Fellow Michigan teacher here. I have been looking into many of these documents as well trying to figure out who to go with. I concluded that valic was best for myself, as they have vanguard funds and have the lowest fees. They also have an account type that doesn't require an advisor to manage, which I was very interested in when looking at their website (which I found to be the most helpful of all the websites checked out). I'm hoping to be able to just run a vanguard target date fund through them with either a 403b or 457. Personally, the 457 plan looks much more attractive to me as there is no penalty for taking funds out early as long as your not with your employer anymore.
I currently have my 403b through AXA. The only reason I started one in the first place was because a very nice guy came to my classroom and introduced himself. Being that I hadn't really thought about money at all at that point, I was more than happy to start one through AXA at the time. Since I have found this magical website and forum though and started actually learning about how to manage my finances properly, I have found out that my expense ratio is 1.13%! Yikes! The account also has its earnings in the 4% range, which seems very low to me, even though it's placed in the aggressive assets allocation
So, one, thank you for posting this! Two, any advice on how to move the funds over would be much appreciated. I'm not looking forward to this 'breakup' of sorts.