In its latest report, Education Trust-Midwest calls for the urgent implementation of “solution-based, research-based strategies” to address the disparate learning losses experienced by low-income students during the pandemic. To increase test scores, one of Ed Trust’s top priorities is to significantly increase the amount of money schools receive on behalf of their low-income students.

Specifically, the report recommends that Michigan schools get double the minimum foundation allowance for each low-income student they enroll. That translates to more than $18,000 per student.

School districts in Michigan already receive an extra 11.5% of the foundation allowance for each low-income student. That cost taxpayers over $747 million in the last fiscal year. Increasing this to 100% would cost roughly another $6.5 billion. That represents a 38% increase to what the state currently spends on public schools.

The Ed Trust-Midwest report does not say where lawmakers should get this extra money, but there are only two options: raise taxes or cut other government programs.

Pouring billions more into public schools now would not be fiscally responsible. For one thing, school districts are still trying to find ways to spend the unprecedented sums they received in COVID relief funding in 2020 and 2021. They cannot easily ramp up their spending to provide extra services for students who need more help.

Schools should not establish new programs or hire new employees unless the new revenue is sustainable.

Even if schools could immediately start spending all this new money, it is doubtful it would have a direct impact on student achievement. The best evidence from Michigan shows that better funded schools struggle to turn the additional cash into better student outcomes.

Plus, giving schools that serve low-income students more money has been tried, over and over again, for the last several decades. It’s why schools in Flint, Benton Harbor, Detroit and Pontiac are — when counting all their revenue — some of the best-funded in the state.

If all it took was more money to raise test scores, Michigan’s students of today would be performing significantly better than previous generations of students. That’s clearly not the case.

That said, if policymakers decide to spend more on schools, increasing payments on behalf of low-income students should still be considered. Research generally finds that it is more challenging to educate students from low-income backgrounds. Doubling funding, however, is likely to waste money without improving education. A more sustainable goal would be a small increase to the current 11.5% bonus. That would encourage districts to make strategic investments in ways to serve these students better.

For example, as the Ed Trust-Midwest report states, there is clearly a need to improve early literacy skills, especially among low-income and minority students. The number of third grade students eligible to be held back based on reading proficiency increased by 20% in 2021-22. Even so, many of these students were promoted to fourth grade, unprepared and in jeopardy of falling further behind.

These students need more focused reading support and a chance at improving their scores. This is the purpose of the Read by Grade Three Law: to create incentives for schools and parents to get every third grader proficient in reading. The strategic use of data and resources to improve reading proficiency before promoting a student to the next grade level would be a wise investment.

Improving teacher quality is another wise investment, and a priority identified in the Ed Trust-Midwest report. The value added by a quality teacher is well-documented. But placing quality teachers in the classroom requires taking into consideration a teacher's impact on student achievement growth, rigorously evaluating teachers and providing them with meaningful ways to improve. Despite a state law requiring teacher evaluations, most schools do not effectively evaluate their teachers. In 2021-22, for instance, 99% of teachers statewide were rated as “effective” or “highly effective,” even in schools with failing report cards. Teacher quality will not improve if schools continue to pretend that all teachers are equally great.

Improving reading proficiency and teacher quality would go a lot further than piling more money on top of existing school programs. Based on the initial signals coming from the new Legislature, these goals will be even harder to accomplish.

Policymakers have called for repealing the state’s third grade reading law and watering down teacher evaluation standards, and making them top priorities. Ed Trust’s recommendation of significantly boosting state funding of schools will have even less of a chance of improving school quality if those things happen.

Molly Macek is director of education policy at the Mackinac Center. Email her at macek@mackinac.org.

Knowing some basics of the U.S. Constitution will aid in understanding the role the Michigan Constitution plays in our lives. In particular, it is important to know about the concept of enumerated versus plenary powers, as well as the federal supremacy clause.

The United States Constitution was ratified in 1788 and took effect in 1789. As ratified, and including signatures, this document had 4,543 words. With 27 amendments today, it has grown to 7,591 words.

In 1803’s Marbury v. Madison case, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Marshall explained that the United States government can only do so much: “The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written.” (He went on to explain those limitations would not have effect if Congress could enact statutes that contravened the Constitution, and thus the concept of judicial review began).

This idea of the federal government being limited to its enumerated powers in the Constitution is further expressed in the Tenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1791: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

If there is not a constitutional basis for legislation, Congress cannot pass a legal statute governing that matter.

The states, in contrast, are generally believed to have “plenary” (full, complete) power over whatever subjects are not enumerated in the federal constitution.

This means a state may legislate on any subject, unless prohibited by either its own constitution or the U.S. Constitution.

As the Michigan Court of Appeals recently noted, “the Legislature does not need express permission from the [Michigan] Constitution to act; instead, it has the power to legislate on all matters that are not otherwise prohibited by the Constitution.”

Thus, the federal Constitution is both a document that provides power to govern (for example, article I section 8 explicitly lays out some subjects of congressional legislation) and one that limits power through matters like the Bill of Rights.

But with Michigan’s constitution, the power to legislate is presumed. The document, more generally, serves as a means of providing limits and guidelines for using that power.

Over the years, federal power has grown immensely. It happened through numerous means: judicial interpretations of the federal “necessary and proper” clause or the commerce clause, the Civil War amendments that made the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, the rise of the federal administrative state, the levying of a federal income tax, or a combination of these things.

Because of the federal Constitution’s supremacy clause, this means that in areas Congress can regulate, federal law controls.

Thus, there emerges a legal hierarchy: federal Constitution over federal law, over federal regulations (for the moment we will accept that federal regulations are an outgrowth of a clear congressional intent), over state constitution, over state law, over ordinances.

This is not absolute, however. Some provisions of Michigan’s constitution allow localities to have control over certain matters, the state Civil Service over others, and certain universities over others still.

Congress’ hierarchical standing and the supremacy clause allow it to preempt states from legislating in certain fields. Sometimes Congress exercises this power, and sometimes it does not. For an example where preemption has not been exercised, consider anti-discrimination statutes that exist, both at the federal and state level.

Even so, federal supremacy generally causes people and groups seeking to challenge laws to look first at federal sources and only then turn to state constitutions.

This does not mean that state constitutions are unimportant. The Michigan Constitution was the basis for the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation’s successful challenge to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID-19 executive orders. Also, sometimes the limits on governmental power in Michigan’s constitution are greater than their federal counterparts.

Despite the growth of federal power, there are still many areas of our life wherein the Michigan Constitution provides the highest governing law. On matters left to the state, it is our supreme law.

This week, Michigan Capitol Confidential will explore the 10 most-popular constitutional amendments since the 1963 Constitution took effect, and the 10 efforts that failed by the greatest margins.

Patrick J. Wright is vice president of legal affairs at the Mackinac Center. Email him at wright@mackinac.org.