Michigan State University Professor David Arsen was featured in a recent Washington Post story about the public school establishment's efforts to boost school funding and opposition to school choice. In particular, Arsen expressed a worry about a Michigan law allowing parents to take their children out of the fiscally and academically failed Benton Harbor school district, and place them instead in nearby school districts. His concern? The law could damage recovery prospects for the Benton Harbor Area Schools.

Notably, Arsen ignored the reverse side of the debate, which is that children removed from the troubled district have almost certainly received a better education.

In other words, the state’s “Schools of Choice” law should not be scorned as a problem for Benton Harbor. Rather, it has enabled thousands of Benton Harbor children to escape the failed school district and obtain a significantly better education elsewhere.

That’s not speculation, but something that is based on an analysis of student performance at the nearby Berrien County school districts that Benton Harbor parents have chosen over their home district. This is allowed under the state law that lets parents place their children in a nearby school district if it has open seats.

Arsen gave the Washington Post this explanation for why he thinks Benton Harbor school finances have suffered: “They’ve lost enrollment terrifically. Their primary financial problems are fundamentally due to the loss of enrollment. That’s why they’re in trouble.”

In Michigan, the largest part of school funding follows the student to whichever district he or she attends. Benton Harbor Area Schools enrolled just 1,941 students in the 2018-19 school year, a stunning decline of 164% from the 5,127 students enrolled 16 years earlier, in 2002-03.

But in his remarks, Arsen ignored where those students have gone and the quality of education they are receiving.

For example, he didn't mention the F grade that all three of the schools in the Benton Harbor district were assigned by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s school report card. The report card compares Michigan schools to each other after adjusting for the different socioeconomic backgrounds of each school’s student body. This adjustment allows the actual educational value added by different schools serving different kinds of students to be compared, given that children from low-income backgrounds face greater academic challenges.

Last year, 1,515 students resided in the city of Benton Harbor and were sent by their parents to another regular district within the Berrien County Intermediate School District, as allowed by state law.

While all three Benton Harbor schools received an F on the Mackinac Center report card, just one of the 21 schools operated by those other seven school districts received an F. Here’s a summary: five received an A, 10 received a B, four received a C, one was given a D and one was given an F.

So while Arsen is correct that parents are removing children from Benton Harbor schools, and this damage the district’s financial prospects, the opportunity is almost certainly causing those children to get a better education.

The flip side of this dynamic is almost as startling: Not one Berrien County parent who lived outside Benton Harbor in 2018-19 chose to remove their child from one of those other seven districts and place the child in a Benton Harbor school.

A similar pattern applies to the financial consequences for the school districts involved. Under Michigan’s school funding system, most of the state funding follows the student. So, the Berrien County districts that managed to add more academic value get more students and more taxpayer dollars. But the school district that has failed to balance its books and failed to add academic value gets fewer students and dollars.

Michael Van Beek, the director of research at the Mackinac Center, gave some examples of how Benton Harbor students represent an important revenue source to school districts whose students are doing much better academically.

Eau Claire Public Schools has three schools, of which two earned an A and one earned a B in the Mackinac Center report card. That district has 333 students from the city of Benton Harbor, making up 44 percent of its entire student body of 754.

St. Joseph Public Schools four schools received four Bs and a C on the Mackinac Center report card. In the most recent school year, the district enrolled 414 students from Benton Harbor, or 14% of its total of 2,989 students.

Arsen did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The warm weather is here, and with it the latest taxpayer-funded marketing campaigns to promote the state tourism industry. With a price tag of $2.5 million, the current campaign’s “Meanwhile in Michigan” theme aims to portray the Great Lake state as an escape from the grind of daily life.

But some independent analysts who have studied these government marketing programs conclude that policymakers should let taxpayers escape from having to pay for what amounts to ineffective spending on behalf of a special interest. Michigan’s version is called Pure Michigan, and its spending is overseen by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, the state agency in charge of giving state subsidies to select businesses.

According to a website created for the promotion, Meanwhile in Michigan ads and images are appearing on radio, billboards, buses and airports, television broadcasts, digital ads and other venues. The promotions will appear in 20 different markets, including Minneapolis, St. Louis, Louisville and Pittsburgh, and are also streamed on Pandora radio.

MEDC spokesman Otie McKinley said, “This particular piece focuses on the hidden gems around the state. Not unlike Long Live Summer or Fall Filter, these specific strategies outline and highlight the different and unique elements of Michigan as a four-seasons destination.”

According to McKinley, the money allocated to this specific project is part of the overall Pure Michigan advertising budget, not in addition to it. “The Meanwhile in Michigan campaign is part of the overarching Pure Michigan campaign,” he said.

McKinley cited a return on investment of $9.28 for every $1 spent on advertising, generating $2.5 billion in visitor spending and $153 million in state taxes.

But Michael LaFaive, a fiscal analyst at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, challenges these figures, which he said are produced by paid vendors whose work cannot be verified. In a 2016 analysis of state-funded tourism promotion programs, LaFaive pointed out that “return on investment” figures produced by one of these vendors, Longwoods International, were not subject to any type of review or third-party validation. That’s largely because the company refused to disclose the methods used to generate the claims.

“The claims made by the state as to an ROI of $9.28 strain credulity,” LaFaive said. “First, their consultants who come up with this figure ignore substantial costs associated with it. Second, our study comes to a different conclusion, and we use publicly available data going back decades.”

LaFaive’s study looked at nearly four decades of tourism promotion spending across 48 states. It found that for every $1 million increase in state spending to promote tourism, there was a corresponding increase in statewide economic activity of just $20,000 – basically a negative 98% return on investment. LaFaive emphasized that that the $20,000 figure is just the increase in gross economic activity, not the number of extra tax dollars collected by the state treasury.

Other independent researchers have produced findings that challenge the validity of spending on government tourism promotions. One such study was published by the Journal of Travel Research in 2011. The authors discovered that while additional funding for tourism promotion increases out-of-state traffic and employment growth for states that have low levels of initial tourism expenditures, the effect diminishes as spending increases.

This state will spend $36 million on Pure Michigan this year and LaFaive said lawmakers should stop funding tourism marketing programs entirely.

“They are demonstrably ineffective and unfair. The money dedicated to tourism promotion would be better spent fixing Michigan’s roads and bridges,” LaFaive said.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has proposed cutting state tourism promotion by $5 million next year, and House budget leaders want to cut it by $4 million. The Senate has voted to increase it $1.5 million.