As readers of this bog know we believe Michigan needs to move away from standardized testing. Anytime we make that case, the first question we get is “what is the alternative?” In a column for Bloomberg entitled Testing Craze Is…
After reading the title of this post, I'm sure many of you are asking "What does baseball statistics have to do with standardized tests?" The subtitle of Keith Law's book Smart Baseball provides a clue to the answer: The story…
Last week, the Equality of Opportunity Project, led by Stanford economist Raj Chetty, released another study in their ongoing series on mobility in America. This one was particularly sobering. The headline: black males raised in wealthy households (the top quintile…
There’s quite a bit that determines whether or not a student is successful in college. They need to have good study habits, be able to write well, be able to manage their own time, be a self-advocate. Academics have created…
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…
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…
These days, it seems nearly every high school serving low-income students can boast of a 100% college acceptance rate. Indeed, it’s a very low bar to clear. Because community colleges and some four-year schools are open-enrollment, achieving a 100% college…
The good folks at Bridge Magazine published a guest commentary I wrote based on my commencement address at Alma College. (The Bridge column is here and the entire Alma speech here. The article was republished, to my pleasant surprise, by…
Anyone who is interested in children's health and education should read Paul Tough's new book, How Children Succeed. The main focus of the book is on what matters most to low income, minority urban kids succeeding in college. To answer…