Michigan lawmakers are considering a 20-percent budget cut for full-time virtual schools. This threatens countless students who won’t thrive in traditional schools due to bullying, crippling anxiety or behavioral challenges.
Michigan school opinions
Posted inGuest Commentary
Opinion | Support Michigan kids with high-quality pre-K for all 4-year-olds
Research on Michigan’s Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP) shows that kids who have a high-quality preschool experience show significant positive developmental differences as compared to children who do not attend a high-quality preschool program. They also have a greater likelihood of success in many areas throughout life, research shows.
Posted inGuest Commentary
Opinion | Michigan’s education proposals show progress; more is needed
Michigan has among the nation’s worst resource gaps between wealthy and low-income school districts. The Legislature is proposing historic investments. Here’s how lawmakers can do even better.
Posted inGuest Commentary
Opinion | Kids are hungry. Why Michigan should provide free school meals
There’s a cost to universal free school meals. But there’s a greater cost — to children and to the state — when students go through the school day hungry. A universal meal program raises student achievement and improves discipline.
Posted inGuest Commentary
Opinion | Education resentment thrives, let’s raise Michigan’s civics IQ
Shortcomings in one’s formal education need not limit a person’s contributions to society. But some politicians seek to diminish the value of true experts because they don’t share their politics. This sabotages democracy.
Posted inGuest Commentary
Opinion | Another governor, another college plan with no accountability
Gretchen Whitmer’s Sixty by 30 plan emulates failed efforts by predecessors to raise the number of post-high-school degrees. But the plan only helps a few thousand. Holding colleges accountable to graduate more students would go farther.
Posted inGuest Commentary
Opinion | State Superintendent pushes funding for urgent education needs
State Superintendent Michael Rice urges the Michigan Legislature to quickly fund a full-time state preschool program, more tutors, free lunches and improve school buildings.
Posted inGuest Commentary
Opinion | MSU student: Want freedom? How about freedom from gun violence
‘In a country that idolizes freedom, I need freedom. I need freedom to go to my dining hall without checking over my shoulder for a gunman. I need freedom to tell those close to me I love them without fear it’ll be the last time I say it. I need freedom to get a violence free education.’
Posted inGuest Commentary
Opinion | MSU professor mourns all that was lost in Monday’s shootings
What these shootings do when they target young people is also target possibility. The 50,000 different stories on campus last night converged into one shared, terrifying detour. And for them, what was going to be is no longer.
Posted inGuest Commentary
Opinion | Michigan charters run by for-profits bring mediocrity, secrecy
Michigan has the highest percentage of charter schools run by for-profit corporations in the nation. Michigan must pass legislation that increases transparency for charter schools says the former president of the State Board of Education.