I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
A number of education reform bills designed to make Michigan eligible for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid under the Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative were passed by the state legislature on Saturday and sent to Gov. Granholm for her signature.
The five-bill package of reforms includes an increase in the number of charter schools allowed in the state, new authority for the state to take over the worst-performing local schools, a new rule allowing professionals without a degree in education to become certified to teach in subjects of their expertise, provisions for merit pay for teachers and an increase in the dropout rate from 16 to 18.
Democrats and Republicans alike praised the reform package as important even if they do not manage to bring some $400 million in federal aid into the state. “Times are tough right now, especially for our schools, and this plan will help secure Michigan’s spot in the ‘Race to the Top’ competition for these vital education dollars,” said Rep. Tim Melton (D-Pontiac), Chair of the House Education Committee, in a press release. “This is not just about the money. This is about 20 years of reforms needed to get our schools back on track. I commend my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for setting aside our differences and passing these long-overdue school reforms.”
House Republican leader Kevin Elsenheimer echoed those sentiments, saying in his own press release, “These are the first meaningful education reforms in more than a decade. Michigan schools now have the opportunity to enact much-needed reforms that Republicans have advocated for years. Not only will these measures improve the quality of education provided in Michigan, they are cost-saving measures that put Michigan in the running for federal education funding.”
The state’s teachers unions, the Michigan Education Association and the Michigan chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, were a bit less enthusiastic. In a joint press release, they said that they had “come to agreement with legislative leaders on every necessary aspect of Race to the Top, including alternative certification, using student data as a component in employee evaluation, and measures to turn around struggling schools.”
However, they also said that there “unnecessary language in the bills stripping educators of their voice in helping students in those struggling schools” and demanded that legislators return to the issue and restore the “collective bargaining rights of employees in struggling schools taken over by a state school reform officer.”
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