Superintendents of the schools in Kent County today urged the Michigan Senate to reject legislation draining scarce school dollars from students and eliminate senseless data collection that has no bearing on academics.               

The Senate will soon vote on House Bill 5887, which takes $25.6 million already appropriated to local schools and transfers it into a fund to pay for the cost of complying with an ever-growing demand for thousands of data submissions about students, staff and spending.  

Among the 123 fields of information required on each student by state and federal reports are student phone numbers and their birth order, in addition to dozens of data points that must be completed for each student, regardless of whether they apply to that student or not, such as discipline items and migrant status.  Schools supply the information to CEPI, the Center for Educational Performance and Information created by Michigan Governor John Enger to report information on students, staff and school spending.              

“We just don’t believe the state needs all this data.  It has nothing to do with student achievement,” said Forest Hills Superintendent Dan Behm, who is chairperson for the 456 school districts that filed a lawsuit in 2000 to challenge the state report. “We would hope the Snyder administration would take a look at this and reduce the redundant and repetitive reporting that is costing our schools millions of dollars, none of which are going to the classroom.”

In July the Michigan Supreme Court sided with 456 plaintiff school districts, which include 15 of the 20 districts within Kent ISD.  The districts brought suit a decade earlier alleging the state was guilty of violating the Michigan Constitution’s prohibition against unfunded mandates. At issue was the state’s failure to pay for the cost of compiling the information, much of it of dubious value in meeting the goal of educating children.

School officials say Michigan’s long-troubled economy and significantly lower tax revenues mean that every scarce education dollar should be focused on achieving academic goals – not satisfying information requirements imposed by educational agencies in Lansing and Washington, D.C.

The state, the officials said, should eliminate the non-academic reporting requirements and fully pay the actual costs local schools incur in putting together reasonable requests for information.