Thomas B. Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children?

November 1, 2006

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children? appraises each state according to thirty indicators across three major categories: student achievement for low-income, African-American, and Hispanic students; achievement trends for these same groups over the last 10-15 years; and the state's track record in implementing bold education reforms. It finds that just eight states can claim even moderate success over the past 15 years at boosting the percentage of their poor or minority students who are at or above proficient in reading, math or science. In addition, most states making significant achievement gains--including California, Delaware, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas--are national leaders in education reform, indicating that solid standards, tough accountability, and greater school choice can yield better classroom results.

View the press release for this report

Contents

Michigan

 

 


 

What, Me Worry?

MAD magazine's most famous character, Alfred E. Newman, known best for his "What, me worry?" line, must have a lot of fans in Michigan. A spring 2005 statewide survey found, among other things, that only a quarter of parents in the Great Lakes State believe that getting a good education is "essential" to their children's long-term success.

Michigan parents may not fret overmuch about education, but state leaders do. For many, that survey was the final piece of evidence that they needed to get serious about student achievement. With the automobile industry shedding jobs like a cheap ragtop, the state can hardly do otherwise. The amount of work to be done is staggering. Michigan's student achievement numbers for minority students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress bear closer resemblances to states in the Deep South than to other industrial powerhouses like New York or New Jersey.

Not surprisingly, then, one-seventh of the state's public schools failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in 2005-06 under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.  And the problems are "not just [with] Detroit," said William F. Coleman III, superintendent of the notoriously troubled Motor City public schools. Of the 544 schools statewide that didn't make AYP, 433 were in districts other than Coleman's.

As if this news weren't alarming enough, 70 percent of the schools that failed to make AYP were high schools. Achieve-a national group formed by governors and business leaders to support standards-based education reforms-recently confirmed the state's dismal performance levels and prodded Michigan's Democratic governor and Republican-controlled legislature into a truce that led to some significant policy changes for the state's broken high schools.

The policymakers mandated two major high school reforms:

  1. Tighten graduation requirements. For years, districts had near-total control of their curricula. The state required only a single semester-long course in civics. That is beginning to change, starting with this year's eighth-graders, who must take four credits each in math and English and three in science, just for starters.  Beginning with current third-graders, they will eventually also need to complete two credits of a foreign language.
  2. Require all high school students to take the ACT. The changes took place amid heated debate about local control and flexibility, says Bill Mayes, executive director of the Michigan Association of School Administrators, although in the end those misgivings were "set aside" for the greater good.

"The people that you would expect to oppose these efforts, wanting to keep local control-all of a sudden these groups got together and said it's about time," agreed Sharif Shakrani, co-director of the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University. "They came on very strongly for stronger standards, and then Republican legislators and the Democratic governor came in support of this concept.  It was very surprising."

Unfortunately, there were no significant policy breakthroughs concerning school choice.  In a state where its largest district (Detroit) in 2003 turned down $200 million from a suburban businessman to create new charter schools, many officials remain leery of school choice, despite growing evidence that more parents want options for their children.

The state maintains a tight cap on the number of charter schools (known here as public school academies) despite overwhelming interest in them. There are more than 230 charters statewide, enrolling some 92,000 students. Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies (MAPSA), expects the total to reach 100,000 students this year. Detroit Public Schools are hemorrhaging students to its 44 charters, and not just because parents are frustrated with Detroit teachers, who walked out on strike for 16 days this fall. By that time, according to MAPSA, most charter schools already had waiting lists. 

But with more than 1.7 million students in public schools, it will take more than charters to deliver a high-quality education to all state students. It will take highly skilled teachers, as well. Because the state is an overproducer of new teachers, however, there's little interest in bringing talented professionals from other fields into the classroom.

Each year, Michigan's 32 state-approved teacher preparation programs crank out 7,500 new teachers. There are spot shortages, to be sure. The Great Lakes State has a difficult time finding folks qualified to teach reading, physics, economics, geography, and political science. Special education teachers are also in short supply.  Still, the state does allow for some alternative routes to the classroom. Assuming one can find out them, that is. The word "alternative" doesn't even appear in either the education department's 12-page "Facts About Teacher Certification in Michigan" booklet or its 7 pages of "Frequently Asked Questions for Michigan Certification" (39 of them).  

A growing number of people are rightly worried about the future of education in Michigan. The question is are state education leaders worried enough? The demand for more charter schools is there, as is the need for alternatively certified teachers. The state's few steps toward reform are good ones, but it will take an innovator with the courage of Henry Ford to exorcise the spirit of Alfred E. Newman and take the state the rest of the way. 

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