Dive Brief:
- The Michigan Board of Education presented a draft report this week urging the state's legislature to rethink school funding by considering how other states successfully divvy up funding.
- The report specifically focuses on the education systems in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Tennessee and Florida.
- While those four states have different funding strategies, all channeled money into specific priority areas with at-risk or low-performing students.
Dive Insight:
“We have to spend smarter,” State Board of Education President John Austin told the board in a Tuesday meeting, according to MLive. “We have not been putting the money in strategic investments that other states have." Later, Austin said, "All the high performing states spend money differentially; they put money where it is needed, not equal dollar per pupil.”
According to MLive, the draft comes in the wake of a Bridge Magazine series, "The Smartest Kids in the Nation," which involved sending reporters across the nation to scope out what school systems and reforms looked like in other states.