District Comparison Dashboard

How Michigan compares to top-performing states

Launch Michigan created a dashboard with publicly available data that highlights how Michigan school districts compare in reading and math proficiency and graduation rates to similar districts in top-performing states: Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. 

This first-of-its-kind analysis helps us understand how individual Michigan districts perform against national comparison districts. Prior to this, we could only compare Michigan districts against each other.

Key Statewide Findings

After decades of band-aid fixes and a lack of investment in education, Michigan has fallen behind leading states.

  • 7 out of 8 Michigan districts do worse than national comparison districts in math.


  • 70% of Michigan districts underperform in reading compared to similar districts in top-performing states.

  • 71% of Michigan districts underperform national comparison districts in graduation rate.

Defining Outcomes

To set the standards of comparison, we gathered graduation rates, math proficiency and reading proficiency metrics. When a student is proficient, it means that they can demonstrate that they know all the content expected of them for that grade.

Graduation Rate

The percent of students who graduated from high school with a diploma.

Math Proficiency

Total percent of students in the the district who are proficient in math on the state assessment.

Reading Proficiency

Total percent of students in the district who are proficient in reading on the state assessment.

Important Note: Test scores don't tell us everything about students, but they do give us good information on how much content they know. Many factors influence student learning that are outside of the control of the school or teacher.

Understanding Context

Michigan didn’t get here overnight. After decades of band-aid fixes and a lack of investment in education, Michigan has fallen far behind most states — not due to a lack of effort from educators but because of a broken system.

Since the passage of Proposal A in 1994, Michigan ranks dead last among states in total education revenue growth, according to a 2019 report.

Michigan also ranks 48th among the states in per pupil funding growth. Over the years, Michigan has been taking money meant for K-12 schools and using it for other things, in addition to an overall decline in tax revenue.

Michigan is one of only six states with a disjointed K-12 governance model, according to the Education Commission of the States.

In Michigan, members of the State Board of Education oversee the State Superintendent and Department of Education, even though these individuals are not directly involved in the state education budget or legislative policymaking.

Identifying Similar Districts

Launch Michigan matched school districts based on key characteristics like district size, socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity demographics, language learners and students with disabilities, among others.

This data help us compare apples to apples, creating fair and meaningful comparisons across districts that are similar in key characteristics that influence student performance and that are often outside the control of the educator or school.

LEA Enrollment
The total number of students counted for the district

Urbanicity
The degree to which a given area is city, suburban, town, and rural

Students in Poverty
Model Estimates of Poverty in Schools information created by the Urban Institute

Student-to-teacher ratio
Enrollment over number of teachers in the district

Demographics
Race/Ethnicity, English Learner, and IDEA status

District type & level
Traditional public, charter or other; grade levels in the district

Data Sources & Methodology

Launch Michigan used publicly available, nationally comparable date to create our data set.

EDFacts

Data from 2018-2019 school year (most recent available year)

Common Core of Data

Data from 2018-2019 school year (most recent available year)

Model Estimates of Poverty in Schools

Data from fall 2013-fall 2018 (to align with EdFacts data)

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Every state must have a federally approved state assessment that determines if a student is proficient or not on college and career-readiness. Even if tests are not the same, the interpretation of “proficient” is consistent across states. We used the reported percent of students proficient in reading and math. This has the same policy meaning regardless of state. Variability in the definition of “proficient” across states has been greatly reduced and in some cases eliminated by changes in federal requirements between No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act.

  • For many high-performing districts, it’s true that there may be only small differences in outcomes. There are “ceiling effects” on these outcome measures, which means that we run out of room to see differences. For example, graduation rate stops at 100%. However, because we are using all the districts in Michigan and in comparison states, any difference is a true difference. For example, 95% is less than 97%. Because we are not using a sample to estimate a whole population, there is no need to test for significance.

  • Yes, we did. We wanted to compare Michigan districts to top performing states. We do not want to be better than the worst; we want to be better than the best.

  • Yes, this is true. Not everyone does worse. But seven out of eight districts do worse than their peers in math, and twice as many districts underperformed in reading and graduation rate as overperformed.

  • This is because we are using the pre-pandemic 2019 data in our dashboard. Our data lags from what you can see in MiSchoolData, which often reflects the most recent school year. The state is much faster at making data available than the federal government. Minor differences in point estimates will also happen due to privacy protections.

Questions about the district comparison dashboard? Please contact us at info@launchmichigan.org.

Michigan needs to upgrade its education system to compete globally. We need to reinvent what happens for all students:

  • A better focus on career and college readiness and an emphasis on 21st-century skills for the jobs of tomorrow.

  • The ability for all students to have multiple pathways toward college and career while still in high school.

  • Adequately and equitably funding our education system.

Join the fight for our future