Our recommendations for redesigning Michigan’s education system
Last month we released our first ever state policy agenda. In it we offered a set of recommendations for how we redesign our pre-K to 16 education system, create places where talent wants to live and work, and broadly share prosperity, all with the goal of raising living standards for all Michiganders. Today we’re releasing […]
Low-wage work and a better measure of economic well-being
The poverty rate is often used to measure economic well-being. When the poverty rate drops (which hasn’t happened in some time), we assume more people are better off, more economically secure. But the income level by which someone is declared either in or out of poverty is a fairly arbitrary number, based on a “basket […]
MFS Lessons Learned Part One: The What
As many readers know, in 2009 Michigan Future established the Michigan Future Schools (MFS) initiative, a high school accelerator designed to give start-up funding and capacity-building supports to new, small, college-prep high schools in Detroit. That project has now come to a close, but what’s emerged from our work is a set of learnings about […]
What we miss when we focus only on test scores
At Michigan Future, we’ve been making the argument for some time now that our k-12 accountability systems need to measure schools based on the outcomes that matter most: what happens to students after they leave k-12. This is far different than what we do now. And therefore, our current system tells us very little about […]
Educational attainment and the American dream
Late last year, Stanford economist Raj Chetty and colleagues published an important set of data that measured just how many Americans achieve the American dream. They define the American dream as the ideal that a child will earn more money, and enjoy a higher standard of living, than their parents did. Economists refer to this […]
Standardized tests are harming our schools
The Michigan Department of Education recently came out with a new set of proposed accountability guidelines for Michigan schools, detailing how Michigan schools’ A through F school report cards will be formulated. The major takeaway is that the evaluation system continues to rely, to an overwhelming degree, on standardized test scores. What this means in […]
Michigan colleges and economic mobility, part 2
In my last post I analyzed an important data set recently released by economist Raj Chetty and colleagues, that measures every college’s contribution to economic mobility in America. I looked at the percentage of the poorest students in each cohort at Michigan colleges who, by their early thirties, were in the top 40% of earners. […]
Are Michigan colleges serving as engines of economic mobility?
I’m generally not a fan of measuring a college’s value by the incomes of their graduates. If a high proportion of a school’s alumni enter a lower-paid field like social work, I don’t think this should count against the college. In addition, simply looking at salary data ignores the significant non-pecuniary benefits of getting a […]
When technology advanced, Michigan shifted from farms to factories. We must adapt again.
Amidst the flood of articles predicting how technology like automation and artificial intelligence will change our economy in the future, it’s helpful to have a solid understanding of how the economy works today. How have the technological advancements, increased productivity, and increases in wealth we’ve witnessed over the past half century altered the structure of […]
How to think about “Grit”
For the past several years, non-cognitive skills have been a dominant theme in education. While the concept has been around for some time, the current focus can be traced back to the book How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough. That book popularized the notion that a student’s long-term success was determined by a whole range […]