House Speaker Jase Bolger, freshly elected to a second term to head Michigan’s House of Representatives, added his voice Wednesday to a growing coalition of political leaders in favor of increased state spending on early childhood education. “We should expand early childhood education opportunities as investments to help kids succeed. Those investments also will provide […]
Talent & Education
To prosper, Michigan must be a more educated place. Bridge will explore the challenges in education and identify policies and initiatives that address them.
Posted inTalent & Education
Schools struggle to pass digital test
Two years from now, hundreds of thousands of Michigan students will be expected to go online to take computerized statewide math, language arts and other standardized tests that now are conducted with paper and pencils. The benefits include quicker results for school districts, tests that more accurately track what individual students know and longer test […]
Posted inTalent & Education
Proposed changes to state loan program could limit schools' ability to buy tech
Michigan school districts are vying for $50 million in state money for technology – the first such investment by the state in about a dozen years. Yet, at the very same time, school leaders are watching warily as legislation that could make it harder for them to borrow money to make technology investments may get […]
Posted inTalent & Education
Land O Links
* The Nation rounds up data on why U.S. children struggle in comparisons with youth in other industrialized nations: “In one long-term study of roughly 200 children born into poverty in Minnesota, the quality of the mother-child relationship during the first three and a half years of life strongly predicted whether the child would drop […]
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School choice: not your father's classroom
Imagine a world where your teenage son chooses high school courses like picking dishes in a cafeteria – a serving of Advanced Placement chemistry in the white collar enclave across the river, Spanish online at the dining room table, an English class at the local community college, band at his home school. Now imagine that […]
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Ad campaign leaves voters, experts unimpressed
Conventional political wisdom about ballot proposals says that they’re almost always an uphill battle. The “no” side has an advantage with an electorate that often looks on change with skepticism. So says Robert Kolt, whose Okemos-based Kolt Communications specializes in advertising. (He also teaches at Michigan State University.) But, he adds, that’s not to say […]
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Proposal 5: Supermajority rule on taxes
The signal moment in the budget reform agenda of Gov. Rick Snyder came by a margin of one, as the state Senate voted 20-19 in May 2011 to approve a $1.7 billion tax cut for business and impose a variety of changes to Michigan’s personal income tax. Lt. Gov. Brian Calley cast a rare tie-breaking […]
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Global schooling for a smaller world
What started as a curriculum for children of diplomats and leaders of multinational corporations is being adopted in an increasing number of Michigan schools. The International Baccalaureate Programme — “IB” as it’s commonly called — has special emphasis on internationalism. At the high-school level, a world language is a requirement. Those students also write a […]
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Lansing, Flint, Howell and Pontiac are stops on K-12 townhall series
Michiganians, October is your last chance to discuss K-12 education and reform as part of the Center for Michigan’s townhall series on the topic: WHEN: Oct. 16, 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. WHERE: Elmhurst Elementary School gym, 2400 Pattengill Ave., Lansing RSVP: Carolyn Stone – Carolyn.stone@lansingschools.net WHEN: Oct. 21, 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. WHERE: […]
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Michigan can teach plenty more preschoolers
In his April 2011 special message on education reform, Gov. Rick Snyder extolled early childhood education as an economic engine for the state. The speech was 13 pages long. He could have made the same point by just introducing legislators to Lilly Wolf. Lilly attended the state-funded Great Start Readiness Program last year in Hartford […]