Beyond Learning Loss: Tangible Outcomes for Education Equity Post-Covid
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 and discussion with Colin Seale, a lawyer, educator, and the founder of thinkLaw, which helps educators provide students with the…
A New Economic Development Strategy for Michigan: put people and place first to create good-paying jobs
The evidence is clear that it’s time to stop a failed economic development strategy that invests state resources in businesses, and reorient towards investments in talent. In this commentary, first published by Bridge and co-written with Ned Staebler of Wayne State’s Office of Economic Development and TechTown, we argue that economic developers in Michigan are looking at their task all wrong. For Michigan…
Whitmer’s rising household income for all agenda
Governor Whitmer's new economic policy agenda states: The construction of this agenda has, as a guiding principle, the idea that a primary goal of state economic policy should be rising household incomes for all Michiganders, especially those who are struggling. This is a huge step forward in insuring that we have an economy that as it grows benefits all. As…
Blue collar occupations don’t dominate good-paying jobs
Conventional wisdom has it that there are two dominant paths to good-paying jobs and careers: STEM occupations and the skilled trades. In our last post we looked at STEM occupations including those classified as a professional trade. In this post we will focus on the proportion of good-paying Michigan jobs that are blue collar occupations, including but not limited to…
STEM occupations don’t dominate good-paying jobs
Conventional wisdom has it that there are two dominant paths to good-paying jobs and careers: STEM occupations and the skilled trades. In this post I want to focus on the proportion of good-paying Michigan jobs that are in STEM. (STEM, as you know, is shorthand for science, technology, engineering and math.) In our next post we will do the same…