Michigan’s Plan For Education Reform
Last year, Michigan passed historic education reform. But we still have work to do to make sure every Michigan student receives a quality education. We must pass policies that:
Learn more about these issues and specific policies Lansing is working on now in Michigan.
Reward Effective Teachers
Teachers deserve professional-level salaries, and the more effective they are, the more they should be paid.
In order to provide an excellent education for every student, we must develop an excellent teaching force. To recruit and retain excellent teachers, we must change how we think about teacher compensation. Currently, lock-step salary schedules limit what we can pay teachers based on years of service and degrees earned. Instead, teachers who are effectively helping children learn should be rewarded with salary increases and bonuses. Effective teachers should be able to earn professional-level pay.
Real reform would enable districts to compensate teachers and administrators based on their performance and other important factors.
Fair and Meaningful Teacher Evaluations
The state-wide evaluation system model being designed must ensure that 50% of the evaluation is based on what students learn.
An effective teacher is the most important ingredient to a student's success. Because of this, meaningful and comprehensive teacher evaluations are critical. Teachers deserve to receive valid and useful feedback on their performance so they can continually improve their practice. We must be able to recognize and reward excellence in the classroom and identify and support teachers that are struggling. Evaluations must focus on what students have learned. A comprehensive evaluation should be based on multiple criteria, including principal and peer observations, contributions to the school, and objective measures of student achievement growth, with student achievement growth being at least 50% of the evaluation.
Michigan passed a bill last year which required the state to establish a teacher evaluation system that bases 50% of the evaluation on student achievement growth. Now an independent commission is responsible for designing the evaluation. Michigan legislators must then vote to pass a bill establishing the recommended evaluation system so that it is implemented across the state.
Empower Parents
Parent involvement is critical to student success. We must empower parents with quality information and with alternatives when their children are not getting the education they deserve.
Parents deserve to have meaningful information about the performance of their children’s schools. School districts should establish a letter-grading system for schools, based in large part on student achievement growth. Parents should be able to easily compare schools to each other to understand how their children’s schools are performing.
In addition, parents should be able to take action when their children are not receiving a quality education. Several states have passed laws this year, known as “parent trigger,” empowering parents to force real turnaround measures when their children are assigned to chronically failing schools. Parents who are committed to the success of their community school can organize and petition for specific school-wide changes when other efforts have failed.
SB 620 takes a step in the right direction toward empowering parents to make sure their children get a great education. But the bill needs to be strengthened. Real reform in Michigan would include making school report cards available to all parents and giving parents with children stuck in failing schools the “parent trigger” option, so they can petition and force real change.
