An annual snapshot of child wellbeing shows most metrics in Michigan continue to decline, with education slipping three spots in a ranking among states since last year.
The 36th Kids Count Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation released Monday shows Michigan ranks in the bottom half of states in three out of four categories of child wellbeing, with the Great Lakes State ranked 44th overall for education.
“Education has consistently been our lowest ranking domain among the four key domains that the Annie E. Casey Foundation evaluates, pointing to the continued, urgent need for our state leaders to do more to support Michigan students,” Monique Stanton, President of the Michigan League for Public Policy, the state member organization for the study, said in a statement cited by Michigan Advance.
Michigan’s education ranking, down three spots from 41st in 2024, shows the percentage of fourth graders not proficient in reading has jumped to 74%, while eight graders not proficient in math is at 76%.
Those metrics were 68% and 69%, respectively, when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took office in 2019. The percentage of high school graduates not graduating on time has remained the same since 2018-19, while the percentage of young children not in school has increased to 56% from 53% in 2014-18.
The annual Data Book uses national and state data from 16 indicators in four domains – economic well-being, education, health, and family and community factors – and ranks states overall, and in each of the four domains.
Michigan ranked 33rd overall, one spot better than in 2024, based on an improvement in its rank for economic wellbeing from 31st to 28th, while family and community slid one spot to 29th and health remained the same in 22nd.
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The shifts in the rankings, however, belie trends with indicators, with both children living in households with high housing cost burden and teens not in school and not working both worse in the economic wellbeing domain than in the 2024 Kids Count Data Book.
Health metrics including low birth-weight babies, child deaths per 100,000, and children and teens who are oversight or obese were also worse than the 2024 report, despite the health domain ranking remaining the same.
Family and community was the only domain where Michigan showed improvement, with the percent of children in single-parent families improving one percentage point to 34%, children living in high-poverty areas declining three percentage points to 11%, and teen births per 1,000 declining from 15 to 11.
“While there were some bright spots in this year’s national data from the Casey Foundation, there are also ample opportunities for our state and federal lawmakers to be doing more for kids and families in our state,” said Stanton.
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The continued decline of education outcomes in Michigan has renewed calls from some to increase education funding, despite record education budgets eclipsing $20 billion in recent years and declining student enrollment in public schools.
Lawmakers on the Michigan House Oversight Committee last week grilled Board of Education President Pamela Pugh and Superintendent of Public Instruction Michael Rice over the rapid decline in education since Whitmer took office, a problem created by the governor’s edicts during the pandemic that shuttered schools to in-person learning for nearly a year.
Pugh and Rice, both Democrats, blamed the situation on funding, poverty and class sizes, and called for a massive infusion of taxpayer cash to improve.
“We’ve been increasing funding for education by immense rates,” Rep. Brad Paquette, R-Niles, told the education leaders. “We see the headlines we’re going down (in student performance), and it’s the same slideshow” from state education leaders.
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“When does accountability come into play?” he said. “All we’re hearing is stay the course … and that’s problematic.”
“In the real world, when you’re failing you don’t get to ask for more money,” Rep. Jason Woolford, R-Howell, told Rice and Pugh, “you get fired.”
The call for more cash aligns with a statewide campaign from the left-leaning Michigan Education Justice Coalition that’s gearing up to demand another $1 billion from taxpayers for education spending on the 2026 ballot.
Launched under the guise of pushing back against changes in federal education policy, the effort has since morphed into a demand for an undefined “fully funded” public education system.
“I think we’re just seeing the writing on the wall that education funding is in a crisis in Michigan and in other places,” MEJC Director Rachelle Crow-Hercher told MLive. “And this is something that we can do to at least help stop the bleeding.”
The reality is Michiganders pay about double for education in 2025 than they did 2000 – $20 billion versus $10 billion – to educate about 300,000 fewer students in the state’s K-12 public schools.
And while the coalition bills itself as a grassroots effort led by students and educators, a review of the organizations behind the effort reveals it’s anything but.
Both AFT Michigan and the Michigan Education Association, the state affiliates of the nation’s largest teachers unions, are key supports of MEJC, along with nearly three dozen other progressive activist groups focused on a variety of special interests, from “racial equity,” to “economic justice,” to transgender issues.
The MEJC’s platform demands a minimum of $4 million to ensure resources for students that include a “culturally-affirming curriculum’; raises for school employees; additional counselors, psychologists, and social workers; and “ongoing professional development for educators in transformative justice.”
The MEJC wants to “mandate ongoing professional development for all school staff on confronting and dismantling systemic racism in education and unintentional biases,” while putting students in charge of important decisions, from voting rights on school boards, to abolishing dress codes, to giving students “a say in how their education system functions, including academic curriculum, strategies to address students psychological safety, and how funds are spent within their districts.”
The coalition is crafting petitioning language to present to the state board of canvassers as soon as this month, while working to train 7,000 signature-gatherers with the hope of collecting 700,000 signatures to put its proposal on the 2026 ballot, MLive reports.
The plan is to punish the most successful in the state to generate up to $1 billion a year through a graduated income tax that’s currently prohibited by the Michigan Constitution.
Alternatively, the “babies over billionaires” proposal would add a roughly 5% surcharge on Michigan residents who earn over $500,000 per year, or more than $1 million for couples.