Guy Gordon (00:00.636)
Hello and welcome once again to the Facts Matter Podcast brought to you by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan. We have been taking a comprehensive view of the question, which will be asked at Michigan voters November 3rd, of whether to have a constitutional convention, a top-to-bottom reopening of the Michigan Constitution, drafted back in 1963, and all the various things that could entail. Well, today we’re looking at Article 8, which addresses education and I have

As always, joined by Eric Loufer, president of the Citizens Research Council of Michigan. This is potentially a meaty one, Eric, but it’s not something that’s received a lot of attention in terms of constitutional amendment activity.

Eric Lupher (00:42.774)
It hasn’t gotten a lot of activity with actual proposals, but there’s been a whole lot of discussion about how we govern K twelve education, how we choose our our governing boards of U of MSU and Wayne State and there’s a lot of discussion about education. It’s just we haven’t had that many proposals actually make it on the ballot.

Guy Gordon (01:12.956)
So as as we look ahead, should Michigan voters decide to have a con at the ballot box, one of the things that that by by putting education into its own article, the state of Michigan basically declared this is a very high priority and we see this as a fundamental responsibility of the state. but there is talk of of making this a right, a fundamental right.

How far of a reach is that and what would the consequences be?

Eric Lupher (01:48.151)
We see this in many other states. The constitution every state constitution has an article dedicated to education. Again, it really speaks to the importance of that particular governmental service relative to police and and public works and economic development, a whole bunch of other things. So it really speaks to that. The Michigan Constitution uses language

more or less lifted from the Northwest ordinance saying that education shall forever be encouraged and and it’s the state’s responsibility to make sure education’s available to every young person in the state. But it doesn’t use language that many other states have in their constitution that really creates a

a responsibility of the state to provide either the funding for education or how do you measure and ensure an adequate education. So i it could be as simple as putting in some of those key words if you know keep everything the same but change a few things and and that could be triggering.

There are some. We had a case in twenty twenty in the Detroit public schools where they said you know, our kids are coming out of twelve years not literate and something is failing here and and the end result was a settlement out of court where the state agreed to pony up some more money and so it it became non binding. and and we don’t know how far that would have gone.

Guy Gordon (03:17.778)
Federal. Yeah.

Eric Lupher (03:42.457)
But other efforts have have failed, that there just isn’t those key words in our state constitution, thorough and efficient, high quality, adequate trigger words like that that a court might look at and say it was the intent of the constitutional founders, the the the writers of that document that there be some minimum level of funding or some minimum level of

Guy Gordon (03:56.252)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Lupher (04:12.596)
of achievement of the students and and if you’re not doing that then the state would have the or the courts would have the ability to to you know require more funding or or bring about changes.

Guy Gordon (04:26.094)
Right. Well, I mean it would create and I I I covered that case back in twenty twenty. And it but essentially if you if you make it a fundamental right, it could create a new liability standard for districts based on the the the attainment for the average student, for instance. So could it open the door to you know the or the floodgates to lawsuits saying you failed this group of kids and now you must address this?

It it kind of gets to the whole idea of accountability, doesn’t it?

Eric Lupher (05:00.064)
It does get to the idea of accountability. as Craig Thiel authored this, he’s our our school finance guru. And as we were going through through drafts of this paper thinking about this, I pulled back a little bit. I said, you know, the state has that responsibility now. They don’t really need the court to tell them

That some minimum level of funding is needed and and some level of adequacy is funded. In nineteen ninety-four, we saw that with proposal A, what came came to be proposal A, where the state took on a much greater responsibility for funding. Now we have equal per student funding of our foundation grant for every student. and the state’s really leaning into funding of at-risk students.

Guy Gordon (05:36.667)
Right.

Eric Lupher (05:55.343)
people in poverty, people, English second language students, things like that. You know, so the the the question that the delegates would have to wrangle with how much do we need the constitutional language to give that kick in the pants versus the legislature, our school superintendents, the state board of education really leaning into

Guy Gordon (06:12.902)
Exactly.

Eric Lupher (06:23.916)
Our system isn’t working for everyone and something needs to be done to fix it.

Guy Gordon (06:30.514)
So we we do know that in terms of funding the the proposal A did establish a floor, but it was based in nineteen ninety five dollars, and so I I don’t know how meaningful that is going forward. We do have some new standards for funding adequacy. Do we need to build those into the Constitution? Is that something the delegates might want to do?

Eric Lupher (06:55.554)
Yeah, I mean our w some of our first papers in this series really leaned into what a good constitution looks like and and we really thought about the idea of being evergreen and something that lasts throughout the years. So in nineteen ninety four they thought they were addressing this by putting in a funding floor. They you know, some might argue f a failure and and how they worded that.

Guy Gordon (07:18.492)
It’s not indexed.

Eric Lupher (07:25.058)
And who’s to say that a constitutional convention in twenty twenty-seven, twenty twenty-eight would get that wording better? we we do need to lean into that, and I think having education in the constitution as a standalone article speaks to the significance of it. you know, some delegates might feel like putting in that s that sort of funding floor.

leaning into the idea that every student is entired to entitled to a quality education might do more to lift the those with the least amongst us and and I strong believer in the idea we’re only as strong as our weakest link and constitutional language might reflect that in some way.

Guy Gordon (08:20.292)
Right. Well, I mean they could add something as simple as just indexing the floor to the rate of inflation, or establishing a framework for f for standardizing the weighting for at risk districts.

Eric Lupher (08:25.801)
But right.

Eric Lupher (08:36.45)
Yeah. The the hard part when we look at these lawsuits in other states is it’s really hard to measure adequacy. It’s sort of a eye of the beholder type thing. what it means to one person and what it means to the next person will not always be equal. So this is certainly going to be something that if there’s a constitutional convention, they’ll spend some time talking about.

Guy Gordon (08:46.716)
Yeah. So subjective.

Guy Gordon (09:01.54)
As you point out in the paper, private school choice is a theme that has gained a lot of traction. and it could be a likely avenue of discussion if we have a con con in twenty eight. The idea of having public dollars support families who want to send their children to private schools, pr call it parochiade. It was prohibited under the Blaine Amendment.

There were attempts to change the Blaine amendment that were struck down rather forcefully by voters twenty, twenty five years ago?

Eric Lupher (09:36.793)
yeah, in two thousand. Right.

Guy Gordon (09:38.672)
So is i a lot of time has passed since then. Is that something that may be revisited?

Eric Lupher (09:46.019)
For sure it’s gonna be revisited. we see a lot of states leaning into vouchers for for kid students to go to private schools. Some of those might be religious based. They don’t are are not all. Michigan’s prohibition on funding of private schools has withstood the the test of lawsuits because it’s not specifically written to prohibit

the the funding of students going to a religious school. it’s just a a you know flat out blank restriction. So the way we educate students is evolving. the the days of your where everyone showed up in school and we’re seeing more kids private schooled, we’re seeing more students in in

private schools of some sort. Michigan is different from the other s many other states and to this extent. the delegates are gonna have to wrangle with this. Is is this something that should be lifted, should be evolved in some way, and what does that do given that the voter spoke twenty five years ago but spoke rather forcefully?

that they they didn’t feel that way. h how will this affect how people see the constitution, you know, is is that a

Guy Gordon (11:15.986)
Two to one, I think.

Eric Lupher (11:25.896)
a a go no go for some people.

Guy Gordon (11:29.34)
We mentioned the the word accountability a little bit earlier. as as you lay out in your paper, the the current governance in the state of Michigan is we have a state superintendent of public instruction, we have a state board of education. I think if you ask the average Michigander to name any of those individuals, they they may even express surprise that we have those institutions because they know their local school board so much better.

There seems to be at least no chain of accountability when schools underperform. Is that something that might be addressed that you either strengthen the hand of the governor to have greater appointment power so that a buck the buck stops somewhere? What might we see in terms of strengthening accountability?

Eric Lupher (12:19.008)
I think if there is a constitutional convention, everything we’ve discussed so far will be part of the conversation, but this will be the main point of conversation. it has been well documented, our students are not achieving it to a great extent. funding has gone up every year. Some may argue whether that’s sufficient or not.

But a lot of eyes turn to the governance of the school system. As you say, we have the legislature involved, we have the independent state board of education, we have a s state superintendent of education, we have the governor, there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen, it’s not clear who’s responsible for what roles and

Guy Gordon (13:06.864)
Well and we have this this long standing tradition of of honoring local control of schools. So top down management it runs headlong into that.

Eric Lupher (13:16.246)
Yes.

Eric Lupher (13:21.72)
So as you say, I think part of the question will be do we need a independent state board of education? If you know the old journalists follow the dollar, if the legislature controls the dollar, then you know they’re ultimately making decisions on education, do we need an independent state board of education? If we do, should they be independently elected or appointed?

by the governor, should the legislature have some say in who appears on that body? they ultimately appoint the superintendent of public education who serves on the governor’s cabinet but is independently chosen. It’s not a gubernatorial appointment. Michigan is not alone in that sort of arrangement, but

if the governor is in charge of of you know the general administration of the state, should he or she have greater say on the who that who’s in charge of running Department of Education and who’s setting policy, leading policy for the state? should that be appointed by the governor independently elected?

Should the legislature have some say, the sort of a Senate confirmation process? so there’s a lot of meat there, there’s a lot to look at, what other states are doing, and there’s a lot of history in Michigan. We’ve varied back and forth in how we’ve done this during our through our different constitutions. it’ll certainly be a time consuming element of the Committee on Education if there is a constitutional convention.

Guy Gordon (15:18.686)
we w when we were at the Mackinac Policy Conference, the the the the wildfire up there wasn’t from Canada. It was from the the University Board of Trustees at the Michigan State University. Kevin Guskowit says since come back to to s Spartyland, but we’ve got a real issue there with this notion of having our four Michigan research institutes governed by

an elected board, and everybody else has an appointed board, and they’re hard to get rid of when they fail to to to deliver or when they get get involved in this this infighting like we saw at Michigan State. We have some similar problems at U of as well. How meaty would that topic be in terms of saying whether or not this hybrid, this this unusual way of of electing university governance is addressed?

Eric Lupher (16:16.714)
Right. so as you say, we have independently elected boards for U of Michigan State and Wayne State. The other twelve schools the governor appoints the board. and this is proven to be an issue of contention. We see it at the three flagship schools that there’s

seemingly a constant friction between the board and the the president that they choose.

Guy Gordon (16:49.105)
Right.

Eric Lupher (16:52.474)
S so

Guy Gordon (16:53.146)
And injecting politics into something that should be really an apolitical exercise. Everybody should be rowing in the direction of the best interest of the institution. What helped me with something here was w how did we get here in the first place? Why did we make those three universities and I added one in, forgive me, those three universities a an elected scenario? What what did we feel was the benefit of doing that at the time or do we remember?

Eric Lupher (17:21.218)
Well, it it was about the independence of the University of Michigan. This dates back to eighteen fifty constitution and it you know, so it goes back to almost the very beginning, the idea that we had this university that stood amongst you know, the major schools in the nation and giving it the

latitude and ability to set its own policy. along comes Michigan State College at the time and the premier land grant university in in the state and it’s sort of over time followed in U of M’s footsteps and gaining its independence and then later Wayne State in a similar way. so you know it it is a bit of a accident of history that

They ended up this way, but in 1963, they for sure, 61-62 leading up to the 63 constitution, had the ability to take a step back and and look at how things were operating. And ultimately they decided that these three schools should continue to have their independence. So you know, there are two thoughts, right? We can all agree that this is

Guy Gordon (18:29.948)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Lupher (18:47.054)
should be sort of an apolitical exercise and and how are we doing this and Michigan is the really the outlier in having this independently elected just for the flagship schools. We also look at down in Florida

Guy Gordon (18:58.247)
Right.

Eric Lupher (19:09.414)
not independently elected schools but appointed by the governor and and those people have really taken a very right wing become more politicized. That’s a good way to put it. and and you know I’m you look at other schools, maybe there’s you find examples of of governors pushing it way to the left, but again very

Guy Gordon (19:22.61)
It’s become more politicized. Yeah.

Eric Lupher (19:38.264)
politicized in ways that you wouldn’t think that w would be optimal. So I don’t know that there is a the the yeah.

Guy Gordon (19:42.34)
We’ve seen it to some degree in California. I mean I mean where where university staffers weren’t allowed to travel to states that didn’t align with the political priorities of the state of California.

Eric Lupher (19:55.087)
Right. So there’s no perfect model. for sure this is going to get a lot of attention as we just talked about the K twel governance. trying to find a a better fix that will create some more stability in our flagship schools, get leadership that’s willing to stick around for a little while and return Michigan and to

to being a leader in higher education in some ways. it’s gonna take a little bit of time and and you know, we’ll see what they come up with if there is a constitutional convention.

Guy Gordon (20:36.306)
Okay, and finally I I don’t want to give the community colleges the short end of the stick here. their governance could also become an an issue because it’s it’s it’s more localized, correct?

Eric Lupher (20:48.66)
It is. at the time the the last constitutional convention was meeting, we had some of the junior colleges that were sort of nascent, just in their very infancy. the community colleges didn’t get much attention in our our current constitution. So we have legislatively developed this this form of

continuing higher education. in the way it’s been developed, it’s really been left to the unit the local communities, the local schools to decide do they want to be part of these community colleges. So there’s parts of the state that are are not part of a community college. And if you’re a high school senior trying to decide what to do with the next stage of your life,

You’re looking at out of district tuition,

And and then you look at it at the state level, there isn’t a clear line of ascension, a clear line of responsibility within the Department of Education, within the state board of education to align that K twelve education with community college and higher education. So

We think you know, if there is a constitutional convention, they’re gonna look at what other states are doing, how to align the governance, how to align the curriculum development so that our our K twelve students are better able to feed into be ready college ready when they graduate twelfth grade and and ready to succeed. That starts with governance at the very top and having a uniform system

Guy Gordon (22:30.694)
Right.

Guy Gordon (22:49.158)
Well, and doesn’t it open the door to greater coordination? Because right now this is so decentralized that you don’t have a lot of coordination beyond the K twelve community college intersection there. If you presume that they’re going to go on to a four year institution, perhaps, and that the community colleges are a gateway, you do need to have some coordination between those univers four year universities and two year universities, and it may be happening organically.

Eric Lupher (22:49.219)
throughout.

Guy Gordon (23:16.892)
But from a governance standpoint, wouldn’t that behoove us to have build those connections into the system?

Eric Lupher (23:23.106)
That’s the argument. Yeah, that that’s for sure what we’ll want to look at other states and see those states that have that type of a system, how well does it work? Is it worth emulating what is to be gained by adding that system in? the community colleges in some way have piggybacked on the independence of the the higher education university system. and and

There has been coordination. We shouldn’t short sell that short. The ar the item of study for the constitutional convention is w would greater improved governance at the state level f facilitate that even more and move that into a better position for our s our students to fully, you know, move through the higher education system.

Guy Gordon (24:21.468)
Finally, any any any last article eight thoughts?

Eric Lupher (24:27.99)
No, just to you know, summarize, again, really it’s only education as a public service that gets its own article in the constitution. It really speaks to the importance of it. Michigan has not been achieving in a major way through K twelve education and

Guy Gordon (24:38.919)
Right.

Eric Lupher (24:52.002)
While we’d have great universities, they’re bleeding students and and trying to figure out how to keep themselves afloat. so it’s pretty clear, if we did have a constitutional convention, that we will want to give a lot of attention to main you know, should that article continue, should we continue to have education as a standalone article in the constitution and

How do if we do, you know, how do we address funding? How do we address governance? How do we put the state on a path to prosperity moving forward?

Guy Gordon (25:34.514)
Right. Well that wraps up the Article eight conversation and we invite our listeners and viewers to check out the other there there are l gonna be eleven sections I think to this ultimately, but the the we have s this is

Eric Lupher (25:45.379)
The this is the eleventh one. We’ll have fifteen in total. So we have four more to go, I guess. And then we we plan to have that final one published right around the time people are receiving their absentee ballots for those people voting absentee in September and and they’ll have everything before them as they see that proposal one on the November ballot. Should we have a constitutional convention?

Guy Gordon (26:15.376)
Well and finally I want to give you an opportunity to crow, Eric. I know over the past week that that the the there there is a group that acknowledges fine researchers in the field that we’re in, and the Citizens Research Council of Michigan got a nice bouquet of roses thrown our way.

Eric Lupher (26:35.264)
We did. the Governmental Research Association is a association of organizations like ours in more than half the states. they are equally involved in thinking about the finance and governance of their state and local governments and trying to make things better for their own populations. they have a number of categories that

We nominate you know you can nominate your own work and we were recognized in policy achievement for the work that we did over the last couple of years dealing with the issue of pork barrel spending. And you can go back and look at those on our our website. The crux of it was that we said politicians are gonna politic. We’re never gonna get rid of pork barrel spending, but there needs to be sunshine in the process that

we should know which legislators are asking for the the the funding, what it’s gonna be used for, is it being used only by governments and nonprofit entities or could can we make sure it’s not going to private companies? there should be some ability, some period of time between when the ask is and the actual

passage of the budget so people can ask questions and understand what the set aside is all about. And in fact the legislature took that up through legislative rule and then enacted a law to make it so and so it was a nice pat on the back and something to get feel about, yes.

Guy Gordon (28:17.818)
That’s that’s kind of what the mission is all about, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. Well congratulations. Congratulations to the team. and and that that was just a that was a nice little thing in my inbox this week. So I wanted to make sure that we let folks know about it because those are those are fun moments for the CRC team.

Eric Lupher (28:37.558)
It’s an important message to those that tune in that your dollars are really achieving things. We’re not just writing papers and hoping people notice that we are moving the needle and making the state a better place and we can do that only with the support of businesses and and individuals to support our work.

Guy Gordon (28:45.916)
Yeah.

Guy Gordon (28:59.194)
Which leads us to the coda that we have been using for the past several podcasts, which is if you feel that this is a beneficial service to you as a citizen, maybe tell your neighbors about us, have them join us through Spotify, through Apple Podcasts, or through YouTube or at the CRCMish dot org website. And in the meantime, when you see the little donate button there on the website, you might want to throw a few coins in the pot to to keep the mission alive. Eric, thanks so much.

Eric Lupher (29:28.27)
Thank you. We’ll see you soon.

Guy Gordon (29:29.618)
All right. And we’ll see you next time on the hashtag FactsMatter Podcast. Till then I’m Guy Gordon. Take care.