Six out of 10 fourth graders in Michigan went back to school this year unprepared to read at grade level.
In announcing the results from last spring’s Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress (MSTEP) exams, the state Department of Education touted gains in other areas. But the red-flag was the ongoing decline in early literacy — further 
evidence that Michigan continues to fail a generation of children.
The CEOs of TalentFirst are not waiting for the state to solve this crisis for West Michigan.
“These are children at the beginning of their academic careers — and they already are behind, facing significant disadvantages in school, career, and life,” said Park Kersman, President of Lorin Industries. “We cannot just accept that. We can’t just keep hoping for things to change. That’s why we have been taking action.”
An urgent response
Kersman is a member of our K12 Education Working Group, which has been partnering over the past year with the region’s K12 and higher education leaders, parents and policymakers to develop a set of regional early literacy strategies. These include:
- Promoting the science of reading and the use of evidence-based curricula
- Addressing chronic absenteeism (Read about an initiative launched this week)
- Expanding the teacher pipeline
See more detail below or explore the resources and roadmap on our Early Literacy dashboard, now updated with 2023 scores.
We know these strategies work because we have evidence from other states — and even many districts in our region. Last spring, TalentFirst was pleased to identify and celebrate five West Michigan elementaries as exemples of teaching reading the correct way, with test scores to prove it.
Michigan’s free fall in early literacy
The MSTEP results for English Language Arts exam administered to third graders last spring showed just 39.6% scoring proficient or advanced. This was a new low, more than a full percentage-point drop from 2022-23, which previously was the lowest score for full-scale testing since the MSTEP was adopted in 2015.
In the Aug. 28 release of results, state Superintendent Dr. Michael F. Rice placed some of the blame for declines on poverty and the COVID-19 pandemic: “Poverty, remoteness of instruction in the 2020-21 school year, and being in the learning-to-read window at the beginning of the pandemic have been layered challenges with which some of our children continue to struggle.”
We can acknowledge those very real challenges, but we cannot afford to let them overshadow other factors that are at work. Nor can we ignore that other states have found ways to improve despite facing the same challenges.
National benchmarks
Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, a research center that explores education finance to inform policy, told Bridge Michigan that the state’s results do not reflect trends seen elsewhere.
“This was our chance to get the scores up,” Roza said in a story published Aug. 29. “If it’s not going up now, we’re really in trouble.”
The story cited 2024 gains in in Tennessee, Indiana, and Mississippi.
Michigan’s poor performance is evident in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an assessment in reading comprehension given every two years to students in grade 4 and 8. In 2022, Michigan ranked 43rd among the states for fourth-grade reading in 2022, down 11 places from the previous test.
The challenges of poverty and the pandemic-era learning loss are not unique to Michigan, leaving the question: Why have other states managed to surpass us in early literacy? More importantly, what can we do about it?
TalentFirst’s collaboration with K12 and higher education leaders has identified answers to that question, and we have collaboratively developed some paths forward.
Problems and solutions
Although early literacy has been a priority for TalentFirst for more than a decade, our efforts have accelerated since we published our early literacy dashboard designed to help parents, school boards, policymakers, educators and community partners understand, ask questions and drive immediate solutions.
TalentFirst CEOs have been working with educators, literacy experts, policymakers and higher education to develop a set of regional early literacy strategies for West Michigan. These contain shared obligations for education and business leaders alike with agreed-upon objectives to:
- Promote the science of reading: We are working to increase the number of principals and teachers who are trained in LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling), to ensure curriculum choices are aligned to research. We are engaged with West Michigan teaching colleges to include the science of reading in teacher preparation programs. In addition to successfully advocating for the state to develop a list of research-based curricula, TalentFirst members are funding classroom library grants and celebrating schools that demonstrate best practices and achievement through the Literacy Leader Awards program.
- Address chronic absenteeism: We are working to improve strategies to address chronic absenteeism, including through tools to promote attendance. TalentFirst developed a toolkit and released it this week to help employers educate their workers about the importance of attendance.
- Expand the teacher pipeline: We are promoting “grow your own” programs such as the West Michigan Teacher Collaborative and Talent Together to develop more teachers, expand coaching, and work with higher education to improve early literacy instruction.
Why this is important to the CEOs of TalentFirst
The CEOs of TalentFirst expend their time, energy, expertise and influence on this cause because they recognize it as a generational investment that will pay dividends for our students, families, businesses and entire state for decades to come.
An inability to read sets these students up for lifelong struggles in education and employment. And the implications are dire for employers, who increasingly depend on an educated workforce to compete in a knowledge-based economy.
These young students our best hope for a prosperous future in Michigan. We cannot afford to let them down.
