Lakeshore’s state academic championship for 8th grade reading began long before the MEAP tests were placed on rows of desks in the Stevensville school. For years, the district, along the Lake Michigan shore in Southwest Michigan, has resisted a statewide cost-cutting trend to eliminate librarians. When the winning eighth-graders were in seventh grade, Lakeshore created […]
Ron French
Ron reports on a variety of subjects across the state. Ron came to Bridge in 2011 from The Detroit News, where he was a project reporter. Born and raised in Indiana, Ron graduated from Purdue University. He reported for newspapers across Indiana before moving to Michigan in 1995. Ron lives in Okemos, and like the true Michigander he’s become, he now has a family cabin Up North. You can reach him at rfrench@bridgemi.com or 517-214-3636.
Posted inSuccess
Southfield wins graduation 'game'
Football is full of statistics: rushing yards per game; total offense; turnovers; yards after catch; passing efficiency. In the end, though, the only numbers that matter are on the scoreboard. Did you win or did you lose? Southfield Public Schools doesn’t have the best 8th-grade or 4th-grade MEAP scores. And its juniors score below average […]
Posted inSuccess
Three cheers for academic success
It’s a crisp autumn Friday night in Michigan. Children jostle at a ticket booth, waiting impatiently for the chance to claim a spot in the bleachers. A father buys a hot dog, while a mother carries a stadium blanket and a camera. A high school marching band finishes its pre-game show and high-steps off the […]
Posted inSuccess
Walkerville's success is stuff of movies
If this were football, they’d make a movie. Then again, tiny Walkerville doesn’t have a football team. Pulling perhaps the biggest upset in Bridge Magazine’s Academic State Championships, Walkerville Public Schools, with 314 students and one of the highest rates of poverty among Michigan school districts, is the State Champion of 8th Grade Math. Not […]
Posted inSuccess
Haslett builds readers, 20 minutes at a time
Twenty minutes a night. That number is drilled into Haslett kids in this mid-Michigan suburb by teachers in classrooms and parents at kitchen tables. Read for 20 minutes a night. Read Tolstoy. Read a comic book. Read the New York Times. Read the back of a cereal box, if you have to. “It’s like sports,” […]
Posted inTalent & Education
Who are the state academic champs?
Welcome to the real state high school playoffs. Don’t get me wrong, I love sports, and I have great admiration for the dedication and skill of high school athletes. The lessons they learn in leadership, teamwork and persistence are lessons they can use long after they hang up their helmets. But if Michigan is going […]
Posted inChildren & Families
The popularity of manning up
Rep. Ken Horn knows how to get people’s attention – for better and worse. Horn is the author of Michigan’s new welfare reform, which cuts recipients off cash assistance after they have received 48 months of benefits in their lifetimes. Because the law is retroactive, more than 11,000 families will lose their cash benefits the […]
Posted inMichigan Government
11,000 Michigan families confront the unknown
The roles Sharon Matthews has fielded so far are hardly the stuff of cakewalks: high school dropout; single mom; gunshot victim. But her toughest role yet begins next month: Guinea pig. The 41-year-old Detroit resident and her 15-year-old daughter are among the 11,000 Michigan families banned from welfare, as the state of Michigan begins to […]
Posted inMichigan Government
Cuts don't fall evenly across Michigan
A welfare recipient in Flint is four times more likely to be kicked off cash assistance next month than a welfare recipient in bucolic Luce County — even though the Upper Peninsula county has a higher poverty rate. In rural northern Lake County, 36 percent of children lived below the poverty threshold, the highest rate […]
Posted inMichigan Government
What will they do?
More than 11,000 families will be banned from cash assistance next month, in the biggest one-day dumping of welfare recipients in the state’s – and possibly the nation’s – history. Will those families blend into the work force? Will they lose their homes? Will they find help from charities, churches and nonprofits? Over the next […]
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