the fridge, only to watch them struggle when they reach college, finding out too late that their school wasn’t teaching to the level that others were.

When it comes to education, we need to assess not just the outcomes but the structures, supports, and opportunities that lead to these outcomes. We need to understand how the system is functioning.
 
Adding to the complexity, assessing the education system is just one component. Assessing connected systems including housing, health, and how local economies are structured is also imperative to understanding what is currently established, what is working, and what must change.

Andre Perry, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro and a professor of economics at Washington University, is a leading voice on racial and structural inequality, education, and economic inclusion. He is a regular contributor to MSNBC and has been published by numerous national media outlets, including The New York Times, The Nation, The Washington Post, TheRoot.com, and CNN.com.

To learn more about how Detroit’s education system is deeply connected to the city’s economics as a Black American city, we invited Perry to speak with our Board of Trustees and staff. We then sat down with him to share some of his thoughts on the importance of education systems in majority Black cities:

A structural approach to education

Building forums for student, parent, and community voices

The importance of educators in education policy

Perry’s visit to Detroit was also a personal one because his father is from Detroit. Here Perry reflects on his own Detroit story:

Detroit and America’s majority Black cities

Follow Andre M. Perry and learn more about his work here.