Cassie Walker Burke in Politico Magazine:

Of course, there were big questions: Would the Promise really reverse Kalamazoo’s decline? Could this be a model for other struggling cities around the country? Or was college-for-all too much a fantasy given the entrenched realities of poverty, an unrealistic goal for a world where even getting two-thirds of the city’s kids to graduate from high school is a heavy lift? Nearly a decade—and some $50 million—later, the effects of this bold experiment in using education as a redevelopment engine are now coming into view. And though stubborn challenges remain, so too is a different Kalamazoo.