Michigan state superintendent makes legislative requests, as Democrats bash GOP education policies

Updated 6/23/25

Michigan’s teacher shortage and youth reading scores in the bottom third of the nation didn’t manifest overnight and the issues facing the state’s educational system won’t be resolved as such, Michigan State Superintendent Michael Rice told state lawmakers Tuesday.

However, Rice said those issues could remain on an upward trajectory if the Legislature prioritizes schools.

Only recently has the Legislature begun to address the years of underinvestment in Michigan schools, Rice told members of the state Senate Education Committee Tuesday. But the measures the legislature has enacted like new literacy and dyslexia testing and screening laws and the addition of 1,700 school health and safety professionals have already brought the state closer to the eight goals laid out in Michigan’s Top 10 Strategic Education Plan.

“In the last few years, Michigan has improved in a wide range of areas, some of which are at historic levels,” Rice said. “We certainly have quite a bit of room to continue to improve.”

In 2024, Michigan saw a historic high in four-year high school graduation rates at 82.8%, which Rice said has been helped by rigorous secondary school program expansions that among other successes have resulted in the number of students enrolled in career and technical education, or CTE programs, going up 10% in the last three years.

As the state House and Senate will have to collaborate on marrying their separate proposals for K-12 school funding in the creation of the next state budget, Rice thanked the Senate for designating $85 million towards CTE programming in its proposal which he said will help bring programs that dramatically improve post-graduation employment opportunities to districts that need it the most.

The Senate plan also includes increasing the money schools receive per-pupil from $9,608 to $10,008, with half of that increase being mandated to increase teacher pay. 

Rice’s reception by lawmakers in the Democratic-led Senate Education committee Tuesday was far warmer than that of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee earlier this month, where lawmakers grilled Rice on the state’s bottom of the nation fourth grade reading scores.

In order to address the areas in need of improvement in schools, Rice asked senators to consider making Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, or LETRS, training for reading mandatory for kindergarten through 5th grade teachers across the state. 

Rice is also calling for reducing class sizes in high-poverty areas during the first years of education in order to address learning gaps in communities in need of investment.

“I challenge any of you, and for that matter, any member of the Legislature, you go teach 33 young people in third grade,” Rice said. “Our class sizes are too high in early elementary.”

Addressing the mass flight from the education profession Michigan has seen in the last decade is a top priority in improving the health, safety and success of Michigan schools, Rice said.

A picture is worth a thousand words and the picture previous Governor Rick Snyder painted for the teaching profession shows how critical the state’s situation is, Rice said. In 2011, when Snyder, a Republican and staunch critic of public schools, came into office he signed a state budget that cut per-pupil spending by $470. 

Also, when Snyder came into office there were 23,000 young professionals in Michigan preparing for a career in teaching, Rice said. Five years later, as divestments in schools made teaching a less lucrative career, 9,500 students, less than half, were preparing for the teaching profession.

Chair for the Education Committee, Sen. Dayna Polehanki (D-Livonia), said she remembers how bad things got in schools during the Snyder administration as a teacher in Southeast Michigan at the time who actually ended their teaching career during the administration to join the Legislature.

Reflecting on all the challenges schools have faced, including learning loss during the pandemic and the history of underinvestment in Michigan students, Rice noted that there is no one metric of struggle or success that defines public education, but rather the goals outlined in Michigan’s Top 10 Strategic Education Plan are working to slowly divert Michigan from the negative trajectory it has been on for too long.

This story was updated to reflect that Michigan’s reading scores in 2024 were in the bottom third tier of states.