One common theme in the media across the state and nationally has been the tale of how the city of Detroit's financial crisis stems from a lack of revenue.

An analysis by Bridge magazine says the city receives less than expected in state-shared revenue, or money the state distributes to all local governments it gets from collecting sales taxes. The Huffington Post cited the main root of Detroit's problems as "the simple lack of revenue."

But a report released this month by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan suggests that Detroit gets more than its fair share of state money when measured per capita and compared to what other cities are receiving. And the city's revenue per person has changed little over the past decade.

"They get a lot of money on a per capita basis. They just can't control their spending," Bettie Buss, the report's author, told Reuters.

The report notes that while the city of Detroit received $161.1 million less in state shared revenue in 2012 than it did in 2002, it gets $335 per person in state-shared revenue – by far the highest in the state. Pontiac was second-highest at $176 per person. 

James Hohman, a fiscal policy analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, says the city's real issues are administrative and not revenue.

"They are getting more state revenue sharing than anyone else. They've had it cut, but so has everyone else," Hohman said. "Yes the revenue has gone down a bit in the last decade, but so has everything else in the city of Detroit."

Detroit population has dropped 22 percent from 905,996 in 2002 to 706,585 in 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Meanwhile, Detroit's total revenue dropped from $2.589 billion in 2002 to $2.302 billion in 2012, an 11 percent decline. Governmental activity revenue fell from $1.855 billion in fiscal 2002 to $1.537 billion in fiscal 2012, a 17 percent decline.

"They haven’t adequately planned for a decrease. It’s an administrative issue,” Hohman said.

The CRC report and a review the city's finances shows that Detroit has revenue that is actually higher per capita than it has been in the past. In fact, the city receives about $1,289 per person in total revenue (property taxes, income taxes, other local taxes and revenue sharing) – the highest amount in the nation and 50 percent higher than any other city in Michigan.

Anthony Neely, spokesman for Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, didn't respond to a request for comment.

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See also:

Detroit's Emergency Manager Must Enforce Rules City Officials Ignored

Detroit Police Union Official Says Resource Cuts Make Streets Unsafe, But Police and Fire Salaries Increased

Detroit Exhausts Its Options

Detroit Could Sell Off Assets To Avoid Insolvency

In a recent series of articles, Bridge magazine suggests that kindergarten retention rates are not associated with student academic success, and may have more to do with districts pocketing extra tax dollars.

Author Ron French states his conclusion strongly:

Taxpayers are in effect getting one school year for the price of two – paying an average of $7,000 per failed 5-year-old for an additional year of schooling that doesn’t produce better learners.

Bridge suggests that the state could save money by spending more on Great Start, the preschool program administered by the state. The program, Bridge says, is cheaper than spending an extra $7,000 in state foundation allowance money to hold a kindergarten student back and produces significant benefits to taxpayers and students.

Though this is a possibility, the evidence on which Bridge bases its conclusion is slim, if not nonexistent. French said in an email that the magazine did not compare kindergarten retention rates of one class of students to how those students did a few years later on academic tests. Rather, French said Bridge looked for patterns between 2010-11 retention rates and 2011-12 district grades based on 4th, 8th and 11th grade student test scores. No pattern was found.

Comparing kindergarten retention rates to 2011-12 test scores of older students, some of whom were in kindergarten more than a decade ago, is not firm analytic ground for Bridge to stake its claim, especially since kindergarten retention rates have been changing over time.

According to state data provided by the Michigan Department of Education, during the 2010-11 school year, approximately 10 percent fewer kindergartners were held back than four years ago. Bridge magazine’s failure to find a pattern between kindergarten retention rates and test scores could be simply due to the magazine attempting to compare mismatched data.

Moreover, Bridge cites “study after study finding no long-lasting academic benefit to holding students back in kindergarten…” though the link provided does not specifically address kindergarten retention. Rather, it is a nearly decade-old summary of retention research across K-12 grades.

Martin West, assistant professor of education at Harvard University, summarizes a criticism of much retention research in a paper for the Brookings Institution, noting that “…the disappointing outcomes of retained students may well reflect the reasons they were held back in the first place rather than the consequences of being retained.”

West notes that a program in Florida to retain third graders who aren’t reading at grade level has posted promising initial results, with retained students performing better than comparable students who were not retained on both math and reading tests. Florida students retained in third grade are also much less likely to be retained in later years.

In the case of Michigan, parents and school officials may be delaying students so that they are developmentally ready for first grade. Parents and school officials raised these points in comments posted on Bridge’s initial article.

Godfrey-Lee Superintendent Dave Britten posted some interesting analysis on his blog, showing that students born during the first half of the school year on average outscore students born during the second half of the school year. The gap is consistent across test subjects and student ethnicity. Britten’s analysis suggests that students who enter first grade at an older age might continue to do better throughout their public school career.

Readers should not mistake Bridge magazine’s conclusion for fact. More research is needed to determine whether districts that are retaining more kindergartners are seeing positive or negative results.

It is also a stretch to claim that Great Start is the solution, and should be expanded. Mackinac Center experts have noted before that the positive gains associated with Great Start might be due to selection bias, and that results from other preschool programs are not appropriate evidence for Great Start’s effectiveness.

Claims that expanding Great Start would save state taxpayers money are just claims — until concrete proposals are put forward. For example, French suggests expanding the part-time Great Start program could save money, while Phil Power, another Bridge author, has suggested expanding it to a full-time program, which would surely increase costs. 

As with Great Start, it’s important to present sufficient evidence that a proposed policy solution has a chance of success and is fixing a real problem. There’s simply not enough to claim that district kindergarten retention practices are harmful.