SCHOOL FINANCE RESEARCH COLLABORATIVE

Creating a roadmap for all Michigan students to achieve and succeed.

Who We Are

The School Finance Research Collaborative is a diverse group of business leaders and education experts, from Metro Detroit to the U.P., who agree it’s time to change the way Michigan’s schools are funded.

The School Finance Research Collaborative has completed Michigan’s first comprehensive school adequacy study, providing a roadmap to fixing Michigan’s broken school funding approach and making it fair for all students.

The Challenge

Many of Michigan’s public schools are struggling to meet student performance standards, and our students will continue to fall behind if our school funding approach doesn’t address their wide-ranging needs.

The School Finance Research Collaborative study has determined the true cost of educating all students to make the way we fund schools more fair. Business leaders, school experts, parents, students and leaders from both parties agree: A new, fairer school funding approach is needed that addresses every student’s unique and individual learning needs.

The Results

The School Finance Research Collaborative has completed 3 critically important studies:

  • Michigan’s first comprehensive school adequacy study, released in 2018, providing a roadmap to fixing Michigan’s broken school funding approach and making it fair for all students.

  • An update to the adequacy study released in 2021 that provides new context and updates numbers to better reflect Michigan school costs.

  • A transportation study to reflect the costs Michigan schools face transporting students and develop the first ever funding recommendation of how the state should address those.

You can read those reports here: