The president of the State Board of Education was wrong when he compared a bill that would change how education is funded to a voucher system, said Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

John Austin, president of the State Board of Education, made the comparison when discussing the Michigan Public Education Finance Project proposal, which would allow public schools to take state money from students no matter where they live.

In addition to being on the State Board of Education, Austin is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank that has produced a wide-range of research supporting school choice, including vouchers.

"This is a voucher system," Austin was quoted as saying in the Detroit Free Press. "It's absolutely destructive. It has nothing to do with improving quality. It's loaded with the ideology of creating a new for-profit system for learning that will dismantle the schools we have."

A voucher system has been defined as financial aid to directly or indirectly support the attendance of a student at a private school, Van Beek said.

“Vouchers are defined in our constitution and this proposal is not it,” Van Beek said.

Austin amended his comment when contacted via email.

“It is effectively a voucher system, as a host of new schools, specialty schools and online learning providers, many run by private companies and for-profit operators will be authorized, with money following to these vendors,” Austin said.

But Van Beek said that also is misleading.

For example, a student from Detroit could currently enroll in an online cyber class in Traverse City, but the Traverse City school district could not get funding for that Detroit student. Van Beek said the bill would expand the boundaries for a funding system that was set up in 1994 when charter schools were introduced.

He said there are many “for-profit” entities that work with the public school system, such as companies that contract with schools for books, computers and buses.

Charter schools, however, are public schools with public school boards. Charter schools often choose to contract with a for-profit management company to operate the public school, Van Beek said.

Austin makes it sound as if the money goes directly to the for-profit management companies, Van Beek said.

“That’s not true,” Van Beek said.

He said a student has to first opt to enroll in the public charter school and the charter school district has to approve an agreement with the for-profit operating company.

“It is very different from a voucher system where public money can go directly to a private school,” Van Beek said.

If the state were to revise the constitution and implement a voucher program where students could take money to any authorized public or private school, it seems that many of the scholars at the Brookings Institution would have little objection. An examination of most of the papers, studies and books produced by the think tank shows support for school choice.

The most recent education study done in August found "statistically positive impacts" for a portion of the study's participants.

Their estimates indicate that using a voucher to attend private school increased the overall college enrollment rate among African Americans by 24 percent. 

Lansing attorney Richard McLellan led the team that drafted the education reform bill. McLellan is a founder of the Mackinac Center and is secretary of the organization's board of directors.

(Editor's note: This story has been edited from its original version to add context about the proposed bill.)

When Flint Community Schools Superintendent Linda Thompson made news that she was going to retire, what was missed was the fiscal impact of her leaving the school system.

Thompson worked 36 years for the Flint school district and will be 57 when she retires. A public school employee who worked 36 years for Flint schools and made Thompson's average salary of $175,649 the past three years would earn a pension of $94,850 a year.

If that 57-year-old retiree received a pension for the 26 years of his or her life expectancy with a 3 percent cost of living annual increase, it would grow to $204,552 a year.

"They are getting lavish benefits from an underfunded pension system,” said James Hohman, a fiscal policy analyst with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. "But the terms are the terms. The problem with the pension system is the politicians don’t put enough money aside for it. It's not her fault that politicians can't be trusted to manage a pension."

Thompson's benefits are part of the guarantees written into the contracts she worked under in her time in the district. The generous terms highlight the need for serious reform of the taxpayer-funded teacher pensions systems.

The Michigan Public School Employees' Retirement System’s unfunded liability has reached $22.4 billion. One reason is the state tacks on a 3-percent annual cost of living adjustment to many of the pensions of public school retirees.

The state law was changed in 2010 so that public school employees hired from July 1, 2010 and after do not get the 3 percent cost of living adjustment.

A 2010 study done by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy found that only 6 of 24 major private companies in Michigan had a defined benefit pension plan similar to what teachers are offered. And none of the 24 private companies offered cost-of-living increases.