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Opinion | Michigan’s education crisis is the civil rights issue of our lifetime
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Over 60 years ago, 125,000 Michiganders gathered on Woodward Avenue in Detroit to demand equal opportunity for every American. There, months before he spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a simple dream: Where you grow up, what you look like, and how much money you have should not determine your opportunity to succeed.
Today, a similar dream demands our attention.
Michigan is now facing the civil rights issue of our lifetime: the state’s failing education system.
As states across the country experience rising literacy rates, Michigan students are falling further and further behind. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), nearly 1 in 4 (28%) Michigan fourth graders can read proficiently and only 1 in 3 (32%) are proficient in mathematics. If our kids can’t read and do math, how can we expect them to succeed?
I recently spoke with a manufacturing plant manager on the campaign trail. We spoke about his struggle to find qualified workers for the high-paying jobs they offer. He told me the plant had to remove measuring tape questions from the application process because kids didn’t know fractions. It shouldn’t be this way.
This crisis is the result of failed leadership — and it’s sentencing the next generation to long-term failure.
For every student who cannot read in the fourth grade, there is a 66% chance of that kid ending up on welfare or in prison. This is not just a literacy issue. It is a civil rights issue.
Michigan’s education crisis cannot be kicked down the road any longer. We can fix this, but we have to act now.
First, Michigan must re-enact the “Read by Grade Three” law to prevent third graders from being passed on to the next grade before they’re ready.
Pre-K through third grade, kids learn to read. Fourth grade and beyond, they read to learn. Without knowing how to read, a fourth-grade teacher can’t teach kids the subjects they need: mathematics, science, or advanced writing and reading comprehension. They end up stuck — because the system sets them up for failure. Restoring “Read by Grade Three” retention requirements stops that cycle before it sentences kids to failure.
Getting kids reading again also means going back to the basics: teaching phonics to help students understand how letters and combinations of letters sound. This method allows kids to not simply memorize words, but it gives them the tools to sound out new words on their own. Time and time again, phonics have proven to be a reliable and effective way to teach reading. We must get back to what we know works.
But legislators must also prepare schools to tackle the literacy crisis head on.
Each year, Congress appropriates over $18 billion through Title I funding to schools. That money should be used for reading reclamation programs. A one-size-fits-all approach does not work, so these programs should allow individual students to receive personalized remediation and tutoring. Programs like Beyond Basics provide exactly this type of individualized support. By investing federal dollars into programs like these, schools can make sure that every single Michigan student learns to read.
However, solving Michigan’s literacy crisis is only the first step. Once we get kids reading again, we also have to get kids back to learning fractions and doing math.
That is where putting shop classes in every high school can make a real difference. Shop not only exposes students to skilled trades and high-paying jobs, but it also gives them a reason to apply math outside of the classroom. Measuring materials, calculating angles, and working with fractions help students apply math skills in practical scenarios — scenarios where students understand why math is important. That’s the type of education that empowers and inspires students.
An empowering education sets students up for lives of prosperity and opportunity — something every Michigan child deserves regardless of where they grow up. Just as Dr. King fought for equal opportunity, we must fight today to make sure Michigan kids have the same chance to succeed in the classroom and beyond.
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