The 2019 Michigan economy was not one of our best ever
The Michigan Association of United Ways recently reported that in Michigan's strong pre-pandemic 2019 economy 38 percent of Michigan households were unable to pay for basic necessities. So in what many called the best U.S. and Michigan economy ever, nearly four in ten Michigan households (1.5 million) did not earn enough to pay for housing, child care, food, transportation, health…
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 in the mid-to-late 1900s were…
Our community college completion challenge
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 line unfortunately remains the same: we have an ongoing community college completion challenge. The headline from the new report is…
Wonder Workshops: Bringing Identity and Inquiry Into Schooling: What Now? Ep. 9 with Lisa Bergman and Lisa Diaz
It's commonly observed that a school's culture for children is a mirror of a school's culture for adults. At Mt. Pleasant's Renaissance Public School Academy, as you can see in today's interview, we find a culture where passion and curiosity, alongside a generously nourishing attitude for children, is modeled at all levels. This interview, the first we've done with a…
These are Michigan’s middle-paid occupations
In recent posts we have been exploring payroll jobs wages by occupation and education. Dividing the labor market into occupations with median wages below the national median of $39,810, occupations we call middle-paid occupations with median wages between the national median and the 75 percentile of $64,230, and occupations with median wages at or above the 75th percentile. The first…