KALAMAZOO — To critics of Michigan`s public education system, the core problems are clear: Disengaged parents, unions that care more about the adults than children and a culture of mediocrity enabled by schools` geographic monopoly.

The common lament is that if only we could have public schools that are free of union rules and that face competitive pressure to stay in business, who could serve families that really want to be there.

Here`s what`s interesting: We already have that, in the form of charter schools.

No unions? Check. Must attract families to stay in business? Check. Engaged parents? The very act of enrolling in a charter school, especially one that lacks transportation as many do, is an indicator of a family taking a active role in a child`s education.

Here`s what is also interesting: In recent years, study indicates that academic outcomes at charters aren`t that different from traditional public schools. To be sure, there are some outstanding charters in Michigan and across the country. But  the research suggests that charter-schools students, as a whole, perform about the same as regular public school kids or maybe even slightly worse.

So what`s up with that?

After all, even many supporters of public education readily acknowledge that union rules CAN hamper reform and disengaged families ARE a major factor in academic underachievement and there IS a culture of mediocrity in some districts.

In fact, charters have the additional advantage of being able to target a niche market and adopt a if-you-don`t-like-you-can-leave approach. That`s not a luxury available to regular public schools who are required to reach out and serve all families, no matter how dysfunctional or uncooperative.

Based on the conventional wisdom of the education reform movement, charter schools should be consistently outperforming their traditional counterparts.

So why aren`t they?

I recently posed that question to Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies.

"It was never the intention to say that all charter schools were going to work," he said.

"The strength of charters is that they are new, small, independent and flexible," he said. "But the challenge is that they are new, small, independent and flexible."

Another perspective has been offered by Gary Miron, a Western Michigan University professor who has studied charter schools for more than a decade and is one of the foremost researchers in the nation on that topic.

Miron says there are "some real successes" in the charter school movement. But for the most part, charters have shown "lackluster performance." He attributes that to  “pursuit of profits,” high teacher turnover and a lack of money put into the instruction.  

This theory also is backed by Diane Ravitch, a education historian who was once an ardent proponent of charter schools but did a high-profile switcharoo a few years back. Despite some "notable exceptions," Ravitch says, the charter-school movement has become more focused on profits and market share than the needs of children.

My point here is not to put traditional public schools on a pedestal or to minimize the value of parent choice. One only needed to watch last year on Detroit Public Schools to make the case that families deserve options, particularly when the traditional public system is floundering.

But as Michigan expands its charter school system and the debate over education reform continues to build, the contrast between the original vision and the actual reality of the charter school movement should give us pause.

On one hand, it is clear the educational status quo needs a shakeup, as we face growing and glaring evidence about the need to do a better job of educating today`s young people.

On the other hand, there`s considerable evidence that at least some of the proposed solutions are less effective than many suppose.

While there`s value in allowing  families to pick the "right" school for their children, it turns out that the role of effective parenting as it regards academic achievement is much, much more complicated than that.

While teacher unions may put the needs of adults before children, it turns out that charter-school companies may do the same, and putting money into profits instead of the classroom may actually hurt children by making it harder to recruit and retain the best teachers.

While lack of competition may make traditional public schools complaisant, there`s little to no evidence that introducing competition improves academic quality.

The thing to remember here is that parental choice should be the means to end, not the end itself. The ultimate goal should be improving academic outcomes and raising the bar for everybody.

Are we really moving in that direction?

Julie Mack is a reporter for the Kalamazoo Gazette. Contact her at jmack1@mlive.com or 269-388-8578, or follow her on Twitter at Twitter.com/kzjuliemack For all posts by Julie Mack, click here.

“We believe there is not demand for new schools, but there is great demand for better schools,” Timothy Wood, special assistant to the president for charter schools at GVSU, told The Chronicle. “Our competitive application process is designed to identify quality applicants that will serve students well.”

Central Michigan University has also pushed back the application deadline according to a press release from The Center for Charter Schools at CMU. Groups seeking authorization from CMU to open a new charter public school will now have until March 1st to submit an application.

First, formal educational attainment, such as a degree acquired or years of education completed, is not a good proxy for the earnings potential of school teachers. Public-school teachers earn less in wages on average than non-teachers with the same level of education, but teacher skills generally lag behind those of other workers with similar "paper" qualifications. We show that:

• The wage gap between teachers and non-teachers disappears when both groups are matched on an objective measure of cognitive ability rather than on years of education.

• Public-school teachers earn higher wages than private- school teachers, even when the comparison is limited to secular schools with standard curricula..

• Workers who switch from non-teaching jobs to teaching jobs receive a wage increase of roughly 9 percent. Teachers who change to non-teaching jobs, on the other hand, see their wages decrease by roughly 3 percent. This is the opposite of what one would expect if teachers were underpaid.

Second, several of the most generous fringe benefits for public-school teachers often go unrecognized:

• Pension programs for public-school teachers are significantly more generous than the typical private sector retirement plan, but this generosity is hidden by public-sector accounting practices that allow lower employer contributions than a private-sector plan promising the same retirement benefits.

• Most teachers accrue generous retiree health benefits as they work, but retiree health care is excluded from Bureau of Labor Statistics benefits data and thus frequently overlooked. While rarely offered in the private sector, retiree health coverage for teachers is worth roughly an additional 10 percent of wages.

• Job security for teachers is considerably greater than in comparable professions. Using a model to calculate the welfare value of job security, we find that job security for typical teachers is worth about an extra 1 percent of wages, rising to 8.6 percent when considering that extra job security protects a premium paid in terms of salaries and benefits.

We conclude that public-school teacher salaries are comparable to those paid to similarly skilled private sector workers, but that more generous fringe benefits for public-school teachers, including greater job security, make total compensation 52 percent greater than fair market levels, equivalent to more than $120 billion overcharged to taxpayers each year. Teacher compensation could therefore be reduced with only minor effects on recruitment and retention. Alternatively, teachers who are more effective at raising student achievement might be hired at comparable cost.

Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at AEI, and Jason Richwine is a senior policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation

NOTE: The original article is also (above) provided.  There are a number of issues outlined that are not mentioned in this MEA review.  Dave`s report seems fair!

LANSING – A union-backed research group is blasting a recent study that claimed teachers are paid 52 percent more than fair market rates, saying the work “rests on a series of flawed and one-sided assumptions and sloppy statistical analysis.”

The Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, both conservative think tanks, in November issued “Assessing the Compensation of Public School Teacher,” concluding that “public-school teacher salaries are comparable to those paid to similarly skilled private sector workers, but that more generous fringe benefits for public-school teachers, including greater job security, make total compensation 52 percent greater than fair market levels, equivalent to more than $120 billion overcharged to taxpayers each year.”

Andrew G. Biggs, AEI`s resident scholar, and Jason Richwine, a senior policy analyst in Heritage`s Center for Data Analysis, wrote that teacher compensation could be reduced “with only minor effects on recruitment and retention. Alternatively, teachers who are more effective at raising student achievement might be hired at comparable cost.”

Professor Jeffrey H. Keefe of Rutgers University`s School of Management and Labor Relations, determined the Heratige-AEI study relies on “an aggregation of spurious claims” to make its case.

The review was produced by the National Education Policy Center with funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

“Central to the original report`s argument is the claim that teachers are less intelligent than other workers of comparable education and experience,” Keefe wrote.

“The report bases this claim on the lower scores of teachers on the Armed Forces Qualifications Test. Yet the AFQT is simply not an intelligence test. Further, the authors claim that AFQT scores alone can be used to compare teacher and non-teacher populations. But that conclusion relies on a data sample that`s too small to provide any meaningful long-term analyses or conclusions.”

Keefe wrote that there are other “statistical missteps in the report,” including “erroneous calculations for benefits costs.”

The Great Lakes group notes that the wrote that the study will lead to “`headline-grabbing claims of dramatic overpayment of teachers` that, in turn, will result in ill-informed and harmful policy decisions that further undercut support for public education.”

The Great Lakes group is funded by the National Education Association and the union branches in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. Michigan Education Association Executive Director Lu Battaglieri serves as the Great Lakes Center’s chairman.

The project also was supported by the National Education Policy Center, which is backed by the Ford Foundation, the Great Lakes Center, and the National Education Association, according to the organization`s website.