Sen. Pavlov Supports Michigan Merit Curriculum

Senator Phil Pavlov (R-St. Clair), Chair of the Senate Education Committee, has published an excellent guest editorial viewpoint in support of the Michigan Merit Curriculum in yesterday’s Detroit Free Press.  Sen. Pavlov understands that high expectations and rigorous standards are just what our students need in order to compete in a 21st century global economy. Click here to download his column.

Gerson Slaps Conservatives on Common Core

Michael Gerson, op-ed columinist for The Washington Post, takes on conservatives who oppose the Common Core State Standards as ill-informed and off base.  Gerson is a Policy Fellow with the ONE Campaign, a visiting Fellow with the Center for Public Justice, and a former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.  He served as a senior policy advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000-2006.  Please click here to read his editorial.

Michigan Common Core school standards face political headwinds in GOP

Tim Skubick, MLive, May 15, 2013 at 6:30 AM
“I’m concerned about control coming from the federal government.”

Many moons ago, the quality of education you got in a Michigan school was pretty much determined by your ZIP code. One in Bloomfield Hills brought decidedly better schooling than one in Ontonogan – no offense to the good folks up there.

Then lawmakers, fearing the courts might stick their judicial nose into this inequity, got off their behinds and labored to raise up the lower schools with more state aid while financially sitting on the really good schools until the others caught up. Continue reading

A fantastic read about a broken system. MPSERS must be reformed.

It’s becoming a tired drumbeat, but if you want to know what’s crippling traditional public schools, the answer is relatively simple: legacy costs.

How many times have we heard that before? Struggling cities, the automakers and many other entities all have the same refrain about the difficulty of managing expenses while paying the appropriate amount into their pension funds and keeping up with the promises they made in the past to cover retirees’ health expenses each year.

But the weight of the problem is now landing like a load of bricks on school districts. Because of the way their financing is structured, schools provide a very clear demonstration of the problem — and the way elected officials in Lansing are contributing to it.

Click here for the full article at the Detroit Free Press.