Two Michigan Senate committees on April 20 addressed the growing controversy of the stealth unionization of the state's home day care owners and providers, as well as the mechanism by which it happened. One committee took the legislative route, and the other asked probing questions of a Department of Human Services representative.

On a 2 to 1 vote, the Senate Committee on Families and Human Services approved Senate Bills 1173 and 1179 to effectively see to it that private-sector business owners cannot be categorized as government employees and unionized. These measures now head to the full Senate for consideration.

In the meantime, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Human Services took no legislative action. The committee instead focused its discussion on the Michigan Home Based Child Care Council (MHBCCC). The council is the state entity which acts as the "employer" in the unionization of Michigan's 40,000-plus home-based day care providers the union Child Care Providers-Together Michigan (CCPTM). Union dues come from a portion of state subsidy payments made to day care providers on behalf of low-income parents. The MHBCCC has come under intense scrutiny since last fall, when the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of three day care owners who do not wish to continue having dues diverted from their subsidy payments to a union. Even if these providers choose to decline union membership, they would still have "service fees" withheld.

Even though the MHBCCC was listed on the official meeting agenda, no representative from the council showed up. This latest no-show is at least the third legislative hearing at which the Michigan Home Based Child Care Council was a main topic of discussion but failed to appear, even after legislators last fall attempted to strip state funding for the council.

It turns out that Lisa Brewer-Walraven, director of early childhood education and care at the Department of Human Services, who was already on-hand to talk about other DHS business, is an MHBCCC board member. Committee Chairperson Bill Hardiman, R-Kentwood, took the opportunity to question Brewer-Walraven about her knowledge of the MHBCCC, its purported benefit to the state's day care owners and providers, and its creation through an interlocal agreement between the DHS and Mott Community College.

At first, Brewer-Walraven seemed reluctant to answer Hardiman's question about who initiated the process of forming the interlocal agreement. She replied, "It was initiated, again, because of the number of home-based child care providers that we have in Michigan and wanting to continue to bring efforts to improve the quality of care provided." (See video below.)

Hardiman continued to press Brewer-Walraven who finally nodded her head to his question, "So DHS approached Mott Community College because of their long-standing reputation of providing training for child care?"

After the hearing, Brewer-Walraven confirmed her answer to the Mackinac Center, stating that the DHS did approach Mott Community College about the formation of the interlocal agreement that created the MHBCCC. She would not go into further detail, however, citing the Center's pending lawsuit against the DHS, which is now before the Michigan Supreme Court.

Another study was released this month showing that teacher professional development programs are no guarantor of higher student achievement. The research compared middle school math teachers who were enrolled in an intensive professional development program with teachers who were not and found that students of teachers receiving the extra training failed to perform any better than students of teachers in the control group. This same method was employed by a study a few years ago that found professional development to be just as inept at raising student reading scores. 

This research calls into question a Michigan law requiring all teachers to receive a minimum of five days of professional development annually. Many of the activities that qualify as professional development have little to do with improving student performance anyway and are less intensive than the ones used in the aforementioned studies. Additionally, state law allows school districts to count up to 51 hours of teacher professional development as part of 1,098 required hours of pupil instruction, meaning these days often come at the expense of school's limited instructional time.

These studies support the evidence showing that the best predictor of a teacher's ability to raise student achievement is the teachers' own academic ability in the subjects they teach, not how many degrees they've earned or time they logged in professional development training. Unfortunately, this factor contributes very little to determining who becomes a state-certified teacher and which of these are subsequently hired.

Not surprisingly then, a separate, new study out of Michigan State University found that new math teachers in the United States are not as well prepared as similar teachers in other nations. The nations with the best-prepared math teachers are ones where future teachers spend the most time actually studying and mastering mathematics and not taking as many courses in things like pedagogical theory.

Of all the things within the schools' control that impact student achievement, teacher quality is the most important. These studies cast doubts on whether schools can transform their ineffective teachers into high-performing ones through professional development programs. Instead of spending time, energy and resources on these programs, schools would do better to attract and retain teachers who have proven to excel academically in the subjects that they teach.

Merit pay systems would be the best way to achieve this goal. To attract and retain high-performing teachers, schools could offer higher salaries to new teachers who have demonstrated mastery of their subject and raise the salaries of those teachers who consistently raise student achievement by a value-added measure. 

Of course, paying teachers differentially is staunchly opposed by teachers unions. They would prefer teachers remain paid like assembly line workers with a "single salary schedule," declaring it must be good because it's as old-fashioned as "Mom and apple pie," and no one would want do away with moms or apple pie.

Nevertheless, if schools want to raise student achievement, they must be able attract teachers to the profession who have the necessary skills, and retain only those that actually do. Until then, we should expect student achievement to remain flat, as it has for the past 40 years.