MICHIGAN TRUTH SQUAD ANALYSIS: “Place” – TV ad, “$12 Billion” – mailer Who: CARE, anti-Proposal 3 group What: TV ad and mailer Truth Squad call: Technical fouls Questionable statements: “Make no mistake — Michigan families will pay the $12 billion price tag for this energy experiment.” (TV ad) “Proposal 3 will cost Michigan $12 billion […]
Truth Squad: Anti-Prop 3 ad earns technical fouls on cost claim, wind turbine longevity
Posted inMichigan Government
Truth Squad: Pro-Proposal 3 ad gets technical foul for jobs language
MICHIGAN TRUTH SQUAD ANALYSIS — “Forward” Who: Michigan Energy, Michigan Jobs — Pro-Proposal 3 group What: TV ad Truth Squad call: Technical foul Questionable statement: “Michigan is falling behind in the clean energy race. Thirty other states have already passed measures similar to Proposal 3.” The forward ad cites a July 6, 2012, Crain’s Detroit […]
Posted inTalent & Education
Battle of the 'Starts' takes kids prisoner
Hundreds of Michigan 4-year-olds qualify for Head Start and Great Start, but are in neither preschool program, stuck in a no-man’s land between bureaucracies. School leaders, state administrators and directors of Head Start and Great Start describe a sometimes personality-driven relationship between the programs that can run seamlessly, or can devolve into accusations of “poaching” […]
Posted inTalent & Education
Michigan lags behind other states in pre-K efforts
The education of Jordan Shaw will start a year later because she lives in Michigan. The Canton girl was in a private preschool program last year as a 3-year-old. But after Jordan’s little brother was born, her parents could no longer afford it. “Preschool gives them good learning skills. (But) trying to pay for her […]
Posted inTalent & Education
Why the lights never come on in some preschool classrooms
Gobles is a small, rural, almost exclusively white community on the west side of the state. Beecher is an old blue-collar suburb of Flint, racially mixed and overwhelmingly poor. But the children of Gobles and Beecher do share a characteristic — one that neither wants: They can’t attend free, state-funded preschool. Across the state, there […]
Posted inTalent & Education
One woman marshals a pre-K army
Maybe she just didn’t have enough experience to know better. Maybe she had a financial incentive. Whatever the reason, Natalie Merryman succeeded where a lot of school districts failed. As a first-year preschool teacher in the Great Start Readiness Program, Merryman was able to find the kind of at-risk 4-year-olds who are often forgotten in […]
Posted inPeter Luke: Eye on the Capitol
Proposal 5 would take political dysfunction in State Capitol to whole new level
Five years ago this week, Michigan lawmakers were hurtling toward their own fiscal cliff as a new budget year loomed with no spending and revenue agreement in sight. A month of legislative chaos marked by a desultory combination of boredom, tension, recrimination and fatigue ended in the early morning of Oct. 1 when lawmakers gave […]
Posted inPhil's Column
It's all about human capital, people
“Today, money flows toward people who also have knowledge, advanced skills and the relentless determination to find a better way. Michigan, historically, has not grown enough of this kind of talent. That kind of change will take time and an evolution of our education system.” — Ron Dzwonkowski, the fine now-retired associate editor of the […]
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links
“The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination” — Elizabeth Hardwick, American literary critic. * ProPublica continues its coverage of the petroleum industry and environmental oversight: “Injection wells have […]
Posted inTalent & Education
Education talks set for Imlay City, Pontiac, Detroit, Clinton Township
Imlay City, Pontiac, Detroit, Lansing and Clinton Township are among the upcoming stops for the Center for Michigan’s ongoing townhall series on K-12 reform: WHEN: Sept. 27, 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. WHERE: East Meeting Room, Novi Public Library, 45255 10 Mile Road, Novi RSVP: Julie Farkas, Novi Public Library — (248) 869-7204 WHEN: Oct. […]