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One of Michigan’s Children’s top priorities is to ensure that all Michigan children are ready for post-secondary education, work and life.

Too many young people aren't succeeding through high school graduation, and many need more time or different paths to reach a diploma.  In addition, many young people face barriers to graduation that education alone cannot remove. 

Each year:
  • Too many young people drop out of Michigan high schools, and too few return to complete their credential
  • 16,000 students who should graduate leave school and another 19,000 fall off-track for a typical four-year high school career
  • 4,000 girls under age 18 become parents.  Only one-third of all teen moms complete high school
  • 15,000 children and youths are cared for outside their homes, and nearly 400 age out of the foster care system and are left on their own.  Nationally, youths in foster care are more than twice as likely to drop out of high school than non-foster youths.
  • One in six births in Michigan is to a woman who has not completed high school.  While this includes births to teenagers, the largest share are to women in their early 20s

 

The economic, social and fiscal consequences of dropping out - unemployment, poverty, substance abuse, incarceration, poor health - are profound and unaccepatable.  Fortunately, we know how to graduate more young people and Michigan is poised to make great strides in improving the educational success of all children.
 
What Michigan's Children is Doing
Michigan’s Children works with policymakers, advocacy partners, community leaders and parents to advance public policies and programs that promote educational success in children and their parents. 
Our priorities in education include:
  • Improving support services for young people
  • Improving educational, employment and other services to young people who have left school before graduation
  • Minimizing suspensions and expulsions

 

Specifically, we will work to:

  • Create a prenatal-to-age 20 (P-20) council or task force that can develop and maintain a high quality cradle to career education system.
  • Support innovative after-school programs in middle and high schools, including credit recovery programs and apprenticeships.
  • Provide incentives for schools to establish effective discipline alternatives, and support truancy prevention and credit recovery initiatives that utilize strong out-school time, higher education and workforce development partners.
  • Support multiple pathways to graduation, including alternative and community education options and partnerships between community college and workforce development agencies.
  • Commit to meaningful education reform by supporting consistent funding for schools and programs in order to see real improvement in school success for those most challenged schools, communities and young people.
 
What You Can Do

Join the Graduate Michigan Action Network

Make a donation to Michigan's Children to support our advocacy work
 
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Dropout Prevention and Recovery

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