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Richard Helppie
Hello, welcome to The Common Bridge. I'm your host Rich Helppie. The topic today: K-12 education and our guest is Ernestine Sanders. Ernestine brings a wealth of experience in educating folks in this important time of life. Ernestine, welcome to The Common Bridge. Glad you're with us.
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Thank you, Rich, I'm really pleased to be with you today and I hope I could lend a little clarity to the conversation.
Richard Helppie
Well, your record at the Cornerstone schools where you've helped students achieve at their highest level and grow into attributes of good character, where you've inspired predominantly urban students to exceptional achievement is a story that I think everyone needs to hear because we hear so much about K-12 education and what's going on there and of course, we always hear the bad stories...so some great success stories. For those folks that aren't familiar with Cornerstone, who attends Cornerstone schools?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Well, thank you, Rich. Cornerstone, first of all, it's been around almost for a generation, a little bit more than a generation. Cornerstone started in 1991. I was able to join in 1994. It's been a wonderful journey. You said something in your introduction about serving urban students. Cornerstone has always served urban students, but not necessarily neighborhoods. What I found, and I believe is still true today, is that people from all over Detroit come and seek out Cornerstone. The range is quite far, because everyone feels that education is so important and every child deserves a wonderful education. I'm pleased to say that we are schools inside the city and our range reaches to all points in the city.
Richard Helppie
How has Cornerstone uniquely impacted the students and the community? What were their alternatives? How did Cornerstone make a difference?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
I believe that Cornerstone...first, I should say what attracted me because I think it's a really important thing to do. I had had an opportunity to be in public schools and also in a private school. I just remember reading a little blurb in the newspaper - when people were reading print and not in terms of online - and I saw this little blurb that...two things, there were people out there, they had a shovel, they were having a photo-op because they were going to start a school. Then I saw another little blurb and they wanted a principal and I said I've always wanted to be in the city, let me go and see what's happening with Cornerstone. What attracted me, really, was how they wanted to have both high academic achievement but also imparting what it means to be a good character. I think those two things mirror each other because you can be a great achiever and not a great person; we know that. Cornerstone has always been a school that said academics are really important, reading is very important but you really do need to have the character. So throughout the time, really, that has been something...that's the common strand that goes through Cornerstone. We have paid attention to Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's teachings. He talks a lot about the complete life and over time, it's something that we've tried to mirror and to live by. He talks about the length to live for a purpose born. When you think about purpose it should be that when you're in school there's a purpose to being in school. Part of that purpose is character so we want to instill that purpose. Then Dr. King talks about breadth to be a person for others. It's not just that you're trying to do your best for yourself but can you give back? What can you do to help another person? While the kids are young when they come to Cornerstone, I think, to have purpose, to be a person for someone else, and - as a private school - we said to know God. Those were the three things that I think have permeated what it means to have an excellent education at Cornerstone. It was something that drew me to it. I think it's very important to be anchored to something because you can say, I'm going to teach, teach, teach, but I think people need purpose. They need to do things for others and to know God.
Richard Helppie
That is a wonderful foundation and so many successful people that I've met, and many that I've interviewed, they always talk about priorities. Oftentimes they'll say, well, it all starts with my faith, then it starts with my community and my family - doing things for other people - and then whatever I've achieved. They seem to be those folks that are not only high achievers but most at peace with themselves, and indeed, the most loved and admired. Ernestine, our audience likes to know about our guests so if you don't mind, can we talk a little bit of biography, where did you spend your early days and what was your life like and what was your education and your career arc?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Sure. Well, I am not a native of Michigan. I'm a native of Indiana. I grew up in a small town in Indiana, it's steel town, Indiana Harbor, where they had inland steel. I was born right on Deal Street. I was born at home, which is so unusual because most people are born in a hospital, but I was born at home. My mom and dad; my father was a World War II veteran, my mother was a stay-at-home mom. I have two brothers. Education was very important. I think I started out with great respect for education. I should say that when I was ten, my mother had a catastrophic accident. The reason I bring it up is that it shaped our whole family; it certainly shaped me. She was taking my father to work - we had one car - and there was an accident. out of that accident, she became a quadriplegic. She had to spend a full year in the university hospital in Indianapolis. But why that's important is that I think, growing up, just having family - grandparents, aunts, and uncles - was very important for us. I stayed with my grandmother for a full year while my mother was in rehabilitation to the best that she could be. But during that time period, after going home, my brothers were younger than me so there was this...when you talk about a person for others, it was a belief that I had because my father worked hard. We had someone that came in every day but we didn't have a lot of resources so it was something that you had to work together [on]. But my mother, during that time...she even lost her hearing but she was able to sit on the couch every day, and to rule the roost in a way. What it meant was my brothers and I went to school every day, we did what we had to do, and you did it well because that was the standard. So I went to school, I went to elementary school and then in high school. We lived in Gary, Indiana, which is another steel town. I graduated from high school and from there I went to Indiana University. I graduated from Indiana University. I then came to Michigan, I was married. I have three wonderful children. I started out in public school, I'll never forget that. I started out in Lake Shore School District in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. That was my first teaching position. From there, after I had children, I stayed home for a couple of years and then I went to Friends School in Detroit, did my administrative work at the Roper School for the Gifted, which is in Bloomfield Hills. That was really, I think, a good way of preparing me for leadership and administration. From there, I went to the Cornerstone schools. So my three children are all grown. They are all very different. I have one who's a graduate of Oberlin, who's a musician; my middle son went to the Air Force Academy, graduated from there, flew for the Air Force and now is in business. My daughter went to a historically black school and she's in HR. So I'm real proud of them from the standpoint that I believe education is very important. That's kind of my background. Then my graduate degree, I went to MSU. I started at Cornerstone and I was able to become a principal there, then for their private school, the president and CEO of those schools. Now I work for them in a variety of other ways, passing the baton to others. So that's me in a nutshell.
Richard Helppie
You've made such a positive impact on, not only the students, but the teachers as well as the community at large. We're definitely going to talk some today about that mother's influence with your Mothers' Fund. But as we turn back to Cornerstone, there would be people that said, look, we can't teach this population, we just have to pass the kids along. You didn't agree with that, you said you had a data driven model to help the children achieve. What did you learn from that experience?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Thank you very much for asking. Well, first of all, what I learned and what I came to understand about education is that you can teach every population and certainly the urban population. But you have to understand, from my perspective, what it is that makes them unique - what do they need - where maybe someone else would not need that. When I was at Cornerstone, the thing that was interesting for me is, when you start out, three, four, five year olds - even for yourself - you've probably found that your parents made possible a lot of things for you so that your language expanded, your words expanded, that you were exposed to a variety of things. What we found at Cornerstone, and what I found, is you have to provide the experiences that are missing, and you have to put the resources in so that your students will do well. There were some things that we did in terms of the data driven model, that were very important. The first was more time on task; we can even fast forward that today. We have a model where we start school in September and we end in June. Well, what I found when I first came to Cornerstone with so many of our students not reading at grade level, they weren't doing math at grade level, so just to say that you arbitrarily stop in June in terms of the learning is something that you would want to change. What we were able to do was lengthen the school year and our parents were okay with that too because by that time, we got a tremendous amount of parent involvement. So the parent participation, the parent involvement, the length of the school year, we went through July. Which now, every one would say how could you do that, kids need more time off, things like that. But what we found was, the length of the school year was very important, the parent involvement was very important, and how you teach is very important. You could say, well, I want to teach from the perspective of whole reading - and I don't want to get too much in the weeds - but what we found for our students is that phonics was very important, that you had to pay attention to some of the minute-ness of reading; that if you have a child that has a great number of words in their vocabulary even before they hit school maybe you don't have to do that. But with phonics, how it sounds, how you speak, all of those things matter into making a difference for the young people that are coming into school for the first time. Then with that - that academic piece - also making sure that we equipped our teachers so that they can take the tool that we had and to be able to teach it well. So the data driven model has a cycle. That first part of the cycle is to have baseline, what do you know about the students that you're teaching? That baseline may tell you [that] you have 25 in the classroom: you may have five that are at grade level, you may have another five that are a little below and you may have ten...you know what I mean, you go all the way til you get to the 25. So just like you would say everyone is beautiful and beloved and wonderfully made, you also want to say that they all have different things that you have to be able to teach them so that they can have the outcomes that you want. We worked on the baseline data, we worked on making sure our teachers had the right tools. Then we looked at that data periodically - the interim assessment - so that you knew what you had so that you could have - what we talk about - flexible groupings. When I say flexible, very important, because that doesn't mean they stay in one group, [rather] that they go from group to group based on what they've been able to achieve. A lot of that happened and a lot of lessons learned at Cornerstone for that. Then that whole piece I said about working with our parents at that time, years ago, was so important, just so that we could begin to get those outcomes.
Richard Helppie
I like the entire model; inspiring students to become good students, and to become people of good character, insisting on some level of parental involvement. I know that part of your student population, if they're not in school, they're not doing much. They may not even be going outside their homes, for example, [instead] meeting them where they're at and then filling in the gaps. We have a foundation run program that my wife and I have been heavily involved with in the city of Wayne, right down the road from you, called Champions of Wayne, where it's a mentorship program with incentives with the belief that every one of those children can aspire to better academic performance. But oftentimes, by the time they get to high school they need to get paired up with an adult, and I've come away with that same conclusion: they were missing something and that adult fills it in. The ability to go ahead and try, the ability to fail and fail with the idea that you've learned you're going to try a little harder the next time around. It seems to me that Cornerstone has achieved a lot and your students have done well too, going on to education beyond Cornerstone and on to university. Given as long of a track record as Cornerstone has, what can you tell our audience about the achievements of some of your students?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
There are a lot of stories there and I thank you for the question. One of the things that we found when we were...several things. When we were a K-8 school, we did some of the things that you're doing, we had a lot of volunteers that worked with our students. I think that that helped them to prepare and to see the greater world in terms of a partnership program. What we tried to do there is to equip them so that they were ready for a ninth grade program at other high schools. We did that well and we charted that progress. Then we had a high school called the Leadership and Business High School. What I could tell you is that you even had to do more. This could be the example; we had to have mentors in some of the universities. At University of Michigan, I'll never forget, we have one student who now is a graduate of U of M and he's at Wayne State, doing some more advanced degree work but he worked with one of the professors there, Kathy Shakespeare - I'll never forget her name, because it's Shakespeare and I thought that was so unusual - but she was able to take this young man and mentor him when he was part of U of M. That was a very important lesson. You can't just drop them off at the door. What I found with our students is that you want to find that bridge - and I know that you use the word bridge - you want to find that bridge where they go on to the next level and is there someone on the other side that might take an interest in them. So for this young man to be able to go to U of M, he graduated. One of the things that we found with going into college...there are two things that will keep our - especially urban young people - from graduating from college. One is, of course, academics, that they're not strong enough there, and the other one is money. You want to make sure that you help them with their financial planning, so that they will make the best decisions there. We've had some partners come in and help us with that, with our students. Then the other is the academic readiness and then on top of that, if you can find mentors in the community. We've had young people, of course, at all of the universities in the state of Michigan, many of them have gone both to the private and public universities, and we've been very pleased with what they've done. Then we've also had some of our youngsters go to the community colleges with some success there and then a few that have gone to Ivy League [schools] and we're real proud of them as well. But the biggest lesson that I can take from it is that if you can prepare them, not only with the character, but if there's a mentor, if there's someone that they can call, also with each other, that was very helpful.
Richard Helppie
That was some of our experience with the Champions of Wayne too, that during the high school years the interaction for the first time with an academically successful adult and perhaps coming from a home where they're not being asked, do you have homework, how are you doing in geography, class, et cetera. But through our financial incentive for the student and pairing them with a mentor, they got not only the objective but they got the tools to get there. What we found post-graduation is, as they were able to enter university - because there's generally scholarship money coming from their socioeconomic strata if they have the grades - they weren't coming from an environment where their family knew what finals week was about, why was registration important, and so forth. It's very confusing [if you've] never been on a college campus, never been in a dorm room, for example, and having someone to ask those questions has been very important. I know what a modest person you are but one of the statistics - and I'm not sure where it stands today - but Cornerstone was graduating over 90% of its students from high school, at a time when the population around was graduating about 50%, for freshmen entering. So it's that combination of the academic preparation and the character model that is helping those young people achieve. I think that's a tremendous testament to what you've been able to achieve there.
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Well, thank you for that and that is absolutely true. Having that opportunity to mentor during the school day, having others come and just give their wisdom and experience, we found, was very, very important. The students also had that drive that they wanted to do it. One other piece, I think that perhaps there is a commonality there when you were talking about the college process, what we found is that most of our youngsters, they were the first generation who wanted to go to college or wanted to go into an entrepreneurial opportunity. So we, at the school, we feel it's very important to put those resources around them. Because just having - as you said, the parents filling out the forms, making sure that they're on top of those things - we are not doing it for them because they have to do it for themselves but giving them every opportunity to have the right information and to have others that they may ask a question about something, especially finances, was very important. So that was something we took very seriously in terms of putting it as part of our process.
Richard Helppie
Indeed, and it's the motivation...I think our joint experience...it's not the student, it's just, they don't know how, so like going to college is like going to the moon. They've heard people have gone there, but they don't know anybody that's actually done it. Getting them into that college prep or into a trade school prep has been important. We have a proud history in our country where the public school systems fulfilled that role and did it well. I'm personally a product of the public schools - I want to think of a better example than that - but we do hear a lot of stories about the public schools struggling and things that they're attempting to do legislatively. Just by way of example, in our state, Senate Bill 12 would repeal a law that third graders in Michigan need to repeat the year if they score too low on the state reading test. Now I can argue both sides of that, but as from your perspective, which is more learned; is that a good idea or a not so good idea?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
It's interesting that you said that. I think that there are so many challenges for students today and I just wanted to give you a little bit of data about that and why I think that sometimes we can't be afraid of what the data says so that we can go and meet it. What I mean by that is that over the last three years, with COVID...and I was telling someone at another meeting just this morning, you when you're in it you never knew - with the pandemic - that we would have as many challenges educationally as we had. The schools stopped and most of the schools, including the Cornerstone schools, we did a lot of online. At the time, people felt well, it's going to be okay, especially if we can make sure that they have a Chromebook or if they have a laptop; it will work. But it was true that it did not, especially in two areas. It didn't work academically for the nation; these are data that I'm talking about for the nation. It didn't work academically for the nation and it didn't work socially for the nation. So we find ourselves in K-12 education at a crossroads in terms of what to do about it, but the data is very damning. One of the things we found in 2019, was one in four eighth grade students are proficient in math and that is something - one in four - that's down from 34%. What it means is that this time that we were away from what we call traditional school, where most people are sitting at a desk in front of a teacher, it went down quite a bit. Just to give you an example of that, it meant that fewer students could do something like measuring the length of a diagonal. When we're talking about that, you would say, students can't do that? So see, these are small things that you take for granted that students could do [measure the diagonal] in a rectangle or fewer students could convert miles to yards. So it's little things like that. Then it said, one in three eighth graders were proficient in reading - one in three, one and three - this is in 2019. It says they've not fully mastered the material and the skills needed to do an analysis. We're sitting here and we're talking and we are coming to conclusions and as an educator, that means that if I'm running a K-8 school, my fourth graders and my eighth graders across the country, we have to do something about that, not only for the state of Michigan. Now, here's where it really gets even harder in terms of urban America. They looked at that and it said, the test scores declined even more for black students. For every point, 13 students - black students - did worse. So this is really very, very hard - and I if you wanted it this, I could send it to you - in terms of the data. You asked about the third grade. Why the third grade? Because remember, you're trying to look at where do you want to see how the kids are doing. Most of the time, it's the end of third grade going into fourth grade, eighth grade, and then you may look at 10th, 11th and 12th grade. So we have a real problem. What's happened is they said, well, let's just fix this problem; we're going to make sure that third graders do it. Now, to me, that makes sense. It's a lot of pressure there. But for a lot of people, they said, well, I don't want my student to repeat. Here, as you said, you could argue both sides because is there anything to gain by repeating. With public school data, they would argue that you shouldn't repeat. Most of the time that's the argument they would argue. Now what I found at Cornerstone, it was very hard to get the buy-in of your families to have them to repeat a grade, but it would really be before fourth grade. Because after then it's very difficult socially and academically. What I found is that the parents who had the heart and the understanding of it, their kids did very well. The parents who may fight that, then that becomes where the kids are. It's very difficult. But this is what I know for sure; what I just told you about the drop in the scores, if we don't correct that, that it's...you talk about banking and you get a compound interest rate, well, that's good, right, but if it compounds in a negative way it just gets more to the left - negative, negative, negative - that's what I see is happening in terms of the state of education in America. Many people now are looking at do we repeat third grade? Do we extend the school day? Do we do something in the summer? Do we have smaller groups? However you come about it, we do have to address the data. There is greater failure now, in terms of reading and math, because of the things that we lost as a result of the pandemic. So that's where I am.
Richard Helppie
It seemed to me, at the time, it was pretty obvious that you couldn't take kids out of a classroom or cover their faces and expect them to continue to develop on a normal trajectory. Of course, that's coming home to roost. Nobody wants to own those policies, including the most ardent supporters, which is probably a topic for another day. But we need to say, where do we go from here? I like the idea that there's going to be a statewide standard, that to go on to the fourth grade you need to reach here. Yet, to your point, it may not be the right answer for a specific student. The young person might be doing perfectly well in their geography, their mathematics and social studies; they just may be a poor reader and they need some time to catch up and [we] need to be able to give the schools the latitude to do that. But as we look at public schools, we hear so many negative stories. First of all, let's just stipulate that they have a different mission; they have to take all comers. It's a mandated mission. They're faced with declining population, they have a strong union so the power structures are a little bit different. Then we have all the social agendas, the bathroom policies, what point a parent can be excluded versus included. Do you experience that in the private sector? Do you have a view on how the public schools are doing, given their differences?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Well, first of all, it's a great question and it's one that probably we could go round and round on, but I'll take a shot at it. First of all, for Cornerstone, for many years, up to I think 2018, we were all private, now we are charter schools. So one of the things that has happened for us - just like for every school but it's a good thing - is that you do want to offer the best education you can to all students. I think this is extremely important and I stand by what I first said, that every student deserves an excellent education. So coming into the public market, what we found at Cornerstone, is, first and foremost, again, you have to know your student and that's true for all public schools. There are a lot of things that they contend with. They contend with are there the proper resources, do certain schools get more money than others, how does this work? There are lots of reasons as to why resources will not be totally equal. But in terms of the schools themselves, the whole idea of making something excellent, we still can do that. With public schools, we do have to address certain things that maybe you didn't have to address when you had one hundred percent buy-in of your parents in a private school; it was self-selecting. In public school, parents are looking for the school that may be in their neighborhood, they may not be looking at it the way parents who are selecting a private school. Now that we're charter, we get students from all walks of life where they come from every area and they come with different needs. Reading is what we found that we had to address because our youngest children were coming with the vocabulary being very small and not necessarily having those things in place for reading. Public schools do struggle because it's not a self-selecting community. It's a community whom they serve wherever they happen to be. Then you have to look at that and say, how do I make that work? What resources do I have? What does my staff look like? All of those needs of the students, you've got to look at them square in the eye and see what you can do for them. While you're putting reading and math at the center of everything you do, you still have to put that program and activity around those students that may not be there for them in terms of the amount of time that they spend in their homes. So that's something that Cornerstone has had to address.
Richard Helppie
I love the data drive behind your answer; where are they, what's the issue, what do we need to do to address that? You see school systems - again, you can't really trust the reporting because our media system's broken - they're trying to tease out certain facts. By way of example, Olympia, Washington, and Washington State cutting arts programs. Yet your experience at Cornerstone with fine arts, visual arts and languages, your students coming out of the original Cornerstone, and perhaps now in the charter cornerstones. What are they getting in terms of international languages, musical instruments, singing and other artistic expression?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Well, thank you for that, because I did talk about those programs and they are very important in terms of our brain, how we learn, what we do. At our charter program, we still offer language, we still offer offer music, and different programs that they can do. We also even have a program there - looking at differences - for some of our young people who want to go into the trades, we have a program for that. What we're finding is that there's not one particular student profile at the school. But what we know for sure is you have to have programs to meet their needs. Art is very important, it's another way of...just spatial things...how do you feel in that space? What happens? How do you work well with others? Physical Education, play are important; not to say that it takes over everything else because, overarching, you have to have great programs academically then you surround that academic program with different activities so that they can begin to implement, that they can do hands on, which is very important. Cornerstone has tried to keep that, which I think is extremely important in terms of meeting the needs, but we can't back away from whether they're reading and whether they're doing math; you just can't back away from that, so one doesn't take away from the other. What it does is that it sort of blends it together so that the kids have a variety of experiences along, hopefully, with a strong foundation.
Richard Helppie
In your schools, do you have pressure around diversity, equity, inclusion, and in some of the other things we're hearing about public schools; a child wanting to conceal from their parents that they want to go by a different name or using pronouns in a non-standard way? Are these things that you've experienced? If you care to comment on this very delicate topic, how do you process this? I'm just thinking about the kid coming [in] and getting bombed with these messages; how are they doing?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
I probably would have to dig deeper in terms of my experience right now. But what I'm seeing is not as much; we, the population, is probably not as much where you're getting a lot of that. But what I do see is that, when I was talking about the COVID piece and how it had an academic piece to it, there is a social piece. What we do see now, I would say at the charters, is that you do need to address social concerns; how kids interact with one another, what challenges are they facing. Not necessarily the challenge, but I can see that, the restlessness, how do you solve problems? This is something that I would say that all schools are struggling with and a variety of ways in which they are struggling. But you do have to have those resources: the social workers, the people who can come in that can talk about a variety of problems, or you have resources in which they can go to. So it goes without saying that I have seen the concerns that would say, what do you do for strong mental health? What do you do for conflict resolution? How do you have young people be able to see how they can be solution-oriented? Those are the issues, especially when you get into [grades] 9-12, even 6-12; you're working with that. It's not like, I'm gonna take my ball and go home or it becomes confrontational. It's all about how do you co-exist in a community in a positive way. Those are the areas that I feel that Cornerstone is no different from other schools. But you have to address it because it is about building that community. I think, the more I'm with education, the more I understand community is very, very important. If you don't build the community inside of the school, it's hard for our young people, and even our smallest children, to navigate. So by the time they leave school, they understand that community matters. That's an area that, I say, has heightened my attention and I believe schools are addressing it more than we've ever had to do before.
Richard Helppie
I do believe that's part of the foundational things you said at the beginning of this, it's about compassion, community. As I've often said on my program, I think that our country is filled with compassionate and generous people. We're not the people that our political system portrays us as and we're certainly not the people that our media portrays us as. Yes, there are bad people in our midst, having 330 million people there's going to be some people doing some horrible things every day, but by and large, attempting to do the right thing for the right reasons. Ernestine, anything else about K-12 education? Where we're heading in the right direction or the wrong direction as a country? If you were called on today by President Biden to be the secretary of the Department of Education and he said tell me one or two things we need to start doing or one or two things we need to stop doing, what would you tell our president today?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Wow, what an opportunity. If I had that opportunity, I guess what I would tell him in terms of that, and he's a proponent of early childhood [education] so I hear him say that all the time. But it just can't be - if you're talking about early childhood - I think that we have to, as a nation, really put our hats on so that we do come up with a model for reading, which is very important, and math. Those two that I talked about at the beginning, I would say that. Then I would say, let's look at schools a little differently, that they don't all have to start at eight and end at three. We've got this model that they do that. They don't all have to start in September and end in June. I'd like us to look at how we use time differently - I didn't say better - but I would like to see how we use time differently in terms of our model, so we could expand our learning. That's where, if I could get the attention of some of the people that are working with President Biden or others, that would be the area; how do we use time differently and how do we go deeper in terms of the reading.
Richard Helppie
Well, hopefully we'll get his attention. I have no idea how to arrange that, perhaps somebody from Governor Whitmer's staff; you have received the state of Michigan Education Excellence Award and the Michiganian of the Year (Ernestine: I did.) and you've definitely got the bonafides to speak about these. The other interesting thing is, without necessarily naming names, I know that Cornerstone has been supported by some of the biggest names on the political left and some of the biggest names on the political right. It was never a partisan issue about whether we're going to give our kids a great education or not yet it seems to me that a lot of this partisan silliness and some of the culture wars have invaded this space that should be safe. Often it's the only safe space for these kids and it's only the place where they get nutritious meals and everything. We need to keep the politics out of it and, shoulder to shoulder, whether you disagree with any of the other issues of the day, can we at least agree that we have an obligation and a moral responsibility to make sure that children are nurtured and educated. I mean, it just baffles me that that's gone. We talked about the role of parents and we've talked about the role of administrations, you've also taught teachers and codified some of the things in something you called CSA and now you have this education consulting group. What's that about in terms of educating the educators and what have you learned so far?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Well, first of all, your school is only as strong as your leaders, your school is only as strong as the teachers that you have there. So when we were CSA, it was our Cornerstone private group, and then the education group is the group that we have in terms under our charters, in terms of an organizational piece. But what I could tell you is that the biggest lesson is that your talent pool is very, very important. Just to speak about that, you've got to keep a deep bench in terms of who you have working for you. You have to equip them so that they can do what they need to do. In terms of working with our teachers, what I came to understand is that they have to have a road map in terms of your vision and your mission, which is extremely important, so that you are rowing in the same direction, then at the same time that you're giving them the tools. Remember, I was talking about reading, talking about phonics, how do you teach that? Can you do math well, are you good at math? And then how do you deliver that and what program do you have? All of these things are important. Then of course, you have to have the parent, that you're working with the parent with that. But that team is incredibly important, and the leadership to get the best out of the team. When I talk about education, I'm amazed - I'm not a sports person so I'm not pontificating, because I don't know a lot about sports, Rich - what I do know when I watch these teams, they are always working on do I get this person, this person, this person. They look at data as much as I look at it or even more, in terms of how they look at it. You get that buy-in and then you get the players that are buying-in and they're looking at themselves and the data. That's what I think education has to be about too. Because if you want those outcomes, you've got to be able to do that deep analysis and you've got to have the right team on the floor.
Richard Helppie
I hope this encourages some people to go into teaching and perhaps consider teaching with the Cornerstone schools or a like-minded organization that is striving for excellence and achievement versus excuses and failure. Ernestine, as we near the close of our talk today, if you think back, what are some of the best public policies that we could implement and what would be some of the worst public policies that we might implement as it comes to education?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Well, in terms of policy, I would even go a little bit further, I would say budget; what is the equity of the budget? How are we spending our money? That would be one of the things that I'd like to look at in terms of if you were looking at education. If you're looking at, oh, these schools in this location, they're always...their output is just great, great, great. I'd like to see if there was equity in terms of dollars, which I think is very important. I'd like to see public policies in terms of how we vet our administrators, how we vet our teachers, I think that that is extremely important. Then where do we spend our money? What type of programs, what are we spending our money on? Those are things that I would like to look at. Then in terms of the length of it, how do we measure? Just for me, you get what you measure. It's really that simple. People don't believe it, but you get what you measure. I really believe that.
Richard Helppie
When you peel back that budget, you hear the top line, oh, the per pupil spending and I want to say, well, what are they spending it on? If it's about a lot of administrators that never see the inside of a classroom that sounds like more work for the teachers and less education for the kids. If you're in an older district with older buildings and you have depreciation, that's going to look like a cost, but it's really just trying to keep up, keep the rooms heated and cooled and such. So it really needs to be about what's going into instruction to make sure that every one of the kids is funded appropriately. Speaking of funding, you have something called the Mothers' Fund, very close to your heart, what is that about? What inspired it? What's it doing?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Well, thank you. With the Mothers' Fund, when I read that one in four eighth graders are not proficient in math and one in three in reading, and then we get to the fourth grade and what's happening for them, we wanted to address that. We felt that the best way to address it in our Mothers' Fund. That the reading has dropped to the lowest in 30 years; what are we going to do about it at Cornerstone. We felt, with our early readers - meaning from three years old to going almost into the third grade - we have to look at this differently. Once we became charter, and we said everyone is not self-selecting, how do we bring our mothers and caregivers into the schools so that we can equip them in terms of reading so what happens in the school becomes a bridge to what's happening at home. With the Mothers' Fund we decided that we would work on raising dollars, on top of what we get in terms of our state funding so that we would be able to have parents come into the school. We give them a tool, a phonics tool, so that they learn how to do it and it bridges into what we do at school. When I sent you the brochure, the thing that's interesting for me is you think about how did you learn to read, and it's very few of us [who] would say our parents - our mother, our dad, our grandparents - didn't have anything to do with that. When I told you my story of my mother being a quadriplegic, she still was an avid reader. She demanded of myself and my brothers that we learn too. This fund allows us to bring parents in along with their children. Then we deepen the relationship. We give them a tool so that we can help them. When you talk about data driven decision making, with this we're able to get a baseline because remember, it's after the day, so we're extending the time of reading and we're helping our parents to be able to do that. So we're raising dollars, our threshold is $3 million, we've got about $576,000 raised. But the other thing that I was so excited about, one of the donors that I know gave us a six figure gift so we could start the fund while we concurrently raise money for it. So we have a number of our mothers coming in with their children. They are participating in this. We hope to have this across all of our K-8 schools. This gives another tool in terms of how to teach reading. So that's what our fund is about.
Richard Helppie
That is a wonderfully innovative program. If someone wanted to contribute, how could they do that? Is there a website that they can go to?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Yes, they could go to our website, the Cornerstone website, and the other thing, Richard, is that they could reach out to me directly, Ernestine.Sanders@CornerstoneSchools.org. I would be very willing to talk to them about the fund. It's just an exciting piece to be able to offer it concurrently because you don't often get that chance when you're trying to do your endowment, but we have an opportunity because of this generous donor to be able to do both. But I would be so delighted if someone wanted to do that.
Richard Helppie
Listen, if you're an employer that's listening to this, and you want to have a great workforce, please support Cornerstone schools and the Mothers' Fund. But let's say you're not an employer, let's say you want to retire someday and you want to get Social Security, it's that workforce that's going to be out there with their payroll dollars that's funding your Social Security. So do it for the right moral reasons, do it for the selfish reasons, but try to give at least a little bit to help the Cornerstone schools and the Mothers' Fund. Ernestine, this has been a heartwarming and very educational time. As we wrap up here, is there anything that we didn't cover or any final comments that you'd like the listeners, readers, and viewers of The Common Bridge to hear?
Dr. Ernestine Sanders
Well, first of all, I want to thank you, Rich, for the opportunity to be here to talk education. I really appreciated all the questions that you asked me. What I would say is, our children are what we need to work towards to help them to not only be literate but to be of good character. When I think about the work that I'm doing, that you're doing, and so many people are doing, it takes that collaboration. It takes many people to lift up the students, whether they're in Detroit or whether they're in Wayne County, there about or in New York City or whatever. It's like if we work together and we funnel this, I know we're going to have a better outcome so I'm always excited to tell the story and I just appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.
Richard Helppie
Thank you for being with us. We've been talking to Dr. Ernestine Sanders of the Cornerstone schools, a leader in innovative education K-8 and K-12. I hope that you've enjoyed this edition of The Common Bridge. This is your host, Rich Helppie, signing off on The Common Bridge.
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