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Opinion | If Michigan wants to lead again, it must reinvest in education’s basics
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Michigan has everything it needs to be the best state in the country again. We’ve got smart kids, committed teachers and parents who care deeply about whether schools are actually preparing their children for the real world. But being #1 won’t happen by accident, and it will never happen if we continue to lose sight of the basics. That’s the risk Michigan is taking right now.
Across the state, school districts are quietly cutting certified librarians and scaling back physical education. These decisions don’t usually generate a lot of noise, but they add up. According to reporting by Bridge Michigan, fewer than 1 in 10 Michigan public schools now has a full-time certified librarian. When schools start treating core supports as optional, students feel it the most.
A certified school librarian isn’t just there to check out books. Librarians are educators. They help students learn how to read carefully, do research and make sense of what they’re seeing and hearing. They teach kids how to tell the difference between solid information and bad information, how to explain their thinking and how to ask better questions. Those skills show up everywhere—in every subject and eventually in every job. Michigan’s decline mirrors a broader national trend documented by the US Department of Education and education researchers, who have tracked a significant decline in certified school librarians over the past decade.
This matters even more now because of how much information students are surrounded by. Artificial intelligence can generate answers in seconds, but it can’t teach judgment. It can’t tell a student when something doesn’t add up or when a source shouldn’t be trusted. Major AI developers themselves acknowledge that these systems can produce inaccurate or misleading information, a problem widely referred to as “hallucinations” in AI research. That’s exactly why schools still need adults whose job is to teach students how to think, not just how to search.
I’ve spent my career building businesses and working with people who have to solve real problems. Whether you’re hiring someone, managing a team, or making a tough decision, the basics matter. You need people who can read closely, ask smart questions and think things through. Those skills don’t magically appear at age 22. They’re built early, and schools play a huge role in that.
Michigan is making the same mistake when it comes to physical education. Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that regular physical activity is linked to better academic performance, improved concentration and stronger mental health in students. When kids aren’t physically healthy, it affects their mental health. When mental health suffers, learning suffers too. Cutting PE might look like an easy savings on paper, but it creates bigger problems down the road.
Education doesn’t work in pieces. It’s a system. When we pull out the supports that help kids succeed, everything else becomes harder. Michigan’s reading scores already trail the national average on the National Assessment of Educational Progress or the Nation’s Report Card. We won’t turn that around by pretending fundamentals don’t matter.
In business, you don’t fix problems by cutting corners and hoping for the best. You focus on what works, you do it well and you stick with it. Schools should be no different.
If we’re serious about making Michigan #1 in education, then we need to be honest about priorities. That means valuing certified librarians who teach literacy and critical thinking. It means keeping physical education in schools so kids are healthy enough to learn. And it means making thoughtful, long-term investments instead of short-term cuts that cost more later.
This isn’t about politics — it’s about results. If we want Michigan to lead, we have to start by giving our kids the tools to think clearly, stay healthy and learn well. Getting the basics right isn’t flashy but it’s how progress actually happens.
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