West Michigan Nice

Three out of four children in Grand Rapids Public Schools cannot read at grade level.

Seventy-eight percent.

At some point, a number stops behaving like a number. It settles in. It becomes a condition. A quiet one, mostly. Easy to step around.

Over ten years, the line didn’t bend upward. It fell. Not suddenly. Not dramatically. Just steadily enough to be explained.

This is the same period when our student population decreased, yet funding increased. 

We say the schools are improving. We use the language of progress. It sounds measured. Responsible. It avoids embarrassment.

But the underlying fact remains, unchanged by tone: Most of our GRPS children cannot read.

This does not happen all at once. It happens in increments. In softened language. In meetings where no one says the obvious thing out loud. In a community that prefers not to press too hard.

We call it “West Michigan nice.”

It passes for humility. It feels like civility. But it has a cost. Because there are moments when clarity matters more than comfort, and this is one of them.

Niceness avoids friction. 

Goodness requires it.

Empathy, as we practice it, often stops at feeling. It registers discomfort and then rearranges itself to signal understanding. A way of staying blameless. Empathy is about self. 

Compassion is different. It moves toward a problem. It accepts friction. It risks saying something that lands poorly because not saying it costs more. Compassion is about others. 

To be compassionate, at times, you must be willing to be Good, not nice.

You have to say the sentence cleanly, without softening it: Grand Rapids Public Schools fails a super majority of students in the most basic skills.

Unrecognized and ignored, this is what quiet failure looks like.

It doesn’t argue. It doesn’t announce itself.

It just continues. Empathetically, of course. And always “West Michigan nice.”

To be Good, we must change. We owe our students “better.”