The urgency of imagination for schooling redesign

Success in today’s and tomorrow’s economy is largely dependent on having a set of skills that are critical in today’s workplace. At Michigan Future, we’ve been using a framework articulated by learning scientists Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff for these skills, which they define as: collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence (the […]

How better measures would leave no doubt about the need for school redesign

At Michigan Future, there is a core assumption that underlies our approach to changing our state for the better, and today I want to reflect on how this assumption is relevant to our work in education. That assumption is the belief—based on countless observations—that what we measure matters. When you (whether a person, an organization, […]

What I want for Michigan’s children

After a number of years, I’m preparing to step away from my work at Michigan Future at the end of this month. I am offering a series of reflections on education in Michigan from my years of work understanding what the future, and the present, will demand of our children. While there have been many […]

New report: The real relationship between education and income

Michigan Future is always trying to understand the reality of today’s economy and labor market. Our mission is to catalyze a future for Michigan where all families can thrive, which means that all families have the chance to earn a decent income that allows them to afford the necessities, save for emergencies, and help prepare […]

Continuing to call for rising incomes for all

We want to take a quick moment to re-introduce an effort that Michigan Future coordinated last year. Along with 23 leaders in economic and community development—from around the state and across the political spectrum—we called state leaders to action around the need to measure what really matters to Michigan families—rising incomes. We released the Rising […]

A two-tier economy in pictures

At Michigan Future we are always working to understand the reality of the economy and labor market in Michigan. We try to get beyond the assumptions and the holdover picture we have of how people earn money, and how much of it, that we still carry around from the 20th century. Today we’re sharing two […]

A Pathway for Every Child: What Now? Ep. 10 with Pam Moran and Ira Socol

Two threads came together for me recently. In talking with Colin Seale, the keynoter at our recent conversation on educational equity that we titled “Beyond Learning Loss” (video available here), I was reminded that of everything we’ve tried in education in the past–exactly nothing has achieved equity at scale. Nothing. (I’d argue that integration movements […]

A District In Alignment: What Now? Ep. 8 with Scot Graden

Our guest today has led a district that, for over a decade, has been moving towards a skills-based approach to learning, rather than a purely content-based approach. Scot Graden is the very recently retired superintendent of Saline Area Schools, a public district near Ann Arbor. His district, in the late 2000s, was certainly “good enough,” […]