Although the basis of school funding in Michigan was shifted away from property tax onto state sales and use tax, and although the funding is nominally on a “per pupil” basis, there are still wide variations in the actual per pupil funding between districts.
Currently, the “minimum” per pupil funding is $7511. All schools are supposed to be brought to the “basic” per pupil funding level, which is $8229. However, there are 405 schools at the minimum and 81 between minimum and basic. There are 56 schools with per pupil funding between the “basic” level of $8229 and the maximum level, which is $12,064. On top of the rather extreme variation between the minimum level of $7511 and the maximum of $12,064, there are parent-added educational resources, which also vary quite widely from district to district.
There are “work-arounds” in the law that permit school districts to raise additional funds for capital improvements and other purposes.
It is true that there has been some corruption–partly in the form of kick-backs from suppliers–in some regions.
But some children grow up in environments with more parental investment in education, and parents who are better prepared to contribute to their educations. For a start, I would guess that the majority of CC parents read extensively to their children before the children started kindergarten. I think it is important to understand the socio-economic factors that limit some parent’s ability to enhance their children’s education, even when they are strongly interested in doing so. Aside from issues such as the number of books in the home, the utilization of local libraries (if they are within a reasonable distance), and travel within the US, I would estimate that at least 40% of the students in our local district had visited Europe at least once prior to graduating from high school.
My understanding is that Michigan charter schools on average are not out-performing the local public schools. In a few cases where the charter school is doing so, this may have more to do with parental emphasis on education than with the differential quality of teaching in the public schools vs. charter schools.
Financial information about Michigan school funding, dated February 2017, and supplied by Kathryn Summers, the Associate Director of the Senate Fiscal Agency is available as a pdf here: http://www.senate.michigan.gov/sfa/departments/datacharts/dck12_schoolfundingbasics.pdf