EAST LANSING — This week, at the 18th Annual Governor’s Educational Summit in Lansing, Governor Rick Snyder expressed his thoughts on the educational system, explaining that it is broken at both state and national levels. 

“We’ve built a system that doesn’t work anymore in terms of helping people be successful.”

Snyder.

The goal of the annual summit is to connect businesses and educators, so as to further assist in assuring that a better correlation is made between the skills possessed by graduates and those in demand in the marketplace.

Snyder also talked about Michigan’s economy, stating that presently the State’s website lists 60,000 vacant high-quality jobs. He explained that filling them would lower the unemployment rate by 1.5 percentage points.

Not addressed at the summit was the controversy surrounding a secret advisory group, headed by Snyder’s Chief Informational Officer David Behen.  According to reports, the advisory group has been meeting secretly and discussing the development of a low-cost school plan that will be dubbed a “value school.”  The goal would enhance use of classroom technology that would result in a cost of about $5,000 per student, or about $2,000 less per pupil than the current per-pupil base rate.

Many have drawn criticism to the news, comparing it to school vouchers, which are usually issued by the government and redeemable at private schools. Michigan residents had voted against them in 2000.