Spurred by the financial clout and political power of the DeVos family, Michigan has embraced choice. A charter advocate wrote earlier to claim that the state has made unparalleled gains, thanks to choice. I knew this was wrong, but was on a car trip and couldn’t look up the NAEP data. In fact, Michigan’s academic performance relative to other states is in free fall.

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the only reliable barometer of test performance, Michigan has gone into a decline over the past dozen years.

Michigan, already sliding toward the bottom nationally for fourth-grade reading performance on a rigorous national exam, is projected to fall to 48th place by 2030 if the state does nothing to improve education.

That finding is included in a report out today from Education Trust-Midwest, a nonpartisan education research and policy organization based in Royal Oak. The organization analyzed more than a…