Good afternoon I'm really glad you were all able to join us this afternoon my name is Deborah Horner and this lecture is actually a part of my course that I teach here in the foreign school called Michigan politics and policy but instead of hoarding our speaker. Dr Randy leaper. Also ourselves we thought we'd open up the doors and invite the rest of you to come in and share in Dr Lee I thin sites into the current state of K. through 12 education in Michigan and where we're hoping to go in the future so really a plan is one of the steering committee members of launch Michigan this is a new partnership of Michigan businesses education labor philanthropy civic leaders as well as parents who are interested and can try to work in a bipartisan way to move the needle a needle that has been very obstinate on improving quality education the state Dr Lee up also happens to be the superintendent of the Wayne County regional education service agency Wayne R. Yes he's been that since August of 2015 Wayne is the largest education services agency serving 33 public school districts and academies in Wayne County. Also Serve has served 30 years in public education prior to heading is our E.S.A. or reset part of Headingley So he was the superintendent of Livonia public schools which was one of the largest school systems in the state and in 2014 he was honored as Region one superintendent of the year in Michigan as well as administrator of the year for the Michigan P.T.S.. Dr Leopold a bachelor's from Hillsdale College a master's in educational leadership from Wayne State University and a doctor in educational leadership from. But despite his spartan affiliation we have to have him join us here today thank you so much for coming speak to us I know it's great to be here I mean I can already hear me OK All right how many of you even know what an intermediate school district is already so anybody. All right I like an honest crowd I like an honest group that's good. The state of Michigan actually has set up entities across the state of Michigan there are 56 of them across the 83 counties that provide support for their local school districts within their region and so their intermediate school districts are actually sort of between the State Department of Education and the local school districts and we provide a variety of different support and resources for local school districts we have Wayne Risa train about $20000.00 plus teachers a year in a variety of different areas we have expertise and educational services we have content area experts we have assessment experts we have school improvement exorcists experts they all work with the local school districts to help provide support as they're doing their work in their classrooms and so we have that educational services support we also provide oversight for the G.S.R. P. pre-state wide preschool program we have about $480.00 classes of 4 year olds in Wayne County that participate and that we provide overall support service to all of the special education programs in Wayne County so a countywide special education plan we have what we call active teen programs with which of the more severely disabled students we actually have regionalized programs for them so they can receive better service we have the same types of programs for E.L. learners and then we do a lot of back end stuff for school districts and so when you think about instruction when you think about technology in schools the software programs that run all the finance systems of software programs are run report cards attendance. So if you get a report card from Wayne County that actually comes from our system that our local school districts use along with all the backup services we provide internet access etc So there are all sorts of back and services that we provide we train bus drivers we provide support to business offices and then we also play a very important role in advocating for local schools so I do a lot of policy work here a little bit about some of the things that I do as a release the policy but I'm there advocating for the 33 school districts 108 charters 270000 kids in Wayne County on behalf of those of those school systems and so that's a little bit about what we do I say were many of you will remember this the O.B.S. of commercials we don't actually provide and provide the service we actually make a better that's what we do at Wayne Reese and so that's my background I've been in public schools for quite a while actually I'm not a teacher my background is finance I was actually a C.P.A. that's when I came out of school as a with a bachelor's degree I started working for a C.P.A. firm in C.P.A. firm I worked for did a lot of work as a relates to public school public schools and publicness Balinese and so I had variety of clients and started working for the WAYNE WEST plan schools because they were a client of mine and so that's how I got into the field of education my advanced degrees have all been in leadership but I actually have a finance background and so school funding is one of the areas of expertise that I bring to the table when we talk about policy here in Michigan so what I thought I'd do today with the topic I had in regards to Michigan policy you know where are we going I thought it would be important to provide context in regards to how we've gotten to where we're at today so I want to paint a picture of a variety of things that have been important from a policy standpoint over the last several years and talk about how that's impacted where we're at a Michigan today and then potentially how we might move forward so. Well go ahead and get started with these key policy areas. In Michigan curriculum instruction finance staff management and you'll understand a little bit more and I get into it accountability in school choice these are key policy areas where there's been a variety of policies implemented here in the state of Michigan that has impacted how our schools function and how they how they performed and so curriculum in the struction in 2006 that we actually had a significant change here in Michigan in regards to high school graduation requirements there are a lot of graduation requirements now that are tied into content and that was a big change for local school districts we believe it or not before then the only requirement was a half a credit in the state of Michigan that was the only requirement to have a high school diploma and so that changed significantly in 2006. Pros and Cons certainly focus more on content much more of a pre college type of curriculum that kids would have coming through high school and the offset of that is there are a lot fewer a lot of for kids to take in so now kids are choosing between for example C.T.E. classes and other electives that are of interest to them we see that pendulum starting to switch back now because businesses want to see kids they have more opportunities for real life experiences in the classroom but that was a big change in 20062010 we adapt to the Common Core State Standards these are standards in regards to what kids should know what every great every grade level as they go through their high there are 12 experience we actually partnered with 41 other states as related to our adopting these common core standards they have actually you know as you may have heard there's been some controversy around the Common Core standards a lot of misunderstanding but really just again relates to the types of standards that we would expect kids things for kids to know what each grade level going up through the grades so that was adopted in $2010.00 and what happened were a variety of. Dominoes after that because school districts then had a start changing their curriculum to meet the Common Core State Standards and a good chunk of that sort of ended up with the assessment process for local schools we had to have a. Test called the meet test in Michigan and that switched in to use the standards that were more aligned to the Common Core and so they went to a new test that was called the N. step test that's been changed multiple times in 201516 or changed from the a.c.t as being the basically the high school test and from the old meet test provided before then that went to S. that it was more aligned to the Common Core standards. And the other thing that I would say from a from a policy change standpoint that was been a big issue in the last few years has been the 3rd grade reading and retention bill trying to focus on the fact that we're struggling in Michigan as relates to 3rd graders being proficient in reading and what should we do about that and so there is quite a bit of debate that one and from a policy standpoint in Lansing and eventually what came out of that was a reading and retention bill so from a big picture as I look at this what I see are as we've progressed in Michigan higher standards in regards to what the expectations are for our students but at the same point in time for the practitioners in the field for teachers for our principals for our building leaders what they have seen as a lot of change and so one of the frustrations has been what they would describe as a moving target over the last certainly the last 10 years and in Michigan want to move on to finance because that's another area that people are talking a lot about here in Michigan in regards to where add insult to history the history behind that really has to do with the significant change that happened in 1904 it was called proposal a who's heard of proposal a OK we've got a few here that have heard of for foldaway in 1904 we went as a state from reliance on a property tax system in local communities funding your schools to a statewide system why was that because there were 2 really big issues number one there was quite a disparity between school districts in regards to how much money they received and the other was there was a significant over reliance on property tax that was starting to tax people out of their houses. And look in at that point in time I was the assistant superintendent in when West land for business and operations we had a the highest milage rate in the state of Michigan 47 Mills. Right now you pay 6 mills for your for your and your house for we had a 47 mil levy at that point in time I knew and a home in Wayne West land and so they reduced that the increased sales tax that's how they made up the difference in the money so the increased sales tax from $0.04 to $0.06 they reduce property tax and so that was the way they address that and then what they started to do is they started to try to get the the dollar amount that was really vary between school districts closer and closer in regards to how much money on a per student basis every school district had so this the slide that you see in your package just shows the significant change that occurred in 1904 you can see the vast majority of money in 1903 came from the local property tax in local communities and then you can see it one significantly the other way and now the state really controls school funding so that was really the thing that I would highlight as relates to one of the big pieces is the state really took over the responsibility for funding schools once this happened it was no longer as much a local locally controlled issue and so you can see what happened in the amount of money school districts had across the state of Michigan if you go back to $9495.00 you can see the lowest funded districts had about $4200.00 the highest funded where at that point in time or richest school systems in the state of Michigan the Birmingham's the Troy's they were actually above and beyond that when 93 when the new law went to place the state said look at we're going to cap you it's $6500.00 but then you can levy still some local tax in the local community to keep us $79000.00 per student that was allowed but you can see for the math vast majority of districts there's about a $2300.00 difference and you can see on the far right that's down to about a $600.00 per student difference. So the 2 things that they tried to do under proposed way really did happen they did reduce reliance on property tax and they did close the gap in regards to the school districts in regards to how they were funded but there are a variety of other things that were going on in local schools over that period of time that have really impacted them and so if you look at this chart you can see that at one time we were quite about a quite a bit above the national average in regards to how much money we spent in Michigan and education and that has that has slowly creep to where we're now in a position at least as of 201314 where we had actually fallen slightly below the national averages and so that's had an impact on local school districts but there are some other things that are really bent. That have really put pressure on local school districts in Michigan that have caused funding problems for the school districts So enrollment decline big big issue enrollment is king when you're doing a school budget because basically you get that amount of money per student and you multiply it by the number of kids they have that's the way that Usenet the way that we fund the vast majority of schools in our state so when I was a superintendent Livonia I used to say well we have $25.00 buildings in our in our community if we lost one student in every building OK that would be about $25.00 kids you multiply that by about a 1000 dollars per kid we were down almost $200000.00 in funding what cost could we reduce so gotta have a principal still gotta turn the lights on so gotta run the water can't even cut teachers with $1.00 just losing one to a student in the school and so declining enrollment has been a significant challenge for local school districts in Michigan and as you know the economy especially going back 220-082-0020 extension 10. People were leaving our state and so the streets were having a tough time reducing as their funds were going the other thing from a policy standpoint that happened at this time back in 2011 was we took the check cap off of charter schools and so while our role was going down we were actually creating more schools across the state of Michigan there were $300.00 charter schools and so from a funding standpoint that put pressure on local school districts because again if they lost one kid in every building to a charter school they lost the money and they could reduce their costs so that was a big thing that put pressure on the retirement system has been a killer for the state of Michigan we now pay our little over 30 percent of every dollar that we have coming in to fund the retirement system there are a variety of reasons that that pressure is there. A part of it again has to do with fewer people in the system paying into the system it's almost all over like full security and so school systems are now responsible for that cost back in 1903 by the way prior to proposal a they were not responsible for that that was a sage responsibility local district responsibility now and so their budget was getting crapped in regards to retirement costs on an annual basis special education funding same thing the costs were increasing greater than the increases in the amount of money they were getting on a per student basis so that was putting admission pressure on local school districts. School aid funds diverted to higher education so when you think about the school a pot OK Remember the state took over funding for schools they basically said OK when that happens we're going to put sales tax into the pot We'll put some income tax in the Pat we're going to put the lottery right the lottery goes into the pot and so that pad was there for the state of Michigan but what happened over time as there were struggles in the state as relates to their budget they started to divert think that used to be paid for outside of the school a budget into the school a budget. Higher education is one of them committed Caligiuri is and universities when they get their money from the state some of it if not all of it in case of Community Colleges comes from the school aid budget it's about a 1000000000 dollars last year that never was taken on the school a budget before $2010.00 I think of 2009 actually when it began with a $200000000.00 suppose of loan so that put pressure on the school funding system. We continue to face school infrastructure funding. Disparities between school districts because that's basically pay for still by property tax and so if you're in a high proper hour if you're in a high assessed valuation community you're in a lot better position to fix your buildings up than if you're in a low S.T.V. school system and so what's happened with all these things that have happened over time. Basically what you've seen is a gradual reduction of programs and services for kids at the same point in time when we've seen an increase in the number of at risk students that are better coming into our schools that need additional support and so when I was the superintendent Livonia in 2003 we had our for idea of really good programs in place that were supporting kids especially at risk kids we had lower class sizes we had admission a lower class sizes in our more at risk buildings we had a program called Reading Recovery which is a one on one program for 1st graders to get them caught up to reading grade level we had a $2500000.00 professional development budget a $2500000.00 textbook budget and by the time I left in 2015 we had to get rid of all the class size reduction reduction pieces that we had in place our $2500000.00 professional development budget was down to 0 we actually had some money from the federal government that we could do teacher training with our textbook budget went from $2500000.00 down to $500000.00 our reading **** recovery program has gone. Now that's just not our story in Livonia that's the story of our pretty much every school system across the state of Michigan the other thing that happened over that period of time is the number of students that we have coming to us that were premier duce lunch with the sort of our gauge in regards to students that are going to come in the higher poverty. Student the more at risk they are to have have learning disabilities or learning needs when they come into our schools we went from a 5 percent accountants are free and reduced lunch in 2002 up to over coming in with more needs and we had less less service surprise over time so that's been the that's been the push or the or the pull when it's been coming to what's going on in school funding across the state of Michigan these things you may have heard of over that period of time there are a few things that have happened we had emergency managers appointed that was a law that was passed in the early read around 201-2011 that said that if your school system was faltering financially that the school system of the BE no longer in charge of the actual district the school board would no longer be a charge will be they'll be an emergency or emergency manager appointed and every 18 months if you still have problems will be a new one appointed that happened for almost a period 10 years in our largest school district we had 2 school districts universe in Inkster that actually disappeared there almost started to go down so much as I gave you that example that their debt was way outside outside of what they were ever going to be able to pay so the state and of closing the school districts and in Detroit because of the significant increase in charter school students they have about 50 percent of the kids now they go to charter schools in their community again it's the it's whether you agree with charter schools or not that's not my point my point is the way we fund schools in Michigan and because of that Quicken Roman declined that they had. They literally ended up going bankrupt and so and it wasn't like well they didn't know how to manage their money they had an emergency manager in place for almost 10 years and the Detroit public school system that emergency manager assigned to them that's supposed to be a financial expert that would be able to and they had all knowing powers they could pretty much do whatever they wanted in regards to running the school system they couldn't balance the budget they closed 100 schools only have 100 schools open up in their boundaries and so number one I saw how the enrollment works they couldn't cut the cost nearly as fast as the loss of revenue because someone would open up a charter school in the neighborhood significant pressure that led to that and. In Detroit so let me go to the next. The next area of policy we talked about finance and we've talked about. The 1st item which was the curriculum and instruction staff management a variety of changes that have occurred in the last 10 years in regards to how we manage our staff and our ability to manage our staff and so as you know there are tenure laws in the state of Michigan for teaching staff in 2007 there are significant changes that were made to that particular tenure law there were limits on seniority and that had to do with rights within the contract or many of the contracts on local school systems as a relates to where they could you know what their placement would be in their local school district or other guarantees that they may have in their contract that would not have been a management choice but would have been something that was found in the contract so those were limited tenure he had to get he had Dafydd years instead of significant changes to the evaluation system it started with that if you had 3 years of ineffective evaluations you would have to you would lose your job there's a new piece of that this says that if you have 2 years of ineffective evaluations you actually have to notify the parents that have a class with that teacher. And the most recent changes that just happened in 2015 have to do with the actual process they actually have specific forms that school districts and principals had to be trained on along with their teachers in regards to how they would be evaluated and a portion of their a valuation now has to be a has to do with a student achievement and so anyway it was 25 percent for the last couple of years it's now 40 percent of the evaluation has to be based on some type of assessment that are given to kids in their school. And so there are a couple of things to look at here in regards to the impact on this this certainly gave management more flexibility in regards to the placement of teachers in regards to addressing teachers that were struggling in their classrooms at the same point in time when we went to this high stakes. System of evaluating teachers that also put a significant amount of pressure on teachers struggle about how do you actually measure that and. I think at a certain level really wore down teachers in regards to even their feeling about them doing their work in their schools and so those are a couple things that I would mention as it relates to the tenure to the tenure changes next ARIAD look as accountability and so historically back in law that's a federal law it was put in place it was sort of the 1st step in regards to how and how states have to hold their schools accountable and so what they said was that number one they had to basically establish reading a mass standards which was not a requirement prior to that then what they must do is they must assess students at least once at the elementary middle school high school you might remember Michigan used to be the 4th grade 7th grade 11th grade so you may have been a 4th grade 11th grade or 7th grade at that point in time. And then they said schools must intervene were students are not making adequate yearly progress and they had a whole process in regards to how you identify how that is that changed in 2001 the big big law that came into place of the relates to accountability across the country was the No Child Left Behind Act and what that basically said was number one by 2014 all students would be proficient in L.A. and math and that was a quite a shock wave that one through the education community when that happened and that at that did not happen and they actually through the adequate yearly progress process they set up criteria the school districts would have to follow and if you weren't keeping up with that criteria there were consequences could be anywhere from having to reconstitute your school to potential school closure changing in minutes trader's a priority of things that they had in place if you were not meeting the criteria well as time went on that a shocker for those of us in the field not every kid was going to meet the standards for they were going to be proficient and reading and and English they were starting to see that that was not going to happen more and more schools were not being the adequate yearly progress requirements and so what they did is they said OK we're going to change some things and this is after Obama became president they said OK we're going to the Michigan State to the National Department of Education said we're going to make some changes here and what we're going to do is provide some incentives to improve achievement versus mandatory requirements and then they started creating waivers for local school districts because some local school districts believe it or not we're not going to have every single kid meet to meet the meet the standards in regards to what had been set out for them to be proficient. And so that occurred in 2009 they could apply for the waivers. But when this came one of the things that happened is there are more strings attached not only to the money but to the waivers and so that was getting pretty onerous for local school districts also that they were trying to deal with these vast majority of new requirements that were coming in as a related to being able to get a waiver to not have your school either closed or reconstituted so what happened in Michigan over this time is the state of Michigan said OK well we have to put more specific rules for our state in process to meet the requirements under the new federal guidelines and so they did this through a section called it did meet the requirements 1st of all we had to identify the lowest achieving schools across the state of Michigan we had identified the bottom 5 percent. They created what they call the school reform office at the state level that would supposedly provide some kind of sanctions for the schools that were in the bottom 5 percent that were not able to get out there for specific. Interventions that were put in place at that point in time you could be either reconstituted you could be closed you could appoint a C.E.O. of the school a new C.E.O.. Or. When there's one other catch it as we go through but those were new requirements that were put in place under this under this particular piece and. That was starting to cause problems because as the school reform office was starting to work with schools who could not get out of the bottom 5 percent list what they said they actually started coming in this is just a couple years ago you may or may not remember they were going to start closing schools. And surprise surprise local communities were very excited about that. They said my gosh you're not going to come in and call the local school where's my kid going to go how can I get them there how are you going to guarantee me that that school's any better than the school that you're going to send them to down the road there is a significant issue that came about in regards to the state starting to implement some of those school closures the same with appointment of a C.E.O. all they want to do that needs Detroit schools and who's going to be the C.E.O. Why are they going to be more qualified than the people that were doing the work there already are there any seals I mean who's going to come in and actually do that work and so the logistics of that from a commonsense standpoint started to overweigh or outweigh doing our making those changes and so what happened was at the state level the. What happened at the state level is that the governor got together with the then state superintendent Brian Weston and they said we will create partnership schools and what they meant by that is they would have a partnership agreement with any school that is that was on that list that could not get off the list and instead of closing or being appointed a C.E.O. They would set a set of benchmarks at 18 months and goals at the end of $36.00 months that they would have to reach in order to not have admission of sanctions on their school the partnership is between the Intermediate School District and the State Department of Education and the local school district so those are the 3 partners in the partnership schools and that is sort of now the. The supposition of where accountability is in the state of Michigan as it relates to the requirements under the federal requirements. And so you know we've been actively involved in that work. And so what's happened since then is the No Child Left Behind law is finally been repealed or replaced with the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act which is Assa So that is now the new accountability requirements at the federal level so you can see the houses the sort of played out over time and those new accountability rules at the Essel level basically what they've done is they've taken a lot of the out a lot of the guidelines that are the. Rest of the top guidelines that were put into place he still had to have a bottom 5 percent list but they gave the states a lot more flexibility number one in regards to what that looks like what schools have to do and what the Ultimately what the. Sanctions are if indeed if the schools do not show improvement move on to choice another big significant issue in Michigan has been policy around schools of choice it started in 1993 right when proposal K. A came into place one of the reasons that they wanted to put together a foundation allowance and have a dollar amount beside every single student in the state of Michigan if they wanted that money to be portable they wanted to be able to move that money from school district to school district or school district to other school entity and so that was put in place with 9394 at the same point in time they passed the law passed a law that outlined the process in regards to if you want to start up your own public school it is a public school you could do that in Michigan. choice which meant if you lived in Livonia you want to go to Plymouth can as long as Plymouth Kansas board so they will accept students you could do that that was in her district choice and that is widespread across the state of Michigan certainly in Wayne County where I live. Right now in place in 2000 there was actually a valid proposal then that would allow for vouchers which is really taking the foundation allowance and allowing it to go to private schools that are not public school systems that failed though that did not pass in 2000 that was that was defeated at the ballot box there and that statewide proposal and then again a significant change that occurred in 2011 was eliminating the cap in regards to the number of charter schools that they are so when you think about choice in Michigan we're definitely an all in choice state there's no question about that when you look at it we actually have about 10 percent of our students that are in a charter school in Michigan so that's a pretty large percentage compared to other states in fact it's a very large percentage compared to other states if you look at Bint Flint to Detroit they're actually about half of their students are in charter schools in in their communities. One of the other some the other differences just from a management standpoint is that in Michigan there are more for profit management companies that are hired by the school boards of the charter school to run the school system so the way charter schools work is they have to have a school board and they have to have a chartering operation process that they go through and typically they'll hire a company to come in and run the system to hire someone to come in and actually run the the school and so that can be done by a variety of different people in a variety of different ways we actually chartered a school in Livonia at one time and we were very active in regards to the management of that so that can vary from Charter School the charter school. And in Michigan what they see is there's a quite a few more profit for profit entities that do this in fact to the point where there are a variety of the top nonprofit charter. Entities that run the schools that actually won't come to Michigan because of the lax sort of lax rules around charter schools. Teachers are not the retirement system and so that's a significant difference between a job under most of the laws and rules charter schools and public schools are under the same rules but one of the big difference is that if you're a teacher in the charter school and a charter school you don't have to be the state you're not required to be in the retirement system number says almost a 30 percent cost. And so they could provide a different retirement program for their teachers where if you're a teacher you pick your local school system here in Ann Arbor if you're a teacher by law you have to be in the state retirement system so that's one other significant difference and then the other thing that we are cited for quite a bit of Michigan is minimal over sight of the Authorizer the authorizes of the entities that actually can set up a charter school that can be a local school district it can be an Iowa City it can be a university those are the entities that can actually authorize the opening of a charter school and here in Michigan we don't have quite the same oversight as they do in. In other states so. Again the impact of that you know with the lifting of the cap we literally have over $300.00 charter schools in Michigan again it's not an issue of whether you're a supporter or not a supporter of charter schools as much as it is the way that we fund schools in Michigan declining enrollment in our local districts now they're losing more kids had actually bankrupt our largest school system but it's just not their employees can which is a high performing school system they actually have. About 3000 kids going to charter schools in Plymouth can some of them are coming from their neighboring districts but it's just not Detroit or flint that are impacted by this it's anybody from a financial standpoint that will lose you know $100.00 kids anywhere a 100 kids times $7500.00 a $750000.00 and so that's put a significant pressure on. Local school districts from a financial standpoint and that's been one of the big impacts of that particular of that particular. Policy So so let me summarize sort of where we're at from a policy standpoint in Michigan so we can talk a little bit about where maybe we can go so policy more rigorous standards. But it's been a challenge because it's been a moving target in regards to what what the expectations are for local schools from a fine to finance Sam point we're still competitive nationally but to the circumstances that I that I described and Roland per pressures and other issues with retirement etc There really has been a significant pressure on local school districts which has really. Created a lot has turned into a loss of programs in our local schools over the last 15 years. From a staff management standpoint from a policy standpoint we do see more management rights and it's provided us some admission flexibility in regards to dealing with certain issues that that we have to deal with in local schools but that has come with a tradeoff also of high stakes. High stakes of really high stakes mentality in regards to what the expectations are for teachers and I think what we're seeing is a certainly a demoralized teaching staff in our state I don't know what the numbers here at the University of Michigan but northern Michigan just closed their college of education down this past month gone Madani University in Livonia where I live but down of years universities have Our school districts are really struggling in regards to finding quality people that want to go into and stay in the field of education and so that's been a challenge. Accountability again when I highlight policies with accountability the struggles been as much as anything the moving target piece and you know what really are the best ways to measure schools and again from a choice standpoint more options for parents without a question but it's really spread out the resources across the state of Michigan and it's watered down the funding for all of our kids overall So those are the pieces that are in place and so what's happened in Michigan and this is painful for me to say because I've been a superintendent since 2002 but when you look at how we're doing and I was picked 4th grade L.A. That's what I picked up for the example here we're one of 5 states across the entire country that have actually seen our scores on the nape go backwards were lower today than we were back in 2002 we're only one of 5 states that is actually declining we have less than in reading at the 3rd grade level as I'd die down to 5 by our state standards again state rankings when you look at L.A. the 4th grade we used to be ranked in regards to compared to the other the 50 states and one of our one on one and readiness benchmarks it's a pretty it's a pretty sad. Demoralizing picture of where red in Michigan you guys how many how many here one school in Michigan. OK We have great schools in Michigan there are a lot of good things going on my 3 kids got an excellent education going through Michigan public schools they're doing great there a lot of good things going on but from a big picture standpoint we've got to do something different that's that's my 2 cents in regards to where we're at There's a lot of things that you can talk about measurements there are a lot of arguments in regards to what you should be looking at what you shouldn't be looking at but we're pretty hard pressed in the state to say that our policies over the last whatever number of years are really resulting in do improved achievement for our kids and so where do we go from here now to come back to launch Michigan but I want to talk about a variety of studies that have been done in the last couple of years because people are recognizing that we really need to sort of relook at where we're at and sell governors made a variety of recommendations the this you know part of education has gone through with the variety of stakeholders to come up with a plan to be attached 10 state in education over the next within the next 10 years as a cation trust Midwest which is a major think tank across the country they've developed a report and then we have the school finance research collaborative that is really looked at a different way of funding schools which will spend. A moment on in a minute here are the main pieces that came out of those reports that I would highlight a few in regards to where we should be going in the state of Michigan with our educational system and I highlighted the I don't know if you can see that that 1st one is bolded but it's called it says elevate the profession. And that really is multi-faith that it regards them in regards to how you go ahead and you actually. You actually do that but sure that that the colleges have kids that are interested in going into education they're getting them in the program and having them be prepared so that's a significant piece I I try to draw the analogy any tie anybody in Detroit Tigers everybody love the Tigers right maybe not so much this year. Well they got a pretty good managers name is Ron Gardenhire it's pretty good manager but you're only as good as the people you can put on the field right we need really really good people to go into education so we can get them in the field we are having now teacher shortages in our school systems mostly in special education and some technical fields but in our poor communities it's every single position across the board we are we we are in dire shape because it's all about feeding the pipeline and our pipeline starting to dry up I just gave you a couple examples of that but we have to address that issue when I was the superintendent Livonia early on we'd have $200.00 people that would be coming in applying for an elementary teaching position now it's pretty normal for us when we went to the college fairs lines out the door that's starting to get shorter and shorter for the bony A and you can only knowing only know what that means when we talk about what it is in a school system that doesn't have the resources to support the students that are coming in with fewer needs and and a pay scale that's a little bit more competitive you can imagine what that's like for those other school systems that are fighting for those same same teachers so elevating the profession is a big big topic for us it's not only getting the best people in that it's providing them the training once they get in and the resources and support to do their job. And so that's a big big piece reviewing the funding model I talked about the school finance research collaborative this is a group of people that came together not just educators but it's people from across the state of Michigan we have people from higher read on the committee we have people from non-profits we have people that are policy experts we have former legislators both Democrat and Republican on the committee we have business leaders that came together and the one thing that everybody who volunteered to be on the school finance research clabber of agreed with is that our school funding system here in Michigan needs to be fixed it's warm it's welcome in regards to 1925 years ago and so they came together and they did a study they hired 2 firms to come in and do a very detailed study in regards to what does it cost to educate a child if we want all kids to meet the state standards that was the criteria and they looked at it a lot differently than most people look at when they look at school funding studies often when you do school funding studies you compare yourself to the surrounding states you look at the percentage of money being spent on. Instruction versus non-instructional issues you compare how much money is being spent in the central offices compared to other central offices you do that kind of you know those numbers pieces right the state did a study a couple of years ago and said well our highest performing schools spend this much money so they must be doing something right maybe that's the right amount of money to be spent and that's really numbers piece this report is something completely reverse of that they actually sat down with educators 1st in Michigan $300.00 of the best educators in Michigan they brought together from all different areas high school elementary preschool special education et cetera brought them in and said OK if we want every kid in your classroom to meet the state standards what the school need to look like. And they asked them about that separate from that then they brought in and they look at all the research education research they said OK what is the research say the school out of look like in order for kids to meet the same standards what are schools need to look like a look at all the research class size wraparound services counseling ratios they looked at all that and that rather than just looking at the numbers they actually said What's a school look like and they drew a picture of what school lot of look like and if this is an elementary school 400 kids and they have. $75.00 kids that are at risk for reading and they have $25.00 kids that need it all services and they have 50 special education is to what should that school look like what supports that they need so our kids can meet the standards that made a whole lot of sense for someone like me who's been doing this for a long time I don't want to talk about numbers I want to talk about what school should look like one of the resources we what your class sizes be and how much professional development the teachers need in order for them to be at the top of their game I've got a 5 more minutes I'm almost done so that's what they did with this research they went through in great detail and they said OK here's what it looked like and then they cost that it out to say here's a school lot of look like here's the number of people you need here the number of bodies you need Here's a number of textbooks you need and then they cost that out makes a whole lot more sense as relates to how we fund schools so that's a piece of looking at we're looking at moving forward increasing access to post-secondary education that has to do the early college do enroll in opportunities for kids more ways for kids to be able to afford and get into and into a post-secondary program review review the accountability measures again look at other states and what they're doing as a relates to what is really going to what kind of accountability system really help move the needle in regards to. Student achievement invest in early childhood education. Which is somewhat obvious I think. And then looking at addressing disparities experience between children schools the type of the facilities that they have the staffing that they have the quality of programs that they have there's a disparity still in the state of Michigan what can we do to improve that which is really what the school Financial Research collaborative does so I'll finish it was just talking a little bit about launch mission which is I am a part of launch Michigan very similar to the school finance research collaborative is a group of stakeholders not just educators for we're partnering with the business leaders of Michigan we're also partnering with now profits we're partnering with labor and we're all coming together and we said look at we have been on the opposite sides on a lot of policy discussions over the past 20 years in Michigan while we one of the things we see in states that are successful in regards to moving the needle as a relates to student achievement one of the things that we see success that these groups work together Massachusetts is the one that we like to talk about a lot they started in the mid ninety's our funding was about the same as Massachusetts in the mid ninety's and our an arch event was about the same we've gone and different directions they worked with the business community at that point in time to put together a plan it's a look at we're all going to work together we're going to make this happen it has to happen over a period of time and so launch Michigan is our effort to try to get those stakeholders in Michigan together and say there's going to be some things we disagree with but are there some things that we do agree with that we that can go to our legislators in Lansing and say Here are the policy changes that we think needs to happen so we can move the needle here in Michigan so that effort just started over the last the 9 months and we're actively meeting on a regular basis we're looking at literacy we're looking at funding we're looking at accountability and we're looking at supporting educators as the 4 areas that we want to see if there are some common ground that we can push together as a long term model to change policy in Michigan. Yeah so obviously a. Significant change in the election we still have we now we have a split government which is you know can be very challenging I remember the days when Governor Granholm had a Republican Senate and then they really struggled in regards to policy change. There are a couple things that we note when we look at the split government number one is you know from our eyes the number the the. The number of Republicans and Democrats in each of the houses has got a lot closer and so from a policy standpoint you have to start moving closer to the center because you only need a couple of votes either kill a bill or passable. You know right now in the Senate at think it's 26 to 11 pretty hard to come to the center on a policy when you have the spirit that that the spirit of a margin you know. There's not a lot of compromise that has to happen when you have one side that has that significant level of control and so certainly Gretchen Whitmer is going to be someone that one of the things that we're very pleased with there they were all talking about the school finance report as part of the conversation when they were talking about. Their education policy so that I will believe I believe will be forefront in the conversation. And so it's going to be I think a change in regards to some of the things that we've done I think there's a. There's much more of an environment to do it because the business community has in the last few years recognized that we are falling behind in Michigan they're recognizing it because they can't fill jobs they have lots of jobs open job openings right now and they're trying to find skilled labor to come in and do that so they're now certain to say all well I guess this is pretty important I hate to be so crass about it I don't mean to be. But that's been you know the reality at least from the eyes of the people the feel it's like OK you get it now maybe we need to do some things differently in Michigan so they are now much more on board and so when that happens along with the much closer margins in both of the chambers and a Democratic governor I think puts us in a what feels like a completely different position I think very honestly Snyder was starting to get there working with Brian Wilson as the state superintendent there was you were starting to think see things that were nudging towards a different policy discussions that were there in 2011. Thank you. Absolutely. Have covered by. Working to pass time so I should I should have been a little more life on that we don't know if they've ever looked at their brush it was hard to get through all that history that I. Saw in your class what would they be looking at as careers that they want to go into you know. What I'd like to know. Yeah if you're doing OK I'm. Home I have to care about so I have to get the greatest and they are big big big sickly all they did was exactly need to know we have to be problem relates to your local government so talk about some schools is really good but I think the people are saying really want to hear what are the next steps OK so. Mike. What final comments on your do you want now I want to open I have no way to long winded OK but I had it doesn't even have a question start to break. Thank you I'm really interested in learning more about school choice and how that is find it and how local funds are sort of used when a kid goes to school outside of his district. I think this. So I'll give a very specific example so what happens is every student the state of Michigan has a certain amount of funding tied to them will say $7500.00 per student OK So if you're in your home resident district they get some money but if you decide to go to a neighboring district that excepts choice students they get the money and so what happens from a funding standpoint you know it's not like that well $7500.00 you know buys medical textbooks and permits student that's not the way it works the way it works is if you're a school system like in the body we say well we're going to accept 50 kids next year from outside of our boundaries if we got 50 kids and we got an admission all 50 times and our case a $1000.00 we got an extra $400000.00 those kids would be over multiple grades potentially so I might have to only hire one or 2 teachers So here I've got to put out $7500000.00 I get $400000.00 in I now have 300 $1000.00 to help find also some. That's the way school districts have looked at school choice the opposite happens if you're a loser in that case if you have more kids were going out in the air coming in now you're trying to figure out how I'm going to cut my budget by $300000.00 because I've lost the money but it's really on a big picture basis it's not really on a school basis it's really on an overall I have a school system here's how much money I have how my going to balance my budget next year and then they look at how many kids are coming in are leaving under the policy in regards to what they can do for all kids. Understand the state funding follows them with local funding also follow them or it's like a kid goes to a school district then has a local militia church or swing with their house then it's were determined the day when they have to pay were No I actually have from the local standpoint it's basically based on property tax so that number doesn't change whether you take kids in or don't it's one of the it's one of the public part it's one of the challenges that local school districts have when they accept students in from outside of their community because sometimes their community center the members say wait a 2nd I passed the millage to fix the schools up you know to do all this to build a new auditorium and to put a new swimming pool I'm paying for that and these families are coming in from outside of our community into our community and don't have to pay for that so that's been a bit of a sore point when it comes to that but the local money stays locally doesn't matter if you accept kids or how many kids come in or how many you lose. From the perspective of when Risa do you take a position on a district like river or spending money to bus in kids from neighboring districts. As a great question because it's a controversial issue down an area they have they have their sort of gentlemen's rules around schools a choice because and Wayne County we are the poster child down river kids go here to here to here it's all over the place and so most of our districts participate in schools a choice some do it in a limited level some take an unlimited number. River Rouge in some people's lives across the line because they actually go and start recruiting and communities all put up signs and say come to rue schools in the bus stop will be here in your community and so that's been that's a rather controversial we don't take a position on that though because I mean I'll have personal conversations with superintendents to say hey wanna let you know how your colleagues are feeling about this often their colleagues will call each other that's the inside baseball that goes on but we can't be in it where we're not in a position to be able to say one district ought to do something and another district should. We have no control over the policy. Hi I just want to thank you for coming in to get this presentation many Miss Taylor Smith I'm actually I'm actually student studying education policy and it's really interesting that you bring up the point about elevating the profession for teachers and I guess my question was along the lines of what kind of incentives are you offering what basically is the state of Michigan offering teachers in low income school districts in particular to get them to want to come in and teach as they are the answer there is none there's nothing happening at the same level for that now part and parcel of that is because local contracts are based on local communities but that there are a couple of issues I think that need to be addressed we have we do have to look at incentives in regards to getting kids will be interested to come back into the profession I think there we probably have to increase the. Base salary so I think about young people that aren't trying to pick a profession Boy boy I just talked to a company last week they build army tanks. And they need workers and they said they will if you have a kid come in and out of high school we want them to be a machinist or start another $12.00 an hour ago be a 15 dollars an hour within 30 days we will pay for their. Associates degree or certificate whatever they want to get at school craft college while they're working and if they want to then we will pay for their 4 year degree where they want to go into engineering stay in machining whatever they may want to do so we figured out for those kids number one they're gonna have no debt number to buy their food and their 4th year they're going to make in $60000.00 not including their overtime and number 3 they're going to go on and. Get their 4 year degree if they wish that we figured they'd have $180000.00 bucks in their pocket and no expense and no debt compare that to a teacher who's going to come the University of Michigan you Michigan State University walk out with $100000.00 and that's if you don't have the money to pay for college and you can come in they can $38000.00 bucks here that's a tough market for us to to be competitive so for us to be competitive with accountants with engineers with architects we need to get that the base pay higher you know there are some incentive there no different than an engineer OK I'm not going to $1000000.00 that at the end of my career but I have a tech I have a technical skill I can make a good living and you know there are perks to being teachers also but we have to get that base level pay up number one number 2 my suggestion to local communities is they have to start recruiting in their own local communities for their best and brightest in try to convince them and find ways to incentivize them to come into school and do teaching profession we have to figure out ways in urban areas to have college be free for kids want to be teachers because the kids are urban areas are the area urban areas are not going to recruit kids from South Lyon and Livonia. There are going to those by and large a lot of our kids that we hear from they want to go back and teach in their own communities you know they enjoy school they want to be a teacher they want to go back and teach their home communities we don't have a lot to say you know was a lot of my love my focus is really I want to go and I want to go into urban education and so we're going to start growing within I think to be to get the numbers up in the areas where we need we need teachers the most. OK So 1st I also want to just echo thank you so much for coming I will preface this with I was a teacher on the side of the tree in a charter and I benefited from some of win races P.D. programs so thank you all. I from more of like a political standpoint. It seems as though and this is just something I'm not super familiar with the push for eliminating the cap on charter schools I mean it seems as though because so many of them in the state are for profit that that is causing a lot of the issues especially like it's disincentive eyes and teachers there's no more buying into the retirement like I know when I was in charge at least we weren't part of a union there was no benefits. Well I mean there are benefits but not like like long term. Is and I noticed that on the list of things that have like possible solutions being looked at putting the cap back on charters was not one of them is that like from a political standpoint that's not feasible and could you just mention like maybe who the stakeholders are in Kiev and that capped off so when the cap came off in 2011 that was really an ideology. From a portion of from leaders in our state at that point in time that really felt that competition would improve schools and that the way to improve the way to improve schools that are performing well is to provide that competition that there's going to be a good school down the road now we're going have to pick their game up in order to keep their kids problem with that is it's a 0 sum game. So that's that's really what's happened from a financial standpoint but that was the theory behind it that charter schools will lift up all schools and there would be number one more options for parents and number 2 it would raise the level quality across state of Michigan test scores don't show that that that's happened at least from a big picture standpoint but that was the theory behind it as a relates to putting the cap on it now I don't. I don't think that will be the political push as much as a wall be what we can do to make sure that their quality charter schools and so you know the genie is out of the bottle to some extent we're not going to go back and not have charter schools in the state of Michigan I don't think anyways and so what may happen is they may say look at in other states where they're having more success with charter schools we are going to we're going to put more guidelines more oversight more review in regards to making sure that the quality school in order for it to succeed that may close some of the charter schools. And you know keep the best ones open that I would see that probably is as a change from a policy standpoint that would happen before we're going to you know we're going to go backwards that's what I think will happen.