Education-related questions that have been rattling around our in-box…
HOW DO WE REWARD GREAT TEACHERS? At a Community Conversation in December, a significant number of Michigan teachers suggested it’s time to end the state’s teacher tenure provisions and figure out a fair system of rewarding top-performing educators with merit pay. Now the Michigan Education Association is open to exploring the topic, the Freep reported this month.
HOW DO WE IMPLEMENT KEY EDUCATION REFORMS — SMALLER CLASS SIZES, EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUATION, ETC. — SUPPORTED BY REAMS OF RESEARCH? A new group called the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education has a few ideas?
COMMUNITY COLLEGES AS CENTERS OF TRANSFORMATION: Community Colleges breathed a sigh of relief this month when they were spared, at least for now, the state budget axe. The new jobs/training program explained below (courtesy of the Michigan Community Colleges Association) helps illustrate why community colleges are so important to the transformation of individual lives and the transformation of the Michigan economy…
Public Acts 359 and 360 of 2008 create the Michigan New Jobs Training Program (MNJTP). This program, designed as an economic development incentive, authorizes community colleges to issue debt on behalf of employers that are creating new jobs and/or expanding operations in Michigan for the purpose of funding job training. The MNJTP provides flexible funding to meet a variety of training and development needs. The assistance ranges from highly specialized and customized training to basic skill development for new jobs. The principal and interest payments on the debt are paid by capturing the incremental increase in the state income tax associated with the new employees’ wages and redirecting it to the college, instead of the state.
The MNJTP offers an incentive for employers creating new jobs or expanding operations in Michigan, while up-skilling the workforce at a very low financial risk to the state. This program has the potential to be a cornerstone of Michigan’s workforce and economic development efforts, with the state’s 28 community colleges collaboratively partnering with state and local economic development, the Michigan Works! Agencies, and the private sector to implement unified strategies for regional growth.
Role of Community Colleges: Community colleges will work with employers creating new jobs to identify training needs, calculate the needed financial support to fund training, determine most appropriate training provider, and draft the project agreements. The agreements will need approval by the community college board of trustees, but will require no review or approval from the State. The employer and community college will jointly file the final agreement with the Department of Treasury, and both will be required to report, at year end, the amount of taxes withheld and submitted to the college in support of the agreement.
The community colleges are able to raise capital by either issuing debt in the form of bonds (by themselves or in a group issuance administered by the Michigan Municipal Bond Authority (MMBA)), or could self-fund loans to employers out of the colleges’ reserves or operating funds. This process is permissive. It would be up to each college to determine the best approach and financing mechanism to raise the training funds. The colleges will administer the training funds, with 15% of the bond/loan proceeds being used for administrative costs and to build the necessary infrastructure and program capacity (staff, curriculum development, technology etc) to effectively serve as regional intermediaries for economic and workforce development.
As a coordinating framework, community colleges will serve employers locating or expanding operations in their designated service area. Approximately half of the state’s geography is served by a community college. Only for the purposes of the Michigan New Jobs Training Program, the entire state’s geography will be divided into 28 community college service areas. This will allow for employers and economic developers to more easily determine which community college should be the lead contact for any particular training agreement. The Michigan Community College Association (MCCA) will play the lead role in working with the presidents to craft a Memorandum of Understanding regarding the determination of the 28 service areas.
Use of Training Funds: Funds may be used to pay for 100% of any direct training expenses including the following: basic adult education; job-related instruction; skills assessment; training equipment; materials and supplies; training services of a community college or another educational institution; testing and evaluation of employees; customized or general instruction at a training facility selected by the employer; reimbursement of training travel costs for employees or company trainers; college tuition, books, and fees; and training services of a private trainer.
Role of the Employers: An employer will first need to hire a specific number of new employees and will then work with its local community college to identify training needs. The employer will enter into an agreement with the community college and will be liable for delivering on the terms of the contract. As previously stated, the employer and the community college will jointly file the final agreement with the Department of Treasury. As a re-payment mechanism, the employer will capture the incremental increase in state income tax due to the new jobs of the employees trained under the program, and will redirect the withholding to the community college, instead of the State. The employer will report to the Department of Treasury, at year end, the amount withheld and submitted to the college in support of the agreement.
Role of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC): The MEDC will work with community colleges to leverage the Michigan New Jobs Training Program as another economic development tool in the overall MEDC arsenal to offer new and expanding businesses in Michigan (along with Economic Development Job Training (EDJT) grants, and other incentives such as the Michigan Economic Growth Authority (MEGA) grants which are aimed at bringing high-paying, technology driven jobs to Michigan).
Role of the Department for Labor and Economic Growth (DLEG): DLEG will work with community colleges to leverage the Michigan New Jobs Training Program in collaborative efforts with the MEDC, the MWAs, and other local/regional stakeholders to meet workforce development needs of businesses creating new jobs in Michigan.
Role of the Michigan Works! Agencies: Michigan Works! Agencies, in their role of providing one-stop access to the major Michigan workforce development programs, will collaborate with community colleges, DLEG, and MEDC to serve the workforce development needs of employers creating new jobs, including listing new jobs thru Michigan Works! and the Talent Bank, and providing recruitment and assessment services for potential new hires.
Role of the Department of Treasury: The Department of Treasury will verify and reconcile, at year end, the employers’ claims against what the community colleges reported receiving from the employers in support of the filed agreements.
Additionally, in the case when community colleges opt to participate in a bond group issuance, the MMBA will administer the bond issuance, but will have no oversight authority over the program. MMBA will only serve the technical function of issuing the bonds.
Security: Community colleges will pledge the revenue from the agreements as first security for the issued debt. Under existing statutory authority, community colleges will make a limited tax general obligation pledge as secondary security.
Managing revenue exposure: The proposed legislation creating the Michigan New Jobs Training Program includes an annual cap ($50 million/per year), an 8-year sunset, as well as annual reporting requirements to the legislature on program outcomes.
One Comment
RE: Key Education Reforms, Backgound Papers
Once again the focus for reform is on factors external to the processes used to educate. Demographics, class size and early educational opportunities. Not surprising since most of the fine research cited has been done by those who are cognitively embedded within the paradigm of current educational practice.
Those capable of this type of research should be looking at the processes being used to educate and their efficacy in terms of beyond K-12/16 outcomes for individual students and the service providers, the teachers. They will discover through examination of Essential Schools and/or Sudbury Model practices, that the what, when, where and how of current practice is where reform must begin.
The industrial model for school operation, loosely based on Frederick Taylor’ scientific management and Henry Ford’s assembly line, create significant educational achievement difficulties for a majority of the educational customer base – the students.
The knowledge delivery system which presumes similiar ages are cognitively and developmentally equivalent; and that all children perceive and digest knowledge in a linear and logical way. Age grading and separation by age group and arbitrary birthday cut offs is just strange. Do that in a workplace.
That math, science, english, history et al exist within isolated silos of knowledge. Most five year olds recognize how separated from reality this delivery is and act accordingly.
Assuming that all children can sit passively for fifty-four minutes enduring a knowledge delivery system designed to support a regimen of standardized testing is at the least a foolish assumption.
Buildings designed to house large numbers of students that must pack up and move, in the fifty-four minute cycle, to a new location with a different instructor for different subject matter; a six minute pass time that doesn’t work in large buildings while dragging a thirty to fifty pound backpack. To all those reading this – just try to do your job this way!
School days defined by the commercial work cycle, ( and the efficient use of transportation resources) not the reality of human biology and development
And a system of “credits” doled out in half units based upon number of hours of seat time, in an “educational” context, in an attempt to achieve a target value of twenty-two/four.
Just where in all of that is the goal of education, instilling our youth with a life long desire to learn?
True reform of these (and many more) educationally dsyfunctional practices does not cost more money, will not require “new” buildings, or more of the rigor, relevance and relationships, especially the “rigor”, that traditional thinkers insist as necessary.
It requires thoughtful reflection on what “is” and a renewed focus on what we are attempting to accomplish with the huge amounts of money we currently dedicate to the educational enterprise.
Simply, we must change our ways of looking at the world and act accordingly.