Speaking of YES Prep and the sea changes occurring at the city and state level in some areas, YES Prep is expanding to Detroit, which is among the most troubled school systems in the country. It's amazing to see how much things have changed both in Detroit and Michigan overall:

The evolution of charter schools and education in Detroit is no more sharply illustrated than by these facts: It was Gov. Jennifer Granholm who went to Houston to convince the phenomenally successful YES academies to open a school in Detroit, and it was the Detroit Public Schools that sold YES the school building where it will begin holding classes this fall.

Six years ago, Granholm stood in the schoolhouse door with the Detroit Federation of Teachers and said no to an expansion of charters in the city. Since then, the high performance of the city's best charter schools, the continued deterioration of the Detroit Public Schools and the demand from parents for alternative education choices has changed attitudes about charters. DPS, under the leadership of Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, now welcomes the competition from charters as an impetus to improve its schools.

In fact, Bobb sold YES the old Winship Elementary School on the city's northwest side to use as a home for the new academy, serving grades 6-12.

Chris Barbic, head of schools for the YES Academies, sees the relationship with the school system as "coopetition," meaning that charters and traditional public schools will compete to provide the highest quality education, and cooperate on methods that work.

YES operates eight schools in Houston and boasts nine straight years of graduating 100 percent of its students and sending all of them on to college. YES students are near the national average on the ACT test -- unheard of for high-poverty urban schools -- and only five percent of its graduates need remedial help on entering college.

They are consistently named among the best public schools in the nation.

YES gets those results by hiring highly qualified teachers -- it draws heavily from the Teach for America program, which has been virtually kept out of Michigan by teacher unions -- and by putting students through a rigorous course schedule over a nine-hour school day and a longer school year.

Detroit will be its first school outside of Houston.

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