Background/Footnotes: The first of two ballot initiatives on vouchers in Michigan was held in 1978. Seventy-four percent of state residents voted against a proposed statewide voucher program, and 26 percent favored it.[1]

The state passed a charter school law in 1993. Shortly thereafter, however, the teachers unions and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit, claiming that charter schools were unconstitutional because they would use state funds but would not be regulated by the Michigan State Board of Education. On November 1, 1994, Ingham County Circuit Judge William Collette ruled that charter schools could not receive public funds.[2] The decision was appealed, and the Michigan Supreme Court upheld the state's charter legislation in 1997.[3]

Under then-Governor John Engler, the law was revised in 1994. Current law allows state public universities, community colleges, intermediate school boards, and local school districts to create public-school academies. Teachers in district charter schools must be certified and are covered by district collective bargaining agreements. Universities may charter up to 150 schools, and there is no limit on the number of schools districts may charter.[4]

In 1996, the legislature established interdistrict school choice through the enactment of Public Act 180. Under this legislation, students may transfer to other participating districts within the Intermediate School District (ISD), which is composed of several school districts within a county. Students may attend schools outside their ISD with the permission of the receiving district superintendent. If the sending district chooses not to pay the receiving district, the parents must pay tuition.[5]

Also in 1996, the Postsecondary Enrollment Options Program (Public Act 160) went into effect. The program allows qualified high school students to enroll in college courses for high school or postsecondary credit or both.[6]

In 1999, Senate Bill 31 was introduced to give vouchers to students in cities with a population exceeding 750,000. Students from families earning less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level would have been eligible. The bill died in committee.[7]

Under the leadership of Amway co-founder and former Michigan Board of Education member Richard DeVos, school choice activists and civic and business leaders formed Kids First! Yes!, which sought to amend the Michigan constitution to give parents whose children attend schools in districts with poor academic performance a publicly funded voucher worth one-half of the public per-pupil expenditure to attend a school of choice. At that time, about 30 of the state's hundreds of districts failed to graduate two-thirds of their students. Proposal 1 would have guaranteed that public school spending would never fall below the current level and would have required teacher testing in academic subject areas.[8]

A January 2000 Detroit News poll indicated that 53 percent of voters favored the Kids First! Yes! proposal, while 23 percent opposed it.[9] Michigan's Catholic bishops called expanded educational choice "not an option [but] a requirement of social justice."[10] Proposal 1 also enjoyed the support of many Protestant religious leaders.[11]

Opponents included teachers unions and a coalition of 30 anti-parental choice groups organized under the name All Kids First! Three school districts broke the state's election laws by distributing materials opposing the measure to parents, prompting the Secretary of State to issue a warning to all of the state's districts.[12]

Ultimately, Proposal 1 was defeated by a margin of more than 2 to 1 on November 7, 2000. Since then, school choice supporter Betsy DeVos has created a Grand Rapids-based think tank, Choices for Children, and a political action committee called the Great Lakes Education Project.[13]

Since 1991, the Education Freedom Fund, a privately funded scholarship organization, has awarded scholarships to children in grades K-8. Students who qualify for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program are eligible to receive these scholarships. Recipients are chosen by lottery and receive a maximum of $1,000. The number of participants in this program has skyrocketed, increasing from three in 1991 to more than 3,700 in 2001.[14]

Interdistict school programs are popular and currently involve two-thirds of all Michigan school districts. An estimated 33,200 children statewide attended school in a district other than the their own in 2002.[15]

On April 10, 2002, the Commission on Charter Schools, created by the Michigan legislature, issued its final report, Charter Schools in Michigan. Chaired by Michigan State University President Peter McPherson, members included the Superintendent of Public Instruction and representatives of the governor and legislature. The commission recommended, among other things, creating a statewide accountability structure, increasing the authority of the state superintendent over charter authorizers, holding authorizers responsible for oversight, and raising the cap on university-sponsored charter schools while limiting the number of new charters to one per year in Detroit and two per year in other districts through 2007.[16]

A Center for Education Reform (CER) analysis of the report pointed to inconsistencies. According to CER President Jeanne Allen, the commission "ignored the facts" and "neglected to look at the growth in state test scores in many of the charter schools, or why parents--who are taxpayers and deserved their attention--want to send their children to charter schools. And they chose to ignore the evidence in Michigan that charter schools have spurred public school districts to improve."[17]

For example, in a 2002 study, "School Choice and School Productivity (or Could School Choice be a Tide that Lifts All Boats?)," Harvard professor Caroline Hoxby found that competition from charter schools in Michigan compelled public schools to raise their productivity, as measured by students' achievement gains.[18]

House Bill 4800, which incorporated many of the commission's recommendations, was defeated by a vote of 54 to 52 on May 1, 2002.[19]

According to an EPIC/MRA poll commissioned by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy prior to the 2002 Supreme Court decision upholding vouchers, 43 percent of respondents said they would support a voucher program for Michigan, 67 percent said they would support an education tax credit similar to the one developed by the Mackinac Center, and 22 percent indicated that a favorable decision by the court would make them more likely to support a voucher program.[20] In December 2002, the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University released a survey showing that 72 percent of those polled support charter schools.[21]

A September 2002 study by the Mackinac Center found that, while charter school students in Michigan score below their traditional public school counterparts, they are making stronger academic gains on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP). During the 2000-2001 school year, charter school students improved 43 percent on the 4th grade MEAP reading test compared to a 10.1 percent improvement among students in traditional public schools; 4th grade math and 7th grade reading test improvements showed a similar trend.[22]

Enrollment in Detroit's traditional public schools dropped 5 percent between 1990 and 2000, while enrollment in Detroit's charter schools increased by 7 percent. By the 2001-2002 school year, charter enrollment in Detroit had increased to 19,000. Reacting to the competition posed by charter schools, administrators of Detroit public schools are working to improve. According to a district spokeswoman, "We know that it's a competitive market. We are implementing a comprehensive, no-excuses school improvement plan with the objective and belief that every child can learn."[23]

On February 3, 2003, a student at the University of Michigan filed suit against the state because the state stopped funding her scholarship when she declared theology as her major. The student, Teresa Becker, was receiving a scholarship under the Michigan Competitive Scholarship Program, but after she declared her major in her sophomore year, the state cancelled the award.[24] In June a Federal District Court ruled in favor of Becker,[25] and in 2004 Governor Jennifer Granholm signed legislation allowing students majoring in religious studies to receive state aid.[26]

In April 2003, Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services published a review of the 57 charter schools operated by Central Michigan University (CMU).[27] The study found that the charter schools served students who were more likely to be from lower-income families, and the schools themselves operated with less money than other public schools. Although the average passing rates on state tests for CMU charter school students were lower than the state average, 14 of the schools performed better on state tests than other schools in their district.[28]

In May 2003, a study released by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce refuted claims that charter schools are more expensive to taxpayers than other public schools. The study revealed that, on average, the per-student expenditure of charter schools is $1,036 less than that of conventional public schools. In some districts, the disparity is even greater; for example, due to operating costs, the public schools in the Ann Arbor and Southfield districts cost taxpayers over $2,000 more per pupil than charter schools.[29]

In the summer of 2003, philanthropist Bob Thompson offered $200 million to the city of Detroit to create 15 new charter schools. By October, Michigan lawmakers agreed on a compromise to S.B. 393, which was introduced that summer to change the state's charter law to allow up to 15 new "urban academies" to open in the city.[30] Thompson's offer drew formal protests from teachers unions, and he withdrew his offer in October.[31]

Bay Mills Community College, which can authorize an unlimited number of charter schools,[32] chartered 20 schools for the 2004 school year--the largest number opened at the same time by one authorizer.[33] Additional schools chartered by the college were scheduled to begin in 2005.[34]

In 2004, Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) signed S.B. 599, which allows children of public school teachers limited school choice if the parent is a teacher at the receiving school (that is, "nonresident" students can be accepted at a public school if the parent is a teacher at the school).[35]

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