Michigan Education board member claims funding cuts after record funding

A Michigan Department of Education board member decried the lack of funding in public education during a March 11 meeting.

Schools must deal with “significant cuts in funding, which means schools are trying to do at least what they’re doing with less if not trying to do more with less,” said board member Mitchell Robinson.

Robinson said school districts have focused on standardized tests and narrowed the curriculum by cutting subjects such as music and social studies.

“We also need to take a hard look at what standardized testing is doing to the quality of schooling and to how we use those precious dollars that we have,” Robinson said.

The state’s 2025 education budget is a record $34.4 billion, and this comes after the state received $6 billion in federal COVID-19 aid. Its spending on K-12 schooling has increased by 30% since 2013 when adjusted for inflation. This year, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer acknowledged that the state spends more on public education than most states but gets worse results.

“We spend more, and we get less,” Whitmer said during her State of the State address in February. “It’s not acceptable. For our kids, let’s do better. Let’s face our literacy crisis with fierce urgency.”

Whitmer noted that just 24% of 4th graders can read proficiently and that 24% of 8th graders are proficient in math.

While standardized tests are not perfect, they are the best measure of school performance available and they help educators meet their students’ learning needs, Molly Macek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said in an email to Michigan Capitol Confidential.

“Student performance in reading and math is still worse than it was before the pandemic,” Macek wrote. She noted that teacher quality is the most significant factor in student performance as measured by test scores and suggested that schools could invest more in high-quality math and English teachers without sacrificing other curriculum offerings.

Robinson did not respond to an email seeking comment.