The boards of several public school districts in Michigan have passed a resolution denouncing the Let MI Kids Learn initiative.

The boards of education for Birmingham Public Schools, Bloomfield Hills Schools, Bendle Public Schools, the Dickinson-Iron Intermediate School District and Battle Creek Public Schools, among others, discussed or adopted a resolution template created and provided by the Michigan Association of School Boards. Some districts adopted it with minor modifications.

The advocacy group Let MI Kids Learn promotes an initiative petition campaign to create and fund Michigan Student Opportunity Scholarships. Under its plan, individuals and corporations could receive state tax credits for giving money to scholarship granting organizations that fund savings accounts for qualifying students. The accounts would be open to families with an income of up to 200% of the limit for a free or reduced price school lunch, and parents could use them for a variety of educational purposes.

The Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators has distributed talking points, one-pagers and fact sheets to describe the proposal. Most are misleading.

Another group that opposes the initiative campaign is For MI Kids. Its members include teachers unions, the ACLU, school board and superintendents associations and other public school-supporting associations.

The resolution offered by the school board association calls the proposal a “backdoor private school voucher program,” portraying it as an effort to take money from public schools and give it to private schools. The funds that would be distributed by scholarship granting organizations, could, however, be used by public school students who need additional support. Families that receive the funds could use them to buy laptops and textbooks, tutoring, education therapy, and special education services. They could also use them for expenses for homeschooling, private school, or other non-traditional schooling.

The school board association says that 69% of Michigan voters already rejected a tuition voucher program. That number refers to a ballot proposal offered to state voters in 2000. That proposal would have given students vouchers to attend nonpublic schools, within certain parameters, according to Ballotpedia. The plan proposed by Let MI Kids Learn is not a repeat of the decades-old proposal.

The Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators states on its website that Let MI Kids Learn “would take hundreds of millions of dollars away from our public schools.” The group For MI Kids uses the phrase “billions of dollars.” The school board association, in its resolution, refers to “redirecting public school dollars.”

None of those charges reflects how the Let MI Kids Learn proposal would work.

Individuals and corporations making donations to scholarship organizations would receive a tax credit. For instance, if they donated $1,000, they would receive a $1,000 tax credit. Since the money is donated by private parties to the scholarship organizations that then make grants to families, it never touches government coffers. So it’s not possible for money to be redirected from public schools.

The program would be capped at a $500 million annual cap for the first year, with the cap rising to $1 billion over five years.

Fiscal Impacts of Educational Choice, a report published by the Mackinac Center, notes that out of 73 studies of programs like that envisioned by Let MI Kids Learn, 68 showed positive fiscal effects on taxpayers.

Four studies found them to be cost-neutral. Five found net costs to certain taxpayers.

The Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did the Michigan Association of School Boards.

Michigan students dropped in math and reading test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the state’s Department of Education announced recently.

“Statistically, we are not alone nationally,” State Superintendent Dr. Michael Rice said. “Most states were adversely affected in, and by, the pandemic. That said, instructionally, we have a great deal of work to do.”

Even grading on a curve, however, Michigan has performed poorly, sinking several places in several key national rankings.

Fourth graders reading scores dropped 2.97% from 218.3 on the 2019 NAEP assessment to 211.8 in 2022. The lower scores resulted in Michigan moving from 32nd in reading to 43rd in the nation this year. Eighth grade reading scores dropped from 262.6 to 258.5, a 1.56% decrease. Eighth graders in Michigan were 28th in the nation for reading and are now ranked 31st.

Fourth and eighth graders saw lower test scores in math as well. Fourth graders dropped from 236.2 to 232, a 1.7% decrease.

Although their test scores were lower, Michigan fourth graders did move up from 42nd in the nation to 36th, amid a general collapse in American public education outcomes. The same held for eighth graders, who went from 280.3 to 272.6 in math, a 2.74% decrease. That decline was small enough to move these students relatively ahead in national math rankings, from 26th to 28th.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been criticized for her draconian lockdown measure for schools and businesses. Public health data now show that these did not prevent Michigan from scoring worse on COVID-19 outcomes than most other states. Children are far less vulnerable to COVID-19 than are other age groups, which led many parents to wonder why their students were forced to do online schooling for a prolonged period of time.

Unions such as The Detroit Federation of Teachers threatened to strike to keep schools shuttered. Whitmer did not agree to a plan to re-open schools until January 2021, when she announced that students would return to class in March of the same year. Many districts remained shut through the end of last year, however, with Detroit and Flint schools still engaging in sporadic closures this year. 

School district policies forced children to isolate for up to ten days every time they were merely within a certain number of feet from an infected person. The numbers varied from school to school.

Whitmer did not respond to a request for comment.