By The Center for Michigan - September 10, 2007
Leaders in more than 80 Michigan locations are hosting Community Conversations this fall to give residents of all ages a voice in the difficult decisions our state faces. This is the first in a series of Phil Power columns outlining Michigan's Defining Moment Public Engagement Campaign that formally launches on October first. Email us to reserve a seat in a Community Conversation near you!
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I lost all faith in government years ago. I use to write letters. It would always be frustrating to get back a response and realize it was basically a form letter written by (my guess) some political student.
Government can not be all things to all people. Irresponsible spending has been the norm for a long time, regardless of which party was "in". My daddy made the most sense when he said, "No Son, we can't because we don't have to money to". It's really easy to spend someone elses money.
In 1998 Forbes magazine published an article showing that Michigan schools had a larger percentage of administrators that any other state. 33% of the school employees were at the state and county level – all administration. Another 6.6% were district staff and 14.6% were local “…aides, …counselors, librarians, administrators.” Only 45.2% were classroom teachers. At the other end of the scale were such states as Rhode Island, Hawaii, Nevada and Idaho with corresponding numbers averaging 17.8, 7.8, 13.8, and 60.5. So Michigan had almost 55% administrators and the more efficient states had less than 40% administrators. It does not take a math major to see that Michigan could reduce school costs by cutting half of the administrators and that would cut about 3 Billion out of our $13 Billion budget for schools, assuming they average the same pay as teachers.
Recent data available at eia.com (Education Intelligence Agency) and schoolmatters.com (School Matters, a service of Standard and Poors) confirm that not much has changed from the Forbes article.
Data on these web sites also show that many states with a smaller administrator percentage produce students who perform as well on standardized tests as do Michigan students.
Several months ago, I wrote to my two Michigan legislators, Chris Ward and Nancy Cassis as well as to Governor Granholm, submitting submitted the information mentioned above from the Forbes article and from the internet sites.
Senator Cassis replied by letter that it is a local problem (even though I pointed out that 33% are state and county level). Governor Granholm replied that the information was interesting. Representative Ward did not answer.
This is a good example of the kind of inefficiency that is allowed to continue.
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