Granholm Says Education Reforms Will Position Michigan for Race to the Top Competition

December 1, 2009

Bipartisan legislative action needed this month

LANSING - Governor Jennifer M. Granholm today said that Michigan must enact comprehensive reforms in the next three weeks to strengthen the state's education system for a new knowledge-based economy and position the state to successfully compete in the Obama administration's Race to the Top competition.

"Race to the Top reflects President Obama's and Secretary of Education Duncan's desire to move education in this country to new heights," Granholm said.  "Just as we have set a goal to double the number of college graduates in Michigan, President Obama has set an ambitious goal for our nation:  to once again lead the world in the share of our population with college degrees by 2020."

"And as the president has said, nothing else we do is as important to American prosperity," Granholm continued.  "It is true for Michigan as well - nothing else we do is as important for the prosperity and future of Michigan."

In the Race to the Top competition being conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, all 50 states are racing to reform their education systems so American children can compete in a global economy.  Only a small number of states will be winners.  Each will receive as much as $500 million in federal Recovery Act funds to improve their schools.

The Obama administration is asking states for reforms in four areas:

• establish common core standards and assessments and to benchmark standards, for the first time, to international standards;
• create a comprehensive data system that can track student progress from pre-school to grad school and all points between;
• take concrete action to increase the number of great teachers and school leaders; and
• turn around our lowest-achieving schools.

To strengthen Michigan's education system and position the state to be a winner in the Race to the Top competition, the state Legislature must enact and the governor must sign into law legislation that achieves the following reforms:

• require school principals to be certified;
• create high-quality alternative routes to certification for both teachers and administrators to help bring more of our best and brightest into education;
• give the state superintendent of public instruction clear authority to intervene in low-performing schools;
• when failing schools are clustered in a few school districts, allow state intervention to make individual school turnaround possible;
• increase the number of high-quality charter schools in Michigan; and
• require an annual evaluation of teachers, principals and other school leaders that uses student-growth data along with other factors.

"While each of these reforms meets a specific Race to the Top goal, I want to be very clear: Each of these reforms, in its own right, will give us a stronger education system in Michigan," Granholm said.

The governor stressed that Michigan needs to be a winner in the Race to the Top competition.

"No state needs it more than we do - not just financially but from the long-term perspective of changing our economy," Granholm said.  "The Race to the Top is an opportunity to tell the nation and the world just who we are:  a state committed to the fundamental change, the systemic change, the deep change that the future demands.  We must transform education in Michigan, and we must be fearless in our determination to do so."

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