In coming weeks, the Michigan Legislature will finish work on Michigan’s fiscal 2013 budget — including funding out of the state’s School Aid Fund to local public schools. In today’s 42North debate, Glenn Nelson and Brit Satchwell of Ann Arbor argue that Gov. Rick Snyder’s 2013 (and 2014) budget plans continue a harmful policy of […]
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
Will Michigan's universities look like Indiana's?
Doubling the number of college degrees and certifications. Cutting costs. Tracking job placement rates. Those are the latest proposals for Indiana’s public universities. Why does that matter to Michigan? Because those goals are tied to formula funding – the same type of funding now being proposed in Michigan. Indiana bases part of its funding for […]
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Do charters skim profit, or spend smarter?
When Vickie Markavitch discusses the finances of traditional public schools vs. charter schools, she starts with a table of expenses, taking care to note the figures her analysis uses come from the state Senate Fiscal Agency, a reliable, nonpartisan source. Then the superintendent of the Oakland Intermediate School District starts her rundown. The per-pupil state […]
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Arizona offers balmy climes to charter schools
If charter schools are poised to grow in Michigan, they’ve already exploded in Arizona. Neighboring California leads the nation in sheer numbers of charter schools, but Arizona has everyone beat on percentages – a quarter of Arizona’s public schools are charters, growth that accelerated after the state lifted its charter cap in 1999. “We had […]
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Back to school. And stay there.
My boss, Bridge editor Derek Melot, doesn’t have children. I get the idea if he did, they’d have run away to grandma’s by now, fleeing their father’s firmly held belief that what ails children is very simple: Not enough schoolin’. “If you want to get better at something, do you spend less time at it?” […]
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Charter schools: Different road, but still bumpy
Nearly 20 years into the experiment, public-school academies — charter schools, as they are more popularly known — would appear a rousing success. An enthusiastic Michigan Legislature, as part of a comprehensive reform package, lifted the state cap on charters late last year. The charter ranks, now at 255 schools, can start growing next year […]
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For parents, charters are about choice
Once upon a time in public education, when all schools were neighborhood schools and attendance was a matter of which side of the boundary lines you lived on, families like Marilyn Williams’ would have been rare indeed. The mother of two teenage daughters just two years apart, Williams’ daughters don’t just attend different classes, but […]
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Better ideas in 140 characters or less
This week’s inaugural Center for Michigan Twitter chat on education, while it didn’t exactly melt the Internet into a puddle, was a success, enough so that we’re planning another one. Mark your calendars for March 28, noon to 1 p.m., hashtag #edchatmi. We’re sourcing the crowd to air common-sense solutions for boosting parental involvement in […]
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Does college prep begin in grade school?
If Michigan wants more minority college graduates, it needs to invest in quality school counseling. Grade school counseling. That’s one of the recommendations in a report released today by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. The report, “The Quest for Excellence: Supporting the Academic Success of Minority Males in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics […]
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Get in line, kid. It's a long one.
The University of Michigan released data on the application process for next year’s freshman class, and it is eye-popping: Provost Philip Hanlon told a group of faculty Monday that the school has received 41,600 freshman applications to date, compared to 38,700 at this time last year. U-M received 39,570 applications total for entry to the […]