Michigan Schools Fail Kids: 7 Benchmarks to Know in New Report

ROYAL OAK, MI – Michigan is slipping to the bottom of U.S. states on a rigorous national exam testing the nation’s public schoolchildren's educational progress, according to a report released Thursday.

The Education Trust-Midwest, a Royal Oak-based nonpartisan education research and policy group, said in its report (embedded below) that already sinking fourth-grade reading skills could fall to 48th place nationally by 2030 without meaningful education reform in Michigan.

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Fourth-grade reading skills were about average in 2003 — Michigan ranked 28th — but by 2015, they were among the weakest in the nation, 41st.

Suneet Bedi, one of the report’s lead authors, said Michigan needs a “Top 10” education system now, both to arm students with the skills they'll need to compete professionally and to meet the needs of the state’s economy.

“Yet far from becoming a top ten education state, we’re actually getting worse — and new national data suggest Michigan is witnessing systemic failure across racial and socio-economic groups,” Bedi said.

These four rankings from the report show how the public school system in Michigan is failing its students:

• Fourth-grade reading fell to 41st in 2015, down from 28th in 2003;
• Fourth-grade math fell to 42nd in 2015, down from 27th in 2003;
• Eighth-grade reading fell to 31st in 2015, down from 27th in 2003;
• Eighth-grade math fell to 38th in 2015, down from 34th in 2003.

Demographics don’t seem to matter. In fourth-grade reading tests in 2015:

• White students in Michigan ranked 49th;
• Higher-income students ranked 48th; and
• Black students ranked 41st.

Michigan’s plunge in fourth-grade reading scores is dramatic when compared to other states nationwide, putting the goal of becoming a Top 10 school out of reach even by 2051 without aggressive change, Arellano said.

“We need to have a serious conversation about how to improve schools,” she said. “Michigan is an average spending state on education, but a terribly low-performing one compared to the rest of the U.S.Strong implementation is everything — and we are falling down on that front.”

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The Michigan Department of Education and the State Board of Education are addressing some of the achievement gaps highlighted by the report with a list of 31 strategies to improve schools in the next decade.

Below, read the report.