Michigan spent big to fix schools. The result: Worse scores and plenty of blame

• In 10 years, Michigan boosted K-12 education spending more than 41 states
• The result: More staffers and worse test scores. ‘We invest more per pupil than most states and achieve bottom 10 results’
• There’s plenty of blame, and one consensus: Michigan needs a wake-up call to fix crisis

Frustrated by declining academic performance in state schools, education leaders in 2015 announced an audacious goal: make Michigan a top 10 education state by 2025.

“If 10 years from now we’re not a top 10 performing state, then shame on all of us,” said then-State Superintendent Brian Whiston. 

During the next decade, Michigan beefed up staffing, increased free early childhood education and opened its cafeterias for free breakfast and lunch — efforts predicted to improve learning. By the end of 10 years, Michigan boosted classroom funding by an inflation-adjusted $2.1 billion, the ninth-largest hike among all states.

And Michigan students fell further behind.

Related:

• Fact check: What’s true, false, misleading about Michigan’s education slide
• Mississippi turned around its schools. Its secret: Tools Michigan abandoned

Today, Michigan’s children are learning less than their peers in every other Midwest state, as measured by a national test often called the nation’s report card. There are poorer states where students fare better, as well as states that spend less money and get far better results. Most have recovered quicker from pandemic learning loss than Michigan.

And now, Mississippi, long ridiculed for having one of the worst school systems in the nation, has zoomed ahead of Michigan in state rankings.

“We've reached an ‘emperor doesn't have any clothes’ situation,” said Venessa Keesler, former deputy superintendent at the Michigan Department of Education and now president of education advocacy group Launch Michigan.  

“Mississippi is like everybody’s wake-up call.”

Bridge Michigan analyzed state-by-state data over the past decade and spoke to more than 40 people involved in education policy here and across the nation. Their reactions to Michigan’s education slide ranged from frustration to dismay to resignation.

Some blame past underfunding of schools; others point fingers at weak leadership, stubborn interest groups and a muddled command and control system that thwarts reform.

All warned of the devastating repercussions of not fixing the state’s failing schools, from hobbling the economy to exacerbating population decline.

Education is shaping up as a key issue in the 2026 campaign to succeed term-limited Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Candidates are lining up platforms with familiar promises, a testament to the difficulty of reforming a fractured system even when most agree that change is needed

Among the changes undertaken by successful states are two never tried in Michigan, despite a cacophony of proposals: clamping down on local control and sticking with reforms long enough to see if they work.

“The reality is we invest more per pupil than most states and achieve bottom 10 results,” said Whitmer in her 2025 State of the State address. 

“It’s not acceptable.”

A ‘truth bomb’  

By many measures, Michigan’s schools have gone in the wrong direction since the Michigan Department of Education and the Michigan State Board of Education set a goal of being a top 10 state by 2025.

School funding is up 10%, after adjusting for inflation, in the past decade, even as enrollment dropped 8%, from 1.49 million to 1.37 million.

Staffing is up 14%, too, buoyed in part by a surge of federal COVID-19 spending. Districts in 2024-25 employed 3,950 more teachers than in 2015, as well as 22,142 more aides, up 29.2%. 

Despite more money and staff, national test scores are falling or stagnant, and Michigan has a greater learning loss from the pandemic than most other states.

States like South Carolina, once behind Michigan, have passed it. In 2013, when Michigan ranked 38th in 4th grade reading, South Carolina ranked 44th. By 2024, it was ranked 24th in fourth-grade reading. Michigan fell to 44th.

And in a separate analysis of pandemic learning loss, Michigan students remained more than six months behind in reading in 2024 from where they were in 2019. That loss is the 8th worst in the nation.

Michigan’s slide can be seen in every demographic group and geographic setting. Urban, suburban and rural districts all reported substantial learning loss and, on the NAEP, both the state’s economically disadvantaged students and their wealthier classmates recorded some of the biggest drops in the nation.

While Michigan students do better on math tests, with results that are middle of the pack, experts consider elementary reading scores to be a more of a marker to future academic success.

Robert McCann, executive director of the education advocacy group K-12 Alliance of Michigan, downplayed the pertinence of the low 2024 NAEP scores, calling them “an anomaly” that doesn’t represent the good work done in Michigan classrooms.

But that’s a misreading of data, said Marguerite Roza, a research professor at Georgetown University who studies education finance decisions.

“I don’t think any year is an anomaly,” Roza said. “If your (NAEP) numbers are trending down, it’s time to make some changes. If you’re trending up, keep at it.“

Roza said test scores are a “truth bomb” because the test is rigorous and allows the state-by-state comparisons to reveal “what’s really going on.”

There is one area where Michigan remains a leader: chronic absenteeism. Close to 30% of the state’s 1.3 million public school students are missing 10% (18 days) or more in a school year, the 9th highest rate out of 45 states with comparable statistics. The weighted average of those states is 25%.

“A third of your kids (in Michigan) don’t have a chance to be successful,” Roza said. It’s hard to learn, she said, “if you’re not there.”

For sure, there are metrics by which Michigan schools are improving. Graduation rates are at an all-time high, as are the number of students completing technical career education while in high school and students taking and successfully completing advancement placement classes. 

Still, the overall trend in Michigan classrooms is clear, according to the vast majority of experts who spoke to Bridge.

“We are failing children as policymakers,” acknowledged State School Board President Pamela Pugh at a recent House Oversight Committee hearing.

A lost generation

Educators know those low test scores could shadow Michigan for a generation. 

Studies show third-graders who struggle to read have lower academic achievement in high school, which can lead to fewer attending college. That matters because incomes generally rise with education. In Michigan, the typical high school graduate earns $31,900 a year five years after graduation; those with a postsecondary certificate or associate’s degree bring home about $54,000; those with a bachelor’s degree, $65,000.

“We are at a crisis point with baby boomers retiring,” Jandernoa said. “We need a talented workforce, not just a workforce that turns over in a week or two. 

“If they can’t read and can't do basic math, they’re going to be really limited” in their job opportunities, he said.

Karen McPhee, education policy adviser to former Gov. Rick Snyder, agreed. “We are weaker as a state if we fail to educate our population,” she said. “In the end, we are only as strong as our schools.

“This should be a moment of reckoning,”

Many plans, little resolve

Michigan has a long history of attempts to boost school learning. It has a shorter history of sticking with reforms.

There were 11 reports on education reform published by Michigan think tanks and advocacy groups just in the four years from 2014 and 2018. Legislators voted to grade Michigan schools on an A-to-F scale, then the system was dropped. Third-graders were supposed to read at grade level to advance to fourth grade for a few years, before the state punted.

There were seven different accountability systems for Michigan schools in the 10 years between 2010 and 2020.

“Every year, schools were getting told, ‘Here's (the new way) you're going to be held accountable,” recalled Keesler, who was in charge of accountability with the Michigan Department of Education at the time. “And these were high-stakes accountability, there was a threat of (school) closure, takeover, principals got fired.”

Scott Menzel was superintendent of Washtenaw Intermediate School District for much of that decade and recalls the frustration of constantly changing reforms.

“If you’re a teacher, there’s going to be a new flavor of the month and you can wait it out,” said Menzel, now superintendent of Scottsdale Unified School District in Arizona. “You know that within a certain amount of time, things are going to replace it.

“You can throw spaghetti at a wall, and the more things you try, the less chance anything is going to move the needle,” Menzel said. “Mississippi focused on a single goal — to make sure their children were reading at grade level. What is the single goal in Michigan?”

That’s certainly not clear from the “Top 10 in 10” report of 2015.

That blueprint for education reform had seven goals, 44 strategies and 105 sub-strategies.

None are as straight-forward as Mississippi’s law that sets a standard that “every student completing the third grade is able to read at or above grade level.” 

For example, goal No. 2 in Michigan’s reform blueprint reads: “Implement, with strong district and building leadership, high-quality instruction in every classroom through a highly coherent, child-centered instructional model where students meet their self-determined academic and personal goals to their highest potential.”

Keesler, who worked on the creation of the document, acknowledged the goals were “probably not attainable,” and that there needed to be fewer and more specific goals.

Even John Austin, president of the State Board of Education at the time the “Top 10 in 10” report was approved, told Bridge that the report “was never meaningful.

“There was never any plan to implement and no money from the Legislature,” Austin said. “It was just wheels turning.”

Austin was another long-time education leader who told Bridge that he is “not surprised” Michigan’s schools have continued their slide despite more money and staff.

“It’s tragic,” he said. “We haven’t had any real leadership that cares about (how to) do things better.”

Local control run amok

To others, the blame lies with Michigan’s disjointed control over schools. 

The Legislature has power of policy and holds the purse strings; the Michigan Department of Education is charged with applying laws and the elected State Board of Education supervises education and appoints a state superintendent. The governor has no direct role in overseeing education, with the state school superintendent appointed by the State Board. Only six other states have that system of governance.

“Because of that, you have a lot of warring going on and you have this piecemeal approach,” McPhee said.

Bridge requested an interview with Whitmer in May and gave her office several weeks of availability. Instead, spokesperson Stacey LaRouche sent a statement that read in part: “Republicans have had decades of control over state education policy and funding, and while we’ve been working to turn the ship around over the last six years, we need to focus education policies to make sure that every kid in Michigan can read.”

LaRouche did not respond to follow-up questions, including asking the governor what additional reforms would increase learning in Michigan classrooms. 

• Read LaRouche’s full statement here

Even if state leaders did come to a consensus, Michigan school districts have more autonomy than in most states, according to education experts. While educators agree that reading skills in early grades is key to academic success, the state’s traditional and charter schools use 444 different curricula to teach English. 

School funding, staff rise as enrollment falls

“We have a local control system run amok in the state,” State Superintendent Michael Rice told a House committee recently. “We're proud of our local control system until it doesn't produce the results that we wanted to produce.”

Added McPhee, “In essence, we have 800 systems (the approximate number of charter schools and traditional districts) of education in this state, and everyone operates in a fair amount of isolation.

“There are 130 Secretary of State offices in the state,” McPhee said. “Can you imagine if they all issued driver’s licenses in a different way and designed their own license plates? We’d never accept it, but we do with our schools.”

‘Too many cooks’

Even now, when there is general agreement that action must be taken to improve Michigan schools, there is little common ground in the Legislature or among candidates for governor. 

The Republican-controlled House’s budget proposal includes removing $42 million for dedicated literacy coach funding, but would incentivize schools to have a third-grade retention program with at least one literacy coach and funds for lowering class sizes. The Democrat-controlled Senate proposal includes money to lower class sizes in some districts and increase teacher pay.

Gubernatorial candidates are pitching accountability measures for schools, supports for teachers and extra help for students in the form of tutoring and reading scholarships. Some candidates praise the new “science of reading” laws but acknowledge it will take time and cohesion to see the effects of implementation. 

Many of the education leaders who spoke to Bridge have scars from decades of failed reform efforts, where time and cohesion were in short supply. Most pointed to a lack of policy consistency over different governors and legislatures as one of the reasons Michigan schools have floundered.

“We’ve got to survive through multiple administrations (and) a generation of school leaders and teachers, and not get frustrated when we don’t see everything we want (immediately),” McPhee said.

What Michigan lacks is “a clear one person in charge of education who actually also has levers of control over money, who could actually do anything,”  said McCann, of K-12 Alliance of Michigan. There are “a  lot of cooks in the kitchen without necessarily having seen what the previous cooks baked up.” 

“We're a kind of silver bullet state,” Keesler said, with politicians looking for a quick — and fast — answer to a complicated problem. “We expect this instant gratification with this huge investment of cash,” Keesler said.

But with decades of sliding academic performance, patience is wearing thin. 

“This crisis is causing people to think differently," Keesler said. “But now we have to deliver.”