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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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