Democracy is inherently good, and since public schools are democratically controlled they, too, are inherently good. Right?

You’d think so from the way many people invoke “democracy” when championing government schools, but thanks to a recent blog post from the Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli, we might have a rare opportunity to actually scrutinize that assumption. A few days ago, Petrilli questioned the value of local school boards in light of what seems to be frequent capture by teachers unions, and was immediately accused of attacking “democracy” by historian Diane Ravitch.

“Gosh, Mike,” Ravitch wrote in the comments section, “it sounds as though you have identified the real problem ‘reformers’ face: democracy.”

With that the battle was on, and it’s one I’m happy to join: A huge problem we face in education is, indeed, democracy.

Before I go further, the first thing that’s necessary to do is define “democracy.” Unfortunately, that’s something rarely done by those who wield the term like a rhetorical chainsaw, swinging it wildly at anyone who might question government schooling.  Typically, it seems the word is employed to just vaguely connote some sort of action by “the people” — whoever they are — as opposed to “elites,” or to indicate that popular voting is in some fashion used to make laws.

That said, the most basic definition of democracy — the one you probably learned in grade school –  follows these lines: “Control of an organization or group by the majority of its members.” You might also assume the word means representative democracy, where people vote for their representatives and majorities of reps make the laws, but usually the word’s use isn’t even that precise.

This lack of precision leads to numerous problems, and a big one was illustrated in an exchange between Bob Bowdon — of Cartel and ChoiceMedia.tv fame — and Rutgers University professor Bruce Baker. Bowdon had a Flypaper post pointing out numerous cases in which ”the people” enacted education policies disliked by teachers unions, and the unions, instead of accepting the “democratic” outcomes, headed to the courts to thwart the new laws. Baker would have none of this argument, in the comments section of Petrilli’s post calling Bowdon’s entry an “absurd and misinformed rant.” Why? Largely because Bowdon failed to acknowledge that courts in Georgia — where one of the legal actions cited by Bowdon occurred — were taking perfectly legitimate action in striking down a charter school law that violated the state’s constitution.

Of course, Baker isn’t talking about democracy, at least in any precise way (or the feel-good, “people rule” sense I think Ravitch meant to convey) but a constitutional republic with separation of powers. That’s a very different thing, with a very different goal, from simple majority rule. As The Federalist discusses with great insight, a constitutional republic with checks and balances is a system intended to minimize the threat government poses to individuals, while enabling it to do those things that government must do.  That does not at all seem to be the “democracy” Ravitch and company were lauding, and you can’t reasonably blame Bowdon for turning that against them. Live by the loaded, imprecise definition, die by the loaded, imprecise definition. Unfortunately, that makes it much harder to have a useful debate about education governance.

But why don’t we want pure democracy?

Aside from the towering logistical problems, uninhibited majority rule is an existential threat to individual liberty, the true foundation of American society. Should my ability to drum up support from 50.1 percent of voters be all that’s needed to have your house taken from you, your speech quashed, and your family imprisoned? Of course not, but pure democracy would not only allow that, it would give it complete legal sanction.

So a constitutional republic, with its checks, balances, and enumerated powers, is infinitely preferable to pure democracy. However, it is a much harder concept to employ when you just want people to feel good about public schools, or angry about efforts to change them. “For crying out loud, they are democratic schools — schools controlled by the people – you evil 1-percenter!” (Cue foreboding tyranny-of-the-majority music.) And just because a form of governance is better than democracy doesn’t mean it works well.

Why does this superior form of government still largely fail? To really get into this question I recommend Cato’s Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice, available free online! I’ll just briefly hit the main, inherent pathology of government that constantly leads to skewed results.

Ultimately, it comes down to concentrated benefits and diffuse costs: The people who get the greatest benefit from a policy will be the most motivated to participate in the politics of that policy, while the costs are usually highly diffuse, giving the people paying for it relatively little incentive to politick. In education, the greatest benefit is accrued by the school employees — the people whose very livelihoods come from the system — hence they exert hugely disproportionate power. They are also much easier to organize than parents or taxpayers.  

In light of this basic inequality of incentives, it is no surprise that teachers unions (and other education employee organizations) wield disproportionate influence. Teachers and administrators aren’t bad people, it’s simply that normal incentives give them much more reason to constantly engage in education politics than the average voter, taxpayer, or even parent, for whom there are many other major concerns than trying to influence the district, state, of federal government on education policy. 

To deal with the effects of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs in school districts, Petrilli suggests a couple of possible options: a move toward greater mayoral control of the schools, as exists in New York City, or having states control education. But these are fraught with at least as much peril as local control.

At the risk of violating an Italian corollary of Godwin’s Law, the mayoral control argument seems to come down to this: Mussolini made the trains run on time. Essentially, if you can put someone with dictatorial power in charge he won’t have to worry about special interests and can do what needs to be done. Plus, in the case of mayoral control there wouldn’t be real dictatorship — Il Duce could be voted out in four years.

Obviously, though, there’s a reason the term “dictator” doesn’t enjoy the same esteem as, say, ”chocolate,” or “Betty White” — people generally don’t like the way dictators turn out. Maybe you’ll get one who’s benevolent and wise — in which case you’ll just be troubled by your ultimately nonexistent freedom – but more likely you’ll get one who’s stupid, or cruel, or a combination of the two. And what do you do when the dictator imposes a bad reading curriculum on your kids, or closes a school that might have served them well? Just suffer.

But there’s the election — you can hold a mayor responsible then! Of course, that puts us right back in the concentrated benefits, diffuse costs problem, where the special interests are likely to be much more active in politicking than the average voter. And the problem isn’t just that: When the public votes for mayor, the vote is based not only on education policies, but also law enforcement, sanitation, sodium speakeasy crackdowns, and myriad other things. In other words, it is almost impossible to send an unambiguous message that the public is angry about education when so many issues affect who votes and why.

All these problems remain with state or federal control. There’s a reason the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, American Association of School Administrators, etc., have big headquarters in the Washington, DC, area, and their state affiliates run hefty operations in state capitals: they are wielding political power! And, like mayoral elections, voting in state or federal elections isn’t just about education, but taxation levels, wars, roads, bridges to nowhere, extramarital affairs, “do nothing” congresses, birth certificates, and so on.

At this point you might feel that democracy really is bad, and generally doomed to failure. And you’d be right, which is why government should be restricted to doing only those things that private individuals cannot do, and one of those things is not furnishing education. We know that private individuals can and do supply widespread education from our own history, in which education and literacy had very broad reach before government schools existed, and in which private schools often thrived — including a huge system of parochial schools — despite having to compete with “free” alternatives. Perhaps even more compelling, we can see it in the massive for-profit schooling industries that out-teach government schools in the poorest places in the world.

So what is the viable solution to our education governance problems? To end government control of education, setting both educators and parents free. Move to a system of universal school choice, in which funding is controlled by parents, educators have the autonomy to run their own schools, and all involved have equal power because free, voluntary exchange — not wielding political influence – is how business is done. Don’t make parents and taxpayers engage in endless, plodding, political warfare in which they’ll always be outgunned. Let them exercise immediate power by taking their kids — and the money to educate them — out of schools that do not satisfactorily serve them and put them into schools that do.

Thanks again to Mike Petrilli for daring to question “democracy,” and I hope it spurs a truly thoughtful, honest discussion about this absolutely crucial topic.

Democracy – Whatever That Is – and Education is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Over at Downsizing the Federal Government, we focused on the following issues this past week:

• Over the last decade, annual average military wages rose 6.6 percent, federal civilian wages rose 5.0 percent, and private sector wages rose 3.0 percent.
• A rule-of-thumb to remember is that total federal spending is 3 to 4 percentage points of GDP larger than usually reported by officials.
• Imagining that more federal infrastructure spending will be a panacea for the economy is a liberal fairy tale, detached from the actual experience of most federal agencies over the last century.
• We’ve nearly tripled the cost of sending a child all the way through the K-12 system, while performance near the end of high school has been stagnant (reading and math) or even declining (science).
• Small Business Administration to close? Unfortunately, no.

Follow Downsizing the Federal Government on Twitter (@DownsizeTheFeds) and connect with us on Facebook.

This Week in Government Failure is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Almost 600 pages into the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is a provision directing the Government Accountability Office to assess the feasibility of the federal government certifying organizations that provide financial literacy. The GAO released its report this week and concluded that “While a federal process for certifying financial literacy providers appears to be feasible, doing so would pose challenges.”

The challenges cited by the GAO are generally of the bureaucratic variety: What agency or agencies would be in charge? What criteria would be used? How would oversight be conducted? And most importantly, how much would it cost [taxpayers] to implement and operate a federal process for certifying financial literacy providers?

Fortunately, the GAO says that the majority of the representatives of private sector financial literacy organizations, federal agencies, and academic experts that it interviewed said that the disadvantages outweighed the advantages. Numerous concerns were cited, but one in particular stands out: Financial literacy certification may not be an appropriate role for the federal government.

Well, Hallelujah. I’ve read my share of GAO reports – almost all of which have dealt with activities that are not a proper role of the federal government – and I don’t recall that concern being mentioned.

Not only is individual financial literacy not an appropriate concern of the federal government, the federal government itself is a monument to financial illiteracy. It isn’t just that GAO report after GAO report continues to document financial mismanagement across the entire government complex. No, it’s the fact that Washington’s financial mismanagement has left us with a bloated government that’s mired in debt and crippled by massive “entitlement” programs that operate like Ponzi schemes.

The additional irony is the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul was passed in the wake of an economic meltdown perpetrated in large part by government failure. Alas, there might not be a lot of shame in Washington, but the hypocrisy is seemingly without limit.

The Federal Government and Financial Literacy is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• The Obama Doctrine fails to address the limitations of Washington’s attempts to shape foreign conflicts.
• The 2012 Republican presidential field has thus far failed to produce a small-government conservative.
• FREE E-BOOK: Government Failure: A Primer on Public Choice is available for reading and download (PDF) for a limited time on our website.
• Republicans and Democrats are quibbling over a measly $61 billion in spending cuts–that’s a failure of leadership.
• Under the failing status quo, Big Sugar wins, and Joe Taxpayer loses.
• Ian Vásquez, director of Cato’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, joined C-SPAN’s Washington Journal to talk about the failure of foreign aid:

Thursday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Freshman Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has raised the bar in Washington by releasing a bill that would make substantial, specific, and immediate cuts in federal spending. While policymakers on both sides of the aisle have largely paid lip service to stopping Washington’s record run of fiscal profligacy, Paul’s proposal makes good on his campaign promise to seriously tackle the federal government’s bloated budget.

Paul’s bill would target $500 billion in cuts for fiscal 2011 alone. While audacious by Washington standards, cutting federal spending by that amount would still leave us with a projected $1 trillion deficit this year. Nonetheless, the federal government’s scope would be dramatically curtailed, which would pay dividends in coming years as the economy is unshackled from numerous failed federal interventions.

A description of Paul’s proposed cuts can be viewed here, but some of the bolder ideas merit a comment or two.

First, Paul would eliminate most Department of Education spending, with the exception of higher education subsidies. He correctly notes that the federal government’s increased involvement in education has been “detrimental” and that “the mere existence of the Department of Education is an overreach of power by the federal government.”

Second, the Department of Energy, which is becoming a chief source of corporate welfare, would be zeroed out. Paul would eliminate subsidies for all energy industries — from fossil fuels to so-called “green” energies. He notes that the government’s interference in energy development should be ended and the free market allowed to “start taking the reins.”

Third, the Department of Housing and Urban Development — one of most visible examples of government failure — would be eliminated. Among the HUD programs that Paul singles out, it is his criticism of housing vouchers that deserves the most applause as they remain popular in some Republican and conservative quarters.

Paul deserves credit for proposing cuts at the Department of Defense, although the savings would be relatively small. However, his proposal would cut the Department of Homeland Security almost in half, and would zero out billions of dollars in foreign aid. The latter is well-timed given the situation in Egypt, a major recipient of U.S. foreign aid dollars.

Finally, Paul would chop a quarter of the Department of Health and Human Service’s budget, although he doesn’t take on Medicare or Medicaid. He is reportedly at work on separate legislation that would address Medicare and Social Security. Because Paul’s proposal is focused on immediate cuts, his decision to tackle the big mandatory spending programs separately shouldn’t be viewed as a cop out.

Thus far, the spending cut bar in Washington has been set pretty low. Policymakers from both parties and varying ideological backgrounds have been timid in spelling out precisely what they would cut. By getting specific, Paul has raised the bar, which will hopefully put pressure on others — in particular, the congressional Republican leadership — to move beyond a vague, myopic fixation on nondefense discretionary spending.

Sen. Rand Paul Proposes Serious Cuts is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Over at Downsizing the Federal Government, we focused on the following issues this week:

• Unfortunately, the president’s Fiscal Commission appears to have operated on the premise that the federal government should continue to do everything it now does.
• Getting Rep. Jeff Flake on appropriations is a step in the right direction, but his appointment can’t be a token gesture.
• A new study finds that policymakers needn’t fear spending cuts.
• House Republican leaders’ support for “Prince of Pork” Hal Rogers to chair the chamber’s appropriations committee is a slap in the face of voters who demanded change in November.
• Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, whose state’s unemployment rate is almost 13 percent, has advice for Washington on how to create jobs. No, it’s not April 1st.

This Week in Government Failure is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Sen. Mitch McConnell’s quick reversal on the subject of earmarks was a surprise, but that quick, largely symbolic win against profligate spending certainly won’t translate into a more permanent movement without sustained effort. Shortly after McConnell made his speech supporting a “moratorium” on earmarks, I spoke with Matt Kibbe of Freedomworks about turning the enthusiasm for smaller government into that enduring force. He said understanding public choice gives lawmakers a better shot at turning popular anger at government into reductions in its size and scope. Freedomworks recently held orientation sessions for freshmen members of Congress. A primer in public choice was on the agenda.

Cato’s Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice is a good place to start to understand the mechanics of government dealmaking.

Stopping the ‘Culture of Spending’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The left-wing blogosphere and left-leaning newspapers have spent the past few days joyously incensed over the story of a Tennessee city fire department that allowed a home to burn because the homeowner hadn’t paid his annual fire fee.

AlterNet’s Jonathan Holland titled-and-teased his post on the fire:

Ayn Rand Conservatism at Work — Firefighters Let Family’s House Burn Down Because Owner Didn’t Pay $75 Fee

Talk of limited government is appealing until you see what it actually means in practice: a society in which it’s every man for himself.

ThinkProgress’s Zaid Jilani thundered that the fire demonstrates that there are two competing visions of American society:

One, the conservative vision, believes in the on-your-own society, and informs a policy agenda that primarily serves the well off and privileged sectors of the country. The other vision, the progressive one, believes in an American Dream that works for all people, regardless of their racial, religious, or economic background. The conservative vision was on full display last week in Obion County, Tennessee.

(An aside: ThinkProgress loves to throw in partisan barbs, so Jilani claims that “every seat” of the Obion County Commission is “filled by a Republican,” a claim that Holland echoes. Nope. But then, ThinkProgress recently harangued Michael Cannon for an opinion that isn’t his, so ya’ know…)

Finally, today the New York Times editorial page chimes in:

In any case, the founding fathers left no message that government can make an object lesson of a neglectful citizen by letting his house burn down. The [homeowners] deserve an apology, even if it won’t come from the candidates peddling dreams of constricted government.

It’s unfortunate that these writers didn’t pause from their fervor to consider the facts. In a nutshell: The firefighters involved were from a city government fire department following a city government policy concerning people who didn’t pay a city government fee for a 20-year-old city government program that was adopted in response to a county government decision.

John Galt in Nomex this ain’t.

Beyond the facts, these writers are confused about basic political theory.

All three writers argue that fire service is a public good that shouldn’t be left to private action. “Public good” is a technical term referring to a type of market failure in which (to over-simplify) it would be easy for some people to benefit from a good without paying their fair share for it. As a result, public goods are at risk of being under-provided because of all the free-riding. The classic (though flawed) example of a public good is a lighthouse: a ship can benefit from the safety of its beacon without contributing to the lighthouse’s construction and upkeep.

But it’s unclear how the Obion County fire would be an example of a public goods failure — obviously a homeowner who fails to contribute to fire service can be excluded from receiving the service. A better example in support of the public goods argument might be that fire service is publicly provided so as to protect the neighbors of a house that’s on fire — though again, if you read the details of the Obion County fire, you find that it provides an example that such neighbors can be protected.

Indeed, the Obion County fire seems a clear example of government failure, not market failure. Because city government provides the service (albeit through a voluntary fee system for people like the affected owner who live outside the city lines), people likely consider it a subsidized public service. As a result, there is strong disincentive for any private firm to enter the market and offer competing service. It’s not difficult to imagine what a private fire service would do in an event like the Obion fire: it likely would extinguish the blaze and then send the homeowner a bill. There are plenty of examples of this sort of practice in private marketplaces. And it’s what the government fire company in Obion should have done. Instead, the firefighters stood by and watched the house burn.

One can’t blame the NYT editorial page, ThinkProgress, and AlterNet for trying to spin an example of government failure into a tale of the horrors of limited government. Just a few weeks out from a national election in which progressive candidates appear poised for a major waxing, the last thing the progressive side needs is a heartrending example of government failure. And yet, the Obion County fire is an example of why that waxing is sorely needed — and justified.

Hot Heads and Government Failure is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

1. Additional federal spending transfers resources from the more productive private sector to the less productive public sector of the economy. The bulk of federal spending goes toward subsidies and benefit payments, which generally do not enhance economic productivity. With lower productivity, average American incomes will fall.

2. As federal spending rises, it creates pressure to raise taxes now and in the future. Higher taxes reduce incentives for productive activities such as working, saving, investing, and starting businesses. Higher taxes also increase incentives to engage in unproductive activities such as tax avoidance.

3. Much federal spending is wasteful and many federal programs are mismanaged. Cost overruns, fraud and abuse, and other bureaucratic failures are endemic in many agencies. It’s true that failures also occur in the private sector, but they are weeded out by competition, bankruptcy, and other market forces. We need to similarly weed out government failures.

4. Federal programs often benefit special interest groups while harming the broader interests of the general public. How is that possible in a democracy? The answer is that logrolling or horse-trading in Congress allows programs to be enacted even though they are only favored by minorities of legislators and voters. One solution is to impose a legal or constitutional cap on the overall federal budget to force politicians to make spending trade-offs.

5. Many federal programs cause active damage to society, in addition to the damage caused by the higher taxes needed to fund them. Programs usually distort markets and they sometimes cause social and environmental damage. Some examples are housing subsidies that helped to cause the financial crises, welfare programs that have created dependency, and farm subsidies that have harmed the environment.

6. The expansion of the federal government in recent decades runs counter to the American tradition of federalism. Federal functions should be “few and defined” in James Madison’s words, with most government activities left to the states. The explosion in federal aid to the states since the 1960s has strangled diversity and innovation in state governments because aid has been accompanied by a mass of one-size-fits-all regulations.

For more, see DownsizingGovernment.org.

Six Reasons to Downsize the Federal Government is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The Washington Post is full of so many stories about government failure these days, it’s hard to keep up.

Today, on page A19 we learn about a Small Business Administration subsidy program that has a 60-percent default rate. On the same page, we learn that the U.S. Postal Service will lose $7 billion this year.

Flipping over to page A20, we learn that former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik is a liar, a tax cheat, and thoroughly corrupt.

Then flip back to A15, and columnist Steve Pearlstein rightly lambastes the latest stimulus scheme from Congress: ”This $10 billion boondoggle is nothing more than a giveaway to the real estate industrial complex.”

Finally, on A14, we’ve got government-owned Fannie Mae losing a colossal $19 billion this year and asking the Treasury for another $15 billion taxpayer hand-out.

The federal government is a mess. Policymakers have no idea what the effects will be when they spend billions on scheme after scheme. Most of them don’t read the legislation, they don’t understand economics, and they never admit mistakes when their schemes almost inevitably fail. Fully 40 percent of the vast federal budget will be debt-fueled this year, but few policymakers seem to care. And public corruption seems never-ending. 

Isn’t it time to give libertarianism a chance?

Government of Continual Failure is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Historian Diane Ravitch drives me nuts. She has written numerous, terrific books chronicling the ills of government control of education, including the wrenching social conflict it has caused; the ejection of meaningful content from textbooks and tests it has required; and the dominance of educrats over parents and children it has enabled. She has been, essentially, the official historian of government-schooling’s failure. And yet, in a new blog interview with journalist John Merrow, she appears not to comprehend the most important lesson her copious works have to offer: that government education is doomed to fail.

Why the huge disconnect between her historiography and willingness to act on its clear implications? Because, it appears, as much as she knows that government schooling fails, she fears educational freedom even more. “Privatization,” in her mind, is simply too dangerous:

I remember your saying in an interview years ago that you favored public schools but not the public school system that we have.  In New Orleans Paul Vallas has called for ‘a system of schools, not a school system.’  What’s your ideal approach?  Are we moving in that direction?

If “a system of schools” means that the public schools should be handed over to anyone who wants to run a school, then I think we are headed in the wrong direction. Privatization will not help us achieve our goals. We know from the recent CREDO study at Stanford that charter schools run the gamut from excellent to abysmal, and many studies have found that charters, on average, produce no better results than the regular public schools. Deregulation nearly destroyed our economy in the past decade, and we better be careful that we don’t destroy our public schools too.

Unfortunately, while Prof. Ravitch knows a gigantic amount about education history, she exhibits precious little understanding of freedom or its economic subset, free markets. For one thing, charter schooling – a system by which public schools are given a right to exist and largely held accountable by government – isn’t even close to “privatization,” if by that we mean taking control from government and giving it to free, “private” individuals. Worse, Ravitch evinces a reflexive and, frankly, simplistic fear of free markets in hyperbolically asserting that “deregulation nearly destroyed our economy in the past decade.” I’d strongly suggest that she explore some non-education history – for instance, that of government-sponsored institutions such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; federal laws such as the Community Reinvestment Act; and federal regulation – before making any such over-the-top declaration again.

Ultimately, it seems likely that Prof. Ravitch fails to grasp – or, perhaps, to intuitively feel – how freedom works, and hence she fears it. Like many people, maybe she’s just not comfortable with seemingly ethereal spontaneous order, and needs to have some higher power pulling the strings to feel safe. Perhaps she fails to see how freedom, by fostering competition and innovation, produces all of the wonderful things we take for granted. Maybe she doesn’t really understand that it is due to freedom that we have an abundance of computers, coffee cups, cars, houses, package delivery services, miracle drugs, and pencils, not to mention religious pluralism, marketplaces of idea, and even happiness.

And then there’s the flip-side: government failure. While she has done more than perhaps any other historian to detail government failure and damage it has inflicted in education, Ravitch seems dead set against applying what she knows to public policy. She knows, for instance, that government often works precisely for the powerful special interests it’s supposed to keep in check. She doesn’t, though, seem to know why that is, and why it is the rule in government. She doesn’t appear to realize that the people who would be regulated, or who are employed by government, have by far the greatest motivation to get involved in the politics of their narrow areas, and hence exercise by far the most influence over them. And she doesn’t realize that it is only when special interests control government – not when they are in free markets – that they can exert unchecked power, because it is only then that they no longer have to get others to voluntarily do business with them.

Unfortunately, Ravitch’s apparent fear of freedom forces her to deny the only hope for making American education really work:  to empower all parents to choose, and to set educators free. Only then would schools be able to specialize in the needs of our hugely diverse children, and would children be able to attend them. Only then would educators have to compete for their money, forcing them to respond to the people they are supposed to serve rather than exercising political control over them. Only then would we see in education the kind of powerful innovation and progress we take for granted in everything from consumer electronics to restaurants.

And yes, freedom works in education, just as it does in almost every field of human endeavor. Despite much of the world having adopted the government-schooling model, we have ample evidence of this. For instance, James Tooley’s hugely important research reveals how private, for-profit schools are educating the world’s poorest children much more effectively than “free” government schools. And Andrew Coulson’s recent review of education research reveals that the more free an education system, the better its results.

Freedom, quite simply, works, and government, typically, does not. Which might be exactly why, after Ravitch has bashed “privatization” and “deregulation,” the only prescription she has left is blind, reality-ignoring hope: “At some point, we will have to get the kind of leadership that can figure out how to improve our public school system so that we have the education we want for our children.”

We should wait, in other words, for a miracle, a healing of that which is inherently broken. It is, of course, no solution at all, but both knowing the history of American education, and fearing real freedom, Ravitch has nothing else to offer.

Fear of Freedom Leaves Only Faith Healing for Our Schools is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Kevin Carey, policy director at the think tank Education Sector, asserts that when it comes to higher education libertarians are boxed in, unable to find a solution to out-of-control college costs that won’t violate at least one, basic libertarian principle:

This puts libertarians in somewhat of a box. On the one hand, they tend to be hostile toward the tens of billions of public dollars that flow into colleges every year. The more colleges cost, the greater the claim on the average citizen’s hard-earned money and thus reduction in their precious liberty etc., etc.

But the best way to bend down the long-term higher education cost curve and thus reduce government spending is to increase government regulation in the form of mandatory reporting. So it’s a pick your poison situation for the Cato folks — would you rather have Big Brother’s hand in your wallet or his eye on your business? You really can’t avoid both.

Now, I don’t want to seem obnoxious about this. After all, in the same piece that produced this quote, Carey notes that “while my politics are pretty far from Cato’s and I often think they’re wrong, they tend to be wrong in interesting ways.” I thank him for that (I think), though I should note that the impetus for his piece is a paper that comes from the John William Pope Center – the same paper I discuss here – not from Cato. So it might not even be Cato that Carey finds interesting. Regardless, here’s my potentially obnoxious-sounding reply:

Without even discussing the extremely dubious assumption that more regulation will lead to lower college costs, wouldn’t the best, most direct way to “reduce government spending” obviously be to, well, reduce, or even stop, government spending?

Of course it would, and that is the obvious solution for libertarians! It would get Big Brother out of our wallets and kill whatever justification subsidies might give him to gaze into our business. And it wouldn’t just make libertarians feel better – the benefits would accrue to almost everyone. If students and donors, rather than taxpayers, were to cover much more of colleges’ costs, taxpayers would save money, colleges would be unable to charge as much as they currently do, and schools would have to focus much more on their customers and patrons.

So there is no either-more-regulation-or-higher-costs box. Indeed, the only box that libertarians could possibly be trapped in is a mime’s box – a purely illusory one that someone has to really, really want to believe in for it to have any sort of existence at all. 

Having broken free of the invisible, intangible box, let me address one other thing that Carey brought up both in the discussion held at Cato, and his latest commentary:

The problem is that colleges aren’t just going to unilaterally release lots of new information on their own. Nor would it help matters much if they did; for data to matter it has to be standardized in a way that allows for comparison. That’s why companies report one set of quarterly financial results to the SEC, not 50 different sets to each state. Given that higher education is a national market this leads to a similar national solution: The federal government should compel colleges to release much more information about success as a condition of receiving direct or indirect federal aid.

The idea that a market that happens to be national in scope somehow requires federal control is both very common, and very inaccurate, simply equating “national” with “federal” and moving on from there. Even worse, though, is the even more basic assumption that to get something good, or just standardized, government control is required.

Whether it’s McDonald’s or Ruth’s Chris, an item on the menu in Beverly Hills is going to be essentially the same as in New York City. Why? Not because Washington says it must be, but because that keeps the customers coming. Or consider the QWERTY keyboard: It became the national standard by free-market, not government, forces. And how about the Model T, which was driven by Americans from Maine to San Diego? It was standardized not because the federal government said “this is a national car, so we must make it the national standard,” but because one company produced it and it was freely chosen by customers from sea to shining sea. And how do we choose automobiles today? Not by going to some federal report on what a car should be (though perhaps that day is coming) but, often, by consulting such trade mags as Road and Track.

Clearly, we don’t need government to set standards or inform consumers – markets will do those things themselves. But that markets will set their own standards is just part of the story. Sometimes – indeed, almost all of the time – you simply don’t want a single standard: Vegetarians don’t want a great steak. Many people would rather click than type. The English major fascinated by Chaucer doesn’t need a cyclotron. The working mom often doesn’t want the same education as the parentally funded 18-year-old.

And then there is the gigantic – but usually ignored – problem of government failure: Government regulation and standardization is very costly. It can be used to crush the opponents of the politically well-connected rather than advance the common good. It can have crippling unintended consequences. And, as former Dickinson College president, Clinton-era Department of Education assistant secretary, and current George Mason University professor A. Lee Fritschler made clear at the discussion of the Pope Center’s paper, it also simply fails – a lot. Indeed, based on his experience at the Department of Education, Fritschler is adamant that the feds are simply incapable of effectively regulating higher education.

So once again, Carey sees a mime’s box. This time, though, it’s not one he imagines entrapping libertarians, but one he thinks Washington can drop on the ivory tower to make it work right. It’s a different box, but just as illusory.

Trapped Inside the Mime’s Box is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Cato is planning a seminar in New York on April 30 with an all-star lineup of speakers: Nat Hentoff, our new senior fellow and perhaps the leading First Amendment advocate of the past generation. Top climate scientist Pat Michaels. Peter Schiff, the financial guru who spent 2006 and 2007 failing to persuade people that the U.S. housing and financial markets were on the verge of collapse. And Freeman Dyson, one of the world’s top scientists and the subject of a recent New York Times Magazine profile for his “heretical” views on global warming. Check out the program:

• 11:05–11:35 a.m. Nat Hentoff —Keynote Address: An Endangered Native Species: The First Amendment
• 11:35–11:55 a.m. Pat Michaels —Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know
• 11:55 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Peter Schiff —Economic Crisis: A Government Failure
• 12:30–2:00 p.m. Freeman Dyson —Luncheon Address: Climate Disaster, Safe Nukes, and Other Myths

Register for the event here ($100 per person).

All-Star Lineup in New York is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Another day, another mad power grab by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

Only in government does failure bring more responsibility.

Federal agencies have long had extensive regulatory powers over commercial banks, but allowed the banking crisis to develop despite those powers.

It was a failure of will, not an absence of authority.

If the authority is extended over more institutions, there is no reason to believe we will have a different outcome.

This power grab is designed to divert attention away from the manifest failure of, first, the Bush Administration, and now the Obama Administration to devise a credible plan to deal with the crisis.

Regulations We’ve Got. Geithner’s Seeking Something Else is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog