Michigan's Nutty Schools Count Day

Michigan counts students on two days (yesterday was worth 80% and one day in Feb. from last school year is worth 20%).  This is then used as a basis for calculating student populations that is used for deciding funding.  I find "count day" to be a particularly annoying and disingenuous part of the school year in Michigan for two reasons:

First, if you are truly trying to figure out how many students attend a school, counting them on two days a year is going to produce a skewed result.  In other words, its not a statistically valid way to measure the population that actually attends the school when that population is artificially inflated (or at least can be).  I know they are trying to measure the census (that's everyone) that should be in the schools. But statistically speaking, the schools are only teaching a sample of the census.  So to be accurate, they should be measuring the samples. 

The second annoying part is, if you have to entice students to show up for school with TVs (does that strike anyone else as ironic?), laptops, and Ipods, then maybe you actually don't need the funding for these students?  And just out of curiosity, who is paying for that big screen TV and other electronics?  Does that come out of the school budget?  Is there a $10,000 "Count Day Prize Budget"?  No, actually there is a $500,000 "count day" budget (sort of).

I know. I get it.  It's all about school funding and school choice.  And don't get me wrong, I don't want to see funding fall for Detroit Public Schools... lord knows they can't afford to lose any more cash, and we as a state certainly don't spend enough on inner-city schools to begin with.  And, yeah, the current system is designed to be stacked in favor of large urban school systems (DPS isn't the only one with these count day incentives).  It's much easier to bolster attendance for two days rather than 40 or 50 days.  But, if you want school funding based on accuracy, then this isn't the way to do it.

I am annoyed by the prizes, but the $500,000 budget isn't actually just to get kids into school for one day.  It's a campaign to have parents choose to keep their kids in DPS. In that sense, this is probably a good way to spend money.  However, aiming for this one day, well, that's ridiculous.

I'm happy to say that DPS Emergency Financial Manager, Robert Bobb, appears to understand this.  He told WDIV:

...he’d continually fight to keep students in the district, including contacting parents to reassure them of the quality education their children get in a DPS school.
“Those are the parents we are going to start reaching out to throughout the year," Bobb said. "For all those children that are leaving the district and moving to other schools, our campaign will continue."

Well, I hope he does continue to fight.  And to keep him honest, if I were in control, I drop this "count day" nonsense.  I'd make it "count weeks" (one or two weeks a month for as many months as I could get) and then calculate the daily average to use as a base for the funding. 

The other side benefit to doing it this, is IF you can get more kids to come to one particular school AND show up for school during count weeks, then you might actually get some consistency and be able teach them something too (and isn't that really the point??) --  note the big "if".

Obviously, if you are going to do this, then you have to address the funding disparity between suburban schools and inner-city schools.  One thought on this might be to dump the separate school systems funding as they are now.  Why not shift to funding based on county-wide counts, instead of separate districts?  Heck, while we're at it, why not dump the separate districts all together and make county-wide districts?  I know, parents at every other Wayne County school district will pitch a fit at having to help clean up the mess and corruption at DPS.... 

Anyway, that's obviously a whole different can of worms.  However, with the state teetering on the brink of insolvency (or should that be tumbling over the edge?), I have to wonder if there is an opportunity here to change either Count Day or even the school system structure to help DPS make the most of substantially smaller state funding overall.