From the Office of the Governor

by Jennifer M. Granholm, Governor of Michigan

On April 14, 2003, I announced a new partnering effort with schools, businesses, and community organizations to take urgent action to help turn around “high-priority” Michigan schools. This partnership represents every sector of Michigan united by one goal: to help Michigan’s children succeed. Children are the future of this state. The children in low performing schools need our help now. Through the work of this partnership, the entire Michigan community is responding to their call for help.

For the first time, the State Board of Education, local school districts, intermediate school districts, private businesses, the faith community, social service organizations, teacher unions, state government, the Department of Education, and the foundation community have joined forces to help low-performing schools achieve academic success for all of their children. The partnership comes on the heels of the Michigan Department of Education’s release of a statewide accounting of schools that have not met goals for adequate yearly progress (AYP) as required by the new federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law.

We believe in high standards—not only for our schools, but for our state. We want Michigan to be the best place in the country to raise a family, so we are doing whatever it takes to make sure all our students master reading and math—the gateway skills that open up a world of opportunity to learn and, later, to earn.

The 1,990 Michigan schools that have achieved state goals for reading and math, the staff who work in them, and the parents who support them, deserve our praise. These schools represent positive proof of our schools’ capacity for success. The 216 schools that did not make adequate progress are now our state’s highest priority. We see precisely which schools are hurting, so we can precisely target appropriate resources. We must focus our efforts to improve education by first improving these “high-priority” schools.

A school principal is the leader of learning in each school building. By the end of this school year, each “high-priority” school will submit a rigorous, detailed AYP Achievement Plan to the Michigan Department of Education for approval. In May 2003, nearly 90 percent of the principals from the 216 schools that failed to meet AYP attended the state’s first Principals Academy to turn around our “high-priority” schools.

Principals who attended the academy continue to receive intensive guidance in both developing a specific turn-around plan for their schools and in implementing that plan with their building-level staff. In return for their participation in these academies, the partnership will, in turn, lend its resources to those principals and schools that take immediate action to begin the schools’ turnaround:

• The state’s new Children’s Action Network will focus coordinated, improved social service delivery
• Local businesses and/or faith organizations will offer support
• Great Lakes, Great Hopes scholarship program will provide scholarship money
• Mentor Michigan will find mentors for children in these schools

There will be a broad support system in place to aid each school by the time school begins again in the fall. Please join us as we continue to support the outstanding work of the teachers, principals, support staff, parents, and students in our neighborhood public schools.