In every classroom across our great state--from Monroe to Manistee and Mt. Pleasant to Marquette--every Michigan student deserves access and opportunity to the educational resources and support to realize a bright future. Yet for too long, Michigan's education system has served as an engine of inequality when it should be providing opportunities…

Non-compliance is a challenge for practitioners serving children with and without disabilities. Many interventions have been developed to increase compliance. High-probability request sequences (HPRS), an antecedent-based intervention that is based on behavioral momentum theory, is one way to increase compliant behavior. HPRS includes the…

This book uses the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as a touchstone for the importance and value of including place-based education in the social studies curriculum. Whitlock scrutinizes this local environmental issue to not only drive critical inquiry in the classroom, but also to show how the curriculum can propel valuable social change in the…

This report focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic in the Kalamazoo Public Schools District in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which closed its doors to students from mid-March 2020 to June 2021. During this time, instruction transitioned from face-to-face to virtual, with students having three options for virtual instruction. In addition to individual KPS student…

Almost every state in the United States has revamped its principal evaluation policies since 2009, yet we know little about how they are implemented. Based on interviews and document analysis in 21 small- and medium-sized school districts, we found that superintendents' sensemaking shaped their implementation of policy. Drawing on their beliefs…

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically disrupted the functioning of U.S. public schools, potentially changing the relative appeal of alternatives such as homeschooling and private schools. We study changes in families' choices of school sector using longitudinal student-level administrative data from Michigan and nationally representative data from the…

For more than a quarter century, Michigan public schools have been financed under a structure commonly known as Proposal A. This funding system's greater dependence on using state revenue to finance an enrollment-based funding formula has led to greater parity among districts over time and fueled more publicly supported schooling options for…

As part of integrated instruction, educators aim to efficiently and simultaneously address learning goals across multiple subject areas like English language arts (ELA) and science or social studies. While studies are beginning to show that this instructional approach can be effective, it is challenging to implement in practice, requiring that…

There is empirical evidence of substantial heterogeneity in economic mobility across geographic areas and the efficacy of schools has been suggested as an explanatory factor. Using administrative microdata from seven states covering nearly 3 million students, we explore the potential role of schools in promoting economic mobility by estimating…

Effective school leaders focus on identifying the changes needed to improve student learning. However, school improvement is often reduced to a checklist of compliance activities, and, consequently, achievement gaps continue to stay the status quo, or even widen. This paper reports on a qualitative case study analyzing how professional learning…

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of master of music education degree program directors and alumni from selected schools regarding the ways in which their music education master's programs balance the varied needs of program participants. Findings are presented in the two broad categories of improvement in P-12 teacher…

This report explains how Michigan could pursue a flexible funding program that would give learners greater agency, especially for middle-school and secondary students and their families. Charting a path to complete a diploma, every student would be allowed to use a portion of their per-pupil allotment to "purchase" courses from schools…

This exploratory, descriptive study examined trends associated with Kalamazoo Promise (KPromise) student stop out, reenrollment, and persistence to a credential upon reenrollment. For the 2006-2017 cohorts, 78% were retained from first to second year. Inferential models suggested that first-year stop out was mainly correlated to students' high…

The incorporation of professional development (PD) activities for PK-12 teachers has long served to advance competency in the profession. With changes in requirements for continued teacher certification, student performance, and state-level testing, superintendents are faced with maximizing PD opportunities of their faculty. This primary…

On February 24, 2017, all of the authors of the state-of-the-state manuscripts published in the "Journal of Education Finance" met in Cincinnati, Ohio, to participate in a roundtable discussion focused on recent legislative actions in 38 states. A majority of those papers were revised to reflect a final report on legislative actions…