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…
Google student loan crisis and you get to choose from 58 million results. Over and over and over again we are told that today's college students, particularly those who pursue a four-year degree, are saddled with debt so large that…
While most of our video interview series on education has focused on formal K-12 education settings, we've also become pretty interested in recent years in what education can learn from the various out-of-school sectors that serve kids. We all know…
Last month Oracle announced they are bringing 8,500 jobs at an average salary of $110,000 to central city Nashville. The company will invest $1.2 billion to build out its new campus, including $175 million for public infrastructure. The city, in…
A year ago I wrote about the year two results from the MDRC evaluation of the Detroit Promise Plus program. This post is largely a rerun of that post with data updated for year three of the program. The bottom…
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…
The educational impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is unquestionable. But what if we spent less time talking about closing achievement gaps and more time talking about practical strategies and outcomes for shattering achievement ceilings? We invite you to a presentation…
On Tuesday, Bridge published an essay I co-wrote with Ned Staebler, the vice president for economic development at Wayne State University and the president and CEO of TechTown. We hope to inspire an important conversation among those who work in…
The announcement that KIPP will open a K-12 charter school in Detroit is good news for Detroit students. KIPP is the nation’s largest nonprofit charter school network, with more than 110,000 students ranging from preschool to 12th grade in 255…
We are continually confronted by the myth that there are lots of good-paying jobs that don't require higher education. "Not everyone should go to college," people claim. While that's true on a personal level--not every person will benefit from college,…