Business Leaders for Michigan (BLM) recently announced a new education reform coalition aimed at catalyzing action to improve Michigan’s education outcomes.

The coalition led by BLM includes Education Trust-Midwest, The Skillman Foundation and business and education leaders from around the state.

“Too many younger workers lack the basic skills they need in literacy and math—and the problem seems to be getting worse,” Doug Rothwell, president and CEO of BLM said. “It’s time for all of us to come together, learn from other states, and make things right.”

“I am pleased to see so many Michigan stakeholders pulling together for the change young learners need,” Tonya Allen, president and CEO of the Skillman Foundation, a member of the BLM coalition said. “If we can continue to collaborate around effective solutions for students, we will almost certainly move the needle on K–12 achievement.”

In conjunction with the coalition, BLM released a new report, Business Leaders’ Insights: Leading Practices in K-12 Education That Can Improve Student Outcomes in Michigan.

The report examines best practices and models from five states that are comparable to Michigan: Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Tennessee. The report highlights effective strategies these states are leveraging that can lead to action steps for Michigan.

Recommendations include:

• Maintain high college and career readiness standards: Keep and strengthen the M-STEP. The 2014 M-STEP was aligned with national benchmarks and provides an accurate measure of a student’s readiness to succeed after 12^th grade. The Michigan Department of Education has recommended changing to a different assessment in 2018, while the report recommends staying the course with the assessment to increase the rigor of assessments. Last week CMF’s Board of Trustees approved a resolution that emerged from the Public Policy Committee for CMF to advocate in support of maintaining the M-STEP.

• Prepare and train teachers on Michigan’s standards and provide effective opportunities for professional development and access to technology and data: Provide teachers access to high-quality curricula, tools and resources to support learning objectives and opportunities to learn together. The report also recommends full implementation of the statewide educator evaluation and support system.

• Make sure classroom funding is adequate and equitable: Among the five states in the study, Michigan has the second highest level of per pupil spending. The report recommends reassessing the costs to educate Michigan students and that our state make the most of current funds. First, the report states Michigan should utilize the Michigan Adequacy Study published in January to understand the approximate range of costs to educate Michigan students. The second recommendation is to execute a study on the effectiveness of current spending to help inform strategic decisions.

• Adopt accountability metrics that are easily understood: Michigan’s Parent Dashboard for School Transparency is a positive step, but consideration should be given to show how Michigan schools are doing compared to others around the country. 

These ideas and more were shared during recent Solutions Summits across the state, hosted by the Center for Michigan, Bridge Magazine and BLM.

The conversations at the summits called for more action, including support for the coalition’s goal of cross-sector collaboration from businesses, education and philanthropy to help catalyze an equitable education agenda at the state level with legislators.

“Michigan’s approach to improving education has been both piece-meal and unsuccessful,” Julie Ridenour, president, Steelcase Foundation told CMF. “To address this critical situation, the current circumstances require a comprehensive approach which includes accountability, professional development for all educators and a whole-state commitment to a quality public education for all children. This is an issue which affects all students, pre-K through college, their parents and their future employers.”

At the Solutions Summit in Detroit, there were business and education policy leaders from Tennessee and Massachusetts discussing their roles in moving education reform forward in their respective states.

Panelists from Tennessee and Massachusetts shared how important business leadership was in their states to accelerate the education work which also supports economic development and the demands of a changing workforce.

“The world is changing fast, we have to prepare our students to be life long learners who can adapt to a changing society, a global society and to the workforce of the future which is going to be having a job that hasn’t been invented yet,” Linda Noonan, executive director, Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education said. “That’s what we try to do by influencing state policy to drive improvements in education.”

As an example, in Tennessee 700 core coaches were selected and trained from a pool of teachers. Over the course of three years, the core coaching teachers went on to train the entire teacher workforce.

There were other successful examples shared, including a program underway in West Michigan that was modeled from Tennessee. The Center for Excellence, Teaching and Learning (CETL), launched by Ed Trust-Midwest in partnership with the Steelcase Foundation, works with educators to better support instructional practice, collaboration and professional development. Three of the five elementary schools working with CETL are among the top improving schools in the state.

“The work that Ed Trust-Midwest is doing in partnership with the Steelcase Foundation is a clear example of using a best practice model from Tennessee and implementing it in the west side of the state,” said Eve Haley, CMF P-20 Education Affinity Group member and program officer, Bosch Community Fund, who attended the summit. “It’s imperative that we’re doing research-based best practices in our schools.”

To accelerate this work, BLM’s coalition is planning to move forward in the coming weeks and months.

"We intend to work towards raising public awareness over the course of the summer and approach candidates for office with these ideas to make sure they're aligned with this direction, as well,” Rothwell told the Detroit Free Press.

Want more?

Learn more about the coalition.

Read BLM’s report: Business Leaders’ Insights: Leading Practices in K-12 Education That Can Improve Student Outcomes in Michigan.

Explore the data from the 2018 State of Michigan Education Report.

See CMF's Public Policy Committee's M-STEP briefing paper.