The Mackinac Center for Public Policy's new "Context and Peformance" Report Card factors student poverty levels into standardized test scores for over 2,000 public elementary and middle schools in Michigan and ranks the schools accordingly.
Here's a list of the overall top performing elementary and middle schools on the report card.
In the close of HBO's wonderful 2008 series about America's second president, titled "John Adams," the voice of Adams is narrated by actor Paul Giamatti and it closes the seven part mini-series:
Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.
The Legislature has begun its summer recess, with no votes until July 18 at the earliest. This report contains recent votes of interest not included in previous issues, so they would not become too long.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 175, Undo National Guard pension reform: Passed 37 to 0 in the Senate
To reverse a 2010 reform that eliminated "defined benefit" pensions for future Michigan National Guard commanders and their assistants, and instead provided 401k benefits. The 2010 reform was adopted following reports of these "Adjutant Generals" being granted generous state pensions based on limited state service ($78,000 to $133,000 for 1.5 years to 13 years service).
Select tax incentive deals are in the news, again.
A new report from the left-leaning national group, "Good Jobs First," lists 240 "megadeals" nationwide over the past few decades and found that Michigan leads the pack with 29; six more than second-place New York.
Republicans in Michigan are divided on the question of how to react to Obamacare. They are currently in conflict over the issue of Medicaid expansion.
This is a classic example of the administrative perspective versus the historic perspective. Medicaid expansion is the top issue facing state lawmakers regarding Obamacare this year.
House Bill 4813, Create process for dissolving fiscally-failed school districts: Passed 20 to 18 in the Senate
To establish criteria and procedures for dissolving a school district that has become so financially unviable that it can no longer educate students, and for attaching the failed district’s territory to one or more nearby school districts. The bill was introduced after the Buena Vista and Inkster school districts reached this state shortly before the end of the 2012-2013 school year. The House concurred with minor changes and sent the bill to the Governor for signature, which is expected.
Who Voted "Yes" and Who Voted "No"
By Jack McHugh
Some political observers are marveling that none of the House Republicans who voted against the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, and none of the Senators who say they will oppose it in the Senate, did not or do not plan to offer one simple amendment that would make the bill actually live up to its proponents' claims.
In justifying his Medicaid expansion vote in Michigan Capitol Confidential, Rep. Al Pscholka, R-Stevensville, argued that this would prevent Michigan from being a "donor state" — whereby Michigan taxpayers send more money to the federal government than it receives in transfers to state programs and federal spending in Michigan.
There is no clearer image of the failure of Michigan's public education system than that of a school official knocking on doors and asking to see children’s bedrooms to catch families that are simply trying to provide the best education for their children.
Bill Shea of Crain’s Detroit Business has an article titled, “Many dollars, little sense: Projects that seemed like good ideas at the time…,” which looks at high-profile government projects long on promises but short on results.
Shea cites AutoWorld, the Detroit People Mover, Pinnacle Race Course, Unity Studios in Allen Park, Asian Village and the Jefferson plant deal.
By Jack McHugh
Dr. Megan Edison has raised an interesting point about a “healthy behavior” provision in the Obamacare Medicaid expansion bill that was passed by the Michigan House and considered by the Senate.
Under the bill, enrollees would pay more unless they “demonstrate improved health outcomes or maintain healthy behaviors as identified in a risk assessment by their primary care practitioner.” Dr. Edison characterizes as “creepy” the requirement that doctors must track and report to the state whether their patients have met that standard.
Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman writes in the current edition of The Ripon Forum about the “performance dashboards” utilized by Gov. Rick Snyder, noting both their positive and negative aspects and suggesting improvements.
Read the full article here.
Education Policy Analyst Audrey Spalding writes in an Op-Ed in the Midland Daily News that socioeconomic factors and their impact on student performance have to be taken into account when considering school performance.
On the morning of Tuesday, June 18, the Grand Rapids City Commission will consider transferring 163 or more properties to the Kent County Land Bank. These properties will not go to tax auction, where private individuals could bid on them.
If city commissioners approve this resolution, they will be helping the Kent County Land Bank circumvent state law, which forbids land banks from acquiring property prior to tax auction. Moreover, the land bank will have the ability to choose who can or cannot purchase these properties.
By Jack McHugh
House Bill 4714, Accept federal health care law Medicaid expansion: Passed 76 to 31 in the House
To expand Medicaid eligibility to families and childless adults up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, which implements a key component of the federal health care law (aka “Obamacare”). Under that law, the feds are supposed to pay 100 percent of the expansion’s cost during the first three years, with the state responsible for not more than 10 percent of the costs starting in 2020. The House-passed version of the bill does not contain a provision in the original requiring the federal government to approve certain cost-saving state Medicaid reforms before the expansion may proceed. All but one Democrat voted "yes," and a majority of Republicans (30 out of 59) in the Republican-controlled House voted "no."
A “favor” the Michigan Department of Corrections gave Jackson County has cost taxpayers millions of dollars, Fiscal Policy Director Michael LaFaive told The Jackson Citizen Patriot.
The MDOC has continued a contract with Jackson County, buying steam from the county’s incinerator to use at state prisons in Jackson, even though a 20-year contract between the two parties expired in 2007. The state kept the contract in place until this year, when bonds used to originally build the incinerator will be paid off. It would have been “unfair to leave the county with debt when they were trying to assist us,” a DOC spokesman told The Citizen Patriot as to why the state kept paying.
By Jack McHugh
If the Republican-controlled Michigan Legislature votes to accept the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, it will prop-up an unpopular and vulnerable law that practically all members of the majority caucus have said should be repealed. How could this be? Wes Nakagiri, a savvy Tea Party leader from Livingston County, has explained one very possible scenario for his members:
By Jack McHugh
This week Michigan Capitol Confidential reported a committee vote to adopt a substitute version of House Bill 4714, the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. The next day some of the Republicans named in that report voted against advancing this bill to the full House. These expansion opponents were Reps. Kevin Cotter, Ken Goike, Ray Franz, Tom Leonard and Dan Lauwers. While these legislators missed the chance to place a "speed bump" in front of Obamacare capitulation, on the more important committee action they voted against accepting the Medicaid expansion.
In so many ways, Michigan’s got it good compared to Nebraska. We boast Michigan State University for one and the birthplace of punk, Motown and heavy metal for another. Hemingway hunted and fished here as a boy; it’s the birthplace of both George C. Scott and Dick York; and the Upper Peninsula inspired the poetry and fiction of Janet Lewis.
Monday the Foundation for Excellence in Education sent out an email under the masthead “Common Core State Standards” that proclaimed the Mackinac Center “has endorsed higher standards for Wolverine State students.” Although the email never stated that the Mackinac Center actually favored the Common Core, many could have easily been led to believe just that. The email was based on a Gongwer summary (subscription required) of an article I wrote, but unfortunately fails to capture my opinion on Common Core.
Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh testified before the Michigan House’s Competitiveness Committee Tuesday about why the state should not expand Medicaid under Obamacare, according to The Detroit News.
“Why in the world would you want to be remembered as the politicians who helped prop up this law at the very moment when it was becoming highly vulnerable to a serious course correction?” McHugh asked the legislators.
The Daily Caller and Reason today highlight a recent Michigan Capitol Confidential story about the 2013-2014 Michigan teacher of the year who, thanks to his district’s single salary schedule, makes about $21,000 a year less than the average teacher in that district.
Those of us who have championed capitalism and free markets have had a tough go of it in an era of financial meltdowns, Occupy Wall Street and the snarky fella at the end of the bar who persistently bloviates that the rich keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer, free trade is a bust and soon we’ll resort to eating our young and elderly.
MichiganVotes.org has the details on a resolution to support "International Talk Like A Pirate Day" introduced last week by state Sen. Roger Kahn, R-Saginaw.
Sen. Kahn playfully sported an eye patch while his proposal was discussed, but the moment of frivolity is bound to remind observers of how members of a full-time Legislature can be full-time mischief makers, whether they intend to or not.
