Brendan P. Walsh

Before the dust settled on his budget proposals, Gov. Rick Snyder this past week outlined sweeping education reform for the state of Michigan.  Some of the headline items were predictable – expanding charter schools, accountability governed by test scores, financial aid driven by improvement, tenure reform.

With baseball season upon us, we can say these aspects of the proposal are the “straight fastballs” of the current education reform movement.

But Snyder threw a few curveballs as well.  One was enhanced support (and real dollars) for early childhood development programs, so that “children [are] born healthy… thriving and developmentally on track from birth to third grade, … developmentally ready to succeed in school at the time of school entry,… [and] prepared to succeed in fourth grade and beyond by reading proficiently by the end of third grade.”  This is fairly progressive stuff.  I applaud Snyder’s efforts here.

If we compare it to what Snyder’s left hand is doing, for example eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit, there’s an argument to be made that he is indeed providing practical assistance for this same population other than just doling out government money.  This is one of the best examples I’ve seen yet of Snyder casting aside the traditional yoke of partisan ideology.  No argument here.

But if that proposal is a curveball, his “forced choice” proposal is a corkscrew pitch to make Willie Hernandez blush.  School choice is one of the largest planks of the education reform movement, the introduction of free market influences on stodgy ol’ public education.  To set some context first, however, we need to acknowledge that Michigan has a progressive history on school choice dating back to Governor Engler’s days in office.

Michigan public school districts have long had the option to declare themselves “schools of choice” in either a limited or unlimited fashion.  Unlimited means anyone who wants to enroll in the school, regardless of where they live or pay taxes, may do so.  Limited choice might mean a district would only allow the same for example kindergarten through fifth grade, or cap the number of outside students who will be accepted.  Point being, there’s precedent here.  Engler effectively delivered a form of a statewide voucher system, except the voucher could only be used at public school districts that chose to participate. (Specific details on the law here.)

And participate they did.  I sat in on the superintendent interviews for another suburban school district and one of the candidates hailed was from Macomb County.  He shared that of twenty-one public school districts there, nineteen participate in schools of choice.  This is a good example of the compounding market influence of choice.  Once a few started, clearly most of the others concluded they could not withdraw from the free market.

Distilling the statewide data on school choice is difficult, but I am comfortable reporting that of Michigan’s roughly 1.6 million students, somewhere between 15% and 20% do not attend their home district in favor of another traditional public school  or Public School Academies, aka charter school.

And what is one of the predominant sources of those emigrating students?  Not surprisingly Detroit Public Schools — by the thousands.  This is where this issue gets interesting.  For most Michigan residents, the demise of DPS – what U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called “ground zero” – has been something of a disconnected problem. DPS and its “like districts” (e.g. Ecorse, Inkster, Pontiac) have been a unifying source in the calls for changing the reviled status quo.  But Snyder’s plan to force all Michigan districts to accept students from anywhere just dropped the drawbridge over the alligator-infested moats constructed for years via higher tax rates and higher property values.

The economic argument the opposition will raise (“but we’ve paid higher taxes for years!”) has not dissuaded the CPA turned governor Snyder who said, “Providing open access to a quality education without boundaries is essential. No longer should school districts be allowed to opt out from accepting out-of-district students.”  Not a lot of equivocation there.

State Superintendent Michael Flanagan upped the ante when he said in support, “I hate to think that there is a kid struggling in one district, and half a mile away over some artificial border is an opening in a proven public school and they don’t have access. There are tensions that are racial often, and we need to move beyond that.” Yonder lies Altar Road and Mack Avenue, Grosse Pointers.

The flight of students from DPS to schools who have opened their borders has undeniably done two things.  First, it shows that school choice has already allowed those tens of thousands of students whose families have had the motivation, means, and options to flee Arne Duncan’s proclaimed “ground zero” and its smaller urban statewide satellites.  Is it a surprise to anyone that remaining students with less means, guidance, and motivation, do not score as well on standardized tests?

Secondly, as those droves of students left, with their $7,000+ in per pupil revenue in tow, the financial collapse of DPS and others like it was certain.  Of all of Proposal A’s thorns, none is as sharp as the rapid loss of revenue associated with the rapid reduction of student enrollment. These forces have amounted to an economic and academic death spiral that even the swashbuckling Robert Bobb has not been able to solve.  Anyone curious why they’ve had trouble finding Bobb’s replacement?  Anyone still think all the taxpayers of Michigan (or nationally) won’t be on the hook for DPS’ $327 million (and growing) debt?

Given their ability to remain insulated from much of this, the suburban districts with higher property values and higher millage rates, might have reacted to this in a passive way – running the gamut from “poor DPS” to “tough s__t, DPS.”  Both are in the “not my problem” bucket.  How about now?  How many today, given the prospect of forced choice, would prefer to see Detroit, Inkster, Pontiac, Grand Rapids, Flint, Muskegon and others thrive?

On the other side of the coin, how many think Michigan can return to economic growth if Detroit collapses entirely?  I watched testimony before the state board of education during which economists on both sides of the aisle agreed that healthy state economies have, among other characteristics, a healthy large urban anchor.  I think we’re about to find out if that urban anchor’s educational system can be a confederation of charter schools.  As it has in the past, Detroit remains the United States’ vanguard city.

Choice has an unpleasant side regardless of the context.  Exposed to the same free market influences, in which businesses fail or thrive, school districts are doing the same.  Why should anyone be surprised that some school districts have indeed failed?  Yet those same districts, the ones students and families have not chosen, are the poster children for further reform.

We just witnessed the failure of a bookstore here in Grosse Pointe.  I’m sure that Amazon has not bemoaned Border’s failure.  Does part of us not now mourn DPS’?  Unlike failed bookstores, the excess school district inventory requires some special handling.

Snyder’s proposal, with expanded public school choice and expanded charter school options, is throwing these students a lifeline.  His means of doing so demonstrates that he’s staying true to his free market roots while showing legitimate sympathy for the plight of these students.  Perhaps he also knows that many other local school district ships are about to founder and more life jackets will be needed.

Herein lies one of the great sources of friction in the hundred-year history of this uneasy juxtaposition of publicly funded schools in a country where free market ideology is hard-coded in the national operating system.

The question is, are Snyder’s suburban free market constituents, the ones who have loudly opposed this form of free market choice, as committed the concept as he is?  We’re about to find out.