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Adair/Durant
IV Case Gets Affirmative Ruling From MI Court of Appeals
MIRS, July 7, 2008
The Adair/Durant IV case that has been ping-ponging within the
courts since the beginning of the decade got an affirmative
ruling from the Michigan Court of Appeals last Thursday.
The Court ruled that the state did not adequately fund the
requirement that the school systems maintain and contribute to
four statistical databases that record school performance, a
violation, the Court said, of the Headlee Amendment. This
amendment prohibits the state government from mandating local
functions without paying for it.
The suit came as a result of several school districts claiming
that between 1979-1995 the state did not provide the
administrative funding needed.
This is the second time that this case has appeared before the
Court of Appeals, after being remanded by the Michigan Supreme
Court back in 2006 (See "Adair Case Going Back To Appeals,"
3/22/06).
The state's defense was that the burden of data reporting was
actually the result of restrictions put in place by Michigan's
School Safety Initiative (SSI) and President George W. BUSH's No
Child Left Behind (NCLB), not former Gov. John ENGLER's
Executive Order 2000-9, as Adair was arguing.
While the court did not discuss whether the burden was from E.O.
2000-9 or SSI and NCLB, the judges said that if the burden had
originated from SSI and NCLB this would not preclude the state
from funding the additional requirements on the school district,
saying "Headlee prohibits the imposition of unfunded mandates no
matter what particular state statute imposes such mandates."
Also discussed was the legitimacy of the state requiring school
districts to utilize their "discretionary funding" to aid in
offsetting the costs of these mandates. Again the court ruled
against the state's assertion that the language of the
"prohibition on unfunded mandates" clause does not "reflect any
intent" to allow the Legislature to dip into discretionary funds
for this purpose.
According to court record, in 2002 $2 extra per pupil was
appropriated to assist in financing the initial costs of the
program, however no additional funding was ever sought to aid
school districts in complying.
However, the case was not a complete win for Adair. The appeals
court rejected the notion that the error checking required under
the mandate levied an additional burden and thus required
funding by the state. The court said that prior to this case,
school systems were responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the
data they reported to the state and that this did not put
additional responsibility on the school district as a whole.
Additionally, the Court refused Adair's petition for attorney's
fees, saying that their suit was not "sustained" under state
statute because this claim was but one of many they raised in
the action and all the others were rejected by the Court.
Student Improvement to be Factored Into
Michigan’s AYP as Part of Pilot Program
MIRS, July 7, 2008
Michigan schools will be better equipped to track student
progress, after being accepted to participate in a federal pilot
program by the U.S. Department of Education, according to the
Department of Education (MDE).
The Growth Model program allows school systems to take into
account a student's yearly academic growth when calculating
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), one of the benchmarks of school
progress under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.
Michigan is one of only 10 states participating in the program.
Michigan currently uses the Michigan Education Assessment
Program (MEAP) and MI-Access, a test for students with
disabilities, to determine student progress. This new pilot
program that includes student "growth" will help state schools
recognize areas of growth not previously exhibited by the test
scores.
"This will help recognize the hard work being done in schools
where the students may not be reaching the required proficiency
levels on our state MEAP and MI-Access tests, but are making
significant educational progress every year," said state
Superintendent Mike FLANAGAN.
The Michigan model will also allow schools to include students
"on track" to be proficient in three years to count towards
school making AYP, even if they aren't yet proficient.
Identifying these students will utilize only the state's English
Language Arts (ELA) and math tests for grades 4-8.
ELA and math tests are the only subjects required by NCLB to be
tested and used to determine AYP.
MDE will add "on track" students into the AYP calculations for
the 2007-08 school year, adding these calculations to the
preliminary AYP results already issued to elementary and middle
schools.
The department said that this would result in some schools not
previously making AYP to actually make the cut and that no
school would be negatively affected by considering the new
calculations.
The other states approved for the Growth Model pilot program
are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Iowa,
Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee.
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