For Michigan to improve its economy, its children need to move through school, through college, and have the opportunity to start a business. It needs to invest in the arts and the environment and market those assets to existing and potential businesses around the world. And Michigan politicians need to stop their bickering and adopt the policies needed to make those things happen.

Or so says a report released in May by the Center for Michigan.

Michigan's Defining Moment: A Common Ground Agenda for Michigan's Transformation calls on state leaders to work toward a talented workforce, a vibrant economy with great quality of life and an effective, efficient and accountable government. Among the measures toward reaching those goals is tying school curriculum more closely with developing jobs and careers, simplifying the business tax to support entrepreneurs, and eliminating term limits to encourage legislators to build relationships.

"This effort shows that, beyond the partisan political battles in Lansing , there is a great deal of common ground on which Michigan residents from many walks of life stake their claim to the future," said Center for Michigan President Phil Power. " Michigan is at a hinge in our history. The decisions we make about our state over the next few years will go a long way in determining what Michigan looks like for decades to come."

The report was developed through 175 "community conversations" held around the state and online. The report argues that state leaders need to develop a more modern, and simpler, tax system designed to generate the funds needed to invest in the programs required to move the state ahead, the report said. And among those priorities should be shifting money from corrections to education.

Among the uses for that additional educational funding should be reducing class sizes and extending both the school day and the school year. The report also calls for additional rewards for the best teachers and for school districts using best practices.

School funding also has to be spread more equitably across the districts, the report said.

Education has to be spread more evenly across people's lifespans, with the K-16 curriculum including encouragement of lifelong learning and with easier access to those programs for those who want them.

But not all the proposals involved funding. It called for efforts to "(b)uild a culture of education by increasing parents' and students' recognition that education is essential to prosperity."

Read the full report…