Education
Michigan’s School Funding Disaster
It’s a telling sign that other states are studying Michigan’s school funding system to see where it went wrong.
What started as a revolutionary plan back in the 1990s has become a poster child for disaster. Depending on sales and income taxes to pay for obligations such as schools results in a system that is unstable and unsustainable. And anyone with a brain should have seen it coming. I did, and warned my colleagues about it fifteen years ago. It works as long as the economy is expanding at a rate that’s faster than inflation. That ensures that revenues keep pace with, or outpace, inflation. But when the economy goes south, so does school funding. That forces schools to cut back. And in a collapsing and changing economy, education is the one thing that offers hope for the future.
The solution to the budget problem, according to school critics, is to cut teacher salaries and benefits. Fair enough. But anyone with an understanding of economics knows where this will lead: to less competent teachers, higher teacher turnover and less effort from those teachers who stay.
With cuts in salary and benefits, why would any competent person go into teaching, especially in fields like math, science and economics, where they can work in private industry for far more money? If you remove the economic incentives for becoming a teacher, anyone with half a brain will go into another field. That leaves behind only those who have no other option.
And do you want your child being taught by someone who is in the classroom only because there is no other option?
I don’t.
Posted by The Editor on 08/13 at 12:58 AM
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State Owes Schools Millions
From a Free Press Story:
Michigan may have to cough up millions of dollars in additional funding to local school districts because of a state Court of Appeals ruling that says they should have been reimbursed for the cost of keeping and reporting more data required under education reforms enacted in the last decade.
AdvertisementIn an opinion released Monday, a unanimous three-judge panel in Lansing said state officials—essentially the Legislature and governor—violated the 1978 Headlee Amendment by ordering schools to turn over data about students and student performance without providing additional resources. The judges said that the state Supreme Court previously ruled that if the state mandates any new activities by school districts, Headlee requires the state to provide funding for it.
As a school teacher, I can tell you that not only do these testing mandates cost money, they also cost enormous amounts of time—both in the classroom and among administrators and teachers. Time that might otherwise be used for teaching is spent teaching how to take a test, preparing the paperwork for testing (each kid has to fill out forms—or someone has to do it for him), test taking, retesting, and so on. Administrators spend time filling out forms, planning ways to meet the ridiculously stringent rules (for example, desks must be 18 inches apart), and gathering and analyzing data. And instead of inservices that might actually benefit the students, teachers are forced to sit through meeting after meeting on how to properly administer tests, teach students the “proper” way to take tests, and so on.
Because of the money linked to the tests, and the dire consequences for a district whose students don’t pass, the standardized tests have become the masters and not the servants of education. They were supposed to help districts figure out where they needed to focus their attention. Instead, they have become the reason for education itself.
Who cares if the students actually learn anything useful. All that matters is that they pass the tests.
Posted by The Editor on 07/09 at 02:29 AM
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Ohio Newspaper Blasts Michigan Political Leadership
Its bad enough when the Free Press chastises the Michigan governor and legislature for political posturing and general stupidity, as has in recent editorials. But when a newspaper from neighboring Ohio takes the Governor and legislature to task, it’s downright embarrassing.
In a recent editorial in the Toledo Blade, the editors blast the political stonewalling in Lansing, and make a particular point of the damage that cuts to school funding will do:
Slashing school funding won’t help Michigan regain its economic equilibrium and, in fact, will accelerate the state’s plunge into disarray. Underfunded schools won’t attract new business and industry but will only repel what the state needs most - growth.
The same is true of support for higher education, as citizens of Ohio know only too well.
No one likes tax increases, but Michigan Senate Republicans have an obligation to stop stonewalling and join with the Democratic governor and House of Representatives to work out a quick solution to this looming fiscal crisis.
Posted by The Editor on 05/09 at 04:56 PM
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