History

The Michigan Coalition of Essential School's roots can be found in the earliest research of Theodore Sizer and his study of America's high schools, which spanned the years 1979 - 1984. One result of this research was the creation of a national reform initiative called the Coalition of Essential Schools. The Coalition urged a re-thinking of American education based on ten common principles. The goal of the Coalition was to support and facilitate the restructuring of our schools through collaboration, inquiry, thoughtfulness, and genuine commitment to the success of every learner.

Today, the schools working with the Coalition number over 1,000 and the practitioners involved number in the tens of thousands. The work of reform requires on-going support, coaching, and facilitation. The national CES organization began to promote the creation of local or regional centers to better support and respond to the needs of schools attempting to start and extend their own conversations about the Coalition. In December 1993, a meeting was convened in Philadelphia to study those centers already in existence, and to learn how new centers could be created across the country.

In November 1994, the Jackson Community Foundation stepped forward to make the MCES Center an operational enterprise. They made a significant financial commitment to fund the MCES and to help secure additional funds to keep the Center operating in the future. In January 1995, the MCES offices opened officially and the staff began its work.

Since that time, the Michigan Coalition of Essential Schools has become a fully accredited CES regional center with a growing staff of both full and part-time professional employees. Additional support for MCES' work with Michigan schools has come from both state and federal grants as well as from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. MCES has become one of the four strategic partners (with Central, Northern, and Eastern Michigan Universities) of the Michigan Middle Start initiative, which is attempting to reform middle level education in the state. MCES has established itself as a leader student-centered reform across the state and was selected as the school reform model provider for Comprehensive School Reform in 19 Michigan schools. The center has earned a reputation as one of the leading CES centers in the nation.

The creation of the Michigan Coalition of Essential Schools has been a truly remarkable process. Perhaps the most important fact about this experience is that the Center was brought into existence through a true collaboration between local educators, community leaders and philanthropists, a state university, and a national non-profit reform initiative. MCES is the product of a community that cares in a deep and passionate way about its children and its schools.