Let’s have a cheer for Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, who comes from Clarklake, a town in Jackson County. There have been far more “snow days” than usual this year, and Michigan public schools are required by law to provide at least 180 days or 1,098 hours of classroom instruction. This year, in most districts, that’ll mean keeping school in session longer.
Unless, of course, the lawmakers take the easy way out and pass a bill allowing the schools to ignore the requirements this year. That’s what they did after another harsh winter in 2013; they were allowed to schedule longer days instead. If you remember your high school days, you probably know just how little learning went on the last hour of the day.
Now, there’s a move to do it again. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whose early policy moves have been near-flawless, said on Grand Rapids TV station that she was willing to forgive snow days that occurred during a recent state of emergency there – though it isn’t clear if she meant for the entire state. Meanwhile, a number of legislators in both parties, from liberal Jim Ananich, the state senate minority leader, to a couple conservative Republicans in the House, are drafting bills to allow schools statewide to either not have to make up the days, or add extra hours again.
What’s going on, of course, is that families have scheduled vacations, camping trips, etc. And some kids are planning on going off to camp or other excursions. Adding days to the school calendar would inconvenience them – and the teachers too.
But not nearly as much as being poorly educated would inconvenience them, and all of us, in the long run. Senator Shirkey gets it. As he told the Detroit Free Press, “I feel sorry for what we are enduring from a weather standpoint this year,” he said, adding “But I’m not really interested in taking more school days away from our kids.”
Noting that Michigan students have been falling farther and farther beyond in areas like statewide tests, he said “They need all the school days we can get.”
He’s certainly right about that. We are falling behind much of the rest of the world for a number of reasons, but education is certainly one. Costa Rica, which spends considerably more of their GDP on education than we do, has a much higher literacy rate.
In Japan, most kids go to more school after school. Chilean students spend the most amount of time in class of anyone in South America, and also have the highest reading and math scores on of any Latin American nation. That isn’t an accident.
But just keeping kids in class longer doesn’t mean much if you don’t have good teachers. The highly regarded Citizens Research Council of Michigan has a new report, “Michigan’s Leaky Teacher Pipeline,” which shows that while we don’t have a teacher shortage yet, there are ominous signs on the horizon. While the teaching workforce is sinking slightly faster than the number of students is falling in our aging state, the real problem is retaining good teachers.
One-sixth of newly certified Michigan teachers are leaving the profession within five years after they start, a rate higher than the national average. That may not be surprising, given that Republican legislators have waged war on teachers and their unions in recent years.
Eric Lupher, president of the Citizens’ Research Council, wisely thinks lawmakers should concentrate on efforts to retain the teachers we have now. But the problem goes beyond that; what they need to do is make a serious commitment to education, whatever it takes.
Intellectual infrastructure is every bit as important as our physical one. We need to fix the schools as well as the roads, if we are ever to save this state.
