Funding, poverty and class sizes.

Those were the primary excuses from state Board of Education President Pamela Pugh during a Wednesday House Oversight Committee meeting on the state’s failing education system.

“We’ve seen historic budgets, but it has not kept pace with inflation,” Pugh told committee members. “When we look at the poverty rates, we have some of the highest rates in the country.”

Pugh likened education funding to a brick dropped on a foot that will not immediately heal once it’s lifted.

“The dollars and budgets we’ve seen the last few years, it’s going to take time,” she said. “It’s going to take a few more years.”

Lawmakers including Rep. Steve Carra, R-Three Rivers, pointed to literacy rates that have declined from 37% in 2007 – “rapidly falling since 2019” – to roughly a quarter of students in 2024, and pushed for answers on what officials are doing to reverse that trend.

“The literacy package you all passed … the department, (state Superintendent Michael) Rice has been working on that for 5 years,” Pugh said. “We are moving with urgency.”

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Many of the same reading reforms were implemented in Mississippi a decade ago and produced impressive results that now eclipse outcomes in Michigan. Last year, Mississippi’s fourth and eighth grade students scored the highest in reading of all states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress when adjusted for demographics, while Michigan ranked 40^th.

Pugh said Michigan is developing many of the same reforms as Mississippi, and she expects the state to implement the changes in the 2027-28 school year.

“We have been putting forward legislation we know will help us,” she said.

Rice said 4,500 Michigan teachers have gone through training to improve literacy instruction, but argued the department needs more funding to make it mandatory for all.

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“It’s outstanding professional development but it needs to be for … all our elementary teachers,” he said. “We’re asking you to make it mandatory in the state.”

Other requests for additional funding included “lower class sizes in high poverty K-3 classrooms,” doubling what’s currently an $85 million allocation for early literacy, and to roll back changes that have eroded instructional days since 2019, Rice said.

In 2019, lawmakers allowed seven professional development days without students to count toward the state’s 180 days of required instruction for all schools, while Democrats in 2023 added an additional 15 virtual days to count as in-person instruction, Rice noted.

When combined with 9 days for weather, “these decreases could result in as few as 149 days of in-person instruction for some students,” according to a presentation from the superintendent.

“That’s an outrage and it needs to change,” Rice told lawmakers. Lessons from the pandemic “showed very clearly virtual days are inferior to in-person.”

Lawmakers pointed to class sizes of 30 to 50 students in the 1920s that produced the Greatest Generation with higher literacy rates, and questioned whether lost reading time at home and in the classroom played into the decline.

They suggested vouchers for homeschoolers could help alleviate crowded classrooms, and pointed to needed reforms for a free school lunch program that has less stringent nutritional requirements than prison food.

“We’ve been increasing funding for education by immense rates,” said Rep. Brad Paquette, R-Niles. “We see the headlines we’re going down (in student performance), and it’s the same slideshow” from state education leaders.

“When does accountability come into play?” he asked Pugh.

Rice and Pugh both pointed to past funding, with Pugh offering her brick analogy and Rice suggesting “the persistent underfunding of education impacted the pipeline” of folks entering the profession.

“Accountability has to be rooted in reality,” Pugh said.

“All we’re hearing is stay the course … and that’s problematic,” Paquette countered.

Others including committee chair Jay DeBoyer, R-Clay Twp., questioned Pugh about a resolution drafted and approved by the Board of Education in March that alleges President Donald Trump’s executive orders “pose direct threats to children.”

The political statement half of Michiganders disagree with came as parents are “watching the learning outcomes decline,” DeBoyer noted.

“Your role is to educate children to teach them to read and do math,” he said. “Why do we spend time doing this when we’re failing at educating children?”

Pugh defended the resolution she said was her idea, and its heavy focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, insisting “education is making sure our children have safe spaces.”

She also blamed lawmakers for problems plaguing the state’s education system.

“We are failing them as policymakers,” Pugh said. “We have to do better.”

Rep. Jamie Greene, R-Richmond, who was repeatedly commended for shepherding education reforms through the legislature, noted the “walls and barriers” to make that happen, and questioned the value of the board of education in its current form.

“Why shouldn’t the state of Michigan dismantle the Board of Education and start fresh?” she asked. “Why do we need a Board of Education?”

Rice ignored the question, and instead blamed local school boards for a lack of rigor in the classroom.

“We have a local control system run amok in Michigan,” he said. “It’s an issue of the choices at the local school level.”

Rep. Jason Woolford, R-Howell, asked Pugh for two personal priorities or goals to change the state’s education decline moving forward, but she had nothing to offer.

“I would refer you to the eight strategic goals” from the Education Department, she said.

“In the real world, when you’re failing you don’t get to ask for more money,” Woolford said, “you get fired.”