CLOSUP Student Working Paper Series Number 50 December 2018
Michigan K-12 College-Readiness
Taylor Smith, University of Michigan
This paper is available online at http://closup.umich.edu Papers in the CLOSUP Student Working Paper Series are written by students at the University of Michigan. This paper was submitted as part of the Fall 2018 course PubPol 475-750 Michigan Politics and Policy, that is part of the CLOSUP in the Classroom Initiative. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy or any sponsoring agency
Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy University of Michigan
Smith 1 Taylor M. Smith Final Paper Michigan Politics and Policy (475/750) Dr. Debra Horner Fall 2018 Michigan K-12 College-Readiness Introduction When exploring the K-12 curriculum structure, it is important to note what the most effective methods are when it comes to making sure that students are getting all of the training that they need in order to be ready for college when the time comes. Grant Blume and William Zumeta note that almost all 50 states across the U.S. have overall low college-readiness policy efforts (Blume & Zumeta 2014). This is a clear indication that new college-readiness policies need to be implemented across all states. There are a few factors that determine the outcomes what the college-readiness process is like for students in K-12 such as race, test scores, disabilities, and family economic background. Teachers also play a major role in the college readiness process in that it is their job to ensure that all students are ready. The research conducted for this paper strictly pertains to the K-12 school structure in the state of Michigan.
Teacher Quality in Michigan Schools Researchers and policy makers agree that teacher quality is a pivotal issue in education reform. However, there is considerable disagreement surrounding which teacher attributes signal quality and how to better invest resources to provide quality teachers for all students. Many of the low-performing schools and students are in the urban districts of Michigan where poverty is
Smith 2 high, where large proportions of students have limited English proficiency, and where students perform poorly on achievement tests. Moreover, these urban districts in Michigan face numerous challenges, including attracting teachers to their schools and optimizing their hiring, transfer, and retention policies so that they bring the best available teachers to the classroom setting. What is now needed is an understanding of how schools differ on the qualifications of their teachers and the mechanisms driving these differences. Teacher effectiveness is quickly becoming a topic of great interest to policy makers and researchers as teacher contribution to their students’ learning is an important measure in assessing overall teacher quality. The State of Michigan collects data on public school personnel through two systems: The Register of Education Personnel (REP) and the personnel licensing system (L2K). Each system assigns a unique personal identifier to each employee, and the state provided us with a crosswalk to match cases across the systems. Register of Education Personnel (REP). The REP records: 1. Each employee’s race or ethnicity 2. Place of employment (school, local district, etc.) 3. Date of hire and termination 4. Undergraduate institution 5. Highest degree 6. Subject teaching assignment Personnel Licensing System (L2K). These data identify each Michigan teacher’s license, or certification credential, including any secondary licenses, along with date of birth and gender. Even though the definition of teacher quality is constantly in flux, there may be some factors future policy makers could take into account in order to develop a more comprehensive
Smith 3 definition. First, teachers should have an initial set of qualifications linked to the subject matter and grade level being taught prior to entering the classroom. Second, some would suggest that mechanisms should be developed for evaluating teaching effectiveness in producing student learning. And these should not be just traditional achievement measures linked to a single test score. An evaluation strategy for determining teacher quality could encompass a combination of peer evaluation, portfolios, and value-added assessments. Using a sole determinant of teacher quality, such as pupil achievement scores, is impractical and not sound empirically, but combining the above-mentioned measures may result in strengthening the professional field and, more important, may affect student learning.
Michigan K-12 College Readiness Michigan has one of the worst education structures in the country. Unfortunately, there is not an equal playing field for all students to learn and interpret the material that is being taught to them in the same way which also presents another problem with the curriculum that is used in schools nationwide. Educators should explore multiple forms of teaching and facilitation. Sarah Bonner and Ally Thomas suggest that peer-facilitated instruction intervention can help student success on the sections of their SAT and ACT that is widely known to be the hardest portion: mathematics. They note that the goal for peer-facilitation is to better promote college readiness not just in mathematics, but every subject (Bonner & Thomas 2017).
Student Support Systems Students need help and support in the college-readiness process. A study conducted by Grace Francis, Jodi Duke, Frederick Brigham, and Kelsie Demetro, suggests that there is a major lack of focus on how students with disabilities are supported in schools as they being to explore
Smith 4 college as an option after K-12. The authors’ study notes that it is necessary to have a curriculum that caters to students with disabilities so that they are afforded the same opportunities as students without them. They noted that students with disabilities often wish that they had more support and were offered more information from teachers and administrators about college in general (Francis, Duke, Brigham, & Demetro 2018).
Students Needs Before College On a study conducted explicitly on the state of Michigan’s K-12 college readiness initiatives, (Shomon Shamsuddin 2016) found that the state has one of the lowest ratings for meeting the needs of students before they transition over into college. Adequacy studies have been used to identify resources needed to establish school funding formula adjustments to the base student costs that reflect student and school district needs. Theoretically, if all education providers had an equal distribution of students with special needs, the resources needed would be tied into the base student cost. This section explains how different states handle teaching students that need additional services: (1) learning disabilities of varying degrees (2) students with challenges in their life outside of school that might include frequent moves or unemployed parents (3) students whose first language is one other than English. More often than not, these student’s study in schools where there are high levels of need, which means teachers need more tools and resources than in schools where the students do not have high needs. Because students with high needs are not equally distributed, weights or special accommodations need to be made (Shamsuddin 2016).
Smith 5 The most frequent weight changes found across the country are the additional resources needed to provide education for special education students, economically disadvantaged students, and English Language Learners. As a result of the work done for Michigan Education, recommendations for future work on Michigan school funding should be divided into short-term and the long-term actions. Short-term actions would use the base cost, plus adjustments identified in policy imitative to recommend changes in the Michigan school finance system state wide. Numerous issues may be addressed, but at the center, a simulation of the cost and impact that it would have on the district would be needed. Efforts should be mainly focused on K-12 college readiness and on the long-term actions needed for improving Michigan’s school funding formula. This long-term focus will include taking steps needed for an adequacy study that will uplift that base cost number from MESR and provide more appropriate student need on future proposals when it comes to education policy in the state.
Race(ing) to College Race has major implications on the opportunities that are afforded to some students because of who they are and what type of background they come from. Daniel Klasik and Terrell Strayhorn conducted a study further supporting the claim that race plays a major role in the college readiness process. Based on their study, all students of color scored significantly lower on their standardized test and have lower GPAs which affected their chances of being competitive candidates for colleges to choose from (Klasik & Terrell 2018). Similar to their study, Linda DeAngelo and Ray Franke argue that race and test scores act as a predictor tool for not only college readiness, but also first-year retention (DeAngelo & Franke 2016).
Smith 6 When it comes to supporting the students that are suffering because of race, disabilities, economic backgrounds, or test scores who want to attend college, we must look towards the state to write and implement policies that rearrange the curriculum so that the Core Curriculum State Standards (CCSS) Initiative is fulfilled. This paper will further explain the barriers that block students from being college ready, and also offer solutions to how teachers could be more supported through new state policies on college readiness, and how they can be more supportive in their classrooms for all students regardless of their race, disability, economic background and test scores. ACT and SAT scores are the icing on the cake to determine which types of schools incoming college freshman will get accepted into, and what types of scholarships they will be eligible for if any. There have been discussions surrounding this particular topic, and many believe that college readiness should not be solely determined on whether a student performs will on a test, seeing that college sometimes make decisions based on how well as student does. In an article titled Assessing College Readiness the author conducted a study to see just how heavily SAT and ACT scores were weighed and the effects that they could have on the students and he concluded that “single assessments are problematic� (Geoffrey Maruyama 2012). Maruyama expressed how parents spend so much time and money for tutoring for their child to be able to pass the SAT or ACT and some students are just naturally bad test takers. The author asks two questions: 1. Why should students have to pay for test in order to access their college readiness? 2. What if students from low-income communities cannot pay to take the test that are needed in order to get into college?
Smith 7 School Aid A one-time fix to help balance the state budget has now become regular practice in the annual appropriations process. Michigan has shifted a total of $4.5 billion intended for K-12 public schools to universities and community colleges since 2010, including a record $908 million for the upcoming budget year. This cut to K-12 education was not done for the benefit of postsecondary education, but to balance the state budget and compensate for General Fund dollars that are increasingly stretched thin due in large part to tax cuts for businesses. The School Aid Fund (SAF) was first established in 1955 as an amendment to the 1908 Michigan Constitution, retained in the 1963 constitution, and transformed through Proposal A of 1994. From the time it was first established until Budget Year 2010, the School Aid Fund had been used exclusively to fund Michigan’s K-12 schools. Funding for postsecondary education, on the other hand, came from the General Fund. For 2010, in order to balance a state budget that had been beaten down over the past decade by tax cuts and the Great Recession, Governor Jennifer Granholm and the Michigan Legislature used a supplemental bill to appropriate $208 million in SAF dollars to community colleges. The one-time appropriation included language stating that “funds appropriated to community colleges from School Aid Fund [will] be considered a loan” that “will be repaid from General Fund to School Aid Fund over the period of FY 2011-12 to FY 2015-16.” The Legislature never paid the funds back. In Budget Year 2012, Governor Rick Snyder’s first budget drew from the School Aid Fund to replace General Fund dollars going to universities and community colleges, with no language stating it needed to be repaid. In its final form, the nearly $400 million taken from K-12 was accompanied by a $470 per pupil cut in the K-12 foundation allowance—the only year since
Smith 8 Proposal A in which the foundation allowance was statutorily cut. The cut was accompanied by a very large tax cut for businesses that cost $1.6 billion, with only part of that amount made up by increased taxes on individuals. The Legislature later passed a supplemental budget that took an additional $64 million from the School Aid Fund to pay for community college operations, for a total of $460 million in SAF dollars shifted from K-12 to postsecondary institutions in 2012. This shift has been the norm during the past eight years, as every budget introduced by the Snyder administration and passed by the Legislature has shifted at least $350 million—and often more—from K-12 public schools to universities and community colleges.
A Growing Dependence on the School Aid Fund The precedent begun by the administration and Legislature in 2012 has led to a growing dependence on SAF dollars to fund postsecondary education rather than finding the dollars for that use in the General Fund. Three of the past five budgets have funded community college operations entirely from the School Aid Fund, and the most recent budget more than doubles the SAF dollars going to universities. In Budget Year 2019, rather than reversing a practice that started as a one-time budget solution in the lean years of the Great Recession, the Legislature dug in its heels and shifted a record high $908 million from K-12 to postsecondary education. The $908 million in SAF dollars shifted to universities and community colleges in Budget Year 2019 could have gone into K-12 classrooms, improving educational achievement, reducing inequities based on race, income and place, and helping more Michigan children become college- and career-ready. Here are some ways in which the School Aid Fund should have been used to improve outcomes for schoolchildren:
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Recommendations Increase the Foundation Allowance: In the 2018 budget year, 63% of Michigan public school students were in districts receiving the minimum foundation allowance of $7,631. The 2019 budget increases the minimum foundation allowance by $240 per pupil, to $7,871. While this sounds like a significant increase, it leaves the minimum allowance far below the level prior to the Budget Year 2012 cut when adjusted for inflation. Although the foundation allowance has been raised in small amounts each year since, the 2018 minimum allowance of $7,631 was equal to only $6,780 in 2011 dollars—a 7% drop in purchasing power. In 2018, per-pupil funding would have had to be $8,234 in order to equal the 2011 level. Bringing the per-pupil funding back up to its 2011 level in real dollars is not enough, however. The Michigan School Finance Research Collaborative, a nonpartisan group of education experts, school officials, business leaders, public policy advocates and others, has recommended that schools receive a base cost of $9,590 per pupil, with additional funding weighted by the number of students in poverty, the number of English language learners, district size, and geographic isolation, up to a maximum of $11,482. These figures were based primarily on 2018 needs, and the $7,631 per-pupil allowance for that year fell far short of the recommendation. Fully Fund Early On: Early On is Michigan’s early intervention program that identifies and serves infants and toddlers with developmental delays and helps them succeed in K-12 schools. Michigan receives approximately $12 million each year in federal funds for the program but is one of very few states that has put no state dollars into Early On, resulting in an inability to provide comprehensive services to all children identified as needing intervention. For the first
Smith 10 time, the Legislature approved state funding and dedicated $5 million from the School Aid Fund to the program in 2019. However, the Michigan Early-On Foundation estimates that Michigan needs to appropriate nearly $63 million in state dollars to the program in order to serve all students who need intervention. Fully Fund the At-Risk School Aid Program: The At-Risk School Aid program provides state funds to schools to serve students who are at risk of failing academically or who are chronically absent. Currently, At-Risk funding is used to ensure that third-grade students are reading proficiently, and high school graduates are career- and college- ready. Despite recent increases, funding at the current level of $499 million (using SAF dollars) still falls short, as many schools are not getting the formula payments required by law and many high-poverty schools continue to struggle to reduce educational inequities. Providing interventions to economically disadvantaged students, many of whom are students of color, is important for eliminating economic and racial disparities in school success. Students from households with low incomes and less job security are less likely to achieve in school or be prepared for college, while those whose families are more economically secure are twice as likely to be proficient on standardized tests for reading and science and are much more likely to be prepared for college. This has resulted in large racial disparities in postsecondary education enrollment and success. In 2015-16, only 53% percent of African American and Latinx seniors had enrolled in a two- or four-year college within six months after graduation, compared to 68% of white students and 83% of Asian students. In addition, 52% of African American college students were enrolled in remedial education, compared with 39% of Latinx students, 23% of white students and 18% of Asian students.
Smith 11 Increased Funding for Early Literacy: To improve reading proficiency, particularly in light of the new third-grade reading law, the Legislature should fund comprehensive programs for children from birth through third grade. This needs to include resources for schools to implement the new law and outreach to families to understand the state’s retention policy. Since 70% of third-graders of color tested as not reading proficiently, the policy could disproportionately affect children of color. For 2019, the Legislature provided a continuation of the 2018 level of funding ($244 million) for the Great Start Readiness Program, which provides a high-quality preschool program for 4-year-olds from families with low incomes. However, this is not sufficient to ensure that all eligible 4-year-olds can participate, nor does it enable the state to expand the program to 3-yearolds, as is done in some other states. K-12 education and postsecondary education depend on each other: universities and community colleges need K-12 schools to adequately prepare students to continue education after high school, and K-12 schools depend on universities and community colleges to produce skilled workers (including those who work in K-12 schools) who contribute to the tax base, create jobs and keep communities strong. However, recent state budgets have set up a zero-sum game in which money that has traditionally supported K-12 is used for postsecondary education instead, with the savings going to the General Fund to be used for non-educational purposes—including tax cuts.
Conclusion The K-12 Education structure in the state of Michigan needs a great deal of reforming. The teacher hiring process, student support services and access to college-related material are needed in order to effectively make the education system in Michigan better for all students
How Well Michigan’s K-12 Educational System Prepares Students for College
regardless of whether they other race. starting better system 12.
POPULATION DENSITY Low <100 Mid High > 800 | Total A Very Good Job - | 205 156 145 | 506 33 44 54 | 44%
their socioeconomic backgrounds, or are Black, White, Asian, or any The recommendations are the
----------------------------------------------------------
points that will eventually lead to a
A Fair Job - | 329 167 101 | 597
overall for students in Michiganâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s K-
53 47 37 | 46% --------------------------------------------------------A Poor Job - | 52 22 16 | 90 8 6 6 | 7% ---------------------------------------------------------
Figure 1.
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Don't Know | 42 13 9 | 64 7 4 3 | 7% ---------------------------------------------------------Total | 628 358 271 | 1,257
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How Well Does K-12 Michigan's Educational System Prepares Students for College 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 A Very Good Job
A Fair Job Low < 100
Mid
A Poor Job High > 800
Don't Know
Total
This data was found on the Michigan Public Policy Survey or CLOSUP (2009)
Bibliography Bonner, Sarah M., & Thomas, Ally S., (2017)., The Effect of Providing Instructional Facilitation on Student College Readiness., https://link-springercom.proxy.lib.ncu.edu/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11251-017-9426-0.pdf Blume, Grant H., & Zumeta, William M., (2014)., The State of State College Readiness Policies., https://journals-sagepub-com.proxy.lib.ncu.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/0002764213515235 Francis, Grace L., Duke, Jodi., Brigham, Frederick J., & Demetro, Kelsie., (2018)., Students Perceptions of College-Readiness, College Services and Supports, and Family Involvement in College: An Exploratory Study., https://link-springercom.proxy.lib.ncu.edu/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10803-018-3622-x.pdf Klasik, Daniel., & Strayhorn, Terrell., (2018)., The Complexity of College Readiness: Differences by Race and College Selectivity., https://journals-sagepubcom.proxy.lib.ncu.edu/doi/pdf/10.3102/0013189X18778598 DeAngelo, Linda., & Franke, Ray., (2016)., Social Mobility and Reproduction for Whom? College Readiness and First-Year Retention., https://journals-sagepubcom.proxy.lib.ncu.edu/doi/pdf/10.3102/0002831216674805 http://closup.umich.edu/michigan-public-policy-survey/fall-2009-data/
Smith 14 Shamsuddin, Shomon., (2016)., Taken out of context: Piecing together college guidance information in urban high schools., n.p., DOI 10.1007/s11256-015-0347-4 Maruyama, Gefforey., (2012)., Assessing College Readiness: Should We Be Satisfied with ACT or Other Threshold Scores?., https://www-jstororg.proxy.lib.ncu.edu/stable/pdf/23271495.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Ad61702cbcf9cf90 740d4402a3a11cef6