The Mackinac Center for Public Policy's new "Context and Peformance" Report Card factors student poverty levels into four years of standardized test scores for nearly 600 public high schools in Michigan and ranks the schools accordingly.
Here's a list of the top 10 charter public high schools.
Our new "Context and Performance" Report Card factors student poverty levels into four years of standardized test scores for nearly 600 public high schools in Michigan and ranks the schools accordingly. Here's a list of the top 10 conventional high schools — that is, district-run schools that are neither charter schools nor selective-admissions schools.
Dr. Paul McCracken, a long-time member of the Mackinac Center’s Board of Scholars, passed away at the age of 96 Friday in Ann Arbor, according to Carpe Diem, a blog written by Dr. Mark J. Perry, another member of the Center’s Board of Scholars.
McCracken was a Ph.D. economist who was on the faculty of the University of Michigan’s School of Business Administration. He served on the President’s Council of Economic Advisors during both the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations, and was a member of President Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board.
Recent news reports indicate that a private Michigan state fair (now called “Great Lakes State Fair”) will operate from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3 in the city of Novi. The official, government-supported state fair that had been located in Detroit closed in 2009 for lack of taxpayer subsidies.
Tearing a page out of the Occupy Wall Street playbook, concerned Grand Traverse County residents are employing a similar strategy this weekend. The residents initiated “Occupy the Boardman” at the Brown Bridge Dam on Friday, Aug. 3, in order to raise awareness of the environmental and ecological damage initiated by the drawdown of impounded water between three of the Boardman River dams.
The House and Senate are in the midst of a summer break, so rather than votes, this report instead contains several newly introduced bills of interest.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 1182: Repeal mandatory expulsion of violent students
Introduced by Sen. Mike Kowall (R), to repeal the law that requires public schools to expel a student who makes a school bomb threat or commits a physical assault against a school employee or other student. The bill changes the law to say “may expel” instead of “shall expel.” Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
No one likes to see a building sit vacant. Vacant buildings deteriorate, can invite vandalism and discourage those considering moving to a neighborhood.
If a building is tax delinquent for a number of years, it can be taken by county government, which then takes up the expensive task of maintaining the property until someone purchases it.
Our new "Context and Peformance" Report Card factors student poverty levels into four years of standardized test scores for nearly 600 public high schools in Michigan and ranks the schools accordingly. Here's a list of the top 10 rural high schools.
To see more comparisons like these, download the full report card here.
The Oakland Press in a story Thursday about the strain of government employee pension benefits on taxpayers cites Mackinac Center research on the matter. Our analysis shows that closing the defined-benefit pension plan to new state employees in 1997 has saved taxpayers up to $4.3 billion in unfunded liabilities.
It’s that time of year again: Back-to-school deal hunting season.
Hoping to give their kids every possible advantage, millions of Michigan parents will flock to nearby retailers for new school supplies. But before loading up on notebooks, pencils and crayons, parents should remember that their local public school is required by law to supply these necessities to every student free of charge.
The details are laid out in a 2011 Michigan Department of Education memo listing specifically what supplies schools must provide, including pencils, paper, crayons, scissors and glue sticks. In addition, school districts may not charge for registration or any course fees, even for elective courses.
Yet many parents remain unaware that the tax dollars tendered by themselves and their neighbors have already paid for these school supplies. Some school districts improperly suggest that parents are responsible for these supplies. According to the 2012 Huntington Backpack Index, parents will spend between $548 and $1,117 on school supplies and fees for each student on average.
Our new "Context and Peformance" Report Card factors student poverty levels into four years of standardized test scores for nearly 600 public high schools in Michigan and ranks the schools accordingly. Here's a list of the top 10 town high schools.
To see more comparisons like these, download the full report card here.
Henry Payne, editorial cartoonist for The Detroit News and editor of The Michigan View, was the guest speaker at an event honoring Milton Friedman Tuesday at Northwood University, according to the Midland Daily News. The event, held on the 100th anniversary of Friedman’s birth, was co-sponsored by the Mackinac Center.
The Manhattan Institute last year commissioned polls in a number of states on public attitudes regarding government workers. One of the questions dealt directly with an issue the Michigan Legislature will face during a one-day session scheduled for Aug. 15: closing the school pension system to new employees, and instead giving them generous 401(k) contributions.
Health Savings Accounts are becoming ever more popular and widespread even as Obamacare threatens to effectively prohibit them. Health policy expert Greg Scandlen reports that the number of Americans covered by HSAs grew 18 percent last year, from 11.4 million in January 2011 to 13.5 million in January 2012.
A decreasing property tax base gives municipal officials a chance to “engage in innovations and efficiencies that will improve city government,” a Mackinac Center expert told the Dearborn Press and Guide.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, suggested that cities and counties “give up the specialty items,” such as golf courses and wave pools, if there is a concern about revenue and providing core services.
Despite student and parent protests, Detroit Public Schools closed Southwestern High School this year because of its poor academic and attendance track record.
The Mackinac Center's new high school report card, which attempts to account for socioeconomic factors as well as student academic performance, supports the closure decision: Southwestern High School received an 'F' on the high school report card, and was the 20th lowest-scoring high school in the entire state of Michigan.
Our new "Context and Peformance" Report Card factors student poverty levels into four years of standardized test scores for nearly 600 public high schools in Michigan and ranks the schools accordingly. Here's a list of the top 10 suburban high schools.
(Editor’s note: Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of famed economist Milton Friedman. The Mackinac Center will celebrate with blog posts commemorating his impact on free-market ideology and his educational choice.)
Mackinac Center interns today commemorated the life and work of Dr. Milton Friedman at “100 Years of Milton Friedman,” a luncheon and forum co-sponsored by the Center at Northwood University.
(Editor’s note: Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of famed economist Milton Friedman. The Mackinac Center will celebrate with blog posts commemorating his impact on free-market ideology and his educational choice.)
Milton Friedman’s 1979 interview with Phil Donahue includes a brief segment in which the two men discuss a common criticism advanced against proponents of the free market: capitalists are greedy. It serves as an example of an oft-recited complaint among those against whom such criticism is advanced.
Our new "Context and Peformance" Report Card factors student poverty levels into four years of standardized test scores for nearly 600 public high schools in Michigan and ranks them accordingly. Here's a list of the top 10 city high schools.
To see more comparisons like these, download the full report card here.
(Editor’s note: Tuesday marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of famed economist Milton Friedman. The Mackinac Center celebrated with blog posts commemorating his impact on free-market ideology and educational choice.)
Milton Friedman is considered by some to be the father of today’s education reform movement. While this is a bit of a stretch, Friedman’s ideas have been extremely influential within the school choice movement and are frequently used to make both the economic and moral case for expanding parents’ freedom to choose the school they think is best for their children.
The Mackinac Center recently published a high school report card that accounts for student socioeconomic differences. While this “Context and Performance” report card produced several illuminating results, its main limitation is that it only compares schools within Michigan. Fortunately, a new study published by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance gives a much broader comparison of school performance. Unfortunately, the results aren’t very good for Michigan’s public schools or the nation as a whole.
A union-backed ballot initiative that would make union bosses more powerful than local and state elected officials is “extremely radical,” Labor Policy Director Vincent Vernuccio told The Chicago Tribune. The story also appeared in The Columbus Dispatch and on Yahoo News.
A new Mackinac Center feature that allows users to compare the social outcomes of alcohol control policy in all 50 states based on each state’s level of regulation was cited in an Op-Ed Saturday in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The Op-Ed was co-authored by Antony Davies, an adjunct scholar with the Center and an associate professor of economics at Duquesne University who, along with Fiscal Policy Director Michael D. LaFaive, wrote the recent Center study, “Alcohol Control Reform and Public Health and Safety.”
James Taranto today in the Wall Street Journal cites the Overton Window — developed by the Mackinac Center’s late executive vice president, Joseph Overton — in a column about the controversy surrounding comments made by Boston Mayor Tom Menino and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel about fast-food restaurant Chick-fil-A.
