Jan. 8, 2010

This was a landmark week for Michigan education, with important changes to how we educate our children and new learning opportunities for students in struggling school districts.

On Monday I signed a five-bill legislative package that reforms Michigan's education system and allows the state to compete for up to $400 million in federal Recovery Act funds for our schools through President Obama's Race to the Top initiative

.These reforms include allowing the state to intervene in our lowest-performing schools to help turn them around.  New high-quality charter schools can open if they meet certain standards, and low-performing charter schools will be closed.  And every year, all teachers and administrators will be evaluated on the basis of student academic growth.

I want to commend the legislature for its quick, bipartisan action on these reforms which focus on how we can improve student academic progress.  We now will have a system for measuring academic growth, and every single person in our education system will be accountable for children's academic progress.  The teachers, the principals, the superintendents - all will be accountable.

Helping children progress academically in math and science is the goal of another initiative making news this week, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellowship.  The fellowship was established last fall when the Kellogg Foundation announced its $16.7 million grant to the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.  Over a two-year period, this innovative fellowship will train 240 new teachers to teach science and math in hard-to-staff middle and high schools.

President Obama highlighted the Michigan Teaching Fellowship at a White House education event on Wednesday.  At the event, the president announced the six Michigan universities that were selected to educate these new teachers.  The six are Eastern Michigan, Grand Valley State, Michigan State, U-M, Wayne State and Western Michigan.  These universities will completely redesign their teacher education programs in science and math to train these new teachers, who can be college seniors, recent graduates, people who've changed careers or veteran educators.

The 240 new teachers will teach in the five school districts that serve the cities of Detroit, Grand Rapids, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo and Benton Harbor.  Almost 90,000 students will receive high-quality instruction in math and science from these new teachers during their first three years in the classroom.

The W.K. Kellogg Woodrow Wilson fellowships, the Race to the Top initiative and our state education reforms are transformational for our students, teachers, schools and universities.  All share a common goal: giving children throughout Michigan the world-class education and skills they need to compete in a global economy.

Thank you for listening.