Gov. Gretchen Whitmer “and Lansing Democrats have done immeasurable harm to an entire generation of our kids,” said state Republican Senate Leader Sen. Aric Nesbitt.
State Rep. Jamie Greene, R-Richmond, told the Washington Examiner the results of the 2024 Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress “really reflects how long Michigan was closed during the COVID lockdowns” and the impact it had on the state’s students.
The reaction from MI Senate Republicans: “Michigan 3rd grade reading scores are the lowest in the history of the test,” a Wednesday post to X read. “Yet @GovWhitmer and Democrats decided now was a good time to pass a budget that fails to increase per-student funding for the first time in over a decade?!
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“They’re failing our kids.”
🚨BREAKING 🚨 Michigan 3rd grade reading scores are the lowest in the history of the test.
Yet @GovWhitmer and Democrats decided now was a good time to pass a budget that fails to increase per-student funding for the first time in over a decade?! 🤦♀️
They're failing our kids. https://t.co/Tk7Fgaqako
— MI Senate Republicans (@MISenate) August 28, 2024
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M-STEP scores released Wednesday show a mere 39.6% of third grade students in Michigan can read on grade level, which means 6-in-10 can’t despite focused efforts to boost K-3 literacy in recent years. The dismal results follow $5.6 billion in federal COVID funding for Michigan to address student pandemic learning loss that went to intervention services, instructional materials, tutoring and other efforts, The Detroit News reports.
Wednesday’s test results show those efforts were not enough to overcome Whitmer’s pandemic edicts, which included nearly a year without in-person instruction. Other educational changes adopted by the Democratic majority in the state legislature watered down reading standards and eliminated student progress to evaluate teachers, both factors Republicans believe are contributing to the problem.
Third-grade reading proficiency has declined from 42.8% in 2021, to 41.6% in 2022, to 40.9% last year. In 2015, that figure was 50%, according to the Examiner.
That percentage is critical to measuring future educational development, as research has found that third graders who lack reading proficiency are four times more likely to become high school dropouts.
“I never thought in a million years that I would be the public school champion,” Greene, a Navy veteran who homeschooled her two children, told the news site, “but that is what I believe I have to do now because our literacy rates are low.”
Aside from the school closures and policy changes, Greene pointed to the Whitmer created Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential as another program she’s “100%” convinced is “detracting from funding that the department actually needs” to improve learning.
Whitmer’s MiLEAP, Greene said, “split the Department of Education” to create the governor’s “own parallel department,” a move that came with an executive FY 2025 budget request to transfer 75% or $414 million of Department of Education funds to MiLEAP, though the final budget spent $138.8 million, according to a conference report.
“We’ve challenged the constitutionality of what she’s doing in many respects because the Constitution is clear that the Michigan Department of Education and the state Board of Education is overall education in Michigan as far as programming,” State Board of Education member Tom McMillin told CBS in February.
State education officials, meanwhile, focused on other aspects of the M-STEP results that showed incremental improvement, such as fifth-grade social studies, and eighth-grade English, while downplaying the reading decline as a product of poverty.
“These results reflect hard work by students and educators and investments in education by the governor and Legislature,” state Superintendent Michael Rice said in a statement. “That said, much work remains, both instructionally and financially for needed supports to students.”
The depressing M-STEP results aren’t the only measure of Michigan Democrats’ education failures.
During Whitmer’s tenure, fourth-grade reading scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress plummeted from 32nd nationally in 2019 to 43rd in 2022.
A report in December from the governor’s own Growing Michigan Together Council found the state is “lagging behind” others with less than 33% of fourth- and eighth-grade students testing proficient in reading or math.
A U.S. News & World Report on the nation’s best high schools released in April offered a disappointing assessment of student performance and college readiness in Michigan.
“Michigan ranked 31st in a comparison of states with the highest percentage of top-ranked public high schools, dropping five spots from its ranking last year of 26th when it tied with Kentucky,” according to the news site.
Another U.S. News & World Report on the “best states” found Michigan students have below average math test scores, are less likely to graduate from high school, and leave college with more debt, when compared to the national average.
Experts blame much of the poor student performance to chronic student absenteeism and related mental health issues born from isolation and social media during the pandemic, and have correlated learning loss with the amount of time students were shut out of schools.
In Michigan, which had much longer school closures than most states, experts predict the learning loss will take decades to recoup.
The declining reading proficiency, chronic student absenteeism, increasing mental health issues, and continued threats to school safety are all reasons Republicans significant education cuts in Michigan’s 2025 budget approved by Democrats this summer.
The budget cut $302 million from school safety and mental health funding, while keeping per-pupil education funding flat for the first time in a decade. Those cuts helped to fund other priorities, including $330 million in pet projects for lawmakers, $1 million in legal aid for “asylum seekers,” electric bike incentives, menstrual products in men’s restrooms, and the governor’s multi-billion dollar climate goals.
On Monday, Sen. Mark Huizenga, R-Walker, announced legislation to restore the education funding, which has also become a top priority for the state’s teachers unions and school officials that helped propel Democrats in 2022 to their first government trifecta in 40 years.
“As kids across Michigan return to their classrooms, it’s crucial that we work together to solve this problem by correcting this course and restoring this vital funding to help our schools provide safe learning environments and ensure all our students have access to the mental health care services they need,” Huizenga said in a statement. “That is what my bill would do, and I hope we can get it passed before the new budget starts in October.”