GRANHOLM TO ISSUE BUDGET E.O. NEXT WEEK

Governor Jennifer Granholm said Tuesday that she will issue an executive order to cut the state's 2008-09 budget on Tuesday, May 5, but an agreement on what would be cut and by how much has still yet been reached.

Ms. Granholm met into the early evening at her Capitol office with legislative leaders and Budget Director Bob Emerson on what the agreement would include, but officials exiting the meeting said there was still work to be done.

What is also certain not be in the EO is a provision to cut the entire $785 million the state budget is short so far for this fiscal year.

Senate Appropriations Chair Sen. Ron Jelinek (R-Three Oaks) told reporters that he did not want to put a number to the level of cuts that could be in the executive order because no agreement has been reached, and more research needs to be done on potential cuts.

"We need to do more research on how the numbers will affect things," he said.

But all parts of the budget are on the table for action, he said, even though the federal stimulus money will be used to help balance the current year's budget.

At an education summit (see related story) Ms. Granholm told attendees that the state will have to cut the important things to preserve the essential in the state's budget.

She also indicated she has told her budget team to try to preserve those things that will help diversify the state's economy and will help boost the number of college graduates in the state.

The required five-day notice that a budget cutting executive order will be issued was released to legislators on Tuesday.

Sources said Ms. Granholm has decided to move ahead with an EO, even without an agreement at this time, in order to keep advancing the process of balancing the state's budget, as well as help move negotiations forward.

GRANHOLM WARNS EDUCATORS OF TOUGH TIMES TO COME

The state still has its goal of doubling the number of college graduates.   But that will have to come despite less funding for education, Governor Jennifer Granholm told the Governor's Education Summit in Lansing on Tuesday.

Ms. Granholm said the state has programs designed to get both youth and adults through college or trade school programs.   And she unveiled a new website to give students and their parents access to more information about college options and financing.

"The bottom line is we've got to get all these kids to go beyond high school," she said.   "The question is how do we shake these kids and make them understand that the world has changed."

But she warned that the state funding to support that education at all levels will at least not be what educators would like.   "I hope you're not discouraged by the challenges the budget will present," she said. "We are going to have to cut the important to fund the essential."

Ms. Granholm said the effort to increase the number of college graduates would continue to be a focus for the administration, but was not on the list of things that would not be touched as part of budget balancing efforts.   What was on that protected list, she said, was the social safety net and efforts to diversify the economy.

"In every way we are trying to fund the means to double the number of college graduates," she said.

Where there still will be money in the process, she said, was the tuition support through the various state scholarships, the new Michigan Promise Zones and, for adults, the No Worker Left Behind program.

"There should be no excuses left for kids who might not otherwise be able to afford it," she said.

The new Michigan College Access Network website is designed to further assist in that effort to get people into higher education by providing a single portal for comparing various programs and for finding financial aid, Ms. Granholm said.

"We wanted to make sure it accessible and communities can use it to get kids to go to college," she said.

The network also released a report Tuesday showing, based on surveys and interviews, that Michigan has substantial racial gaps in both high school and college graduation and that the state is below the national average for college graduation for all racial groups.

The report also found that students were not prepared academically or financially for college and that the state had to create more links between high schools and higher education.

"There is significant opportunity to create an early and sustainable impact for Michigan youth by providing them with the promise of financial access to college, and the knowledge and tools to become 'college ready'," the report said.

Among the recommendations in the report is having college readiness programs reach students before high school.   "Expanding the capacity of programs to reach these students at this critical time would greatly improve their likelihood of being prepared for and aspiring to college," the report said.

It also called for statewide efforts to create college access programs, particularly in areas not currently served by some kind of community scholarship fund.

But even with the college efforts, Ms. Granholm acknowledged a substantial gap remains.   While No Worker Left Behind has provided training for 61,000 residents, the state has lost some 700,000 jobs since 2000.

And she expected it would be some time before the state's job market would recover.   "The last thing employers do is make a commitment to hire because they want to make sure it's going to last," she said.

In the end, though, the economy will recover and people will go back to work, she said.   "We are redefining Michigan and we're going to be all right," she said.

HAYCOCK: MICHIGAN SCHOOLS ARE FAILING AND IT'S THEIR FAULT

Michigan schools are, in general, struggling relative to the rest of the nation and the world.   And if they want to change that, they have to stop blaming race and poverty and take the steps needed to improve, said Kati Haycock, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Education Trust, at the 2009 Governor's Education Summit in Lansing on Tuesday.

The summit focused on efforts to get more students prepared for and into college, and Ms. Haycock said doing that in Michigan will mean expecting more from students and teachers and making the changes in schools and curricula to allow them to meet those expectations.

While she said poverty and race have been correlated to poor performance, schools and teachers also traditionally expect less of those groups that historically performed below average.

"There is no way you can blame our performance on poor kids, kids of color or the schools that serve them," Ms. Haycock said.   "What schools do matters hugely. ...What colleges do turns out to matter as well."

"We appreciate the honesty but we've got work to do," said Governor Jennifer Granholm of Ms. Haycock's presentation, which had been provided earlier at a cabinet meeting.   "We had just come off patting ourselves on the back for the MEAP scores."

"We know we have to deal with all kinds of problems and many kids come to school without the proper support from home, but they're at school and what we do there can transform their lives," said State Board of Education President Kathleen Straus (D-Detroit).

The schools that are performing well for low-income and minority students are looking beyond the traditional performance correlations and concentrating on the things they can do to improve achievement, Ms. Haycock said.   And she said there are colleges and universities making similar efforts to improve their graduation rates above schools serving similar populations.

"The schools that really work succeed by focusing like a laser on the things they can do, things they can change, not by wasting a lot of energy on the things they can't," she said.   "They don't leave anything about teaching or learning to chance."

And she said there are performance gains across the nation.   "What you're seeing is improvement for all groups of kids and faster improvement for groups of kids that have been behind," she said.   "When we focus on something as a nation, we make progress."

Those gains, however, are largely lost when students hit high school, she said.

And Ms. Haycock said on national assessments, Michigan students are largely behind their national counterparts, with poor and minority students substantially behind on many measures.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan argued in many cases schools and districts still do not understand where they stand in relation to other schools or the rest of the world.

"You have to have clarity about what your record is because if you don't know where you stand you can't improve," Mr. Flanagan said.

And he said even the state has contributed to the problem.   While the state curriculum and Michigan Educational Assessment Program has sufficiently high standards, he said the department has in recent years set artificially low cut scores because not all students have been exposed to the curriculum needed to meet the standards.

He warned those cut scores will go up in the future, potentially meaning more students will drop from the ranks of proficiency.

Ms. Haycock said many school officials have argued that recent data showing the United States falling behind other developed countries on student performance is the result of factors outside its control, like the percentage of students allowed to go onto high school and levels of poor and minority students in its schools.   But she said changes in other nations have negated many of those arguments.

She said the United States is now 17^th in the percentage of students it sends through traditional high school programs, down from first.

The one area the nation does excel, and not a compliment, is it is second among 29 nations for the gap between higher income and lower income students.

"The gap between our top kids and bottom kids is among the largest in the world," she said.   "Rather than organize our education system in this country to ameliorate that problem, we actually organize the education system to exacerbate that problem.   It turns out we take the kids who arrive at school behind and give them less of everything."

"Unless you and I are prepared to argue that children from high income families are more than eight times as smart then something's wrong with education system because that is precisely the result we're getting," she said, pointing to differences in college attendance and graduation.   She said some 75 percent of upper income students have a bachelor's degree by age 24 compared to 9 percent of lower income students.

And Mr. Flanagan said all parties in the schools have to take responsibility for action.   "I'm not sure we together are understanding that, whether it's unions or management or boards, that we need to get together or we're going down," he said.   "We need to focus on student achievement."

Push will also come from the state for changes in local operations and performance, Mr. Flanagan said.   "I plan to use every authority I have the next few years to have change happen," he said.

Using that authority will include sending in more financial managers where school districts cannot get their budgets in balance, he said.

Mr. Flanagan urged schools to participate in his reimagining schools project.   While only a few schools will be selected as demonstration programs highlighted by the state and potentially having easier access to federal stimulus money, he said all schools need to realize they are going to have to operate in a new economy with new parameters.

"This is why you have to reimagine: because you can't fund the current system and you deserve more money but there won't be any more money," he said.

Among the examples he raised of reimagining the system was the extra pay teachers receive for having advanced degrees.

"There's no evidence to support that paying extra for a master's degree has any impact on student achievement, but that's the system," he said.

He did not call for districts to eliminate that extra pay to save money, but he did recommend that, going forward, districts look at ways to provide additional pay for teacher's efforts that do improve student learning.

But he also said he would be willing to offer waivers to some state requirements for innovative programs, like allowing high school certified teachers to teach in elementary schools to move up language programs.

"The kids will learn language better" in earlier grades, he said.   And "the band parents are going to kill you when you can't fit in band and the requirement for language hits."

While he agreed that all children can learn and high standards for all are appropriate, Doug Pratt with the Michigan Education Association said the state was not likely to see as much improvement as needed without additional funding to education.   Current funding levels are leaving many districts without the resources they need to be sure students and teachers have proper materials like textbooks.

But Ms. Haycock argued that was yet another excuse for inaction.   "It then makes the achievement gap not about us; it makes it about those policy makers," she said.   "It flows not from choices policy makers make but choices that we as educators make."

TENURE:  Despite his April 1 announcement (an April Fool's announcement that he had found a better job and was leaving the department), Mr. Flanagan indicated Tuesday that he planned to be around awhile longer to follow up on the efforts he has already led.

"I hope to be involved through at least the first term of the next governor to make some of the changes that we urgently need happen or we're going down," he said.