Dr. Kirk A. Johnson

The fact that the IDEA program comes with federal money [means] school districts have a strong incentive to classify more students as being learning disabled.

New study will help schools marshall scarce resources for better education. Register for Wednesday forum.

An Assessment of What Michigan Public School Districts Can Do to Save Money Without Laying Off Teachers or Other Essential Staff

The dirty little secret of Michigan’s education establishment is that it doesn’t really believe the system (that is, itself) needs to be reformed. That’s why reformers devised the idea of charter schools, and vouchers and tax credits: as ways to impose reform from outside the system.

MIDLAND—Governor-elect Jennifer Granholm should move the administration of the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test back to the education department, says Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., director of education policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Charter school students scored lower, but are improving faster, than those in regular public schools.

A well-crafted tax credit plan will simply relieve the public schools of the obligation to teach a relatively small percentage of students across the state, while providing the resources to increase the average student expenditure.

A number of commercial firms publish high-quality, low-cost educational achievement tests that could potentially replace the MEAP test. A Comparison of the MEAP, SAT-9, and ITBS.