The number of third graders able to read at proficiency dipped below 40% for the first time in Michigan after scores plummeted during the state’s strict COVID-19 lockdowns. In 2015, 50% of third graders read at grade level.

Reading proficiency took a hit among the state’s elementary schoolers when schools across the state were, for the most part, required to operate through online learning from March 2020 until December 2020. In January 2021, Whitmer began to encourage (although not require) schools to resume in-person activity by March of that year. 

Whitmer is widely regarded as a rising Democratic star. Once rumored as a front-running contender to be Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, the governor gave a high-profile speech last week at the Democratic National Convention. While acclaimed within her party, Republicans in her home state immediately laid the blame for the grim educational news at the Democratic governor’s feet. 

Senate Republican Leader Aric Nesbitt said, “6 in 10 Michigan students being unable to read at their grade level is absolutely UNACCEPTABLE and an indictment of Democrats’ education policies during and since the pandemic.” He added that Whitmer “and Lansing Democrats have done immeasurable harm to an entire generation of our kids.”

Jaime Greene, a state Republican senator and mother of two, told the Washington Examiner the news “really reflects how long Michigan was closed during the COVID lockdowns.” Over a year ago, a panel of education professionals told the House Committee on Education and the Workforce that COVID-19 lockdowns led to “the largest negative shock to student learning in the U.S.”

Greene is a Navy veteran who homeschooled her children before retiring from teaching them last year. “I never thought in a million years that I would be the public school champion, but that is what I believe I have to do now because our literacy rates are low,” she reflected.

Greene added that she’s “100%” sure Whitmer’s move to create another educational program is “detracting from funding that the department actually needs” to help children perform better in schools.  

In July 2023, Whitmer signed an executive order that created the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential, an initiative tasked with improving learning outcomes from preschool through postsecondary levels.  At the time, Whitmer assured the state her new program was meant to complement existing educational infrastructure and wouldn’t draw away resources from the State Board of Education, which oversees the Michigan Department of Education. 

Members of the State Board of Education continued to worry, however, that their department had been given the cold shoulder. 

“The funding that we’re concerned about primarily is this $414 million that the governor’s proposing come out of Michigan Department of Education and go to this MiLeap that she’s created,” Tom McMillin, a member of the State Board of Education, told CBS in February. “We’ve challenged the constitutionality of what she’s doing in many respects because the Constitution is clear that the Michigan Department of Education and the state Board of Education is overall education in Michigan as far as programming.”

Greene said Whitmer “split the Department of Education” and created “her own parallel department because she does not believe that the current department is doing their job.” Whitmer’s fiscal 2025 budget proposal aimed to transfer 75%, or $414 million of the Department of Education‘s funds to MiLEAP.  

However, Greene is unsure why Whitmer doesn’t seem to believe her Department of Education is performing up to par, chalking up the debacle to a “standoff between the state superintendent and the governor.” 

“They weren’t doing what she wanted to do, or what she thought was a priority,” Greene commented, adding she is unsure what Whitmer’s priorities are.

Whitmer signed Michigan’s latest education budget into law last month. 

Michigan Republicans in the state Senate claimed it failed “to increase per-student funding for the first time in over a decade,” in a post on Wednesday to X. 

“Michigan 3rd grade reading scores are the lowest in the history of the test. Yet @GovWhitmer and Democrats decided now was a good time to pass a budget that fails to increase per-student funding for the first time in over a decade?! They’re failing our kids,” the state’s Senate GOP said. 

The Washington Examiner reached out to Whitmer’s office for comment.