LANSING – Michigan already spends more on schools than most of the rest of the nation, but it spends less than the top achieving state, the State Board of Education heard in separate presentations Tuesday.

Among other measures, Michigan ranks ninth in education spending as a portion of per capita income, Audrey Spaulding, education advisor for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told the board in one of its ongoing presentations toward a proposal on proper levels of school spending.

Michigan spends $54.30 of every $1,000 of personal income, Spaulding said. Alaska was top at $75.47.

She noted that Massachusetts ranked 34th on the measure, and Florida ranked 50th.

But per pupil, Massachusetts spends twice what Michigan does, Amber Arellano, executive director of the Education Trust-Midwest, told the board.

In her presentation, Arellano said Massachusetts spends $2 billion more overall on education despite having 600,000 fewer students.

The two did agree, though, that the state needs to work to better tie its spending to education performance.

So far, nationally, there is no correlation between the amount a state spends on education and the achievement of its students, Spaulding said. She showed a graph of spending increases and achievement improvement between 1990 and 2009 that showed a slight trend of increased performance with increased spending, but states all over the board on what they were actually able to achieve.

Michigan in that graph showed a below average increase in spending, but a substantially less than average improvement in achievement.

Spaulding noted that Florida had the smallest increase in spending but was about tied for the greatest increase in performance.

Massachusetts, over the period, had among the top increases in spending as well as among to top performance gains.

She also presented several graphs that showed schools across the per-pupil spending range fell at both ends of the state’s top-to-bottom ranking.

“I would focus on what schools are doing now and whether there is a relationship between spending and outcomes,” Spaulding said.

Particularly because of that lack of correlation between spending and performance, Spaulding warned the board away from one of its goals: a statement on the cost of educating a child in the state.

“I would be cautious saying we as the state know what it costs to educate these [children],” she said. Costs vary between regions and districts. “That child might be more expensive to educate in Detroit than in the Upper Peninsula,” she said of a student eligible for free lunch.

Arellano said the state should look to Massachusetts’ spending plan, which gives every district a base spending amount, but provides additional funds based on numbers of special education students, average income levels of students, and the overall cost of operation in the given community.

That plan, she said, yielded student achievement improvements not only across the board, but among the minority and low-income students who tend to have the most struggles.

“We know that so many of the socioeconomic trends that are hitting the country are hitting us really, really hard because we are transitioning from industrial to knowledge based economy,” Arellano said. But she said Massachusetts looked similar 20 years ago and has been able to overcome some of that struggle through strategic investment in schools.

She noted that, while Massachusetts had followed the rest of the nation in allowing charter schools, it had put higher standards on those schools.

“Today our charter sector pretty much mirrors our traditional sector,” she said. “A few good schools, a large number of mediocre schools, many poor schools.”

Massachusetts, she said, gives those poor charters less time to improve.

“The bar for charters in Massachusetts is higher because they were sold as we are here to provide a better education option,” she said.

Spaulding agreed there should be performance marks for schools, but she said in large part their survival should depend on their attracting enough students to remain solvent. Particularly in setting limits on charters, she said the only factor should be whether the school can support itself.

“Opening a charter school is not an assurance of enrollment. Opening a charter school is a great financial risk,” she said. “If they think there’s an opportunity and there isn’t … I’m fine with letting them take that risk.”

She warned against a program that would force schools to close based on a finding by the state that the school was not successful.

“Are there so many of those schools that we should take on the risk of accidentally closing one that is providing value?” she said she in response to comments from board member Dan Varner (D-Detroit) that there are a number of schools where students have left , but not enough to force the school to close.

She said requiring all schools to be open to some level of choice (she suggested a minimum of 5 percent of enrollment) would ensure that students and parents have the broadest choices and students move to the schools that will best meet their needs.

To concerns by some board members that further opening choice means taking more students, and more funds, away from already struggling districts, Spaulding said, “Absolutely we should be concerned about the students who didn’t leave, but I question whether that concern is sufficient to limit students.”

She said she would be open to Varner’s proposal for the state to provide some level of transportation to open broader choice to those without transportation.

“If we’re going to have a choice public school choice system then we have to publicly fund the mechanism to have access that choice,” Varner said.

“That’s something I hadn’t considered. It’s not something I would have a knee jerk reaction against,” Spaulding said. “If it could be done relatively cheaply, it would be a benefit to choice in the area.”

She also urged the state to consider a student savings account, similar to is offered in Arizona, where students would have additional funds, based on need, to pay for anything from books and tutoring to college tuition.

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