MACKINAC ISLAND – Better educating Michigan children and welcoming immigrants are among the keys to improving the state’s economy, Governor Rick Snyder and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said in opening the Detroit Regional Chamber Mackinac Policy Conference.
The conference is organized around three “pillars” of discussion: cultural change, education and the 21st Century global market.
Snyder said the parts are there to make the education system the state needs. He said those pieces just need to be melded together. “We have to get beyond the old model of saying that there are silos,” he said, calling again for a prenatal through higher education system.
Bush, who has been an education reform advocate nationally since leaving the governor’s office, said one of the rights of children in the United States is the “right to rise.”
“Increasingly for many of our children, this right to rise depends on access to an education,” he said.
And he said many children do not have that access. “Only four in 10 complete the most expensive education system … college and career ready,” he said. “Imagine what the world looks like if we continue down this path.”
The problem: “a public education system that dumbs down standards to make adults look better.”
The solution, he said, is to give parents more choice in where their children attend school.
In other products, Bush said, there are a variety of choices (he pointed particularly to the different types of milk available at the grocery store). “By having these choices, we can live a better life,” he said. “Why wouldn’t we want parents to have choices for their children?”
When parents choose the school, they are also more engaged in their child’s education, he said.
Snyder said he is not concerned at this point about the lack of movement on the Education Achievement Authority, one of his hallmark reform proposals. “We’re having a good dialog,” he said.
Performance pay for teachers will also be an important change, he said. “That’s the way most of the world works is people are paid for performance,” he said.
The best teachers also need to be paid more, Bush said. “We must attract the best and brightest into teaching and pay them for what they do,” he said.
But schools also need to make those top teachers leaders, Snyder said. “Let’s reward success,” he said, “but let’s get them in a position to help other people be as successful.”
He also struck back at those who charged him with continuing to cut education funding despite declaring it a priority. He said his budgets have added $600 per student since he was elected.
The cuts, he said, came during the 2008-10 fiscal years, before he was elected.
The first K-12 budget signed by Mr. Snyder cut funding by $475.2 million to $12.659 billion although that reflect the reduction in federal stimulus aid. The budget on its way to Snyder for the 2013-14 fiscal year contains $13.36 billion. However, the final budget written under then-Governor Jennifer Granholm for the 2010-11 fiscal year set a minimum per pupil funding level of $7,146. The budget on its way to Snyder for 2013-14 would set a minimum level of $7,026 although there is a one-time equity payment to bring that level up to $7,076.
Bush said money, in and of itself, is too much in focus. “What’s important is where you spend it,” he said. “Governor Snyder and the Legislature have done a good job prioritizing.”
Bush pushed heavily for choice during his address.
And he noted that Sweden has converted entirely to a voucher system.
He said later he was not, though, arguing private schools are better than public schools. “Schools should be measured by outcomes,” he said.
Bush said the Common Core Standards, a point of concern for legislative Republicans, are essential to improving education.
“We have way too many standards,” he said of the current system. “In effect, too many standards are no standards.”
He acknowledged, though, the concern that the standards represent an effort by the federal government to impose standards on the states. The Common Core does not represent that, though, because it was developed by the state, he said.
He also urged the state to keep its requirement that all students take Algebra II. “That’s where you need to be and I’m sure there’s push back on that because there always is,” he said.
The two governors also urged immigration reform.
“I’ve been a strong supporter of being pro-immigration since I was running for office,” Snyder said.
Both he and Bush said the nation needs to develop incentives for immigrants studying particularly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to remain in the country and start businesses.
“Immigrants striving to rise have always been a benefit to our economy,” Bush said. “Immigrants are twice as likely to start businesses than American born citizens.”
But he said immigrants are also needed to keep population level or growing. “Our social contract depends on a pyramid that only immigration can rebuild,” he said.
The immigration plan, though, needs to be based on attracting those who will expand the economy rather than on family reunification that seems to be the core of plans currently under discussion, he said.
Carlos Gutierrez, former U.S. secretary of commerce, also pushed for immigration reform that would make many of those currently in the country illegally legal immigrants, agreeing that immigration is essential to growing the national economy.
“We don’t have enough truck drivers, we don’t have enough construction workers, we don’t have enough nurses aides,” he said. “It’s just not the way our population is developing.”
He said immigrants will fill those jobs where citizens often will not.
“If we are 100 percent successful in sealing our borders and ending our overstays of visas, then God help us,” Gutierrez said. “Then we’ll see what a real recession is.”
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