I’ve been a current events junkie ever since I watched President Richard Nixon resign on television as my mother attempted to explain what was happening to her nine-year-old son.
So as I was surveying the news recently one morning, part of my morning routine for decades, I noticed how one word kept cropping up.
Policy.
The word alone makes people want to turn around and leave the room. Be it social, economic or some other form, you know you’re about to get deep in the weeds — and that’s deeper than most care to go.
Believe me, I get it. As both a self-described policy nerd and longtime government teacher, I’m especially experienced with such reactions. But as I retire from over three decades as a civic educator — and as we head toward an important midterm election — I see more clearly than ever what I’ve been telling my students seemingly forever: Voters need to go beyond headlines and dig into the details of policy.
Details have always been important — and maybe now more than ever.
I could give you hundreds of examples, but how about just a handful? Let’s start with what I know best, education policy.
As a longtime teacher, I can think of sundry examples, but I’ll stick to No Child Left Behind, a product of federal education policy passed in 2001. I started my teaching career about seven years before that landmark legislation, and I can divide my career into before and after NCLB.
It was that transformative.
Let me give you a concrete example of how the details matter that might not seem obvious. The intent of NCLB was to improve student learning. One consequence no one talked about: Students today do not take notes. Ever. And why not? Because the standardized testing that was the centerpiece of NCLB led to a kind of spoonfeeding of content so students could get good scores.
Teachers started giving students their own notes or made notes for them. There were some other factors at play, like posting notes for students online, but I’m convinced it was NCLB and the standardized tests that was the main culprit.
So, if that Ivy League graduate you hired doesn’t know how to take notes at your department meetings, now you know why.
How about an example from health care?
I was at my optometrist recently and it was insanely busy. When I complimented her on how gracefully she was handling the overflow, she said something interesting.
She noted that ever since investment funds started to enter medical services more aggressively, the focus on the customer experience and providing quality care has taken a back seat to quarterly dividends. This hyper focus on short-term profits is the result of changes to various policies in recent years, including taxes and investment policy.
Many people may recall, for example, that the corporate tax rate was reduced in recent years from 35 to 21 percent in 2017 under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, but fewer are familiar with new regulations about debt financing and pass-through deductions from around the same time. You might want to look up the effect of those policy changes on the health care industry the next time you’re staring at a painting in your doctor’s waiting room.
To be fair, there are many positive examples in the same policy areas, many from the Michigan state government.
For instance, Michigan Public Act 132 of 2024 expanded which hospitals can qualify for rural hospital access pool funding. And the state’s 2026 fiscal year budget includes $2.3 million for the Office of Rural Prosperity. If you live in an area of Michigan that has been challenged by offering the health care options people need, that money could make a big difference in your life.
Moreover, that same budget includes many programs to help school districts address teacher recruitment and community college tuition support, among other education protocols. Your grandchild might not have a kindergarten teacher, or your high school senior might not take college classes next fall without those policies.
We’re all just trying to make it through our busy lives, so how realistic is it to educate ourselves about the plethora of policies politicians produce?
As I told my students, democracy is not just about the rights of citizens, but also civic duties. A government “of the people, by the people, for the people” in Lincoln’s famous phrase also requires some work from the people.
Perhaps each of us could pick two or three areas of special interest and delve a little bit more into those policies. Collectively, we would then have more eyes, if you will, on the policies that our representatives are crafting.
Then on Election Day — maybe this November — if our representatives are not meeting our expectations, we can all have a little revenge of the policy nerds.
Keith Kindred is a retired Michigan teacher who taught at the high school and college levels for over 33 years. He is also the author of several self-published books and regularly writes about education policy.
This article originally appeared on Battle Creek Enquirer: A teacher’s final lesson: Pay attention to the details | Opinion
Reporting by Keith Kindred, Battle Creek Enquirer / Battle Creek Enquirer
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