A new report on Michigan’s struggling education system says dramatic change is needed to stem academic declines and ensure all students are receiving a quality education.

Among the top recommendations in the report: Michigan should adopt a school funding system that is more fair and equitable than the current one, which distributes state funding on a per-pupil basis but has provisions that still allow for wide disparities in spending between poorer and wealthier districts.

In the report released Tuesday, the Education Trust-Midwest, an education research and advocacy organization, predicts that Michigan’s academic rankings will decline or stagnate by 2030 in some key areas. The rankings are based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an exam taken by a representative sample of students in each state.

Michigan’s rankings on this exam have slid over the last decade. And there are troubling signs of what could come, after scores on the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress and the NAEP showed sharp declines from pre-pandemic levels. On the NAEP, Michigan’s eighth-grade math scores ranked 26th in the country. By 2030, if current patterns hold, Michigan would fall to 29th. In fourth-grade reading, the state ranks 43rd and is projected to remain there in 2030.

As additional evidence of the need for urgent action, the organization points to an October report from researchers at Harvard University and Stanford University that shows how much learning loss occurred in individual districts across the nation since the pandemic. In Michigan school districts with high concentrations of students from low-income homes (Detroit, Saginaw, and Lansing), students lost the equivalent of about a year or more of learning. By comparison, students in wealthier districts such as Northville and Bloomfield Hills lost the equivalent of less than 10% of a school year.

Read the full article about fair funding for Michigan schools by Lori Higgins at Chalkbeat.