LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Shortly before schools across the country departed for spring break, a report came out ranking Michigan in the middle for the most educated state in America.
The study ranked Michigan 27th overall across multiple categories for the most educated which included factors such as: achievement gaps between genders and races, educational attainment, and school quality.
The highest scoring states were Montana, Vermont, New Hampshire, Wyoming, and Maine. In contrast, New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and California scored in the lowest five in the study.
Some of the categories used in the evaluation included the percent of Associate’s Degree Holders or College-Experienced Adults, percent of Bachelor’s Degree Holders, and Average University Quality.
Massachusetts ranked first overall with a score of 83.03 out of 100, ranking first for quality of education and educational attainment. West Virginia took the lowest rank with an overall score of 22.40, holding the 47th position for quality of education and 50th in educational attainment.
According to the study from WalletHub, Michigan ranked in the middle with an overall score of 27, ranking 26th for educational attainment and slightly lower at 28th for quality of education.
CEO and President of the Small Business Association of Michigan, Brian Calley, said that Michican’s ranking raises concerns about the state’s low labor participation rate; that rate is the percentage of the population currently working or actively searching for jobs.
“Education is one of the main drivers of economic opportunity and competitiveness of the workforce, so we’re focused on a broad people-based agenda aimed toward removing obstacles to people in the workforce,” Calley said to Midland Daily News.
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In the Governor’s State of the State Address, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer reiterated how much education was a priority to her, and named several steps she and her administration were taking to improve the state’s education system including making pre-school free and available for all Michigan children.
One of the biggest advances to improve the state’s overall percentage of adults with higher education is the Governor’s 60 by 30 initiative which strives to raise the state’s percentage of working age adults with a skill certificate or college degree from 50.5% to 60% by the year 2030. While the state has improved the percentage, as of Feb. 2023 still ranked 27th overall for most educated.
In recent years, the state experienced historically low performance levels on the Michigan’s required tests for English Language Arts and Mathematics for 3rd and 4th graders, the state has adopted legislation that would remove the opportunity for school’s to retain underperforming students back for a year after changes to the Read By Grade Three Law.
Before the retention requirement of the RBG3 law was repealed, some Representatives, including Rep. Andrew Beeler (R-Port Huron) previously criticized the idea.
“Is that going to attract someone to the state? Is that going to attract a business to a state when their employees are going to have to send their kids to a school where they don’t learn anything?,” he said, “I don’t care how free you make an associates degree, if the kid can’t learn how to read it isn’t going to be worth a darn.”
Other neighboring states such as Ohio and Indiana, ranked 34th and 38th, respectively. Illinois was ranked just below the top ten states.
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