The Michigan State Board of Education’s latest move is revealing.
The board is preparing to oppose a new federal tax-credit scholarship program that could help families pay for tuition, tutoring, school supplies and homeschooling expenses.
Whitmer has not committed to taking part in the federal program. But the urgency with which the state board is acting to preempt her decision suggests Michigan’s education establishment sees it as a threat.
In a draft resolution set to be considered, the board would oppose “any effort by the State of Michigan to opt in” to the program and urge Whitmer not to enable it here.
The program was established in 2025 with the passage of President Donald Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill to encourage school choice. Whitmer has until Jan. 1, 2027, her last day in office, to opt in.
The board repeatedly labels Trump’s program as a “voucher,” attempting to fit it into a political and legal box that carries baggage in this state.
But the framing is misleading.
The new federal program is not a traditional voucher system in which the government directly appropriates public money and sends it to private schools. It has nothing to do with state funding.
Rather, it uses private donations from scholarship-granting organizations, with donors receiving a federal tax credit of up to $1,700. Those organizations then provide scholarships or education-related assistance to eligible children for myriad needs, including private school tuition, tutoring, instructional materials and homeschooling costs.
The distinction is important.
The tax credit carries a public cost only in reducing federal tax revenue through tax credits. That’s not the same thing as the state of Michigan writing checks to private schools out of the School Aid Fund.
The board’s insistence on blurring those looks a lot like politics, which is never far from the State Board of Education.
“Our priority is adequate and equitable funding for public education in Michigan,” says Michigan Department of Education spokesperson Bob Wheaton. The department believes federal money should be devoted entirely to that.
Though it’s a federal program, for funds to benefit local students, each state’s governor or designated representative must alert the IRS that the state is opting in. That authority would then notify the IRS which private scholarship granting organizations will participate in the program.
The scholarships could help students struggling in the current system find alternatives for getting a quality education. But teachers’ unions and the public-school establishment, which bankroll the campaigns of the elected school board members, object to introducing even a modest competition into the education marketplace.
It would be easier to argue for walling off struggling families from support if Michigan’s public-school system were delivering positive results. But it’s not.
Michigan’s reading and math performance rankings remain among the worst in the nation.
That could be one reason school choice continues to poll well in Michigan, even among those who still use and broadly support traditional public schools.
School choice is not an ideological obsession, and many who support it are not trying to destroy public education. That framing is needlessly polarizing.
Michigan parents want more options for their kids in a system that has given them plenty of reason to worry it’s cheating their children, and the board seems concerned about the loss of control.
Its mission should be to give Michigan kids educational options that can improve learning and their lives, not preemptively stymie competition. This resolution from the state board promotes the latter.
Kaitlyn Buss is assistant editorial page editor at The Detroit News. Contact her at kbuss@detroitnews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Michigan school board fights help for vulnerable students | Opinion
Reporting by Kaitlyn Buss, Holland Sentinel / The Holland Sentinel
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