Archive for July, 2009
Duncan’s Donut: The Ed. Sec.’s Impact on Chicago Student Achievement Was Near Zero
For seven months, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the media have bombarded us with tales of how Duncan dramatically boosted student achievement as leader of Chicago Public Schools. Based on two new independent analyses, Duncan’s real impact appears to have been near zero.
The usual evidence presented for Duncan’s success is the rise in the pass rate of elementary and middle school students on Illinois’ own ISAT test. But state tests like the ISAT are notoriously unreliable (they tend to be corrupted by teaching to the test and subject to periodic ”realignments” in which the passing grade is lowered or the test content is eased). In January, the Schools Matter blog argued that exactly such a realignment had occurred in 2006.
So to get a reliable measure of Duncan’s impact, I pulled up the 4th and 8th grade math and reading scores for Chicago on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — a test that is much less susceptible to massaging by states and districts. I then compared the score changes in Chicago to those for all students in Large Central Cities around the nation, and tested if the small differences between them were statistically significant. Not one of them is even remotely significant at even the loosest accepted measure of significance (the p < 0.1 level). Chicago students did no better than those in similar districts around the nation between 2002/2003 and 2007, a period covering virtually all of Duncan’s tenure in Chicago.
As I was finishing up this statistical analysis a few minutes ago, I came across a new report by the Civic Committee of The Commercial Club of Chicago. According to the Civic Committee report, the elementary and middle-school ISAT gains touted by Duncan and the media appear to be almost entirely illusory: artifacts of the 2006 realignment. Chicago high school students, who take a different test that was not realigned, perform no better today than they did in 2001 — so whatever real gains did occur in the early grades evaporated by the end of high school.
Writing in the Chicago Tribune a few days ago, columnist Greg Burns touted Duncan’s supposed success as CEO of Chicago Public Schools, and noted that Duncan had good prospects for winning the support of business leaders nationally, as he did in Chicago. But Chicago’s Commercial Club has now concluded that Duncan failed to accomplish what he has claimed, and given that the NAEP scores echo their findings, the education secretary may soon find national business leaders more skeptical as well.
Does the PASS ID Act Protect Privacy?
I’ve written about PASS ID here a couple of times before – first on whether or not it’s a national ID and, second, on the politics of this REAL ID revival bill. Now I’ll take a look at whether it fixes the privacy issues with REAL ID. Privacy is complicated. Buckle up.
The day the bill was introduced, the Center for Democracy and Technology issued a press release giving it a privacy stamp of approval.
“The PASS ID Act addresses most of the major privacy and security concerns with REAL ID,” said Ari Schwartz, Vice-President of CDT. The release cited four ways that PASS ID was an improvement over the bill it’s modeled on, REAL ID.
Interstate Data Sharing?
First, CDT said, PASS ID “[r]emoves the requirement that states ‘provide electronic access’ allowing every other state to search their motor vehicles records.” It’s technically true: The language from REAL ID directly requiring states to share information among themselves came out of PASS ID. But the requirements of the law will cause that information sharing to happen all the same.
Like REAL ID did, PASS ID would require states to confirm that “a person submitting an application for a driver’s license or identification card is terminating or has terminated any driver’s license or identification card” issued by another state.
How do you do that? You check the driver license databases of every other state. Maybe you do this by directly accessing other states’ databases; maybe you do this indirectly, through a “pointer system” or “hub.” But to confirm that you’re talking about the right person, you don’t just compare names. You compare names, addresses, pictures, and other biometrics.
A New Regulation I Can Support
Normally I would be happy to leave labelling decisions to retailers and manufacturers, but here’s a proposal for a new mandatory labelling scheme that I can get behind.
James Gibney, a reporter from the Atlantic, called me last week to ask some questions about dairy supports. He was preparing a blog post to propose a new labelling idea that might help break the frustrating stranglehold that the farm lobby has over U.S. agricultural policy. Here’s James’ idea:
To wit, every product whose ingredients benefit from a subsidy should include the following language on the label:
“This product has been subsidized by the U.S. government at taxpayer expense. For more information, please visit usda.gov.”
And every product that benefits from tariff protection should have the following language on the label:
“This product is protected from foreign competition by U.S. import tariffs. Its price is higher as a result. For more information, please visit usitc.gov.”
I like it. For more on Cato’s work on agricultural policy, see here and here.
UK Home Secretary Abandons National ID
The UK has been operating in parallel to the United States on the national ID question, and rumors about the collapse of the UK national ID have been circulating for a couple of years.
Now comes word that Home Secretary Alan Johnson will scrap the national ID card system, making it voluntary. When volunteers fail to materialize, it is easy to anticipate that it will disappear entirely.
This is another thing U.S. Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano might want to note as she struggles with with national ID issue here.
Spend Money to Save Money?
You know all those promises that spending more taxpayers’ money on some program will actually result in taxpayer savings — eventually? Check out this story in Sunday’s Parade magazine:
Ten years ago, Congress created a new system of government credit cards for federal employees booking work-related travel. The cards were meant to curb waste and abuse. But since their introduction, charges have doubled—from $4.39 billion in 1999 to $8.28 billion last year.
Among the expenses flagged in a new report from the Congressional Research Service: $3700 for laser eye surgery, $4100 for a first-class trip to Hawaii, and $100 million in unclaimed refunds for airline tickets that were purchased but never used.
Of course, the doubled spending is not all waste, at least not in the narrow sense. In the past nine Bush-Obama years, total federal spending doubled from about $1.8 trillion to $3.6 trillion. But certainly it doesn’t look like the promised efficiencies have been realized.
Who’s Blogging about Cato
Here’s a roundup of bloggers who are writing about Cato research, commentary and analysis. If you’re blogging about Cato, let us know.
- Blogger Melissa Clouthier helps spread the word about Cato’s analysis of Obama’s health plan by posting a video of Cato experts dissecting the ABC special last week.
- David Kirkpatrick examines Obama’s record on civil liberties by quoting Cato scholar Doug Bandow.
- Education blogger Brandon Dutcher links to Neal McCluskey’s analysis of American public schools.
- At the Real Clear World Compass blog, Kevin Sullivan quotes Juan Carlos Hidalgo on the political crisis in Honduras.
- Blogging for Townhall.com, Kevin Glass quotes Michael F. Cannon on Wal-Mart’s support of an employer mandate to provide health care.
- Freedom Politics blogger Thomas J. Lucente Jr. cites foreign policy expert Christopher Preble in a post about the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq.
- Writing about the political situation in Honduras, Patrick Murphy draws from Juan Carlos Hidalgo’s analysis on the president’s removal.
- At the Americans for Tax Reform blog, Tim Andrews cites David Boaz’s post that lists the “taxes proposed or publicly floated by President Obama and his aides and allies.”
Terrorist Risk of Cloud Computing
Bruce Schneier skewers an imaginative fear-mongerer.
Moving to Canada for Lower Taxes
In a recent op-ed, I noted that Canada’s industrial heartland of Ontario is cutting its federal-provincial corporate tax rate to 25%, or 15 percentage points lower than the average U.S. federal-state rate of 40%.
Marginal tax rates affect economic behavior. Thus I was not surprised when I read in a Mark Steyn column that retailer Tim Hortons (essentially Canada’s Starbucks) is packing up its U.S. headquarters and moving to Ontario. The company operates 3,457 retail outlets on both sides of the border.
Here is the company’s June 29 press release:
“Management and the Board believe that the proposed reorganization would be in the best interests of the Company and our stockholders by creating operational and administrative efficiencies over the long-term, enhancing the Company’s ability to expand in Canada and internationally, and improving the Company’s position to take advantage of lower Canadian tax rates.”
Note that the middle reason–”ability to expand…internationally”–probably implies tax factors as well. If the company wants to open locations in, say, Europe, it would be better that the parent company is located in Canada because of its more favorable tax treatment of corporate foreign investment than the United States.
With respect to jobs, Horton’s reorganization probably won’t affect where relatively low-wage jobs in retail branches will be located. But it might affect where higher-wage corporate headquarters jobs are located in the long run.
As a U.S.-incorporated company in recent years, Hortons has had a high effective tax rate, averaging 32 percent. The company will shave that rate by moving to Canada by a few percentage points at first, and then by increasing amounts as lower Canadian rates are phased-in.
For more on such corporate “expatriations” get your copy of Global Tax Revolution.
Senator Webb: Time to reinvent criminal justice system
Interesting article in today’s Washington Post on Senator Webb’s efforts to revamp the American criminal justice system. Here’s an excerpt:
“I am, at bottom, a writer,” he says, invoking his default response. “I start with a theme, rather than a plot.” Webb wants to shape a plotline that, with each turn of the page, draws America closer to reinventing its criminal justice system. Questioning why the United States locks up so many of its youths, why its prisons swell with disease and atrocities while fundamental social problems persist in its streets, has earned Webb lavish praise as a politician unafraid to be smeared as soft on crime. And when a law-and-order type as rock-ribbed as Webb expresses willingness to consider legalizing or decriminalizing drugs, excitement follows.
Read the whole thing. Tomorrow Cato will be hosting a Hill Briefing about federal drug policy. For additional Cato work, go here and here.
Uwe Reinhardt on Health Care Rationing
Health care analyst Uwe Reinhardt takes on critics of the Obama administration effort to “reform” health care, pointing out that the free market is a form of rationing. He adds:
As I read it, the main thrust of the health care reforms espoused by President Obama and his allies in Congress is first of all to reduce rationing on the basis of price and ability to pay in our health system.
An important allied goal is to seek greater value for the dollar in health care, through comparative effectiveness analysis and payment reform. As I reported in an earlier post on this blog, even the Business Roundtable, once a staunch defender of the American health system, now laments that relative to citizens in other developed countries, Americans receive an estimated 23 percent less value than they should, given our high health care spending.
To suggest that the main goal of the health reform efforts is to cram rationing down the throat of hapless, nonelite Americans reflects either woeful ignorance or of utter cynicism. Take your pick.
Fair ’nuff. In a world of infinite wants but finite resources, some form of “rationing” is inevitable.
But Reinhardt leaves liberty out of the equation. The health care system is a mess, largely because of perverse government incentives through its big health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid, and its tax break for employer-provided insurance. As a result, we now have a third party payment-dominated system which simultaneously encourages excessive spending and pushes insurers and providers to decide how to “ration” (i.e., limit) care.
What people need is a medical system that allows them to make the basic rationing decisions: what kind of insurance to buy, what kind of coverage to choose, what kind of trade-offs to make between spending on medicine and spending on other goods and services.
Such decisions are complex and people with little means will need assistance. But the specific “rationing” decisions–i.e., the inevitable trade-offs–vary dramatically by individual and family preference and circumstance. Even today’s system allows many people some choice between plans and providers. The rise in consumer-directed care is a positive development which is expanding the choices available to Americans.
The worst strategy would be to increase the government’s authority. Washington already has to “ration” care through its own programs. Politicizing everyone’s care by increasing federal control would override the differences in preferences and circumstances which are so important for all of us. It doesn’t matter how bright or thoughtful or well-intentioned the legislators and regulators would be. They would end up getting it wrong for most Americans.
Is rationing inevitable? Yes. Is government rationing inevitable or desirable? Neither. The bottom line is: who should control people’s and families’ medical futures? Not Uncle Sam.
A Defense for Iranian Reformers
Although the regime in Tehran finally succeeded in suppressing demonstrations protesting the fraudulant elections, other voices are being raised in Iran in defense of democracy. Reports the Wall Street Journal:
Some members of Iran’s powerful clerical class are stepping up their antigovernment protests over Iran’s election in defiance of the country’s supreme leader, bringing potential aid to opposition figures as the regime is increasingly labeling them foreign-sponsored traitors.
An influential group of religious scholars seen as politically neutral during the presidential election called the country’s highest election arbiter, the Guardian Council, biased, and said the June 12 election was “invalid.” Earlier, it had endorsed the official result that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated Mir Houssein Mousavi and other challengers by a wide margin.
The group, with no government role, has little practical ability to change the election outcome. But its new posture may carry moral weight with Iranians after security forces have quashed street protests and jailed hundreds of opposition supporters.
It highlights a growing unease among Iran’s scholarly ruling class about the direction of the country, and questions the theological underpinning of the Islamic Republic: that the supreme leader and the institutions under him are infallible.
“I’m not sure of the Persian equivalent of ‘crossing the Rubicon,’ but we are seeing it now. The future of the Islamic Republic, which has in recent years become a fig leaf for keeping a small clique of people in power, is now in question,” said Michael Axworthy, director of Exeter University’s Center for Persian and Iranian Studies in the U.K.
The U.S. isn’t going to be able to bring liberty to the Iranian people. Only they will be able to throw the repressive political establishment overboard. But this break within the Islamic establishment, with respected religious leaders denouncing repression, is a critical step forward.
The Iranian people deserve better. For nearly six decades they have suffered, first under the Shah, and second under the Islamic theocracy. They deserve to be free.
Yet Another Imperial Outpost in Pakistan
Visit an American embassy almost anywhere in the world and it is likely to be a large, hulking, ugly fortress. Both size and security are dictated by the U.S. government’s seeming attempt to be dictatress of the world. Following the biblical principle that God is aware whenever a sparrow falls to earth, Washington wants to be consulted whenever a country adjusts a local education ordinance.
Very often the U.S. government keeps busy propping up unpopular regimes and intervening in internal political disputes. As a result, Americans are targeted by demonstrators and terrorists alike. Our embassies need to be large to accommodate all of the officials who are busy micro-managing the local society and fortified to protect those same officials.
The result isn’t particularly good for America’s image. And it is expensive.
Consider the taxpayer tab for new and expanded facilities in Pakistan. Reports the Christian Science Monitor:
The US is embarking on a $1 billion crash program to expand its diplomatic presence in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, another sign that the Obama administration is making a costly, long-term commitment to war-torn South Asia, US officials said Wednesday.
The White House has asked Congress for – and seems likely to receive – $736 million to build a new US embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing for US government civilians and new office space in the Pakistani capital.
The scale of the projects rivals the giant US Embassy in Baghdad, which was completed last year after construction delays at a cost of $740 million.
Senior State Department officials said the expanded diplomatic presence is needed to replace overcrowded, dilapidated and unsafe facilities and to support a “surge” of civilian officials into Afghanistan and Pakistan ordered by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Other major projects are planned for Kabul, Afghanistan; and for the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Peshawar. In Peshawar, the US government is negotiating the purchase of a five-star hotel that would house a new US consulate.
U.S. policy towards Pakistan has been roughly 60 years of incompetence, mistakes, bad judgment, ignorance, inadequate moral conscience, wasted aid, counterproductive actions, and utter failure. But Washington continues to try to fix Pakistan. It seems like time for U.S. officials to learn from their experience.
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