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Does the law matter anymore to our Local, State and Federal governments, or just the laws that they feel like they want to follow.

This is getting out of hand, especially from the Federal and somewhat from the state level.

The Michigan Capitol Confidential news site is reporting that now the state of Michigan may be breaking one of their own laws.  A law passed in 2009 requires that the state of Michigan must publish a list which identifies the bottom 5% of schools, as measured by student achievement, “not later than September 1 of each year”.

Well the state of Michigan did not publish that list for 2015.  Which means the parents of school age children in Michigan do not know if their child attends a school which Michigan would rate in the bottom 5%, named Priority Schools, of Michigan schools according to the criteria they laid out in their law, which they passed.

Why have they not published the list for 2015?

When Michigan’s Department of Education spokesperson Caleb Buhs was asked why, he was quoted in the article stating:

The 2014 list identifying the lowest-achieving five percent has been extended to 2015...No additional schools were named Priority Schools in 2015. This is due, in large part, to MDE’s federal waiver ‘preventing sanctions’ (i.e., new schools being named as priority schools) due to the change in testing from the MEAP to the MSTEP. One year of test data is not considered statistically valid. The 2015 list used the most recent statistically valid data, which was from 2014.

Does this sound like a legitimate reason not to follow the law?

Did the law say they should publish the list or they must, let me give you a hint it did not say it should.

Would the state accept that excuse from us if we did not pay our property taxes on time because we switched to a new calendar?  Not the greatest analogy, do you have a better one?

Might it be because the law would subject these schools to state supervision?  A supervision which would increase in its firmness each year a school is on that list. Also after five years on the Priority School list with no improvement, that school can be taken over by the state or operated as a charter school district.

God forbid it is operated as a charter school, right!

We either have laws that all must follow or we don’t.  What kind of society do you want to live in, one that makes the government follow the laws as well as the citizens or one that the government in charge decides which laws to follow and which laws not to?

Let’s talk about this today on The Live with Renk show, which airs Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to noon, to let me know your thoughts at (269) 441-9595.

Or please feel free to start a discussion and write your thoughts in the comment section

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