By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

LANSING, Mich. – Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder wants to dramatically change how Michigan schools operate to encourage competition and student achievement.

Of course that means the state’s education establishment, especially its teachers unions, hate the governor’s ideas.

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Snyder is expected to unveil proposed changes today for reworking the state’s public school system to allow students to learn “any time, any place, any way and at any pace” – the slogan for the governor’s education reforms, the Associated Press reports.

Specifically, Snyder wants to allow students to attend any school district that will accept them, encourage them to use online learning courses, and provide a $2,500 college scholarship for every semester they graduate early from high school, the news service reports.

The governor commissioned the Oxford Foundation to draft the “Michigan Education Finance Act of 2013” to replace the School Aid Act of 1979. According to its website, the Oxford Foundation based the revisions on goals Snyder set out for education in an address last year.

They include performance-based funding for schools, and funding that follows the student instead of being exclusively tied to school districts. Under the proposal, for instance, students would be allowed to attend different schools for different courses, and their share of state funding would be split among the schools accordingly.

The Oxford Foundation will reportedly post a draft of Snyder’s education reform legislation on its website today. The plan would take five years to be fully implemented, but wouldn’t require additional education funding, the AP reports.

“The 302-page proposal would let students get part or all of their state-funded education from any public school district that accepts them. Districts still could decide whether to accept outside students. It also would let students study online, with Michigan funding the classes based on performance,” according to the AP.

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“Students could get up to $10,000 in scholarship money for graduating early from high school at a rate of $2,500 per semester, and districts would be encouraged to offer year-round schooling by spreading the 180-day school year over 12 months.”

While we believe Snyder’s proposal contains a lot of innovative ideas with great potential to raise student achievement, not everyone sees it that way. Michigan’s education establishment is already lobbing bombs at the proposal.

“This is a voucher system,” state Board of Education President John Austin told the AP. “It’s absolutely destructive. It has nothing to do with improving quality. It’s loaded with the ideology of creating a new for-profit system for learning that will dismantle the schools we have.”

Sorry, Mr. Austin, but competition improves quality. That’s a fact of life. Some schools may disappear under a more competitive system, but perhaps that’s because they don’t deserve to survive.

Frankly, we couldn’t care less if various organizations benefit from the public education system if it means students and taxpayers will get more for their money.

Michigan’s teachers unions, as usual, are focused on what the changes will mean for its members, rather than how the reforms will help students.

“David Hecker, president of American Federation of Teachers-Michigan, said he feared the plan would weaken local control of schools if students can move around and cut into the ranks of teachers if districts lose enrollment to one another and online services.”

Hopefully the Republican-led Michigan legislature will cast unions and other special interests aside and focus on the singular point of public education: to give students the best education possible.

We believe Snyder’s reforms would certainly point his state in the right direction.