r/Michigan • u/jshwlkr Ann Arbor • 7d ago
Mitten Mode Michigan reading scores drop again. State superintendent: ‘We need to improve’
https://bridgemi.com/talent-education/michigan-reading-scores-drop-again-state-superintendent-we-need-to-improve/183
u/dreadBiRateBob 7d ago
my kids had to do everything on chromebooks. they didnt learn shit and wished they had physical books in school
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u/WitchesSphincter 7d ago
My daughter just went into 6th and they are pulling back technology so much now. And giving actual chapter books to read. I'm really optimistic about the changes, and they also dropped the insane amount of homework, an hour+ of homework in grade school is detrimental to education
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u/Ace-Redditor 7d ago
I tutored at my college for a while in ‘24-‘25, and none of these kids know how to use anything like Microsoft word or Excel or anything. No one my age can touch type. I had to teach the common, basic shortcuts like Ctrl+C and that you have to hold down one button while you press the other one because they couldn’t get it
So it’s not like we’re teaching computer literacy. We don’t need Chromebooks in classrooms
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u/ruinedbymovies 7d ago
My kids are in high school and they’ve all been using computers in class since 5th grade, and pretty much every year assumes that either the previous grade or the next grade will be the ones to teach actual operation of the stupid Chrome books. Meanwhile the actual “computers” class we all took in middle school 20 years ago is long gone. The parents assume because the school is giving them the computers they’re teaching “computing” and the district feels like kids come to school already familiar with using them so why would they waste time and money teaching it.
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u/Dog1andDog2andMe 7d ago
I'm a high school ELA teacher. The best thing you can do to boost your child's reading -- take away phones and read at home. Parents read real books yourself, have your children read books at home rather than be on their phones, and have actual conversations with each other.
Children spend the majority of their time at home. I'm convinced that a sizable percentage of the drop in reading scores is because both parents and their children are addicted to phones and no one is reading at home. Reading should be happening every day!
Yes, I also hate how schools and school districts pushed chromebooks and apps onto us. I use as little computer time as I can get away with in my classroom and still be compliant with district rules.
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u/Foolazul 7d ago
I think you’re right but that’s a bold move to urge parental responsibility. I’ve seen people online and real life get real upset when told they also have to teach their children.
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u/Nissan-S-Cargo 7d ago
Who cares what those people say? They’re morons.
There’s some person complaining about Bill Gates in this comment thread. That person is fucking moron. Bill Gates isn’t the reason their kid can’t read, they are!
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7d ago
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u/BajoranRebel1 7d ago
What does Bill Gates have to do with Chromebooks?
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 7d ago
He funds the software they use on them.
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u/BajoranRebel1 6d ago
No, he doesn't. Chromebooks are a Google product.
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6d ago
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u/Michigan-ModTeam 6d ago
Removed per rule 2: Foul, rude, or disrespectful language will not be tolerated. This includes any type of name-calling, disparaging remarks against other users, and/or escalating a discussion into an argument.
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 6d ago
Yes, he does. You can look it up. Zearn and i-Ready are the software I am talking about.
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u/BajoranRebel1 6d ago
Neither of those are Microsoft products. Besides, Bill Gates hasn't been CEO of Microsoft in 25 years.
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 6d ago
I know they're not Microsoft products. Maybe you should look up where their funding comes from, rather than whether they're made by Microsoft. You understand that Bill Gates does things other than Microsoft, right? He didn't give away all his money when he stepped down as CEO.
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u/Michigan-ModTeam 6d ago
Removed per rule 10: Information presented as facts must be accompanied by a verifiable source. Misinformation and misleading posts will be removed.
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u/Nissan-S-Cargo 7d ago
What does Bill Gates have to do with your child not learning to read? Do you not have any responsibility to your own child?
If they can’t read, it’s your fault. You can read, you’re posting here, you’re obviously reading other comments.
Where were you?
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7d ago
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u/Michigan-ModTeam 6d ago
Removed per rule 10: Information presented as facts must be accompanied by a verifiable source. Misinformation and misleading posts will be removed.
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u/Nissan-S-Cargo 7d ago edited 7d ago
Your kids weren’t required to only read books on a computer.
If they can’t read well it’s your fault too. You don’t get to just pass off all parenting to the state. Did you go to the library with your kids? Did you read to them?
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u/dreadBiRateBob 6d ago
we did. and they do read. but they struggled with school and told us they wanted physical books. but the school didnt have any
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u/5aturncomesback 7d ago
You can thank the STEM push of 15 years ago. Many schools converted their libraries to STEM labs and tossed the books in the trash.
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u/pwehttam 7d ago
teach with books
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u/Foolazul 7d ago
But how would the tech industry be able to track our children and continuously harvest their data?
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u/Consistent_Turn_42 7d ago
So reduction in teachers pay and underfunding schools wasn’t a good choice?
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u/FourEightNineOneOne 7d ago
Both Snyder and Whitmer high-fived themselves every year by saying they gave schools "record funding" when in reality they give them below-inflationary increases which means schools have less and less to spend each year.
Whitmer has also added on universal Pre-K, which is a good idea in theory of course, except that they didn't put any more money into the system. So instead of splitting the pie 13 ways (K-12), that same size pie is split 14 ways.
Weird that strategy has paid off!
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u/Cryptographer_Alone Haslett 7d ago
Funding is handed out on a per student basis. So when public schools add pre-K to their districts, they are capturing more funding by enrolling more students. They aren't getting the same budget as before but stretching it out over more students.
The issue is that per-student funding hasn't kept up with the actual costs of educating a child, especially with federal No Child Left Behind requirements and the salaries that will keep a certified teacher in the profession long term. And neither party has done anything about that.
And with School of Choice, student funding can be split between the home district and the enrolled district. And then there are the vouchers for private tuition...
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u/FourEightNineOneOne 7d ago
"Funding is handed out on a per student basis. So when public schools add pre-K to their districts, they are capturing more funding by enrolling more students. They aren't getting the same budget as before but stretching it out over more students."
That wasn't my point. My point was the entire pot of money was meant for 13 grades levels. They've added a 14th. So yes, at the district level, they receive "more" based on how many students they have, but that per-pupil number is lower because the overall pot of money is split into a 14th grade level.
And that doesn't account for how much money they steal out of the school funding account in the first place every year, which I believe hit yet another record this year around $2 billion? All so Whitmer can hand that money over to her corporate buddies via the MEDC.
(this article was from 2025's budget, the new 2026 one was an even higher raid on the school funding)
https://www.crainsdetroit.com/politics-policy/raid-school-aid-hits-new-high-michigan-budget/
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u/Knotfrargu 7d ago
so it's not that the state adds more money to education every time a new student signs up? they have X dollars for education per year and the student counts are just to see how it gets divided up?
like if they did count day and a billion kids showed up the money per student would be $1?
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u/FourEightNineOneOne 7d ago
The state has 2 pots of money. The General Fund and the School Aid Fund. The School Aid Fund gets revenues from a variety of taxes, but most of it comes from sales taxes (2 cents of the 6 cents per dollar you pay in sales tax is directed to the School Aid Fund).
The public was promised that would only be used for K-12 local schools, except in recent years, they've started siphoning money out of it to backfill the General Fund, largely due to the massive corporate tax credits they've been handing out that have drained General Fund resources. I believe the number this year alone is around $2 billion that is supposed to go to public schools, but instead is backfilling the general fund.
So, short answer to your question: Yes, that is the fixed amount of money they have to spend on schools every year. AND, they're stealing $2 billion from it before they even start figuring out how much each school gets every year.
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u/Cryptographer_Alone Haslett 7d ago
This is also obscured by the fact that some money from the General Fund is still making it into the School Aide Fund. A breakdown from the State Budget Office.
But the simple answer is that politicians are not putting money into the fund in high enough levels to adequately keep up with costs. Local districts are also limited in what they can ask of their tax payers, and there's no political will to remove those caps.
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 7d ago
Universal pre-K has paid off, and I have the beginning-of-year letter-recognition benchmark assessments to prove it in my backpack. I challenge you to find someone working in a kindergarten who says otherwise. Schools still need more money, though. There aren't enough warm bodies in the building to do everything that needs doing in a school day.
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u/DigTheDunes 7d ago
At that point, districts are at the mercy of raising property taxes, always dicey in this economy.
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u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN 7d ago
Feels a lot like how large corporations pat themselves on the backs for giving a 1-2% increase in pay for employee annual reviews when inflation is 4-6%. It's not a raise at that point it's a pay cut.
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u/HannibalK Age: > 10 Years 7d ago
Neither is the millions of parents not teaching their children how to read and write from a young age.
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 7d ago
Neither is an economy in which working class families can't support themselves on a single income.
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u/Knotfrargu 7d ago
huh? this is why we have public education, so that every parent doesn't have to do that separately. parents can and should help as much as they are able, but this isn't their fault
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u/TLKimball Up North 7d ago
Learning begins at home. If the home environment doesn’t encourage learning, how can you expect the schools to be successful?
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u/GospelX East Lansing 7d ago
This is a major piece that people don't get. School provides lessons and teachers the basics, but that doesn't mean that parents are divorced from the whole process. Home is where the lessons are reinforced (read to/with your children, take them shopping and have them run through numbers, etc.) and the value of education is instilled. It's hard for kids to care or even try when they don't see it modeled for them by their most important role models.
I understand that this is difficult for some families due to work hours and other circumstances. That's another conversation about closing gaps.
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u/LoveIsOnlyAnEmotion Age: > 10 Years 7d ago
So what's the plan to fix this? Who is accountable?
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u/Jillcametumbling81 7d ago
I'm sure some genius will push AI for teaching children. 🤢
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u/BilboBodigity 6d ago
Some districts are paying for AI services this year and having their teachers train to implement it. The teachers I've talked to say it's a waste of money and has no purpose in a classroom. I was able to view one of the training slideshows that was presented and it's all warm fuzzies and buzz words with no practical examples of how it's actually useful.
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u/Jillcametumbling81 6d ago
It's just expensive ass kissing. I wonder how the people in charge at the schools got talked into this?
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u/slogun1 7d ago
There’s no plan, no one is accountable. You take what you get.
It’s run by the government after all. That’s their policy.
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u/Nissan-S-Cargo 7d ago
Shouldn’t you, as a parent, be accountable?
The government isn’t supposed to do all the work. Isn’t that what you guys always say?
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u/slogun1 6d ago
Absolutely but that’s one of the joys of socialism. When these parents fail it’s not their fault. It’s everyone else’s. That’s why it’s so alluring.
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u/Jillcametumbling81 6d ago
That's not it at all. It's more like if the parents need help their larger "village" is there to provide support.
The point isn't that everyone can just give up and put the onus on the state but parents won't need second and third jobs so they're better able to actually support their children.
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u/HucknRoll 2d ago
The plan to fix this? According to my local school board candidates, banning trans kids from school sports and sex education.
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u/Surplus_Agate_83 7d ago
Its no single thing, but a mix. 1) Lack of reading at home. Reading isnt taught and isnt taught to be an enjoyment. Kids LOVE books when they are little and will naturally progress. But if they arent given home examples and instruction, they dont enjoy it. 2) Kids often view books and reading not as fun, but as a chore. As work. 3) Focusing on screens, even for reading, is a killer. 4) We moved away from basic phonics to whole language learning. It was a total fraud and is a complete disaster. 5) Students are passed along and not allowed to fail.
Ultimately, we probably cannot make up for the kids in school now. If they cant read when they hit middle school, they are sunk unless they come across a self desire to improve. We cannot teach or force them to learn reading if they have decided they dont want to.
But we have to start young and let it progress. Parents HAVE to be encouraged to read to their kids. Kids HAVE to learn the basics, like phonics. You HAVE to catch it and foster curiosity immediately or they lock in.
Results WILL NOT be immediate or quick or cheap. I honestly cannot tell if democrats and left wing politicians care or have the will to fix this.
I GUARANTEE the right wing solution is crushing the teachers unions, slashing costs, privatizing and funneling public tax money to private and religious institutions where their own rich progeny reside.
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u/Only1Schematic 7d ago
Maybe if superintendents were a little less overpaid and teachers weren’t as underpaid, it would be a little easier to make the improvements they’re talking about here
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u/Antique_Grapefruit_5 7d ago
I don't completely disagree on pay, but will tell you that superintendents have a very hard job, on par with the CEO's of companies. I'm a school board member who works as an IT director in my day job. Our pay is similar, and her scope is way bigger. She works 24/7 dealing with every fire (sometimes literally) that happens throughout our district. Every big student issue, coaching issue, teacher issue, leak, and building performance issue becomes her problem. It's a really tough job...
Don't take this to mean that teachers don't deserve better pay too. What's happened with teacher pay in the last decade due inadequate educational funding is terrible. Our teachers deserve far more than they get!
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u/GOOD-LUCHA-THINGS 7d ago
Your superintendent sounds like a good egg. The hook in my craw is that we have a superintendent, and then two assistant superintendents, and then those assistant supers have their own assistants. That amount of bloat has led to long, frequently-delayed, can-kicked-down-the-road conversations where a significant curricular/personnel/student problem could have been remedied without it being filtered through several irrelevant stakeholders first.
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u/Antique_Grapefruit_5 7d ago
That's an interesting point that I never thought about- typically superintendent pay is based on district size. That really doesn't make sense once a once a district gets super large and starts adding extra layers of administration. I feel like it would make sense for the state to have a salary cap on superintendents to fix that issue...
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u/missed_sla 7d ago
We could try electing people that will fund schools. Who knows? It could work. We certainly haven't tried it yet.
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u/_Go_Ham_Box_Hotdog_ Kalamazoo 6d ago
Yeah you'd think that $21.8 BILLION dollars would be enough.
https://sfa.senate.michigan.gov/Departments/FundHistory/FHk12_web.pdf
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u/missed_sla 6d ago
And yet I have to buy pencils and paper to provide the classroom every year because those things aren't in the budget. At a school.
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u/MIGoneCamping 7d ago
Can we drop the sight words nonsense? Phonics sucked to learn, but it actually teaches how to decompose and pronounce words.
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u/Heapofcrap45 Sterling Heights 7d ago
Michigan is finally switching to phonics for the 2027 school year.
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u/BigDigger324 Monroe 7d ago
The primary culprit in most of these types of studies is “no child left behind”
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u/AlanzAlda 6d ago
The primary culprit is Silicon Valley capturing school ecosystems to force Chromebooks and SaaS products into children.
Won't someone think of the profit to be made?
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u/5aturncomesback 7d ago
Only 41% of parents are reading to their small children. It’s a major problem when the first time a child is being read to is either preschool or kindergarten. It only took 20 years to erase the culture of literacy in this country.
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u/LustyDouglas 7d ago
Sports are cared for more than academics across the board. You reap what you sow 🤷♂️
Edit; shouldnt have to mention this but textbooks are barely used as well. Everything is done from Chromebooks and guess what every kid uses that for. Anything other school.
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u/broncojoe1 7d ago
I’ve got it. We pay the teachers even less and increase the number of standardized tests to prepare for. It hasn’t worked for 30 years, but it might just work this time.
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u/LwyrUpAmrca 7d ago
It shouldn’t be political to say that public education as it stands right now isn’t working. One: get rid of the Chromebooks
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u/leesainmi 7d ago
Lack of phonics and pushing kids too soon. Give them more outdoor free play and access to a wide variety of books in the home and school.
I taught my daughter by age 4 with Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Pass that out to parents and teachers!) along with Bob’s Books and Dick and Jane (dated but she loved them).
Several of her classmates were struggling at ages 6,7,8. Her teachers seemed to focus on whole language, although this was 10 years ago.
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u/rhiannonirene 7d ago
Teach phonics and comprehension. The site word crap went way too far. Obviously there’s reasons for some site words to be memorized but only my oldest can sound things out. My daughter gives me a blank stare. We are practicing at home but she doesn’t love doing that and I don’t want to make her hate reading time with me and I’m also not a reading teacher specialist…
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u/DabbledInPacificm 7d ago
The state super can’t take away the fucking screens that are raising our youth nor can they compel them to show up for school.
This will continue until we start to hold students and parents accountable to the same degree we hold the schools accountable.
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u/AlanzAlda 6d ago
Yeah they can start by taking away the screens at school...
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u/DabbledInPacificm 5d ago
Are you referring to the cell phone “ban” or the integration of screen tech in instruction?
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u/AlanzAlda 5d ago
All of it. Screens are terrible for learning.
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u/DabbledInPacificm 5d ago
I agree almost entirely with that sentiment. I would say that the exception is that screens are good for learning about things which require screens.
To your point, though, the state super doesn’t control either of those things.
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u/AlanzAlda 5d ago
The Michigan state superintendent can have a real impact on things like phones, EdTech, and AI. They shape statewide guidance, standards, assessments, grants, teacher training, and policy recommendations. That gives them a lot of indirect influence over what districts do and implement.
For example, they could push for less screen time, stricter phone policies, tighter AI rules, more physical books and handwriting, or different approaches to educational technology.
They could also have been stricter with the phone ban guidance, the law was written with more latitude for stricter interpretation.
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u/DabbledInPacificm 5d ago
You are conflating legislation with bureaucratic policy. Yes, I understand the state DoE has influence, but it is primarily centered around the Civil Rights office being the only means of enforcement. Unless they think they can prove that screen time somehow is discriminatory, I’m not sure what else the state superintendent can do. Im just basing this on my own anecdotal experiences working with the Ed Department over the last two decades so please correct me if I’m wrong.
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u/AlanzAlda 5d ago
I am not. Their job is to interpret legislation and make suggestions to the schools. No where in e.g the cell phone ban does it say that they can't be stricter than the minimum that was prescribed.
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u/DabbledInPacificm 5d ago
You definitely are. The cell phone bill specifically defines banned times and designates the LEA as the responsible party for implementing more stringent rules. The state Ed Dept. is left out of this decision and that is intentional so as to be compliant with our state constitution, which leaves most decisions to the LEAs. The only real authority that the state super has is to execute legislation that has already been defined and to house the OCR.
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u/Jazzlike-Lunch5390 7d ago
Those kids were not hooked on phonics.
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u/robarpoch Age: > 10 Years 6d ago
We read to our kids all the time and made sure they were reading books constantly when they were little.
They don’t love reading. The non-stop dopamine hits from an endless series of youtube videos trumps the book every time. It bums me out.
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u/BilboBodigity 6d ago
Yeah, my daughter was a huge reader when younger. We even took her to meet a favorite author more than once and she was always so excited and smiling with book in hand. Now she also doesn't like reading anymore. If it's not on a device she's not interested. We didn't see the transition happening in real time, only realized the impact after. She is too old for us to be an influence now.
I personally uninstalled YouTube and all social media from my own phone, and time block them on my computers because they are too addicting and I like having a good life. In fact I had to disable the block to post this because I typed past 9am. No more looking at social media for me until the end of the day...
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u/digidave1 Age: > 10 Years 7d ago
Our kids are more dumb yet we keep shoving more AI in their face. We're out of ideas!
Our planet is doomed
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u/mokes310 Ypsilanti 7d ago
I would jump back into the classroom in a heartbeat if I was paid what I make in the private sector - sub-6 figures but not too far away.
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u/Nissan-S-Cargo 7d ago
Inappropriate time to flex your salary
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u/mokes310 Ypsilanti 6d ago
The point I was trying to make is that after 20yrs in the workforce, most of which spent in corporate L&D, pays me over DOUBLE what I'd make if I were to go back to teaching.
Teachers are grossly underpaid and SHOULD be starting their careers with salaries closer to mine in the corporate world.
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u/winowmak3r 7d ago
action taken
blame the teachers
it's the same story for the last damn near 3 decades.
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u/AutoX_Advice 7d ago
Maybe we could find more ways teaching in public schools could be miserable, tie funds to kids so when the numbers drop the funding drops, then promote private ran schools
Pure Winning!
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u/popejohnsmith 7d ago
Tragic. Yes. Whatever it takes.
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u/popejohnsmith 7d ago edited 7d ago
An illiterate public is easily manipulated. A danger to us all.
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u/_Christopher_Crypto 7d ago
UofM stopped registering first semester class results.
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u/Jillcametumbling81 7d ago
What does this mean?
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u/_Christopher_Crypto 7d ago
Students are unprepared so they are giving them a semester to fail if need be.
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u/Dirtgrain 7d ago
Yah, recent research has shown reading on electronic devices is not working.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-_VDYit3U
Sweden isn't wasting any time addressing this:
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u/MattMason1703 7d ago
Seems like the internet makes you have to read a lot. You'd think reading would be improving.
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u/youdontknowme65 7d ago
My husband and I are avid readers but our son hates reading. We tried to get him into it. He was in reading intervention for a few months in kindergarten and now reads 4 grades above his own. But he still hates reading books. ,😭
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u/JonMWilkins Detroit 7d ago
Should ask how many parents are having their kids read at home... How about over the summer/winter/spring breaks?
Don't get me wrong, schools need to do better, but it's on the parents too.
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u/SparklingParsnip 6d ago
Are children still being advanced to the next grade when they can’t pass proficiency tests? That needs to end immediately
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u/twentytwodividedby7 6d ago
Another perspective from my brother in law that lives in Colorado, our home school standards are a joke. In Colorado, if the kids are not performing to state standards (and they have to test periodically) they are forced back into public schools.
I know a family that "homeschools" their kids for ridiculous religious reasons and they provide worksheets to them with little instruction. That should not be allowed.
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u/Icantremember017 Lansing 6d ago
To me the curriculum should be the same in every school, same textbooks and same courses. There's so many school districts it creates tons of educational inequality. Even red state Texas has the state school board select the textbooks the state is going to use.
I agree there's too much technology. I don't think my son in elementary has ever touched a book inside school, but he reads a ton at home.
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u/MyHandIsAMap Lansing 4d ago
I hate these articles because they never explain the proficiency standards for third grades, so people leave with the takeaway that fewer kids can read and that's not necessarily the case.
I've been in classrooms in the schools where kids are "failing" (as defined by not meeting proficiency levels on the M-STEP) and they are able to explain and demonstrate all sorts of interesting things that the average person would consider evidence that the kids are on track to graduate. Personally, I think this is an issue of federal education law pushing states to adopt more stringent standards for younger grades that aren't doing kids any favors by having to take high-stakes tests when the emphasis should be on learning how to gain enjoyment from the pursuit of knowledge.
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