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Michigan Loses Race, but will Grand Rapids Win Google?

By RR | March 7, 2010

Last Thursday, the state winners of the new Federal education reform plan–Race to the Top–were officially announced. Not surprisingly, Michigan did not make the cut. The list of winning states that qualified for the next round includes Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Tennessee. What this means for Michigan, which will apply again this summer, is a little unclear. The recent batch of legislation passed by Michigan to comply to Race to the Top standards (implementing alternative certification, teacher merit pay, and more) seems to be wasted effort, though Michigan teachers and schools will definitely feel the consequences.

More promising for Michigan (Grand Rapids) is its bid to win Google Fiber, the ultra high speed pipeline project that is currently soliciting pilot locations. Winning would bring real change to West Michigan–including educational change. At the university level, a Gig-per-second data transfer rate (roughly 100 times faster than standard cable or DSL) could mean the almost instant exchange of high-resolution x-rays, for instance, which would make the GVSU and MSU medical schools pretty attractive places to be. Google Fiber would also draw entrepreneurs interested in capitalizing on the high speed connection: imagine a Grand Rapids-based digital movie archive with 10-second download times, for instance.

It would be interesting to see what kind of educational possibilities Google Fiber would create. I wonder, for instance, if distance education would be improved. I can imagine all Grand Rapids schools retrofitted with Google Fiber, creating jobs and allowing for real-time data exchange between all teachers, students, and schools. Or, Google could develop more sophisticated cloud apps such as Google Docs (imagine a Google Docs that looks more like Microsoft Office 2007). There are dozens of other possibilities, so keep your fingers crossed.

Strangely enough for a left-leaning guy, I’m hoping a good corporation like Google could foster educational change, and I’m rooting against Obama and more top-down federally mandated “reform.”

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