Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

Organization established in 1989 by Paul N. DeWeese and others to lobby for changes in state law and the state constitution to allow parents to choose between competing schools. The record group also contains records of the Michigan Center for Charter Schools, sister organization to TEACH Michigan, established to promote the development of charter schools in the state. The record group includes Informational materials detailing mission and goals of the TEACH Michigan organization; organizational files; topical files; correspondence; speeches and articles about school choice and the state charter school movement; and audio and video cassettes of TM presentations and appearances of Paul DeWeese on radio and television programs. Also included are the organizational records of the Michigan Center for Charter Schools.

This record group consists of two separate groupings (or subgroups) of records: the combined files of TEACH Michigan and TEACH Michigan Education Fund covering the period of 1989 to 1995, and files of the charter school support group, Michigan Center for Charter Schools covering the years 1994-1995. Both organizations operated out of the same office in Lansing and included some of the same individuals as board members. The TM/TMEF files consist in great part of papers of Dr. Paul N. DeWeese, a principal founder of the organization. The MCCS files are largely papers of executive director Barbara Barrett as well as DeWeese. Together, the record group contains correspondence, policy statements, organizational and activity files, collected materials, sound and video materials, all relating to the efforts of the two organizations first to educate and lobby for changes in the law, and second to provide assistance and support in the establishment of charter schools. The records date from the inception of the organization to 1995. The subsequent records of TEACH Michigan remain with the organization.

Dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan, 1969-1978. Earlier served in Franklin D. Roosevelt administration where he was a key figure in establishing the Social Security program and was Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Lyndon Johnson. Records consist of Dean's files; working files, 1978, relating to his work with the Governor's Task Force on Prevention and Investigation of Abuse in State Institutions; papers relating to the Summit Conference on Inflation, 1974; and files concerning involvement with school desegregation cases in Detroit and Kalamazoo, Michigan; also photographs.

The Wilbur Cohen Papers provide documentation of his work as Dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan and with the state of Michigan Task Force on the Prevention and Investigation of Abuse in State Institutions1977-1979, as well as files on school desegregation in Detroit and Kalamazoo. The papers are organized into five series: Cohen's Task Force on the Prevention and Investigation of Abuse in State Institutions, Public School Desegregation Files, two series of Dean of the School of Education files and Photographs.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, archivist; collected materials relating to local Democratic Party politics; student papers; and photographs.

The McNitt papers consist of materials collected relating to his interest in, and activities with, the local Democratic Party. Included are newsletters, leaflets, campaign materials and newspaper clippings concerning state, county, and municipal politics, particularly the presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and George McGovern in 1972, Ann Arbor City Council and school board elections; the New Democratic Coalition of Michigan; the Human Rights Party; the state presidential primary in 1972; Democratic state conventions; state elections in 1968, 1970, 1972, and 1974; and the election campaign of Congressman Richard F. VanderVeen in 1974.

The collection also includes copies of student papers on topics relating to Michigan history. The titles of these papers are "The Library Extension Movement in Grand Rapids", "Journalism and the Republican Party of Michigan, 1890-1920; A Study of the Michigan Republican Newspaper Association", and "Peace and American Society : Rebecca Shelley and the Peace Movement."

Finally, there are many hundreds of photographs taken by McNitt relating to the construction of the Bentley Library and to the accessioning of the papers of Gerald R. Ford.