Rick Snyder has done much to provide every advantage to business in Michigan – or a GOP’s perspective about what makes business successful. Certainly there were some positive advances. The MBT break that was provided has freed up $1.8B in taxable revenue that our state’s businesses otherwise contributed to the state. As a result, we have much less revenue coming in to the state. His lame duck repeal of the PPT without replacing the revenue will be a positive thing for businesses that might otherwise delay purchasing capital equipment. Snyder perceives moving Michigan to a Right to Work state as a positive thing for our economy – and he signed that as well in lame duck session. He has cut funding to education to achieve some of these initiatives – both in one-time and long-term financing mechanisms.
I’ll refrain here from commenting on his horrific social agenda which negatively impacts women, children, families and non-traditional families.
The impact of much of his work is that there is a lot less revenue coming in to the state. He has significantly escalated the undermining of public education, which is unfortunately the very thing we need to invest in if Michigan is to have an economy that is knowledge-based as much as, or more than, it is manufacturing-based.
Snyder has a handful of bills at the ready for ‘education reform’. These bills generally take power and advocacy away from parents and communities and gives that power solely to the CEO’s of for profit charter schools. He has lifted the cap off of charter schools so that as he positions more of our traditional public schools for bankruptcy, parents can flock to their local charter school to save them. Unfortunately, there is a major conflict of interest in the business model of for profit charter schools. Their primary goal is to increase shareholder value. That has absolutely nothing to do with educating your child - at all, let alone providing a high quality education. Go ahead and make your plea to the CEO to pay for higher quality teachers or spend more on the science equipment so your child gets a better education. See how your requests for help line up with that CEO’s willingness to compromise company profitability – and therefore likely put their job at risk.
If parents think that this model puts them in a position of power or offers better choice, let’s see how this plays out for the next few years. Keep in mind that the Michigan model is primarily a for profit one, as >80% of our charter schools are for profit (the highest in the U.S.).
The EAA bill sitting at the ready for approval will not fix Detroit’s education, but it does a lot to advance an agenda where communities have no voice and the state can take over schools with no accountability to the people and families whose children they are ‘educating’. The Super Voucher bills exacerbate this for all communities. The Oxford Foundation’s rewrite of the School Aid Act place a $0 value on a robust education experience – the kind of experience that provides our students with lifelong learning skills and character development; not job training for jobs needed 6 months ago.
Snyder has been successful at reducing the funds available to improve our state. How this leads to a vibrant economy defies basic economic principles. Vibrant economies generally are saturated with a substantial and high quality education industry as a significant part of their economy (e.g., Ann Arbor as a city; Massachusetts as a state).
I will be very interested in how he addresses education reform, infrastructure development and the economy. Parents should be paying attention to his discussion tonight as well. Beware: the choice that he may mention also compromises the existence of your local public school. Your ability to advocate for your child moves from a locally governed model with a board you elect and can call to a CEO. As you have charters and private schools to select from, you may find that you don’t have a local school to go back to if you find that the quality of teachers and/or education isn’t what you thought it was going to be.
Michigan’s economy: we’ll see how Michigan does as we continue to slide down the median income rankings (we were 39th last year). We’ll see how many investments in homes, cars and other major purchases people are able to make.
Personally, I would reinvent Michigan much differently.
