The Michigan Dream Starts with Education
Let’s make Michigan education and higher education great again. Lift up and transform our public schools, make higher education as the path to better life available and affordable again, and rebuild Michigan’s brand as the Education State.
Michigan once led the country in its commitment to public education, providing high quality and low-cost education for all. We created some of the first great public and land grant universities to put higher education in reach of everyone, not just the elites. We established the country’s first free public high school in Kalamazoo, and following Flint’s lead made our public schools “Community Schools” putting them at the center of community life. Sadly, in recent years our state has walked back our commitment to provide great education for all. State support for K-12 and higher education has dramatically declined. Schools have closed, and teachers have been laid-off, piling more students into the classrooms. Our great higher education institutions are being priced out of reach of working families. A reckless agenda to create an education marketplace and let new vendors open schools without quality control has hurt children everywhere. What’s happened in Flint and Detroit to school children shows the tremendous failure of our state’s leadership. Schools and students are struggling and Michigan is not what it must be--The Education State.
Michigan once led the country in its commitment to public education, providing high quality and low-cost education for all. We created some of the first great public and land grant universities to put higher education in reach of everyone, not just the elites. We established the country’s first free public high school in Kalamazoo, and following Flint’s lead made our public schools “Community Schools” putting them at the center of community life. Sadly, in recent years our state has walked back our commitment to provide great education for all. State support for K-12 and higher education has dramatically declined. Schools have closed, and teachers have been laid-off, piling more students into the classrooms. Our great higher education institutions are being priced out of reach of working families. A reckless agenda to create an education marketplace and let new vendors open schools without quality control has hurt children everywhere. What’s happened in Flint and Detroit to school children shows the tremendous failure of our state’s leadership. Schools and students are struggling and Michigan is not what it must be--The Education State.
This is why I made education my top priority from day 1. I brought people together to build national model learning programs in Flint, changing lives and providing pathways to jobs and college for those that had none before. As President of the Michigan Board of Education I have led the positive reforms Michigan has accomplished, and successfully beat back even more pernicious efforts to dismantle public education. I led the state’s successful Higher Education attainment and improvement efforts, twice. Once with the Cherry Commission 10 years ago which reformed high school requirements, launched Kalamazoo and other community “Promise” programs, created college access support networks, and the No Worker Left Behind initiative that guaranteed a Community College education for all. And again, this past year I brought together the state’s business, labor, education, higher education and bi-partisan legislators together to forge a new broadly-supported roadmap to reduce higher education cost, help more citizens young and old access this path to a better life, and put Michigan where it belongs among the best educated states in the country (www.MiTalentGoal2025.org)
But there is more work to do. I have the solutions and am fighting for needed change. That is why I am leading today’s charge to recommit and rebuild our great public education system, to put Michigan back among the top 10 performing states, I am fighting to bring justice, democracy and quality education back to Detroit and all Michigan communities. And leading the charge to make an education beyond high school the new standard for all Michigan’s citizens.
But there is more work to do. I have the solutions and am fighting for needed change. That is why I am leading today’s charge to recommit and rebuild our great public education system, to put Michigan back among the top 10 performing states, I am fighting to bring justice, democracy and quality education back to Detroit and all Michigan communities. And leading the charge to make an education beyond high school the new standard for all Michigan’s citizens.