Duggan's Education $4.5 Billion Blueprint

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 11/07/2025) It seems like every modern-day governor has taken a stab at improving the education of our children. Gov. Bill Milliken was first with the creation of his "Education Reform Commission" back in the early '70s and, yet, critics contend the system is still in dire need of a fix.

If elected governor, independent candidate Mike Duggan has issued his blueprint for succeeding where others have failed with a price tag of $4.5 billion without raising taxes.

He wants to "turn around Michigan's 25-year decline in school performance" and he starts by stopping the use of K-12 dollars for higher education. It's DOA in a Duggan administration as he would re-direct that $640 million back into the K-12 state aid formula.

Adding to that total, he suggested another $260 million in "savings, efficiencies, and improvements." He does not use the term waste, fraud and abuse.

He adds those two together to get $900 million, and then he hopes to replicate the same amount of savings over the next five years and, voilà, there you have his $4.5 billion reform funding stream.

In his news release he would:

- Slap a pause on the governor and legislative pay checks if they miss the July 1 deadline for adopting the K-12 budget.

- Develop a Marshall Plan on literacy by spending $500 million on reading coaches and streamlining the certification process for literacy educators.

- Pump $100 million into a new CTE (Career Tech Education) program with $30 million in grants for apprenticeships and similar non-college career paths.

- Adopt a parent-friendly, easy-to-understand "hybrid" A-F school grading program "with detailed performance measures," and if schools continue to fail after creating an improvement plan and receiving extra state help, some heads would roll. First to go are principals at failing schools. If there are no improvement after five years, the superintendents are "replaced."

He suggests, "state funding for schools will be tied to this process to insure compliance and results." It's unclear if that means a carrot or stick approach to dealing with schools that are under-performing.

He writes that his school reform program is designed to address the "no accountability at the state and local levels" regarding the education Michigan school children are receiving.