Charters No Substitute for Private Innovation
I wrote about this private school in South Carolina last year. The Voice for School Choice has a new video highlighting the great work of the Eagle Military Academy, which works with many kids the public schools cannot or will not educate.
There’s a lot of talk lately about the transformative power of some charter schools, and it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that many secular and religious private schools have been saving kids all along with no public funds and little or no recognition from the elite opinion class.
We need to open up choice to these schools as well, not just public charter schools that cannot provide the breadth and depth of experiences offered by private schools.
Public charter schools are no substitute for full school choice through education tax credits.
Weekend Links
- A libertarian primer on the real meaning of the phrase “campaign finance reform.” For more, read John Samples’ book, The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform.
- New report shows that Head Start, a sacrosanct (and very expensive) federal education program, doesn’t work. So what should we do about it? Give it more money of course!
- “In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed spending another $4 billion annually on K–12 public education. He did not mention that state, local, and federal governments already spend well over twice what they did in 1980, or that there has been no discernible improvement in student achievement during that period.” Just sayin’.
- Michael Tanner on Obama’s faith-based boondoggle: “The faith-based initiative was a typical example of Bush-style “big-government” conservatism. It has been co-opted by the Obama administration as another weapon for social engineering.”
State of the Union Fact Check
Cato experts put some of President Obama’s core State of the Union claims to the test. Here’s what they found.
THE STIMULUS
Obama’s claim:
The plan that has made all of this possible, from the tax cuts to the jobs, is the Recovery Act. That’s right — the Recovery Act, also known as the Stimulus Bill. Economists on the left and the right say that this bill has helped saved jobs and avert disaster.
Back in reality: At the outset of the economic downturn, Cato ran an ad in the nation’s largest newspapers in which more than 300 economists (Nobel laureates among them) signed a statement saying a massive government spending package was among the worst available options. Since then, Cato economists have published dozens of op-eds in major news outlets poking holes in big-government solutions to both the financial system crisis and the flagging economy.
CUTTING TAXES
Obama’s claim:
Let me repeat: we cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college. As a result, millions of Americans had more to spend on gas, and food, and other necessities, all of which helped businesses keep more workers.
Back in reality: Cato Director of Tax Policy Studies Chris Edwards: “When the president says that he has ‘cut taxes’ for 95 percent of Americans, he fails to note that more than 40 percent of Americans pay no federal incomes taxes and the administration has simply increased subsidy checks to this group. Obama’s refundable tax credits are unearned subsidies, not tax cuts.”
Visit Cato’s Tax Policy Page for much more on this.
SPENDING FREEZE
Obama’s claim:
Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years.
Back in reality: Edwards: “The president’s proposed spending freeze covers just 13 percent of the total federal budget, and indeed doesn’t limit the fastest growing components such as Medicare.
“A better idea is to cap growth in the entire federal budget including entitlement programs, which was essentially the idea behind the 1980s bipartisan Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law. The freeze also doesn’t cover the massive spending under the stimulus bill, most of which hasn’t occurred yet. Now that the economy is returning to growth, the president should both freeze spending and rescind the remainder of the planned stimulus.”
Plus, here’s why these promised freezes have never worked in the past and a chart illustrating the fallacy of Obama’s spending claims.
JOB CREATION
Obama’s claim:
Because of the steps we took, there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. 200,000 work in construction and clean energy. 300,000 are teachers and other education workers. Tens of thousands are cops, firefighters, correctional officers, and first responders. And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.
Back in reality: Cato Policy Analyst Tad Dehaven: “Actually, the U.S. economy has lost 2.7 million jobs since the stimulus passed and 3.4 million total since Obama was elected. How he attributes any jobs gains to the stimulus is the fuzziest of fuzzy math. ‘Nuff said.”
Filed under: General; Government and Politics; Tax and Budget Policy
Less Is More in Education Funding
Spend more money on education, the President says? Actually, we should be looking there for savings . . . here are some of the numbers:
State governments spent 35 percent of their general funds on K–12 education in 2007, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers. In contrast, Medicaid — which is continually singled out as a problematic state-budget item, even though most Medicaid funds come from the federal government — accounted for just 17 percent of general-fund expenditures. Combined, state and local governments spend 27 cents of every dollar they collect on public K–12 education system, but only 8 cents on Medicaid.
Filed under: Education and Child Policy; Tax and Budget Policy
Can Scott Brown’s Election Stop the Federal Takeover…of Education?
Yesterday, I wrote about President Obama’s proposal to extend the Race to the Top program, this time letting school districts completely bypass state governments and apply directly to the feds for funding. I pointed out that the proposal was one among several troubling signs that Obama intends to put Washington fully — and, of course, unconstitutionally — in charge of American education. At the time, I didn’t realize how right I was.
When I was writing yesterday I was basing my comments on documents from the White House’s website and hadn’t yet read the details of what went on at the President’s photo-op announcing the proposed extension. I sure wish I had: At the dog-and-pony show, the President just came right out and said that he wants to push aside states — mentioned by name was famous holdout Texas — that dared to invoke the Constitution and not participate in a program that was, Constitution or no Constitution, supposed to be voluntary.
“Innovative districts like the one in Texas whose reform efforts are being stymied by state decision-makers will soon have the chance to earn funding to help them pursue those reforms,” intoned the President.
Fortunately, Texas Governor Rick Perry wasn’t about to be cowed: “I will say this very slow so they will understand it in Washington, D.C.: Texas will fight any attempt by the federal government to take over our school system.”
So it’s pretty certain now, more so even than just 24 hours ago: President Obama wants to federalize American education.
Thankfully, a lot can clearly happen in 24 hours. Yesterday’s election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts could very well send shockwaves of fear through the ranks of Democratic (and maybe even Republican) legislators in DC, who might finally get the message that Americans just don’t like federal takovers. Heck, perhaps even the President will get the message. If so, then maybe even something as relatively small as a $1.35-billion scalpel designed to cut through states and get right at districts could be seen as too dangerous to handle.
That’s speculation, of course, but we should know a lot more in just, oh, the next 24 hours.
Filed under: Education and Child Policy; Government and Politics
Head Start EPIC FAIL
Andrew’s earlier post is a great overview of the context for the Head Start findings.
I thought we should also highlight the description of the Head Start Impact Study findings in the report itself (p.215/4-31):
Looking at effects on participants does not change the overall patterns found in the main analysis, which show that Head Start improved children’s language and literacy development during the program year but not later and had only one strongly confirmed impact on math ability in a negative direction. (For the 3-year-old cohort, kindergarten teachers reported poorer math skills for children in the Head Start group than children in the control group.)
This is a devastating report for proponents of government-run early childhood initiatives.
It’s past time we turn to the education reform that has proven itself through multiple random-assignment studies; school choice.
Head Start’s Impact Evanescent — HHS Study
HHS has finally released the second installment of its series of studies on the persistence of Head Start effects. Its finding (see page xiv): virtually all academic effects disappear by the end of 1st grade. There is only one positive statistically significant finding out of eleven academic outcomes measured, the size of that effect is minuscule by recognized standards (it’s half way between zero and what most social scientists consider “small”), and the confidence in the finding is low by recognized standards. (Many authors would categorize it as “insignificant” rather than “significant” — it’s only significant at a 90% confidence interval, not the more common 95% confidence interval).
We have spent more than $100 billion on the program to date (ballpark estimate from Table 375 here) and HHS’s own research shows that its results diminish to essentially nothing by the end of the first grade.
There are other government education programs whose effects actually grow substantially over time, and that are comparatively economical. Consider the federal DC voucher program. Just a year or two after switching from public to private schools, the effect of the private schooling was not big enough to rise to the level of statistical significance. But by their third year in private schools, the evidence was clear that voucher-receiving students were reading more than two grade levels above a randomized control group that stayed in public schools. This program, as I’ve previously documented, costs 1/4 as much per pupil as DC spends on public education: about $6,600 vs. $28,000.
But Congress, and particularly Democrats, have defunded the DC voucher program while raising spending on Head Start. President Obama is at the forefront of this travesty. If you weren’t already jaded and disgusted by education politics and its domination by employee unions opposed to educational choice, start now.
Neither Standards Nor Shame Can Do the Job
Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews has done it again: lifted my hopes up just to drop them right back down.
In November, you might recall, Mathews called for the elimination of the office of U.S. Secretary of Education. There just isn’t evidence that the Ed Sec has done much good, he wrote.
My reaction to that, of course: “Right on!”
Only sentences later, however, Mathews went on to declare that we should keep the U.S. Department of Education.
Huh?
Today, Mathews is calling for the eradication of something else that has done little demonstrable good — and has likely been a big loss – for American education: the No Child Left Behind Act. Mathews thinks that the law has run its course, and laments that under NCLB state tests — which are crucial to standards-and-accountability-based reforms — “started soft and have gotten softer.”
The reason for this ever-squishier trend, of course, is that under NCLB states and schools are judged by test results, leading state politicians and educrats to do all they can to make good results as easy to get as possible. And no, that has not meant educating kids better — it’s meant making the tests easier to pass.
Unfortunately, despite again seeing its major failures, Mathews still can’t let go of federal education involvement. After calling for NCLB’s end, he declares that we instead need a national, federal test to judge how all states and schools are doing.
To his credit, Mathews does not propose that the feds write in-depth standards in multiple subjects, and he explicitly states that Washington should not be in the business of punishing or rewarding schools for test performance.
“Let’s let the states decide what do to with struggling schools,” he writes.
What’s especially important about this is that when there’s no money attached to test performance there’s little reason for teachers unions, administrators associations, and myriad other education interests to expend political capital gaming the tests, a major problem under NCLB.
Credit Card Dementia and Boundary Cases
The most interesting libertarian-related conversation I’ve read today comes from Rortybomb, by way of Andrew Sullivan, with commentary by Megan McArdle. Here’s a challenge to libertarians from Rortybomb, aka Mike Konczal:
I want to pitch to the credit card and financial industry a new innovative online survey. It is targeted for older, more mature long-time users of our services. We’ll give a $10 credit for anyone who completes it. Here is a sense of what the questions will look like:
- 1) What is your age?
- 2) What day of the week are you taking this survey?
- 3) Many rewards offered are for people with more active lifestyles: vacations, flights, hotels, rental cars. Do you find that your rewards programs aren’t well suited for your lifestyle?
- 4) What is the current season where you live? Are any seasons harder for you in getting to a branch or ATM machine?
- 5) Would rewards that could be given as gifts to others, especially younger people, be helpful for what you’d like to do with your benefits?
- 6) Would replacing your rewards program with a savings account redeemable for education for your grandchildren be something you’d be interested in?
- 7) Write a sentence you’d like us to hear about anything, good or bad!
- 8 ) How worried are you you’ll leave legal and financial problems for your next-of-kin after your passing?Did you catch it? Questions 1,2,4,7 are taken from the ‘Mini-mental State Examination’ which is a quick test given by medical professionals to see if a patient is suffering from dementia. (It’s a little blunt, but we can always hire some psychologist and marketers for the final version. They’re cheap to hire.) We can use this test to subtly increase limits, and break out the best automated tricks and traps mechanisms, on those whose dementia lights up in our surveys. Anyone who flags all four can get a giant increase in balance and get their due dates moved to holidays where the Post Office is slowest! We’d have to be very subtle about it, because there are many nanny-staters out there who’d want to coddle citizens here. . .
I smell money — it’s like walking down a sidewalk and turning a corner and then there is suddenly money all over the sidewalk. One problem with hitting up sick people, single mothers, college kids who didn’t plan well and the cash-constrained poor with fees and traps is that they’re poor. Hitting up people with a lifetime of savings suffering from dementia is some real, serious money we can tap as a revenue source.
Clearly, only an evil person (or a libertarian!) would allow a scam like this one. Megan responds, I think rightly:
I’m not sure why this is supposed to be a hard question for libertarians. I mean, I might argue that preventing people from ripping off the marginally mentally impaired would, in practice, be too difficult. Crafting a rule that prevented companies from identifying people who are marginally impaired might well be impossible — I’m pretty sure that if I wanted to, I could devise subtler tests than “What day of the week is it?” And while the seniors lobby is probably in favor of not ripping off seniors, they’re resolutely against making it harder for seniors to do things like drive or get credit, which is the result that any sufficiently strong rule would probably have.
But it’s pretty much standard libertarian theory that you shouldn’t take advantage of people who do not have the cognitive ability to make contracts. Marginal cases are hard not because we think it’s okay, but because there is disagreement over what constitutes impairment, and the more forcefully you act to protect marginal cases, the more you start treating perfectly able-minded adults like children.
The elderly are a challenge precisely because there’s no obvious point at which you can say: now this previously able adult should be treated like a child. Either you let some people get ripped off, or you infringe the liberty, and the dignity, of people who are still capable of making their own decisions.
I’d add two responses of my own.
First, I can’t believe there’s all that much money to be had here. Anyone who wanders into Tiffany’s and back out again without remembering what they bought is, generally speaking, a bad credit risk. Mildly irresponsible people — those who slightly overspend, then have to make it up later — those are probably great for creditors. Lesson learned: If you’re not demented, don’t be irresponsible. (If you are demented, you’re not going to follow my advice anyway.)
Second, I am always amazed at how border cases are dragged out, again and again, as if they proved something against libertarianism. Border cases — How old before you can vote? How demented before a contract doesn’t bind? — are a problem in all political systems, because all systems start with a presumed community of citizens and/or subjects. We always have to draw boundaries between the in-group and the outliers before we have a polity in the first place.
What makes the classical liberal/libertarian approach so valuable is in fact that it draws so few boundaries. Where other systems depend on class boundaries, race boundaries, religious boundaries, and so forth — with annoying boundary issues at every stop along the way — libertarians make it as simple as I think it can be. We presume that all mentally competent adults are worthy of liberty until they prove themselves otherwise.
The boundary cases are still there, but they are fewer and more tractable. Konczal just wandered into one of them. It proves much less than he thinks.
Filed under: Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy; Political Philosophy; Regulatory Studies
Sorry to Keep Interrupting Your Folly with the Constitution, But…
…the Constitution!
Andy Smarick at the Fordham Foundation continues to simultaneously cajole and sympathize with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as Duncan tries to formulate some sort of discernible parameters for what the federal government should and should not do in education. Clearly, Smarick feels Duncan’s pain:
I have sympathy … because figuring out the right role for the federal government in education policy is no easy task. But I’ve been pointed and nagging because the Department needs to come up with a coherent position if it’s to sell an NCLB reauthorization plan.
Given his apparently long-standing suffering over this issue, it turns out that today is Smarick’s lucky day — I have an elixir that defines the only unshifting and unmuddled parameters of federal education policy possible: outside of Washington, DC, and federal properties like military installations, the federal government has no authority whatsoever to be involved in education! Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution makes this clear, including nothing about education among the specific powers it gives to the federal government.
And if that medicine isn’t strong enough, the 10th Amendment doubles it, reiterating that the Constitution gives the feds only specific, enumerated powers:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Unfortunately, I’ve offered this potent treatment for Smarick (and Duncan’s) painful problem before and Smarick pretty much just flushed it down the toilet. Last time, he simply ignored the overwhelming evidence I offered that federal involvement in education has been and will continue to be a bankrupting failure; declared it unrealistic to think that the feds would get out of education; and wondered aloud whether I might also want to get rid of federal entities like NASA. In other words, he completely dodged the critical question at hand: What is the proper federal role in education?
Filed under: Cato Publications; Education and Child Policy
DC Vouchers Solved? Generous Severance for Displaced Workers
Colbert King argues that DC should continue the opportunity scholarships private school choice program on its own dime, instead of complaining that Congress is killing it off. He starts off with a refreshing dose of realpolitik: “It should come as no surprise that Democratic congressional leaders are effectively killing the program. They, and their union allies, didn’t like it in the first place.” Too true. This is what disgusts many Americans about politics, but hey, that’s the reality.
But then he seems to descend into uncharacteristic naivete with this:
If the city likes vouchers so much, why shouldn’t the District bear the cost? The answer is as clear as it may be embarrassing to voucher proponents: D.C. lawmakers don’t want to ask their constituents to shoulder the program’s expense.
That is NOT the answer. DC lawmakers are familiar with DC’s budget. DC’s FY 2009 budget, as I show in this Excel spreadsheet file, allocated $28,170 per pupil for k-12 schooling. And the average voucher amount is not $7,500, as King claims. That’s the maximum. The average is $6,620 – one quarter of what the district is spending on k-12 schooling. So operating the voucher program entirely out of the District of Columbia’s own budget would not cost a dime. And if expanded, it would save DC tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars.
So DC lawmakers are most certainly NOT afraid of asking constituents to pay for it — it would more than pay for itself. What DC lawmakers must be afraid of is that DC schools have become a massive jobs program instead of an educational program. They must fear that if the voucher program were expanded it would put many non-teaching staff out of work — including perhaps some of their own supporters.
Well how about a realpolitik solution to that problem: offer displaced workers 18 months of severance pay at something like 75% of their current salary. That would give them plenty of time to find other work, and it could be paid for from the savings of students migrating from public schools to the voucher program. This would mean that taxpayers would not see savings in the first couple of years, but after that the District would be able to offer taxpayers generous tax cuts while also offering kids significantly better learning opportunities.
Surely the details of such a deal could be hammered out by experienced politicians and negotiators. Because, really, the status quo is insane. Why keep paying $28,000 for a worse education than the voucher program is providing for $6,600? That is sheer madness.
Thursday Links
- Helping out the “Wall Street fat cats:” Bankers are responding to the incentives generated by the economic policies of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.
- How charter schools can save states big education dollars.
- Doug Bandow: “Congress has spent the country blind, inflated a disastrous housing bubble, subsidized every special interest with a letterhead and lobbyist, and created a wasteful, incompetent bureaucracy that fills Washington. But now, legislators want to take a break from all their good work and save college football.”
- In case you missed it last week, watch Cato’s Jerry Taylor on the premier episode of Stossel.
- Podcast: “Urban Planners Romanticize Immobility“
National Standardizers Just Can’t Win
I’ve been fretting for some time over the growing push for national curricular standards, standards that would be de facto federal and, whether adopted voluntarily by states or imposed by Washington, end up being worthless mush with yet more billions of dollars sunk into them. The primary thing that has kept me optimistic is that, in the end, few people can ever agree on what standards should include, which has defeated national standards thrusts in the past.
So far, the Common Core State Standards Initiative – a joint National Governors Association/Council of Chief State School Officers venture that is all-but-officially backed by Washington — has avoided being ripped apart by educationists and plain ol’ citizens angry about who’s writing the standards and what they include. But that’s largely because the CCSSI hasn’t actually produced any standards yet. Other, that is, than general, end of K-12, “college and career readiness” standards that say very little.
How to Fix County Budget Problems
I’m wrapping up a paper on the real cost of public education, the total price tag per student, not just the stripped down version they typically trot out to show voters. One of the districts is Arlington, VA, which is the one I happen to live in.
Though the district is an unusually big spender, their most recent budget, for fiscal year 2010, contains hand-wringing typical for school districts across the country. “FY 2010 will present unique challenges and hardships for staff, however as stated earlier, these reductions are taken so that there is minimal impact on classroom instruction.”
Arlington is planning to spend over $23,000 per student this year according to the Washington Area Boards of Education (WABE). That’s a 33 percent increase in constant dollars since 2000.*
And yet the county is still talking about tax increases to cover the expected $80-$100 million shortfall the county expects next year.
Here’s a great alternative; fund the schools at 2000 levels and we’re left with an extra $108 million. Voila, no tax increases!
* The WABE listed per-pupil figure leaves out some k-12 spending and provides a number that is significantly less than that in more comprehensive, but older, state records or that can be compiled from district budgets, so I’ve divided the total expenditures listed on p.23 by the enrollment to get real total per-pupil spending.
College Students to Taxpayers: ‘Rent Now, Oppressors!’
Inside Higher Ed reports today on growing college student acitivism. And what are the young scholars suddenly so active about? Not unjust wars, racism, or anything else so high-minded. No, today the “no justice, no peace!” chants are all about the injustice of students being asked to pay for more of their hugely taxpayer-subsidized educations.
There’s a word for this kind of activism, and it’s not “idealism” or anything else so complimentary. It’s “rent seeking.” Or, if you want to put it more bluntly, “freeloading.”
Vermont Could Save Millions with Private School Choice
The Ethan Allen Institute has just published a report suggesting that Vermont could save $80 million a year by voucherizing its education system. What’s most interesting is how generous the prospective vouchers would be: $10,000 for K-6, and $14,900 for grades 7-12. How could such a system save money? The main reason is that Vermont was already spending $14,000/pupil on public schools across all grades four years ago. Taking into account the inevitable increase since then and the effects of inflation to 2009 dollars, the state is no doubt spending well over $15,000 per pupil today, so EAI’s ample voucher funding would still cost far less than the status quo.
The only problem is that, as the EAI report notes (see p. 10), Vermont’s state supreme court has ruled against state funding of sectarian schools. So tax credits would be a better option for that reason, among others.
GAO: Dept. of Ed. Suffers Oversight Deficiencies
A report released today by the federal government’s non-partisan General Accounting Office finds deficits in the Department of Education’s financial and program oversight. According to the GAO, “These shortcomings can lead to weaknesses in program implementation that ultimately result in failure to effectively serve the students, parents, teachers, and administrators those programs were designed to help.”
The GAO’s findings are consistent with the longstanding pattern: for forty years, Americans have steadily increased spending on public schools without any resulting improvement in student performance by the end of high school (see the figures here and here).
The Obama administration has touted its $100 billion in education stimulus spending as a key to long term economic growth. What the data show, however, is that higher spending on public schools over the past two generations has not improved academic outcomes. And economists such as Stanford’s Eric Hanushek have shown that it is improved academic achievement, not higher public school spending, that accelerates economic growth.
So if the administration is serious in wanting education to boost the American economy, it must support reforms that are proven to significantly raise achievement, such as those that bring to bear real market freedoms and incentives — programs like the DC private school choice program that the administration has decided to kill despite its proven effectiveness.
Thursday Links
- European Union to install its first president.
- How delayed economic reform in India killed 14.5 million children. More details, here.
- It always starts with “good intentions:” How urban planners destroyed the small-town atmosphere in Portland, Oregon and made congestion even worse.
- Lots of talk but little action from the Obama administration on education.
- Podcast: If the Obama administration was serious about job creation in the stimulus plan, why weren’t dollars targeted at states with higher unemployment?
A Pledge Worthy of a Free People
I’ve long criticized having state school officials lead students in a pledge of allegiance to the state. It runs precisely counter to our nation’s founding principles. Michael Lind has gone beyond criticism and proposed an alternative pledge, more fitting to a free people. It’s definitely worth reading.
Of course a free people deserve a free intellectual and education marketplace, in which parents choose their children’s schools without state interference. Those schools, acting in loco parentis, could decide what, if any, pledges their students recite. They could even chose the current one, if that strikes their fancy. That’s what freedom’s all about.
What about K-12, Secretary Duncan?
Speaking to the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, education secretary Arne Duncan said that “he would gladly cut federal red tape if institutions, in return, showed greater progress on improving student performance.” So the secretary supports less government intrusion in education if schools show improvement.
Except he doesn’t. Not at the K-12 level, anyway. Because Arne Duncan has advocated a slow death for the DC voucher program that his own Department of Education shows is… wait for it… significantly improving outcomes while getting government out of the business of running schools altogether.
But maybe that’s the problem. Schools work better the smaller the role government plays in them, but that means we don’t really need a secretary of education at all, do we?
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