Educator creates employment opportunity for teens with disabilities

Kwame Simmons is seated at a desk at his home office, responding to emails and scheduling Zoom meetings with clients and educators. He’s the president of the Simmons Advantage, an educational consulting company centered around creating dynamic learning experiences that transform into opportunity breakthroughs for both students and staff in and outside the classroom.

“Kids are missing experiences and opportunities,” Simmons says. “They have academic gaps, but they’re also a lot of opportunity gaps.”

Simmons is a native Detroiter who proudly grew up on the north end and graduated from Northern High School. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Hampton University and has dedicated the better part of his professional life to all aspects of education. He taught kindergarten at Detroit Advantage Academy and taught and coached junior high basketball at Chandler Park Academy. Simmons then took his talents to Washington D.C., where he became a principal of Kramer Middle School and incorporated digital learning with traditional in-person learning. In less than four months, performance and test scores drastically improved. Simmons had become a nationally known educational rockstar. 

“For me, my rise came after I became an administrator,” he says. “Once I became an administrator, I was very hungry to be good. I started looking to see who were the best administrators. I was very hungry to be good at it.”

In 2015, Simmons became the first recipient of the BET Honors Digital Recognition Award. Following that, he moved back to Detroit, where he became the Executive Innovation Officer for the Education Achievement Authority of Michigan and became known for using integrated and innovative technologies to close the digital divide and revolutionize urban education. However, Simmons felt he could make a bigger impact working with school districts as an outside consultant and started the Simmons Advantage, where he began coaching principals and facilitating workshops on reimagining organizational systems. 

“We believe that every person has the ability to be a leader, but it’s in your blueprint,” Simmons says.

As he began to expand the Simmons Advantage, he decided he wanted to address the gap between school districts and the educational needs of children with disabilities. From his years as a principal, he was aware of the correlation between high poverty and high special needs.  Many times, families who are financially struggling to obtain the basic needs in life also struggle with navigating their special needs children through the school system.

“So many times, kids are coming in and getting identified (as having special needs), but it’s the environment that’s accelerating their low performance[…]You’re just trying to get your deodorant, some socks, some shoes, and move quickly. God forbid if you had to be evicted. We see that happening a lot.”

Poverty, health care, family, and community factors are associated with mental, behavioral, and developmental disorders (MBDDs) in children, according to a 2018 CDC report. To address this, Simmons went on to develop a job training program for teenagers with special needs and began working with the Michigan Rehabilitation Services (MRS).  

MRS is a statewide network of vocational rehabilitation (VR) professionals developing creative, customized solutions that meet the needs of individuals and businesses. They provide vocational rehabilitation services for eligible individuals with disabilities, consistent with their unique strengths, resources, priorities, concerns, abilities, capabilities, interests, and informed choice, to prepare for and engage in employment and achieve economic self-sufficiency.  

Simmons explains how it works. 

“They (MRS) open up a case, which they call a customer, that’s anyone from 14 and over,” says Simmons. “If you’re 14 to 18 or a high school student, you’re identified through your IEP (Individualized Education Program) or 504. Adults have to come in with a documented disability. It (documentation) could be something from a doctor that says they have a closed head injury, or was dismembered in some kind of way, but there is some documentation that verifies the disability, which is required to get started.

Once a disability has been identified, a performance exam is created as part of the IEP. That determines what the person’s occupational needs are. The needs can range from trial work experience, job placement, or various levels of training. 

This is where Simmons comes in — his company assesses teenagers who’ve been identified and matches them up with employment opportunities.  The jobs range from rudimentary roles such as cleaning and warehouse work to more intricate jobs just as cashiers and childcare assistants. This past summer, The Simmons Advantage facilitated a job summer program for special needs teenagers in Detroit, Saginaw, and Flint. Many of the teens worked at Detroit mainstays like Focus: HOPE and Henry Ford Hospital. They all received special awards in a celebratory dinner at the end of the summer. Simmons witnessed firsthand how working at two of Detroit’s most well-known organizations impacted the students. 

“Being able to take young people from all over the city, to be (together) at a common experience, and have their first work experience at Focus: HOPE. It’s an iconic location in Detroit,” Simmons says. “Henry Ford (hospital), everyone knows the name, and over the last 40, 50 years, the hospital, particularly in our region, has had as much equal regard as the car.”

So far, The Simmons Advantage has served more than 2,000 special needs students. They have been so impactful that The Simmons Advantage was awarded an MRS Community Partner award in 2022. Despite the success, Simmons feels they’re only at the tip of the iceberg in addressing this, and there are thousands more students that fall between the cracks and simply get forgotten about.

“People in our country like to only address what they think is a middle-class or upper-class value,” says Simmons. “If you present in a way that shows something less than that, and those values have to do with physique, have to do with image, have to do with thought, have to do with language,

cuisine, all of those things. And so people with special needs present in different ways.”

Simmons is planning to expand his reach by launching a nonprofit this year. He wants to bring more resources and focus to special needs adults and the teens who graduate from his program and high school.

“We want to elevate and celebrate people who have come through our program and those who have helped advocate the program for people with special needs,” Simmons says. “So we want to highlight special education teachers and highlight adults with special needs who have gone on to do really great work.”