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
Education •
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