Center's Research and Analysis Highlights How Policies Affect Urban Schools

A key emphasis of research and analysis at the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University has been to understand the consequences of educational policies for urban school districts and students.

The center has produced a number of reports that have chronicled the impact of legislative policies on urban school districts.

“One of the things we’ve learned at the center is that practically all of the critical education issues that we face have their most dramatic consequences in urban school districts,” said David
N. Plank, co-director of the Education Policy Center. “What we’ve found over the last five years is that many education policies in Michigan work directly to the detriment of urban school districts.”

Two of the most prominent reports produced by the center analyzed the effects of the state’s school choice and charter school policies and Michigan’s school finance law, Proposal A, approved by voters in 1994.

In the case of Proposal A, the state moved away from local property taxes as the way of funding schools. Instead, the state now funds schools on a per pupil basis. School choice and charter school legislation allowed families to opt out of their neighborhood schools in favor of schools in other districts or charter schools.

Thus, school choice and charter schools have siphoned scores of students, the majority of them from urban school districts. That has meant sharp declines in state funding for those districts losing students.

The center has also begun to take a national perspective and recently commissioned an analysis of teacher labor markets, which found that urban school districts have the least qualified and experienced teachers educating the most challenging students.

The problem in Michigan is that state government has failed to provide these schools with proper resources sufficient to meet the challenges they face, and the districts themselves have often not been up to the challenges posed by educating urban students.

In Michigan, for example, the state funds schools at a flat rate for every student. That hurts urban districts, Plank said, because these schools are charged with educating some of the system’s most expensive students. Urban schools often have high percentages of special education, at risk, and limited English proficient students.

“Not only are these districts losing dollars as students leave the districts, but the students who are left behind are the highest cost students to educate,” he said. “By funding at a flat rate, the result is that the districts have fewer dollars to meet the needs of higher cost students and they are not making it.

“The challenges are almost insurmountable.”
Fixing the problem will require substantial political will. One key change would establish a system of funding that provides additional money to those districts with higher cost students.

Urban school districts also would need to change practices that work against the best interest of their students, Plank said. One of the most important changes would be to end the policy of allowing the most qualified teachers to leave the most challenging classrooms because of seniority. Allowing experienced teachers to choose their teaching assignments is a standard feature in most union contracts.

The result, however, is that the most experienced teachers leave the schools that need them most as quickly as they can for less challenging assignments. Plank believes that the state working in conjunction with the districts should establish a system of incentives to keep qualified teachers in challenging urban schools.

For Plank, it is a bleak educational landscape. He notes that some schools in urban districts are doing a terrific job, and that some children have gained access to a better education through school choice. But for the vast majority of urban students who don’t opt for choice, however, Plank sees little in the near future that will make a major difference.

“As long as the state continues to look at the problems faced by urban schools as a local issue, the problems will continue,” Plank said. “It’s a state problem. The accountability for making sure no child is left behind resides fundamentally with the state. The question that should be asked is, Can the state take action to ensure that all Michigan children succeed in school?
“The answer right now is no.”