Here's what happens when two Michigan education policy researchers slap each other from 80 miles apart:
Potshots fly between Midland and Lansing with sarcasm and wit, but no trash talk. It's almost like Gore Vidal vs. Norman Mailer, without potential fisticuffs.
The flareup is between writers at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Center for Michigan. The spark involves "failure" at an early age -- 5-year-olds forced to repeat kindergarten.
Though not as colorful as a city hall protest with Oreos or a mall fight with airborne nacho cheese, the online war of words shows that a seemingly arcane issue involving public dollars and children can fuel a feud. It also shows the vigor and diversity of Michigan's editorial voices. If you seek a partisan peninsula, look about you.
In one corner is Audrey Spalding (above), education policy analyst since last July at the Mackinac Center in Midland, which describes itself as an advocate for "fiscal integrity, free markets and non-invasive government." "Don't Mistake Bridge Claims for Fact" it says atop Spalding's post Friday at Michigan Capitol Confidential, the center's blog.
Across the ring is Ron French (also pictured), an award-winning former Detroit News reporter who joined Bridge soon after its September 2011 birth. The e-publication is part of the Center for Michigan, a nonprofit research group started seven years ago by ex-newspaper publisher Phil Power. It has offices in Ann Arbor and the state capital and describes its goal as "encouraging greater understanding and involvement in policy issues." (Disclosure: The writer of this article worked with French at The News.)
Under the headline "Michigan's 13,000 'Redshirt' Kindergartners," French reported nearly two weeks ago that "the chances of your child repeating kindergarten is not related to academics or maturity, but geography."
A Bridge Magazine analysis revealed kindergarten retention rates in Michigan ranging from about 1 percent to more than 45 percent – a disparity that bears no relation to academic outcomes, poverty or race.
Michigan fails a startling one in nine kindergartners, despite study after study finding no long-lasting academic benefit to holding students back in kindergarten . . .
Taxpayers are in effect getting one school year for the price of two – paying an average of $7,000 per failed 5-year-old for an additional year of schooling that doesn’t produce better learners.
Spaulding pushed back from Midland in a 700-word post that says conclusions from French and in two related posts lack "firm analytic ground."
Bridge suggests that the state could save money by spending more on Great Start, the preschool program administered by the state. . . . Evidence on which Bridge bases its conclusion is slim, if not nonexistent. . . .
Bridge magazine’s failure to find a pattern between kindergarten retention rates and test scores could be simply due to the magazine attempting to compare mismatched data. . . .
Readers should not mistake Bridge magazine’s conclusion for fact. More research is needed to determine whether districts that are retaining more kindergartners are seeing positive or negative results.
Six comments under Spalding's essay include one from Charlevoix reader Duane Lawton, who starts: "You gotta realize that 'Bridge' is really more like a 'Dock' on the left shore."
For his part, French sees the cross-state rip as a rite of passage. "I finally got 'the full Mackinac!' Michigan journalists haven't really made it until they've had one of their articles torched by the Midland think tank," he posts publicly on his Facebook page.
Mackinac defends school spending and the status quo in their takedown, and helpfully provides numerous links back to the original articles. As they say, you make the call.
But no one flung nacho cheese or played a race card.
