K12 Consensus

Working to reform education in a consensus-based environment.

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Education’s Taxing Problem

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School Buses

Michigan’s Proposal A shifted the burden of school funding from property taxes to sales tax, with the goal of reducing the funding inequities between disparate school districts. Now, despite the school funding shift, inequities remain and questions remain regarding adequacy: what is an appropriate level of funding, and how do policy makers budget for it? This article on Pennsylvania school funding has implications for all states, as legislators grapple with how to pay for education:

In short, every state is wrestling with the issue of educational funding inequity.

Because we know that education funding systems relying on property taxes are inherently unfair, that zip codes and property values are wildly uneven across states, regions, and even municipalities, Michigan’s system needs to overcome inequities while providing adequacy.

The Complexity of School Choice as Improvement Model

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school-choice

The Harvard Graduate School of Education‘s online journal Usable Knowledge published an interview with educational economist Joshua Goodman regarding the implications of President Elect Donald Trump’s selection of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Specifically,

The selection (of DeVos) has raised larger questions about who should finance education, how schools should be held accountable, and even how we define the value of a public school system.

A major factor negatively influencing school choice and market pressures as the sole direction of education improvement efforts are the lack of immediacy, where school quality is more difficult to measure than in other areas of the economy, like Goodman’s examples of restaurants and grocery stores.

Inside Detroit’s Radical Experiment to Save Its Public Schools

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Detroit’s Cass Technical High School (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Referencing this older article about the complete restructuring of Detroit Public Schools, but it’s instructive for education reform efforts when parent Arlyssa Heard’s comments are considered:

“We have people making decisions who do not have children here and don’t know anything about what educators are facing in the classroom.”

Education reform efforts need to involve educators and parents, reliant on research and best practice and local influence, absent of ideology.

Lawmakers show they couldn’t care less about the health of Detroit’s schools

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Governor Rick Snyder

How Michigan’s legislators, Governor Rick Snyder, and the pro-charter school lobby circumvented bipartisanship and consensus to force a narrow ideological solution on Detroit’s schools.

When a British Prime Minister sold out Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, Winston Churchill acidly said words to the effect that he had been forced to choose between war and shame.

“He’s chosen shame now; he’ll get war later,” he said.

In Lansing this week, the Michigan Legislature had the choice between a plan that would actually give the Detroit schools a chance to revive, or selling out to the charter school lobby, which wants no restraints on terrible charter schools.

After a day of thinking about it, they unhesitatingly chose shame.

Speaker Kevin Cotter