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Follow CapCon on XSlippery slope: State board members warn against homeschool registry
Two members offer pushback at plan, warn of unstated dangers
Two State Board of Education members spoke out recently against the Michigan Department of Education’s plans to seek a homeschool registry.
“This whole homeschool thing is quite disturbing,” said one of the trustees, Tom McMillin, a Republican, at the board’s Feb. 13 meeting. An eight-minute clip of the meeting, posted on X by @WallStreetApes, went viral.
McMillin believes the homeschool registry discussion has been disingenuous. He believes the registry is not the end game, but the beginning of a regulatory regime. At best it will check and approve homeschool curriculums. At worst, it will seek “unwarranted home entry” into homeschool families’ homes, and failing that, will “barge in and bust the door down,” he said
Michael Rice, the state superintendent, reiterated his January letter to lawmakers at the board table.
“There is a history in Michigan and across the nation that some students get no education,” Rice said.
In the letter and at the table, Rice offered no statistics as to the scope of the problem, whether nationally or in Michigan.
Rice said every child in Michigan needs an “identified educational setting.”
“It’s going to go beyond registration,” McMillin said. “They’re either going to want to know exactly what’s being taught or want entry into the house. ... Registration is the next step and is not the only step.”
Molly Macek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center, agreed.
“A simple list of names with their form of schooling will do nothing to protect kids,” Macek told CapCon. “If safety is the goal, then a registry is just the first step in regulating homeschooling. Whether these regulations include curriculum verifications, home checks or other requirements, they restrict the parents’ right to ‘determine and direct the care, teaching, and education of their children.’” That language is from section 10 of the Revised School Code.
“Simply put, a homeschool registry and any additional regulations would restrict families’ educational freedom,” Macek said. “When parents choose to remove their kids from government schools to be educated outside the system, these kids are no longer under the government’s care.”
Nikki Snyder, also a Republican, echoed McMillin’s concerns.
Snyder called it oppressive to ask students and families who left the Michigan education system to register with the state.
“Students have a constitutional right and reasonable expectation of privacy,” Snyder added.
Snyder echoed McMillin in calling the early attempts at a registry disingenuous, calling the registry the beginning of an attempt to “audit the educational choices of every family in this state.”
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
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What Michigan could lose with National Popular Vote
Beware efforts to turn features of our constitutional system into bugs
As it stands, the candidate the most people of Michigan vote for in a presidential election is the candidate who gets our 15 electoral votes. Winner-take-all is a good system.
Under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, that would no longer be true. If Michigan joins the compact, we could experience the first loser-take-all election in our state’s history.
Advocates for National Popular Vote tend to leave that part out. Here’s what they’re not telling you.
Under the compact as written, a candidate could lose Michigan and still win its electoral votes. Not some of them. All 15.
The interstate compact would take effect when states with at least 270 electoral votes have signed on. That’s a majority of the 538 electoral votes, the same number it takes to win the presidency.
Right now, the compact has 205 of the 270 votes it needs to go into effect. With Michigan it would have 220. State Rep. Carrie Rheingans, D-Ann Arbor, introduced a bill last year that would add Michigan to the compact.
If the compact goes live, every state will vote as a bloc for whoever won the national popular vote. Even if the candidate lost that state.
Beware efforts to turn features of our constitutional system into bugs that need fixing. Michigan’s winner-take-all system has been described as “outrageous.”
“In 2016, for example, all of Michigan’s then 16 Electoral College votes were assigned to Donald Trump simply because he received just 10,704 more votes than Hillary Clinton,” national popular vote advocates wrote recently in an opinion piece. “In effect, all 2,268,839 votes Hillary received in Michigan were counted in the Electoral College as if they were votes for Trump.”
If you don’t like it when a candidate gets every vote after winning by a thin margin, you’ll really hate it when the loser gets every vote. Under a National Popular Vote system, wide victory margins in states like California or Texas would drown out the will of the people of Michigan.
Winner-take-all is the nationwide default for a reason. Only two states, Maine and Nebraska, choose a different system. And in both of those states, electoral votes are awarded by congressional district and the statewide winner gets two additional votes. That is to say, in all 50 states it matters who wins that state.
Only in the event of a nationwide tie would the people of Michigan decide who gets our votes. With 150 million votes cast nationwide, this is unlikely.
Some argue that the Electoral College is no longer needed.
But the Electoral College is a good system. There’s an obvious solution for those who feel otherwise: direct election of the president. Go the long, hard way and seek a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This was the path of the 17th Amendment, which allowed direct election of United States senators.
Constitution-level reform can be done and has been done. It’s just not easy.
It will take a consensus for change that nobody is building, because they’re too busy looking for workarounds.
James David Dickson is a Detroit News columnist and managing editor of Michigan Capitol Confidential. Email him at dickson@mackinac.org. This column first ran on Feb. 21 in The Detroit News.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
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