Arizona Republic Corrects its Tax Credit Savings Estimate in Response to Cato Input
Last Wednesday, the Arizona Republic published a fiscal impact assessment of the state’s education tax credit programs for k-12 private school choice. While the story itself was a good faith effort, there were errors in both its data and assumptions. I wrote an op-ed intended for the Republic correcting those errors and e-mailed a copy to the story’s author, Ron Hansen, the same day his story was published.
While the paper’s editorial page expressed no interest in printing my submission, the Republic published a correction today based on the accurate spending and savings figures I provided. In a phone call, Hansen indicated that the correction was precipitated by my e-mail, though he opted not to mention that in his story, saying that he didn’t think the source of the correction was important.
On the one hand, Hansen and the Republic are to be commended for publishing a correction, and it should be noted that the bad data were provided to them by Arizona Director of School Finance, Yousef Awwad. On the other hand, their correction is incomplete — acknowledging only the bad data and not the mistaken assumption explained in my op-ed.
So while the Republic has now raised its savings estimate from their originally reported $3 million to a corrected $8.3 million, they have yet to explain that this figure could actually understate the total savings.
Still, their response is better than I expected. Most newspapers, in my experience, do absolutely nothing when factual and reasoning errors in their education stories are brought to their attention, and in fact go on to repeat those same errors in subsequent stories.
And they wonder why two thirds of the public now doubt their credibility….
Arizona to Feds: No “Enhanced” Drivers License
Last week, the governor of Arizona signed H.B. 2426, which bars the state from implementing the “enhanced” drivers license (EDL) program.
If the federal REAL ID revival bill (PASS ID) becomes law, it will give congressional approval to EDLs, which up to now have been simply a creation of the federal security and state driver licensing bureaucracies.
As governor of Arizona, the current Secretary of Homeland Security signed a memorandum of understanding with the DHS to implement EDLs, and she backs PASS ID even though she signed an anti-REAL ID bill as governor. As I said before, Secretary Napolitano seems to be taking the national ID tar baby in a loving embrace.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Jeff Flake vs. the Spending Robots
Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona is one of the very few fiscal policy heroes in Congress. Last night, he was doing what he does best — offering amendments to cut funding from a wasteful appropriations bill moving through the House.
Flake tried to strike spending earmarks slipped into the bill by both Republicans and Democrats. Watching the action on C-SPAN, I was struck by what a bunch of robots the big spenders defending the bill were. They said things like “this project is very important,” “it will help people,” and “it has a rate of return of 30-to-1 for every tax dollar spent.”
Flake pointed out the simple logical flaws in the spenders’ arguments. If an earmarked project is so important, why doesn’t it get funding through the normal competitive process? If a project has such a high return, wouldn’t private investors swoop in to earn the big profits? The “high return” claim is a commonly used gambit by big-spending politicians. Economist Martin Sullivan calls it the “liberal Laffer curve.”
Anyway, the spending robots listened politely to Flake, then they focused back in on their staff-prepared bullet points and continued with their self-interested drivel about how the nation’s fate rested on federal aid for the Elvis museum back in their hometown, or whatever their particular project was.
Flake presented some interesting statistics on the earmarks in the agriculture appropriations bill being considered last night. As shown in the chart below, two-thirds of the earmarks go to a small, exclusive club within the House of those on the appropriations committee, committee chairs, and party leadership. He characterized the appropriations process as a “spoils system,” which is evocative of government corruption of the past, such as Tammany Hall.
But unlike the original Tammany Hall, today’s spoils system is not party-based. Instead, it’s run by an elite and bipartisan group of spending robots within Congress, who pose as representatives of the people when they travel outside the beltway. As Flake implied, it’s odd that the great majority of members and their constituents, who get the short end of the stick from the spoils system, don’t revolt.
Calling Secretary Napolitano: Arizona to Reject EDLs
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been all over the map on national ID issues. As governor of Arizona, she signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bush DHS to implement “enhanced driver’s licenses” in her state. These are licenses with long-range RFID chips built into them. But then she turned around and signed legislation barring implementation of the REAL ID Act in Arizona.
Now, having taken federal office, she again favors REAL ID — or at least under its new name: PASS ID. (Her efforts to put distance between REAL ID and PASS ID have not borne fruit.)
In some respects, PASS ID is worse than REAL ID. It would give congressional approval to the “enhanced driver’s license” program — invented by DHS and State Department bureaucrats to do long-range (and potentially surreptitious) identification of people holding this type of card. Back home, the Arizona legislature has just passed a bill to prohibit the state from implementing EDLs.
So the former governor of Arizona, who has both supported and rejected national ID programs, now supports a bill to approve the national ID program her home state rejects. Napolitano seems to be taking the national ID tar baby in a loving embrace.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Mr. Jefferson Regrets
Thomas Jefferson was an advocate of public schooling, after a fashion. He knew that an educated public was the only protection against government abuses, and he assumed that a state-run, state-funded school system would provide that essential education. If he could only see public schooling today.
The Arizona-based Goldwater Institute has just released a study on the civics knowledge of that state’s high school students. Matt Ladner, Goldwater’s head of research, administered the same trivial test that’s given to immigrants applying for citizenship, using the same trivial pass/fail threshold. [I know it's trivial, 'cause I took it a few years ago.] The results of Goldwater’s little experiment… Oh. My. God. Becky:
96.5 percent of AZ public high school students failed
Honestly, why did anyone — especially Thomas Jefferson – ever imagine that a government monopoly would be a good way to educate kids about a democratic republic and protect them from abuses of government power?
Education Tax Credits to Rescue Overturned Voucher Program
The AP reports on a plan unfolding in Arizona to help keep foster children and kids with disabilities in schools of their choice:
Republican-backed legislation to create new tax credits to help hundreds of foster children and disabled children attend private schools is advancing in the Legislature.
On a special session’s second day, Senate and House committees on Tuesday endorsed the bill creating new corporate and insurance premium tax credits for donations for private school tuition grants.
Priority would go initially to foster and disabled children who received vouchers that have been ruled unconstitutional by the Arizona Supreme Court.
The Arizona Supreme Court has specifically and emphatically upheld education tax credits, so this effort should succeed if passed and signed. The ever-wacky 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently created some confusion over the details of tax credit program administration, but the credit approach to funding school choice has never been eliminated by the courts . . . they should be put back in their place on this case as they have in so many others.
Good luck to the children who had their voucher program overturned . . . this should be a no-brainer for the politicians.
9th Circuit Imitates Marcel Marceau
Last month, I warned that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals would soon be handing the school choice movement a legal setback. Well, it’s here.
As expected, the 9th Circuit has reinstated a lower court challenge to Arizona’s scholarship donation tax credit program. The program allows taxpayers to contribute to non-profit Scholarship Tuition Organizations (STOs) that provide financial assistance to families choosing private schools. The taxpayers can then claim a dollar for dollar credit for their donation.
While this ruling leaves the program intact for the time being, it would almost surely require the tax credit program to be amended if it is allowed to stand. Fortunately, as I noted in my earlier post, the 9th Circuit is overturned as often as a caber at the Highland Games. Its ruling is unlikely to stand if appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
At issue is the fact that taxpayers are free to choose the STOs to which they donate their money, and private STOs are free to set criteria for the schools at which their scholarships can be redeemed. There are thus some STOs that offer scholarships only to religious schools. This is essentially the same situation that obtains when taxpayers claim deductions for contributions to non-profit charities. The charities can legally be religious or secular, and they can infuse the services they offer with religion, or not, as they choose. The whole thing is constitutional because it is the taxpayers, not the government, that decides which charity gets their funds. This is all settled law.
To get around the fact that the legal precedents were against it, the 9th Circuit decided to do a compelling impression of Marcel Marceau, pretending to hem itself into an invisible legal box. Specifically, the 9th Circuit decided to pretend that the constitutional restrictions limiting government expenditures (as in school voucher programs) also apply to the private funds at issue under tax credit programs.
That box, of course, does not exist. No government money is spent under the tax credit program, and the tax credits are themselves available on an entirely religiously neutral basis, in scrupulous conformance with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
So here’s my next legal prediction: the constitutionality of the Arizona education tax credit program will ultimately be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, and opponents of educational freedom will have to resort to some new ploy in their efforts to herd American families back onto the public school plantation.
Filed under: Education and Child Policy; Law and Civil Liberties
In English Learning Case, Families Will Lose Either Way
The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today in a case that will affect how and at what cost English is taught to non-native speakers in U.S. public schools. On one side are Hispanic parents from southern Arizona who sued their school district for failing to properly teach their children English, and on the other are district and state officials who want the courts to butt out and let them teach students in whatever way, and at whatever cost, they choose. I understand what these parents are going through — I grew up in an English-speaking family in the French-speaking province of Quebec — but it really doesn’t matter who “wins” this case: the families will lose either way.
Even if the parents “win,” and the Court orders their public school district to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on English instruction, it won’t do any good. A 1985 federal court order compelled the state of Missouri to spend an additional $2 billion over 12 years to desegregate Kansas City schools and improve the achievement of African American students. Neither goal was achieved, and even the presiding judge eventually admitted his order was a failure. Extra spending and court pressure do not improve public school performance, because public schools don’t have to show improvement to get the money and because courts can’t dismiss ineffective administrators or teachers.
The real solution is to empower families to _leave_ the schools that are failing them and move their children to more effective ones. Fortunately, Arizona has an education tax credit program that makes scholarships available to defray private school tuition. Whatever the court’s verdict, these parents should be banding together to create a local scholarship fund that can accept tax-credited donations so their children can attend the private schools of their choice. They can then pick whichever schools demonstrate the most success at teaching English instead of spending their time in court.
Filed under: Education and Child Policy; Law and Civil Liberties
More on the AZ Supreme Court Ruling
As Andrew Coulson noted earlier, the Arizona Supreme Court struck down two voucher programs today that serve special needs and foster children.
I think some of his points deserve an additional emphasis; this is a tragedy for many of the state’s most needy and vulnerable children but it can be easily fixed. (See who school choice opponents are so determined to send back to an inadequate public school system here).
These children can be quickly and seamlessly supported in their school of choice through an immediate expansion of the state’s two existing education tax credit programs, which have been ruled constitutional.
These children are in desperate need of the education they currently receive at private schools, and lawmakers must ensure that they can continue to attend their school of choice.
Vouchers Defeated in AZ. Freedom Can Still Prevail
The Arizona Supreme Court has just struck down two voucher programs serving disabled and foster children. This is a terrible blow to the families involved, but there is a way to continue offering them educational freedom: incorporate them into the state’s popular education tax credit programs.
Arizona residents and businesses can already make donations to non-profit scholarship funds and receive a tax credit for their donations. If the caps on those credits are raised, it will be possible to generate enough funding to serve the students formerly participating in the voucher programs. It would even be possible to create non-profit scholarship funds that specifically focus on serving special needs students, which could help parents choose the schools best suited to their individual children’s needs, and allow donors to know that their funds would go toward that cause.
While the Court has said that vouchers are impermissible in Arizona, it has already upheld the state’s tax credits that accomplish the same ends entirely through voluntary action. It is a solution that should satisfy everyone.
Everyone, that is, who has the best interests of children in mind.
Women’s Suffrage Abandoned. “Too Unpopular,” says Anthony.
Reversing his earlier support for private school choice in the District of Columbia, Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews now calls for the end of the DC Opportunity Scholarship program. Why? “Vouchers help [low income] kids, but not enough of them. The vouchers are too at odds with the general public view of education. They don’t have much of a future.”
So private school choice programs work, but because they are not growing quite fast enough for Mr. Mathews’ taste we should abandon the entire enterprise? Why keep striving for total victory when can seize defeat today!
The thing is, major social changes are usually, what’s the word… oh yes: hard. Susan B. Anthony co-founded the National Women’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She died in 1906 – 14 years, 5 months and five days before passage of the 19th Amendment. If a social reform is right and just, it will inspire reformers who will fight for it every bit as long as it takes.
And even those who decide what social reforms to support based on their popularity should take note that school choice programs are proliferating all over the country. And newer tax credit programs, such as Florida’s, Pennsylvania’s, and Arizona’s, are all growing at a faster rate than older voucher programs like the one in Milwaukee. More than that, the politics of school choice have already begun to change at the state level. While Democrats in Congress had no qualms slipping a shiv into the futures of 1,700 poor kids, more and more of their fellow party members at the state level are deciding to back educational freedom.
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