Great Lakes East
Comprehensive Center

Great Lakes East and the Michigan Department of Education

A Look Back at Year 4

During Year 4, the Great Lakes East Comprehensive Center at Learning Point Associates continued to provide assistance to the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) as MDE built systems, structures, processes, networks, and partnerships in support of district and school improvement. The work of Great Lakes East has focused on MDE’s effort to build the department’s capacity and the capacity of its key partners, including the intermediate school districts (ISDs), to provide technical assistance and other support to local education agencies (LEAs). An integral theme within our scope of work has been fostering structures to promote MDE cross-office communication, coordination, and leveraging efforts to build coherence and reduce fragmentation.

Great Lakes East’s work with MDE focused on three key areas during Year 4: teacher quality, high school, and statewide system of support.

Teacher Quality

In the area of teacher quality, Great Lakes East continued building capacity among MDE staff members and key stakeholders to further raise the quality of Michigan teaching force. Year 4 focused on further developing and implementing a statewide system of support for professional learning based on the state Professional Learning Strategic Plan. Through the collaborative efforts, Great Lakes East and MDE worked with key stakeholders to refine a comprehensive individual professional development plan process, created critical tools, and gathered relevant resources for Michigan pretenure teachers. The team laid the foundation to field-test the individual professional development plan process with a select set of new teachers and their mentors in a variety of schools representing the state’s ethnic, economic, and geographic diversity. The field test will be rolled out in fall 2009. In addition, a team from Great Lakes East, MDE, and key partners began to examine all teacher preparation standards documents to discover gaps and overlaps as a precursor to help MDE develop a “Framework for Excellence in Teacher Preparation” in Year 5.

High School

In the area of high school work, Great Lakes East assisted MDE and key stakeholders in planning for high school redesign in order to support all students toward meeting the state’s rigorous high school graduation standards, the Michigan Merit Curriculum, with particular attention to the academic achievement of student subgroups. An MDE high school redesign cross-office team, which included members from various offices at MDE, was expanded to include key stakeholder organizations and institutions. In addition, an MDE cross-office team on alternative high schools was convened and assisted the state to identify and address key issues and concerns of alternative educators around the state.

To address the needs of Michigan’s student subgroups, especially its English language learners (ELLs), Great Lakes East provided support to MDE in further refining the ELL five-year strategic plan, which defines priority state issues, needs, and action plans. With guidance from the five-year plan, work continued on building a strong infrastructure of support for Michigan’s ELL students and their teachers. As part of this ongoing Great Lakes East support to MDE, a new line of assistance became available in September 2008, when Great Lakes East applied for and received supplemental funding from the U.S. Department of Education to help MDE increase ELL achievement on state accountability tests. The project, titled “Meeting the Needs of English Language Learners in the Great Lakes Region,” outlined concrete assistance in Michigan through June 30, 2009. The kickoff planning meeting was held in October 2008 with leadership from MDE’s Office of School Improvement and Office of Educational Assessment and Accountability. In February 2009, the first Michigan ELL dialogue took place to build cross-office coordination, establish a clear cross-office agenda, and share examples of state-level practices regarding the preparation of ELLs for academic success and raising their achievement.. The theme of the meeting was “Quality Counts 2009: How ELLs Are Putting Michigan Schools to the Test.” The work continues through the newly established MDE’s ELL core team. This additional support strategically expanded technical assistance for the statewide ELL strategic plan and its assessment and standard integration component.

Statewide System of Support

To support Michigan’s statewide system of support, Great Lakes East began working with MDE several years ago in order to address No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act responsibilities and help MDE provide an effective system of support for districts and schools in the improvement process, especially those in corrective action. During Year 4, Great Lakes East helped gather data about the key components of Michigan’s statewide system of support and assisted the state in identifying effective practices used by other state departments of education to support districts with schools in the improvement process. Great Lakes East also provided technical assistance to increase alignment and coherence of the existing components of Michigan’s statewide system of support. In addition, because the technical assistance in special education (disproportionate representation of student subgroups) developed in collaboration with the Office of Special Education and Early Intervention Services has been transitioned by MDE to help districts meet the compliance criteria, Great Lakes East will not have a separate goal in Year 5 for this area. Instead, it will work with MDE to encourage the continued use of the established self-assessment tools through the current work within the statewide system of support.

 

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