That's a 70 percent drop, significantly larger than the 61 percent drop seen nationally during the same period of time.

Multi-millionaire investors are voting with their check books and they've voting against Michigan.  

Not surprising the way we continue to make the same mistakes over and over again expecting different results.  It isn't only happening in city councils or in tax policy, either.  The Ivory Tower reports this morning that House Democrats are preparing to unveil a plan to take over dozens of local schools, assuming that the answer to failure is MORE state intervention.  Democrats Tim Melton and Bert Johnson are spearheading the plan:

A turnaround czar would negotiate strict improvement goals with each failing school, which must meet them over a 5-year time line. Failure to live up to the goals at any point would mean an immediate state takeover under the proposal.

If a complete takeover happens at a school, it would be placed under the management of a company or group with a strong success record in turning around schools with similar demographics, Melton said.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm  backs the bills and "giving the state's superintendent more authority to deal with schools that consistently fail to meet academic goals," spokeswoman Megan Brown said.

Sure, we've had problems with Lefty fronted school turnaround artists in the not-too-distant past, and liberal Big Government control of the schools are what has sunk dozens deep into the muck of failure, but why learn from experience?  Just throw more bureaucrats at the problem and eventually it'll go away.  Or create a whole new class of taxpayer funded pencil pushers whose job it is to tell your community how to educate your kids.  Either way.

And never mind the success of private schools and charters.  After all... we're talking about public education, not kids.