Advocacy

Issue: how do we, our students, and teachers find out what is coming down the legislative pipeline? How can we have a voice at the legislature?

Michigan Department of Education: Mary Anna will look into finding an informant in MDE. She has some contacts.

Here are the pages related to house and senate education committees.

House committees []

House education committee []

There’s also a house appropriations committee on education that meets.

Senate committees Senate Education []

There are also appropriations subcommittees for education in both houses.

List of house and senate committee meetings, with agendas []

ALEC's Education Task Force. @http://www.alec.org/task-forces/education/

Looking at what is happening now (2/7/14): Governor Snyder has put forth his budget proposals. He has proposed increasing funds for higher ed and K-12 ed, and has a list of projects that he would like to see the money go. Most of this is not of interest to us as English educators, but there is a line item of $40.9 milllion for "Teacher evaluations/student assessment." This is going to influence our teachers and their students, and eventually what we are expected to prepare them for. He also is proposing a raise of 80 million for higher education, but it's unclear how he wants that spent.

Mary Anna has volunteered to attend meetings when something of importance to our group comes to committee, as time permits. Liz Homan and Doug Baker have signed up to be notified when committees meet. Meeting agendas are posted to the website.

Doug and Samantha are going to look into how College of Educations at our respective campuses keep in touch with MDE and the legislature.

House bill 5223 is undergoing extensive revision in committee. How much of teacher evaluation is going to be based on test scores? This is in progress. That was in discussion on the January 29 House Education Committee.