Tagged: education

Drug tests for welfare recipients

A bill which would require drug tests for welfare recipients has moved forward in the Michigan legislature.

"A state House panel yesterday sent the legislation to the full chamber. Under the bill, the state would have to have reasonable suspicion before requiring a test. Cash assistance benefits could be terminated for people who test positive," Jake Neher reports.

Student performance in Michigan falls behind

"A new report from The Education Trust – Midwest says Michigan improved some aspects of student performance, but most other states improved even more between 2003 to 2011. The report says one reason Michigan fell behind is that the state’s strategy for improvement relied primarily on the expansion of charter and virtual schools," Michigan Radio's Dustin Dwyer reports.

Ending unlimited coverage for auto accidents

Governor Rick Snyder and GOP lawmakers are unveiling a proposal today to end unlimited lifetime coverage for medical expenses tied to auto accidents.

"The insurance lobby and other critics say Michigan's unique requirement for unlimited medical coverage is too expensive. Hospitals and others say it should stay intact," according to the Associated Press.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Michigan lawmakers are seeking to change the state's high school graduation requirements to make it easier for students to pursue career and technical education programs.

The bills introduced in the House last month would allow students to substitute algebra II with statistics, technical math or another math relevant to their career and technical education. It would also remove the foreign language requirement.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Majority Republicans in the Michigan Legislature are split over spending plans for K-12 schools, public universities and community colleges.

Budgets that moved forward Wednesday include a difference over punishing public employers for signing long contracts before the right-to-work law took effect.

Other rifts include how much to boost preschool funding for at-risk 4-year-olds and whether to give K-12 schools a bigger boost in their per-pupil funding or more for employee retirement costs.

The House Appropriations Committee approved a $15 billion education budget that restricts or cuts funding for the University of Michigan and other publicly funded entities that agreed to new contracts with employee unions before March 28. Workers must continue paying union dues or fees until the contracts end.

Senate budget subcommittees are passing budgets without right-to-work penalties.

The US Department of Education is now investigating the state of Michigan over alleged civil rights violations.

The department’s civil rights office was already investigating two civil rights cases against the Detroit Public Schools.

Some state lawmakers say it’s time to drop a set standards meant to evaluate schools across the country.

A House panel heard testimony today on a bill to opt out of the Common Core Standards Initiative.

Republican Representative Tom McMillin says it’s a federal takeover of school curriculum.

“We don’t want our kids to be common. We want our kids in Michigan to be exceptional. And this certainly lowers the bar, and makes it so that we have no ability to raise the bar.”

Governor Snyder was on hand in Detroit to wrap up his two-day Governor's Economic Summit Tuesday.

One of the summit's main goals was to start matching workforce talent and job skills with employers’ needs. There was a lot of talk about the need for better-trained employees in some sectors, particularly the skilled trades.

But Snyder says employers have to do their part, too—and treat potential employees like customers.

I didn’t go to an exceptionally good public school system, but I did have to study Spanish from kindergarten through eighth grade. More than 20 years later, I found myself in Colombia covering the aftermath of a volcano that buried a town. My rusty Spanish was anything but fluent, but I was able to ask directions, order meals, hire transportation and have basic conversations.

In high school I studied Latin, and later learned French and German, plus a smattering of Russian and Japanese. I am not really fluent in any of those languages, but they have helped me immeasurably. If I could do my life over, the major change I would make would be to have studied more languages more deeply.

If anything, this is far more essential today. We have a global economy, and a few years ago, Michigan sensibly started requiring high school students to take a second language to graduate. So I was horrified to learn that one of our state representatives, Phil Potvin of Cadillac, has introduced a bill to get rid of our language requirement and the requirement that students take Algebra 2.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - A Democratic Michigan lawmaker wants to ensure that students are not penalized for missing school to observe a religious holiday.

Democratic Rep. Kate Segal of Battle Creek recently introduced a bill that would prohibit public school officials from counting days students take off to observe religious holidays against them when handing out perfect attendance or other awards.

Segal said in a statement that if children make up their missed work they should not have to choose "between observing their faith and boosting their academic resume."

From Maine, to California - from Alaska to Hawaii - one of the biggest challenges facing governors and state lawmakers is how to plug the gaping holes in their budgets.

Certainly, Michigan is right in the thick of that challenge.
 
There are plenty of belt-tightening measures that have been taken - cost-cutting steps that can leave the quality of life for citizens somehow diminished.
 
But a new report offers another way to plug those holes in struggling state budgets: keep our kids from dropping out of high school. Increase the graduation rates.

The education advocates who put this report together find that high school dropouts cost our nation some $1.8 billion in lost tax revenue.
 
Today we took a closer look at the cost of high school dropouts, and we found out how one Michigan school district has successfully managed to raise its graduation rate.
 
We were joined by Michigan State University economist Charley Ballard and the Superintendent of Dearborn Public Schools, Brian Whiston.
 
Listen to the full interview above.