“Donald and Kirk are terrific additions to the Michigan Future Inc. board of directors. Their combined experience and wealth of knowledge will be a great resource to our team,” said Michigan Future Inc. President Lou Glazer. “We are excited to have Donald and Kirk join the board.”

Profit is as an attorney at Profit Legal Services, PLLC, a law firm he opened to pursue his passion of helping the Washtenaw County community. Prior to opening Profit Legal Services, PLLC, Profit spent 25 years as the co-owner of Michigan lobbying firm Governmental Consultant Services Inc. (GSCI), and served in the Michigan House of Representatives for ten years, where he chaired the Tax Policy and Higher Education committees and passed prominent bipartisan legislation like increasing education funding and environmental protections.

Rencher serves as the president and CEO of the Hudson-Webber Foundation, a private, independent grantmaking organization working to improve the quality of life in Detroit by supporting organizations and institutions that move the city forward, having contributed more than $200 million to various Detroit nonprofit organizations. Prior to joining the foundation, Rencher was the group executive for housing, planning and development and the director of housing and revitalization for the City of Detroit, where he developed policy and investment strategies that resulted an investment of more than $1 billion in the preservation and creation of affordable housing units.

“Donald and Kirk bring invaluable expertise and insight to the Michigan Future Inc. board of directors. We eagerly welcome Donald and Kirk to our board,” said Nick Khouri, chair of the Michigan Future Inc. board of directors.

Profit and Rencher join the Michigan Future Inc. board of directors alongside Sandy Baruah, president and CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber; Paul Hillegonds, former president of the Michigan Health Endowment Fund; Nick Khouri, retired state treasurer; Peter MacGregor, Kent County treasurer; Angelique Power, president and CEO of the Skillman Foundation; and Dale Robertson, president and CEO of the Grand Rapids Public Museum.

The post Michigan Future Inc. adds Kirk Profit and Donald Rencher to board of directors appeared first on Michigan Future Inc..

“With Michigan’s new focus on becoming a more prosperous state, one that attracts and retains young talent, we looked to the report we issued in 2004 to see how our analysis held up over time, which we found it did – and with severe implications,” said Lou Glazer, president of Michigan Future, Inc. “Michigan needs to change how it approaches economic development if it wants to be a  prosperous state again.”

The 2004 report outlined a paradigm-altering analysis of what mattered most for state and regional prosperity. The report found that manufacturing –– although still an important and valuable component of the Michigan labor market –– was no longer a driver of growth or prosperity. The path to prosperity had become the knowledge economy. Michigan needed to concentrate more on knowledge-based industries and to do that it needed to attract and retain more young, college-educated adults.

Unfortunately, 20 years later, that shift has not occurred. Instead, if each state’s personal income per capita grew over the next 23 years at the same rate that it did between 1999 and 2022, Michigan would end up as the 48th poorest state in the country by 2045, just above Alabama and Mississippi.

“When we first compiled the data in 2004, we feared that without a recognition of the new drivers of prosperity, we risked falling behind,” said Donald Grimes, an economist at the Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics, part of the Department of Economics in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan. “Nothing really changed and Michigan is now one of the nation’s poorest states.”

Michigan’s per capita income in 2022 was 13 percent below the national average, the lowest Michigan has been compared to the nation since the data was first compiled in 1929. This is the opposite of where Michigan was in the 20th Century when the state was structurally a relatively high prosperity state. In 1999, Michigan ranked 16th in per capita income, slightly below the national average.

The report, both the first and second editions, compares low-education attainment manufacturing as an engine of economic growth with high-paying, knowledge-based industries, such as information, financial activities, professional and technical services, and management of companies.

The researchers say that knowledge-based industries and young professionals will be the most important drivers of future economic growth and communities with high concentrations of both are quite likely to be most prosperous.

“I said this when the report was issued in 2004 and I’ll say it again: the best use of policymakers’ time and attention with respect to the economy would come from developing a new agenda on how best to grow a knowledge-based economy in Michigan,” Glazer added. “If Michigan doesn’t become competitive in the knowledge economy, it will be one of the poorest states. Michigan policymakers must change their approach to the knowledge economy if they want to turn our economic decline around.”

To view the updated second edition of ‘A New Path to Prosperity? Manufacturing and Knowledge-Based Industries As Drivers of Economic Growth’, click here. For more information about Michigan Future, Inc., visit www.michiganfuture.org.

The post Two decades later, report finds that knowledge workers, not factory jobs, remain key to prosperity appeared first on Michigan Future Inc..

“We’re devastated at the passing of our friend and colleague Kathy Wilbur. Her decades of being an advocate for higher education and making Michigan a better place for all have been felt far and wide. While we are grieving the loss of Kathy, we will be forever grateful for the incomparable leadership she provided our organization to develop and fight for big change that would improve the well-being of all Michiganders. Our thoughts are with her family at this difficult time and we hope that as we move forward we can honor her legacy by continuing to work on the issues she so fully believed in.”

The Michigan Future, Inc. board of directors include: Sandy Baruah, Lou Glazer, Paul Hillegonds, Nick Khouri, Peter MacGregor, Angelique Power, and Dale Robertson. Staff includes Patrick Cooney and Donna Lasinski.

The post Statement on the passing of Kathleen M. Wilbur appeared first on Michigan Future Inc..

Michigan was a 20th Century high-prosperity state. Now we are a 21st Century low-prosperity state. Ranking 39th in per capita income, 13 percent below the national average in 2022. This is the lowest Michigan has been compared to the nation ever.

This is not a partisan issue. This decline has happened under both Republican and Democratic administrations and control of the legislature.

The core reason for this unprecedented collapse in economic well-being is that the Michigan economy has too many low-wage jobs. A state that once attracted people from across the planet to get high-paid jobs is now a state with median wages nearly ten percent below the nation’s. Six in ten Michigan jobs pay less than what is required for a family of three to be middle class.

What we have been doing to increase the economic well-being of Michiganders has not worked. A small course correction will not be sufficient––transformational change in our approach to the economy and education is required if we are to achieve an economy that as it grows benefits all.

In today’s economy, the reality is talent attracts capital and quality of place attracts talent. The most consistent predictor of a state’s economic success is the share of its adults––particularly young adults––with a B.A. or more.

Where young talent goes, high-growth, high-wage, knowledge-based enterprises follow, expand, and are created. Because talent is the asset that matters most to high-wage employers and is in the shortest supply, the new path to prosperity is concentrated talent.

Transformative placemaking should be the driving force for successful economic development. The key to growing high-wage jobs in Michigan is attracting college-educated members of Generation Z after they finish their education. Michigan cannot get prosperous again until and unless we become a talent magnet for these young people. Focusing on traditional economic development priorities while failing to concentrate young talent in the state will ensure Michigan remains a permanently low-prosperity state.

Because young talent is the most mobile, economic development policies should be squarely focused on creating the kinds of places where highly-educated young people want to live and work. Attracting and retaining highly-educated young people is the state’s primary economic imperative––both keeping the young talent that grows up here and attracting young talent from any place on the planet.

For the first time we have data on where 26-year-olds lived when they were 16 by regions that include every county in America. The data is for those who turned 26 between 2010 and 2018.

About 30 percent of all 26-year-olds moved regions from where they lived as 16-year-olds. About 40 percent of those who grew up in top quintile households––which unfortunately is a good surrogate for those with a B.A. or more––moved regions. The bigger the metro, the more who stay.

The higher the parents’ income, the more who leave. Michigan regions look basically the same as the nation in terms of the percent of young adults who did not move. What distinguishes us big time is the small proportion of those who moved in.

Each of the top eight have more top quintile movers than the entire state of Michigan. Of the one million Black young adult movers Atlanta is by far first. Houston is second. Detroit is 35th. Grand Rapids does not make the top 100. We may think of Detroit as America’s leading Black city. Black young adults don’t.

So, what can we learn from this data that can help inform our efforts to attract young talent to Michigan?

The basic story is movers are moving to big metros with vibrant central cities which by and large are high-cost places with high amenities. This is true for all movers irrespective of education attainment.

Young people, and highly educated young people in particular, are flocking to major metropolitan areas anchored by vibrant central cities. These young people are seeking out central cities that feature dense, walkable, activity-rich neighborhoods.

The places that they are moving to are not low tax places and they are most definitely not low housing cost places. Nor are they places with high standardized tests scores or places with affordable, abundant childcare. They are not particularly warm weather places, nor are they particularly southern. And they are in both red and blue states.

So, what are the core characteristics of the places where young adults movers are concentrating? Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg got it exactly right when he wrote in a 2012 Financial Times op-ed:

“For cities to have sustained success, they must compete for the grand prize: intellectual capital and talent. I have long believed that talent attracts capital far more effectively and consistently than capital attracts talent. Economists may not say it this way but the truth of the matter is: being cool counts. When people can find inspiration in a community that also offers great parks, safe streets and extensive mass transit, they vote with their feet.”

Tami Door, then-CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership, and the architect of the city’s leading-edge placemaking economic development strategy, also got it right when she wrote in 2012: “Mountains and oceans have become secondary to downtown amenities.” In 2005, just after passage of a 98-mile regional light rail transit plan, Denver with the mountains was the home of 45,000 young professionals. Today with great transit and one of America’s most vibrant central cities Denver has 110,00 young professionals. Great cities trump great natural resources.

Despite conventional wisdom to the contrary, young professionals post pandemic are not fleeing big cities. The places where young adult movers were moving to prior to the pandemic are the same places where young professionals are concentrated post pandemic. In 2021, New York City was the home of 773,000 25–34-year-olds with a B.A. or more. Chicago is 3rd nationally and a Great Lakes best with 307,000 young professionals. All ten of the top ten cities for top quartile movers are the home in 2021 of at least 100,000 young professionals. By comparison, the city of Detroit has 20,000, the city of Grand Rapids 22,000 and Ann Arbor 18,000.

Michigan’s current economic development playbook focused largely on business attraction is endangering the long-term health of our economy and the economic well-being of households because it does not incorporate the value of place.

To create a Michigan with lots of good-paying career opportunities we need to strengthen and create more vibrant neighborhoods in our cities that can attract and retain young talent.

For Michigan to become a high-prosperity state once again, we need great schools along with great cities.

More specifically, we need to increase the share of young Michiganders who pursue and complete a four-year degree.

Since most of the young adults who live in Michigan will be raised here, for the foreseeable future they will largely determine Michigan’s talent concentrations. Nearly three quarters of Michigan payroll jobs that pay $80,000 or more are in professional and managerial occupations that require a four-year degree. So, the more Michigan students who have a B.A. or more the better able the state will be to grow high-wage jobs.

Maybe more importantly, increasing the share of young non-affluent Michiganders who pursue and complete a four-year degree is––by far––the most powerful lever for expanding economic opportunity. Increasing four-year degree completion rates for non-affluent students is now an economic imperative.

We are on the opposite track at the moment. The education that is provided affluent students is, by and large, designed and executed differently than it is for non-affluent kids. One system delivers a broad college prep–dare we say liberal arts–education designed to prepare students for a successful forty-year career; the other is designed to deliver an increasingly narrow education built around developing discipline, teaching to what is on the test and narrowly preparing non-affluent children for a first job.

As you would expect, these two systems get the results they are designed to get.

The Federal Reserve found that among individuals aged 22-29, 72 percent of those with at least one parent holding a bachelor’s degree also possess a B.A. In contrast, only 35 percent of those in the same age group, whose parents have some college education but neither has a bachelor’s degree, have attained a B.A. Further, only 19 percent of individuals aged 22-29, whose both parents have a high school degree or less, have achieved a B.A.

All of this adds up to the reality that there are two high-impact levers available to state policymakers to reverse Michigan’s decades-long economic well-being decline:

• First, create transit-rich, vibrant central cities that are competitive with America’s young adult talent magnet regions.
• Second, create schooling from birth through college that substantially increases Michigan student’s four-year degree attainment.

If you do not concentrate college-educated Generation Z here, and do not substantially increase four-year degree attainment of Michigan students – Michigan will continue to get poorer compared to the rest of the nation.

Getting younger and better educated requires making bold public investments in place and education––the drivers of today’s economy. The alternative is clear: Michigan will continue to get older and poorer.

The post Michigan’s Prosperity Will Be Generation Z Driven appeared first on Michigan Future Inc..

In the 20th Century, Michigan was a high-prosperity state. Now we are a 21st Century low-prosperity state. Ranking 38th in per capita income, 13% below the national average in 2022, see line graph below. This is the lowest Michigan has been in per capita income compared to the nation ever. The core reason for this unprecedented collapse in economic well-being is that the Michigan economy has too many low-wage jobs. A state that once attracted people from across the planet to get high-paid jobs is now a state with median wages nearly 10% below the nation’s median wage. Six in ten Michigan jobs pay less than what is required for a family of three to be middle class.

That decline is due in large part to choices Michigan has made: focused on trying to make an old economy work again. It’s the old economy that made Michigan prosperous in the past, but it no longer exists, no matter how much you try to revive it. That old economy vision and strategy, if continued, will insure that Michigan remains a low-prosperity state with a high proportion of households struggling to pay for necessities.

Michigan can return to high-prosperity – a place where all who work hard can pay the bills and save for their retirement and the kids’ education. But that requires a willingness to make big changes in state policy. A small course correction to our economic and education agendas will not be sufficient – transformational change in both is required if we are to restore Michigan to high-prosperity.

Over three decades of rigorous data analysis shows that in today’s economy, talent attracts capital and quality of place attracts talent. The most consistent predictor of a state’s economic success is the share of its adults – particularly young adults – with a four-year degree. Where young talent goes, high-growth, high-wage, knowledge-based enterprises follow, expand, and are created. Because talent is the asset that matters most to high-wage employers and is in the shortest supply, the new path to prosperity is concentrated talent – and the key to concentrating talent is vibrant communities.

Transformative placemaking should be the driving force for successful economic
development. The key to growing high-wage jobs is attracting college-educated members of Generation Z. Michigan cannot get prosperous again until and unless we become a talent magnet for these young people. Focusing on traditional economic development priorities while failing to concentrate young talent in the state will ensure Michigan remains a permanently low-prosperity state.

Because young talent is the most mobile, economic development policies should be squarely focused on creating the kinds of places where highly-educated young people want to live and work. Attracting and retaining highly-educated young people is the state’s primary economic imperative – both keeping the young talent that grows up here and attracting young talent from any place on the planet.

The data show that highly-educated young people are increasingly concentrating in regions that are transit rich with vibrant central cities. Every high-prosperity state that is not energy extraction driven has at least one metropolitan area anchored by a vibrant central city where
both the region and the city have a high proportion of young adults with a B.A. or more.

Michigan’s current economic development playbook focused largely on business attraction is endangering the long-term health of our economy and the economic well-being of households because it does not incorporate the value of place. To recreate a Michigan with lots of good paying career opportunities – we need to create regions that are:

• Welcoming to all no matter where one is born, one’s sexual orientation, race, religion or ethnic background.
• Provide extensive transit — particularly rail transit –– as the 21st Century infrastructure that matters most to retaining and attracting young talent
• Offer talent magnet neighborhoods in our central cities and small towns. These neighborhoods vary in many ways, but all share common characteristics: they are dense, walkable, high- amenity neighborhoods, with parks, outdoor recreation, retail, and public arts woven into residents’ daily lives. And they offer plentiful alternatives to driving.

For Michigan’s population to get younger and more talented, significant public investment is required. Those public investments must be designed explicitly to provide the infrastructure and amenities that Generation Z demands. This is not a set of recommendations that can be done
on the cheap or by tinkering at the edges. The states that have won in the transition to the high-wage knowledge economy are those that have invested deeply and sustainably in the infrastructure and amenities of their central cities.

In reviewing the Table of Top 10 Non Energy Extraction States, one might come to the conclusion that Michigan’s fate is a forgone conclusion given its geography. But that is not the case. Minnesota ranks #15 to Michigan’s #38. Minnesota is the Great Lakes model for public investment led economic development.

At its core, the Minnesota playbook for economic and demographic success has been higher taxes––with state taxes $2,145 higher per capita than Michigan in 2021. These taxes paid for public investments by offering good schools from birth through college and creating places where people want to live by offering high quality basic services, infrastructure and amenities.

The state has successfully competed for talent. Minnesota has not lost a congressional seat for six decades. By contrast, Michigan has lost at least one seat in Congress each of the last five decades. Each decade since 1960, Minnesota has had 8 congressional seats. In 1960, Michigan had 19 congressional seats, today it has 13.

Minnesota is also a national leader in retaining and attracting recent college graduates. Minnesota is one of only nine “brain-gain” states with 8% more recent college graduate residents compared to those who graduated from its college and universities. By contrast, Michigan is a “brain-drain” state with 14% fewer college graduate residents compared to those who graduated from its college and universities.

Minnesota is also a high-prosperity state. In 1979, Minnesota’s per capita income was 1% above the national average, Michigan was 3% above. In 2022 Minnesota’s per capita income is 4% above the nation’s; Michigan’s is 13% below. Michigan could have chosen Minnesota’s playbook. But to date, leaders have not. Michigan can only reverse four decades of population and economic well-being decline by changing its strategy. It must make retaining and attracting talent economic development priority on — as Minnesota has done.

The post Michigan’s Path to Prosperity appeared first on Michigan Future Inc..

How can this be when unemployment is again near record lows, workforce participation is up, and inflation is coming down? These glowing measures, that are touted by politicians, businesses, and economists, are clear indications of a strong economy and reasons for workers to celebrate.

Yet these traditional measures of economic well-being are simply not telling the real story of the working Michigander. A much better measure, and the one that begins to shine a light on the disconnect between “strong economic signals” and what is really happening inside our homes, is per capita income.

Per capita income – big words to describe what a working adult brings home to the kitchen table to pay bills, secure housing and childcare, tuck something aside for retirement and have a little something left over to enjoy life.

Economists use per capita income to understand the overall level of economic prosperity of a particular geography. The measure is simply all of the income received by all of the people in a particular region, divided by the total number of people.

Here in Michigan, our per capita income has been growing more slowly than the national average for the past 20 years. Today, Michigan’s per capita income is 13 percent below the national average, the lowest we have ever been compared to the rest of the country. On this measure, our state ranks 39th, just one spot above the bottom 10.

Michigan is now structurally one of the nation’s poorest states.

But what does this mean for kitchen table economics? What does it mean for the working family? Across the US, from 1999 to 2022, per capita income rose by nearly $37,000; here in Michigan, per capita income grew by roughly $28,500. That’s $8,500, per person, for all 10 million Michiganders (or $85 billion in all), that we don’t have to pay the bills, invest in the future, and save for retirement.

Things look far worse when we look at the most prosperous and fastest growing states. In 1999, per capita income in Michigan was roughly $6,000 below that of Massachusetts. Today, our per capita income sits $27,500 below the Bay State. This is a dramatic difference that is felt dearly by our working families.

This is why Michigan’s low unemployment rate has not meant what it used to – a glowing, satisfied workforce. This is why feelings of dissatisfaction and fear for the future persist against declining inflation.

Because there is less money on the kitchen table to do the basic things every working family needs to do.

Why does it matter what we measure? Because these measurements drive policy, business decisions, and education choices. When we measure per capita income and make “Rising Income for All” our primary political, regional, and statewide goal, we make decisions that work for everyone.  We invest in our people to grow our talent, which attracts high wage employers and fills current employers’ needs.  We invest in our communities to keep our talented people, which leads to higher quality of life and more Main Street business opportunities.

Sounds crazy, right? But states like Minnesota, Colorado, and Massachusetts have seen per capita income growth over the past twenty years not by resorting to large business tax incentives, but by investing in people and place. Michigan can too – we just need to judge ourselves by the right measure.

The post We’ve been measuring the wrong things – and workers are fed up appeared first on Michigan Future Inc..

For those interested in the long-term well-being of young Michiganders – and the long-term financial health of our state – these figures should be alarming. Today’s labor market is functionally bifurcated: there is one labor market for those with a four-year degree, and one for those without. And there is a gulf of opportunity between these two markets.

There are roughly 4.2 million payroll jobs in Michigan today (all data for this analysis comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage and occupation data for Michigan). It is true that the vast majority of these jobs – roughly 72%, or just over 3 million jobs – do not require a four-year degree. In fact, 62% of these jobs (2.6 million) require no education beyond a high school diploma. So, strictly speaking, a four-year college degree is not necessary to find job in today’s economy.

The question, however, is whether a four-year degree is necessary to find a good job in today’s economy.

If we define a good job as one that pays at least $47,000 (our definition of “low middle-class”), that 4.2 million job figure is more than cut in half, down to just 1.9 million jobs (in defining pay, I am taking the median annual income for each occupation). For these jobs, the above chart is flipped, where now the majority of jobs do require a BA – roughly 60% of jobs that pay at least $47,000 (1.1 million jobs), require a bachelor’s degree or more.

However, a single earner household with a couple of kids earning $47,000 would likely still face significant challenges in making ends meet. $47,000 is well below the United Way’s ALICE threshold – defining what Michigan households need to pay for the essentials – which they peg at around $60,000 for a household with two kids. So, what if we define a good job as one that pays at least $70,000 per year, our definition of upper middle class? How does that change the market for available jobs based on education?

Defining a good job as one that pays at least $70,000 a year further narrows our field of jobs, down to just 892,000 jobs, or 21% of all Michigan jobs. Of these jobs, 825,000, or 92%, require a bachelor’s degree or more. This leaves just 67,000 good jobs, or 1.5% of all Michigan jobs, available to those with less than a bachelor’s degree.

But if you don’t have a bachelor’s degree in today’s economy, the odds of you getting one of those good jobs is actually far worse than that, simply because there are many more people with your same educational credential competing for that small slice of the pie.

Indeed, there are 3.4 million Michiganders between the ages of 25 and 64 with less than a bachelor’s degree, competing, in theory, for those 67,000 good jobs that require less than a BA. This is equivalent to 51 Michiganders competing for every good job that does not require a BA.

Meanwhile the 1.7 million Michiganders between 25 and 64 that do have a bachelor’s degree are competing for 825,000 good jobs, the equivalent of just two folks applying for every good job.

One could argue that this analysis is too blunt – what about all of the sub-BA credentials, like an associate’s degree or a postsecondary non-degree award? Aren’t these sub-BA credentials a pathway to good jobs? Indeed, much of our focus in today’s higher education policy discussions center around these pathways – a four-year degree isn’t for everyone, many will say, but these sub-BA credentials offer a pathway to good jobs.

The data tells a different, and decidedly bleaker, story. Of those 67,000 good jobs that don’t require a BA, the vast majority (83%, or 54,000 jobs) require no education beyond high school. Just 13,000 good jobs require one of these much-promoted sub-BA credentials.

And, again, the competition for these jobs is steep. There are 2.2 million Michiganders over the age of 25 (in this case we are not using a cutoff of 64, based on how the Census data is presented) with an associate’s degree or some college but no degree. This leaves roughly 171 Michigan residents with some college short of a BA competing for each of these good sub-BA good jobs. One could argue that this leaves those with a sub-BA credential with the worst odds of any group of capturing a premium for that additional education in the labor market.

There are nuances of course. The field of one’s degree or credentials matter, and labor markets for particular occupations obviously vary. But the central story the data tell is quite simple: while a relatively small number of overall jobs in the economy today require a BA or more, a bachelor’s degree is all but essential to get a good job in today’s economy.

This is why the figures from the Chamber’s survey are so distressing. For most young people, and parents of young people, a $70,000 a year job is likely pretty close to their conception of a good job – the type of job a young person might want to have, and the type of job a parent might want for their child. And the data shows that a bachelor’s degree is not only very important, but nearly essential to getting a job like this. Yet only a quarter of Michigan voters believe this.

The reasons are many, and I’ll go into some of them in future posts, but a big part of it is that our leaders – both here in Michigan and nationally – are repeatedly sending the exact message to young people that was reflected in the survey: that you don’t need a four-year degree to get a good job. It’s a politically popular message, considering the majority of adults, both in Michigan and nationally, don’t have a four-year degree. There should, indeed, be a path to good jobs for these tens of millions of people as well. But it’s not something you can wish into existence if you say it enough. Our economy, now and into the foreseeable future, will have lots of jobs that don’t require a four-year degree, and the vast majority of those jobs will not pay very high wages – the result of global competition and automation that has driven down the price of certain kinds of work.

The solution – instead of sending false signals about the true nature of the labor market – is to use public policy to make jobs – all jobs – pay more. This was a chief motivation behind our effort to expand the state’s earned income tax credit from 6% to 30% of the federal credit. Many more of these kind of efforts are needed to promote a more equitable economy, and a lot of these initiatives would have to occur at the federal level, where the purse is larger.

But in the meantime, we should not promote false narratives about the true nature of the labor market, and what’s needed to succeed in today’s labor market. Our young people deserve pathways to opportunity, and they need an honest assessment of those opportunities to make wise choices.  

The post Education and opportunity in today’s labor market appeared first on Michigan Future Inc..

While this may sound inspiring – a story of a state school system overcoming the odds – Kristof’s story contributes to dangerous and counterproductive narratives around what we view as “success” in education, what “works” in promoting student achievement, the interaction between poverty and economic achievement, and the and the role of schools in solving society’s ills.

What is success?

When we label a school, or a district, or a state system of education as successful, how are we defining success? Kristof writes that based on the 2019 NAEP (the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often dubbed the nation’s report card), 4th graders in Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the country, are in the middle of the pack in terms of reading proficiency and are near the top after accounting for the level of economic hardship in each state.

This is surely wonderful news, and worth applauding. Indeed, Mississippi’s improvements in reading on the 4th grade NAEP are impressive. In 2013, the “scale score” for Mississippi fourth graders was 209, the worst average score in the country; in 2019, it was 219, putting Mississippi 4th graders right at the national average. This is meaningful progress, a sign that many more fourth graders in Mississippi are building foundational reading skills. And it’s particularly noteworthy considering that over this time, fourth grade reading scores for the nation as a whole flatlined, and declined considerably in many states (more on this later).

Kristof is also right to note that Mississippi achieved this growth despite being a high poverty state. Mississippi has the highest proficiency rates in the country among students who qualify for free or reduced priced lunch (a sign of poverty) in fourth grade reading, with 25% of these students scoring proficient or higher (the national average is roughly 18%).

Finally, Kristof is also right to point to Mississippi’s concerted and systemic efforts to emphasize phonics and decoding, the so-called “science of reading” approach that researchers widely agree is the right way to teach young children how to read.

However, this is about the extent of what Kristof gets right.

First, for all the growth Mississippi has achieved, we should be clear-eyed about where Mississippi students are at. In 2019, roughly 31% of Mississippi fourth graders scored proficient or advanced on their 4th grade reading exam. In high-scoring Massachusetts, this figure was 45%. In other words, while Mississippi’s growth is noteworthy, we should not equate growth with success.

One might argue that this is an unfair comparison, given the relative rates of economic disadvantage in the two states. But if our ultimate goal is to get students reading on grade level, the economic hardship a student faces is one of the factors we need to deal with, on par with or taking precedent over anything that goes on in the classroom. From a policy perspective, the performance of a school system is inextricably linked with the economic challenges faced by the students in that school system. We can’t “control” poverty away; rather, it’s a policy challenge we have to confront with the same urgency as and on equal footing with anything that happens inside our schools.

Kids in Mississippi will be living in the same world and competing for the same jobs as kids from Massachusetts, and deserve the same opportunities early in life as children from Massachusetts. In other words, we should not be grading Mississippi kids on a curve, but rather trying to figure out what mix of inputs – both in and out of schools – would enable kids from Mississippi to have the same early education outcomes as kids from Massachusetts.

3rd grade reading laws are not the solution

Second, Kristof credits much of Mississippi’s success in improving 4th grade reading scores with its implementation of a so-called “3rd grade reading law,” mandating the retention of any 3rd grader who is not reading on grade level by the 3rd grade. As Kristof sees it, this law – a variant among similar third grade reading laws implemented over the past two decades in more than half of U.S. states (19 states have laws requiring retention, while a handful of others allow local districts to implement their own retention policies) – has centralized the focus of education leaders on reading in the early grades, and served as a rallying point for students and teachers alike.

This claim has all sorts of problems. First, it’s empirically dubious to suggest that 3rd grade reading laws improve 3rd grade reading outcomes. Of the 17 states that have had a 3rd grade reading law on the books since 2012 (2012 was the year in which most 3rd grade reading laws were passed – more on that in a minute), 11 saw their NAEP scores decline from 2013 to 2019.

And even in states that don’t have a retention law on the books, focus has increasingly been centered on 3rd grade reading over the past decade, as policymakers, philanthropic leaders, and the business community have all reached the conclusion that 3rd grade is “the year.” The result? Since 2013, 4th grade reading scores in 38 states have declined.

There are obviously many potential explanations for this decline, but the most obvious one is the one anti-testing advocates have pointed to for years: when the goals of our education system become too tied to a test, any test, it necessarily narrows the curriculum, and results in less knowledge gained by students (which is critical for reading comprehension), and worse outcomes overall.

Kristof notes in the article that on the days Mississippi students take their high-stakes standardized tests, parents and teachers line the hallways, “cheering madly as the kids walk through to take the test – like champion football players taking the field.” While Kristof writes of this display admiringly, many might see it in a more depressing, perhaps dystopian, light. A reasonable aim for the education we should all want for our children is that they are inspired by a genuine curiosity about the world, and a thirst for knowledge. In Kristof’s telling, the education we should be aiming for is just another competition, where students’ conception of education, and to a certain extent their view of themselves, is reduced to a score on a standardized test.

3rd grade reading vs poverty

Where did our collective obsession with third grade reading come from? And how has this become our national focus instead of, say, ending child poverty?

In writing about Mississippi’s growth despite exceptionally high rates of poverty, Kristof writes, “while Mississippi hasn’t overcome poverty or racism, it still manages to get kids to read and excel.” This is a popular line among folks in the so-called “education reform” movement, and it’s well-intentioned – the idea being that just because a student faces poverty and hardship doesn’t mean they shouldn’t receive a high-quality education. But it also has the effect of excusing inaction on child poverty which, if properly addressed, would have an enormous positive impact on student achievement, perhaps over and above any school-based intervention.

I mentioned earlier that the real explosion of 3rd grade reading laws occurred in 2012. The spark that caused this explosion was a report put out by the Annie E. Casey Foundation titled “Double Jeopardy,” which suggested that students who could not read proficiently by 3rd grade were far less likely to graduate from high school than students who could. This report was an odd one to launch a nationwide movement. It was roughly a dozen pages long, was not peer-reviewed, and presented mostly associational data – that is, it didn’t show that low reading skills in the 3rd grade were causally related to high school graduation. This matters because a number of other variables – poverty, trauma, low school funding, exposure to lead-based paint hazards – may also have been present in the lives of struggling 3rd graders, and may have been more responsible for both their early literacy struggles and their eventual drop out from high school.

In fact, the Double Jeopardy report does show, when read in a different light, that the experience of living in poverty is more strongly associated with not graduating from high school than one’s third grade reading score. The report shows that 22% of children who experienced poverty at any point from 2nd grade to 11th grade did not graduate from high school, whether they passed their 4th grade NAEP exam or not. Thirty-two percent of students who spent more than half of their childhoods in poverty did not graduate from high school. And while the title of the report – “double jeopardy” – suggests that the risk of drop-out was much higher if a student was poor and failed to achieve reading proficiency by the fourth grade, in actuality the risk of drop-out for this group only increased by 4 percentage points compared to the low-income population overall, to 26%. The real danger, it turns out, was not 4th grade reading ability, but growing up in poverty.

And becoming a proficient reader in the fourth grade did not exactly serve as a bulwark against drop out for low-income students: among poor students who did pass their 4th grade NAEP, 11% still failed to graduate. On the other hand, of those students who did not experience poverty, just 6% failed to graduate from high school; if they were not proficient on the 4th grade NAEP, the figure rose to 9%. So if you were a non-poor student who was not proficient in reading in the fourth grade, you were more likely to graduate from high school than a poor student who was proficient in reading in the fourth grade.

In other words, while the report galvanized a nationwide movement of laws centered around high-stakes testing in early elementary school, it could have just as easily – and perhaps should have – galvanized a nationwide effort to eradicate childhood poverty.

Yet Kristof’s messaging – that poverty should not be an excuse for low educational attainment –  though likely not intentional, has the effect of excusing lawmakers from working towards the elimination of poverty and economic instability, instead placing the responsibility back on underfunded schools and poor students to work themselves out of their present circumstances.

The strong and growing evidence base for increasing school funding

Finally, Kristof notes that Mississippi was able to achieve reading gains despite being one of lowest spending education states in the country. Again, while perhaps well-intentioned, these kinds of statements contribute to the narrative (which state legislatures across the country are already primed to believe), that we already spend enough on education, and just have to spend the money better. This narrative persists even though there is a solid and growing evidence base suggesting that boosting K-12 funding may be one of the most effective interventions we can make, to boost student achievement in the short-term, and improve overall educational achievement in the long-term. Research from C. Kirabo Jackson, Rucker Johnson, and Claudia Persico found that if a poor child attends a school that receives a 20% increase in school funding, that is maintained throughout a child’s 12 years of public education, she is likely to complete nearly one additional year of education, earn 25% more as an adult, and is 20 percentage-points less likely to be poor as an adult, compared to students who didn’t receive the same level of funding in either duration or intensity.

As educational interventions go, these are huge effects. The authors write that the size of the effects are large enough to eliminate two-thirds of the gap in these measures of life outcomes between students raised in poor and non-poor families. In other words, more school funding now has a major impact on future economic mobility. This research also found that increased funding had little to no impact on children from non-poor families, perhaps because their schools were already well-resourced, and/or the positive effects of their home lives were more important than any school effects. This suggests school funding enhancements might be that much more critical in poorer districts and poorer states, like Mississippi.

In addition to these important long-term outcomes, more recent research from Jackson has found that declining school funding may also be related to declining student achievement on standardized tests. I mentioned before that 4th grade NAEP scores have been declining nationally since 2013, after nearly a quarter century of consistent improvement. A recent paper by Jackson found that scores declined the most in states that were most reliant on state revenue sources in funding their K-12 education systems, and therefore saw the largest declines in per-pupil funding during and in the years after the Great Recession.

In other words, while Kristof uses Mississippi as an example of how a state can overcome the odds, and grow 4th grade reading scores despite really high rates of poverty and really low school funding, a reasonable reader might also ask: why should we be asking states to “overcome the odds” when it’s possible, through public policy, to simply change the odds, for all states and for all kids, by investing in what a rich body of research tells us will boost student outcomes – investing in the economic stability of kids and increasing school funding.

3rd grade reading scores are not destiny

One final note on 3rd grade reading.

Another problem with our disproportionate focus on 3rd grade reading is that whatever gains are made or not by the 3rd grade don’t appear to be lasting. The entire premise for our all-consuming focus on reading by third grade is that if a student fails to read proficiently by age 9, it will lead to all these terrible outcomes later in life. And that if they can read proficiently, they are on a trajectory towards continued success.

The problem is it turns out that at the population level, how students score in the 3rd grade seem to have very little relationship with how they score just a few years later. As an example, we can look at the 4th grade reading NAEP scores in 2015, compared to the 8th grade reading NAEP scores in 2019. This is the same cohort of students, who were 4th graders in 2015 and 8th graders in 2019.

As it turns out, 4th grade NAEP scores are not destiny: states, and the students taking these tests within those states, can and did make significant progress, or not, between those years. In more than half of U.S. states, students improved their relative standing in reading between 2015 and 2019. In 2015, 4th graders in California scored 10 points below the national average; by 2019, those same students, now in 8th grade, were within 4 points of the national average. Fourth graders in Idaho and Illinois were, in 2015, below the national average, but by 8th grade were a few points above. And here in Michigan, our 4th graders were six points below the national average in 2015, but by 8th grade were above the national average.

A similar story can be told the other way – states whose students were flying high in the 4th grade, but by 8th grade were performing much worse. In 2015, Florida 4th graders were scoring five points above the national average, but by 2019, their relative scores had fallen to the national average. This is a particularly poignant example because for years Florida was held up as the model on which Michigan should base its education policies, largely because of their success on the 4th grade NAEP – gains which turned out to be transitory.

We’ve been led to believe that 3rd grade is the “make it or break it” year, the year in which students will either be placed on or off track, for good. But this, of course, is not true. As Nell Duke, an early literacy expert at the University of Michigan, has written, “there is nothing magical about reading by the third grade in particular.” The act of learning to read, with fluency and comprehension, starts much earlier, and lasts much longer, than this arbitrary point that we’ve set. Even the most basic analysis shows this is the case. Between 2015 and 2019, many Michigan students who were not proficient in reading, gained more proficiency; Florida students who may have been just fine in fourth grade, may have found themselves struggling a few years later.

The point here is not, of course, that we shouldn’t focus on students reading in the 3rd grade – indeed, we should heap resources on schools in the early years to ensure all students have the supports they need to learn this complex skill. The larger point is that we shouldn’t place so much emphasis on student performance in this single point in time, particularly at the expense of so many other educational aims we have for our kids. And there are real costs. More time spent on “reading instruction” can be reduced to more worksheets and skill drills, and less time on engaging content, and building knowledge about the world. Indeed, one hypothesis for stagnant reading scores on the NAEP, advanced most prominently by Daniel Willingham at the University of Virginia, is that students don’t have enough background knowledge and vocabulary to be able to comprehend the words they are looking at on the page. Said differently, reading comprehension is context dependent – you must have some baseline understanding of what you’re reading about in order to construct a mental picture in which you can assimilate and store new information. Researchers have shown that students who appear to be expert readers when reading a passage about soccer can turn into novice readers when reading about baseball, all based on the background knowledge they have about the subject at hand. The prescription in this case is not a quick fix reading program, but a broad-based enriching and engaging education, from birth through high school. Which doesn’t fit very well into a New York Times headline.

The post What’s missed in Mississippi’s success story appeared first on Michigan Future Inc..

“It’s terrific to have the experience and expertise that former Rep. Donna Lasinski brings to the table in developing high-impact public policy initiatives for Michigan,” said Lou Glazer, president of Michigan Future Inc. “With her extensive and incredible background in both business, local, and state government, Donna Lasinski will help Michigan Future Inc. lead a big change agenda designed to reverse decades of economic decline and create a Michigan that benefits all.”

Lasinski joins the Michigan Future Inc. team after having served in the Michigan House of Representatives from 2017 through 2023. During her service in the House, Lasinski was elected to serve as House Democratic Leader from 2021 until 2023. Prior to her time in the Michigan legislature, Lasinski served on the Ann Arbor school board and ran a small business, ThinkStretch, which served schools in 38 states with summer learning programs.

“I’m excited to be taking on this new role with Michigan Future Inc.,” said Donna Lasinski. “Michigan is facing tough challenges, and I look forward to being part of the solution with the Michigan Future team by helping advocate for growing our state while working towards rising incomes for all.”

The post Donna Lasinski joins Michigan Future Inc. as Vice President appeared first on Michigan Future Inc..

And of these two geographies, the one that really matters is the region, or metropolitan area, as the vast majority of highly educated folks congregate in large metropolitan areas.

At present, metro Detroit and metro Grand Rapids have relatively low educational attainment, and, therefore, relatively low per-capita income. Thirty-eight percent of the working age population in metro Grand Rapids has a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 37% of those in metro Detroit do, placing them 35^th and 41^st, respectively, in educational attainment among the nation’s 58 largest metros. Both are in the bottom twenty big metros in per-capita income.

Given all this, the core economic development question should be: how do we increase the educational attainment of our major metropolitan areas? First, we need more Michiganders to earn a bachelor’s degree. And second, we need to keep those college graduates in Michigan, as well as attract young college graduates from anywhere in the world. This post will explore that second strategy – creating places in Michigan that are attractive to young college graduates, both those from Michigan, and anywhere else.

Attracting and retaining young talent

In a paper released last year, a group of economists used data from LinkedIn to quantify the extent of so-called “brain drain” by state. To do this they compared the number of college graduates living in a state to the number of folks who graduated from a college in that state. The key figure from their analysis is below. The number shown in each state is the net increase or decrease (in percent terms) of college graduates living in the state compared to the number of folks who graduated from college in that state. The dark green states are net importers of talent, or are at least roughly even. These are states with more college graduates living in that state than who graduated from a college in that state. The rest of the states are net exporters of talent, with the light green states doing just okay, the light purple states doing worse, and the dark purple states doing really poorly in terms of holding on to or attracting new college graduates.

Michigan is a light green state, with 13% fewer college graduates living in Michigan than graduated from Michigan colleges. This is equivalent to roughly 260,000 fewer college graduates between the ages of 25-64 living in Michigan than would be had we held on to all the folks graduating from Michigan colleges.

Of course, the goal is not to hold on to every person that graduates from a Michigan college. Young college graduates are a very mobile bunch, and they can and should move to opportunities across the country and across the globe. The goal, rather, is to make Michigan a place where enough graduates from Michigan colleges want to remain, and enough graduates from colleges across the country and all over the world want to flock to, such that these net migration figures even out, and, ideally, tip Michigan into the dark green.

So, what is distinctive about the net-importing states? What makes these states attractive spots to land for college-educated individuals, and, in particular, those very mobile young college-educated individuals? What can Michigan learn from these states?

Years of data have told us that young, college-educated individuals are moving to the central cities of large metropolitan areas, and in particular those cities that feature dense, walkable, activity-rich neighborhoods.  And what all these net-importing states have in common is that they all have large central cities filled with vibrant, dense neighborhoods, that serve as magnets for today’s young talent. The map above is not so much a map of talent-importing states, but a map of talent-importing cities – Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Austin, Minneapolis, Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta, New York, Boston.

To put a finer point on it, below is a map showing where 25-34 year old college graduates live. Each dot represents 1,000 young college graduates. This map clearly shows that young college graduates are moving almost exclusively to large metros, and clustering most especially in America’s dense, walkable, talent magnets. We talk about states attracting talent, but what we’re really talking about is metros, and more importantly cities, attracting talent.

How are Michigan’s major metropolitan areas doing at attracting young talent? Just 38% of 25-34 year olds in metro Detroit have a bachelor’s degree or more, placing metro Detroit 43^rd out of 58 large metros on this young talent concentration metric. Metro Grand Rapids, though still not in the top twenty, scores much better, with 45% of 25-34 year olds with a bachelor’s degree or more. This rate is far higher than that of the entire working age population in Grand Rapids, a sign that the city is attracting young talent, though maybe not yet on the scale that’s needed to drive transformational growth.

Drilling down even further, we find that talent concentration at the metro level is dependent, in large part, on talent concentrations in that metro’s central city. In most metros with high concentrations of young talent, the talent concentration in the central city is even higher than that of the metro as a whole. Indeed, part of the explanation for metro Detroit’s relatively low young talent concentration is that just 20% of 25-34 year olds in the city of Detroit have a bachelor’s degree or more.

So, we know that the educational attainment of a region or state is critical to that region or state’s economic success; we know that to boost educational attainment we need to attract and retain very mobile young college graduates; and we know that young college graduates are seeking out dense, walkable, amenity-rich neighborhoods in the central cities of large metropolitan areas. It follows that our economic development policies in Michigan should be squarely centered on creating more of these kinds of neighborhoods, to attract the young talent that drives the 21^st century knowledge economy.

This is why we have proposed the state create a Neighborhood Talent Concentration Initiative (NCTI), focused on developing more dense, walkable, activity-rich neighborhoods in Michigan’s central cities. The initiative would give large grants to support public space development projects in central city neighborhoods or geographically concentrated districts. Crucially, funding would go to support not the development of new buildings, but the public space around the buildings: narrowing streets to promote walkability, developing greenspace for recreation, activating commercial corridors, and flooding the streets with arts and cultural offerings. This is an initiative focused on activating street life and making beautiful public spaces that can be enjoyed by all.

This is the kind of work that has been happening rapidly in cities across the country over the past two decades, but has happened much more slowly and sparingly in our car-dependent metros. Smart Growth America (SGA) puts out an annual report called Foot Traffic Ahead, which ranks America’s large metros by the density of walkable neighborhoods within the metro. Detroit currently ranks 26^th out of the 35 largest metros.

This is important because SGA finds that though walkable neighborhoods make up just 1.2% of the landmass in the 35 metros they analyze, those neighborhoods account for nearly 20% of the nation’s GDP, due to the concentration of knowledge industries and knowledge workers in those neighborhoods. The implication being, the more of these neighborhoods we have in Michigan, the larger slice of our nation’s productivity we account for, and the stronger our regional and state economies will be. The goal of the NCTI would be push Michigan cities to create more walkable neighborhoods, at scale, as quickly as possible.

When you put all these pieces together, we can see that what should be our core economic development goals are largely missing from the public discussion. The prosperity of our state depends on the extent to which we can attract and retain talent in our major metropolitan areas and central cities. And our ability to attract and retain talent is dependent on creating the kinds of places where young talent wants to live: dense, walkable, activity and amenity-rich neighborhoods, with a heavy dose of arts, culture, and greenspace. NCTI is a chance to create more of these places, at scale, in Michigan’s central cities.

The post Attracting and retaining young talent: the economic development strategy that really matters appeared first on Michigan Future Inc..