Bad Politics

February 9, 2010

As I’ve written several times before, I don’t believe that the various federal government stimulus efforts did anything to help the economy.  In fact, they’ve done quite a lot of economic damage by distorting a more efficient allocation of capital and by encouraging the moral hazard where private actors who take unreasonable and large risks get to keep the profits if their bet works and get bailed out by taxpayers if it doesn’t. 

However, plenty of smart people, including a whole lot of folks at market-oriented think tanks, thought large-scale federal intervention in the economy was necessary to stave off an economic collapse. 

Whatever you think of the economic merits of federal stimulus efforts, one thing is very clear — giant federal stimulus efforts were bad politics for President Obama.  It may have made some political sense for an outgoing President Bush to do whatever he could to avoid being cast as the next Herbert Hoover.  But Obama’s political interests should have been different.  He entered office in the midst of a severe economic downturn that had started under his predecessor.  If he had followed the smart political example of Ronald Reagan he would have basically let the downturn run its course and then have rapid economic growth following.  Instead, Obama (and Bush’s) stimulus efforts essentially borrowed consumption from the recovery to soften the severity of the downturn.  The downturn may not have been as bad as it would have been, but the recovery is also much weaker than it would have been.

Reagan’s example may or may not be good policy, but it is certainly good politics.  As any student of Machiavelli learns, you should have all of the bad at the beginning and then let the benefits roll in over time.

Leave a Comment » | economics, politics | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Lost Change

February 8, 2010

No, not that kind of change. 

I’m talking about whether the course of time has really been changed on Lost when they detonated a nuke on the Island.  In the first episode of this season we are led to believe that things have changed.  We see the Losties back on their Oceanic flight but this time it doesn’t crash.  Maybe it worked!

But we also see the Losties on the Island after Esau (Smokey) has killed Jacob and nothing has appeared to change.  Which one is the real timeline?

The answer, I suspect, is that they are still part of the same timeline and nothing was fundamentally changed by the nuke.  Yes, Oceanic landed safely in LA, but I’ll bet that all of the Losties will make their way back to the Island over the next few episodes and the two timelines will merge.  You can’t change time.

This seems to be the major dispute between Jacob and Esau.  When the two of them were sitting on the beach watching the ship, Esau said that it always ends the same way.  Jacob agrees but says that the process is always different and that is progress.  We’ll somehow learn that Jacob is right about this.  We’ll see that there has been progress even if the ending is the same.

Some evidence for this theory is that Juliet seems to be dangling between the two timelines as she is dying.  She talks about going to get coffee and wants to tell Sawyer that it worked.  Also, Desmond appears and disappears on the flight.  I bet things are changing in the alternate timeline to course-correct already.

Some other questions to ponder:  Where is home for Esau (Smokey)?  he tells us that he finally wants to go home and I’ll bet that is the Temple from which he has been banished and will now attempt to recapture. 

Also, is Jacob inside Sayed?  It seems like Jacob gave Hurley the guitar case as an insurance policy.  He knew that he could visit Hurley even after he was killed and deliver the message to his followers at the Temple.  The message may well have been to use the pool to transfer Jacob into Sayed so that Jacob could help defend the Temple against Esau.

Even though Jacob seems like the good guy and Essau as the bad one, I’ll bet that they are both actually mixed in character.  Each has done good and bad things.  We will somehow learn that both are correct — fate cannot be changed but there is still room for free will and human progress.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

UCLA Civil Rights Project Gets It Wrong

February 4, 2010

My friends over at Mid-Riffs take apart the new report from Gary Orfield’s UCLA Civil Rights Project claiming that charters produce segregation:

“The report finds:

…that charter schools, particularly those in the western United States are havens for white re-segregation from public schools; requirements for providing essential equity data to the federal government go unmet across the nation; and magnet schools are overlooked, in spite of showing greater levels of integration and academic achievement than charters.

It looks like, based on a quick pass through the report, their main finding is based on demographic comparisons  between charter schools and traditional public schools at the state level. This method of comparison likely leads to inaccurate conclusions due to the fact that charter schools are overwhelmingly an urban phenomenon. The correct comparison is between charters and the demographics of their immediate geographic area. We have discussed this topic as it relates to Little Rock at length here.

The Economist’s take on this report is concise, to-the-point, and spot on.

In plain English, there are a lot of black kids in charter schools. This is because charter schools tend to get set up in neighbourhoods where the public schools are terrible, such as south-eastern Washington DC or the rougher parts of New Orleans. These neighbourhoods are disproportionately African-American. Charter schools are popular with poor black parents because their other choices are so awful. There are very few charter schools in rich white suburbs with nice public schools, because there is no call for them.

The important question about charter schools is: do they give kids a better education than they would otherwise have received? The answer is yes. Nothing else matters.”

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

DC Vouchers Will Not Go Quietly

February 4, 2010

Obama, Duncan, and Durbin would love this issue to just go away but it won’t.  From the Washington Post editorial page today:

SENS. JOSEPH I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) haven’t given up on their bid to save the federally funded voucher program that allows low-income families in the District to send their children to private schools. We would like to see them succeed, but it’s clear that President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress have already written the epilogue to this worthy program. Their disregard for how vouchers have helped children is so complete that it seems that the best chance, perhaps the only chance, for the program’s survival is for local officials to step in….

The best solution, of course, is the one sought by a bipartisan coalition lead by Mr. Lieberman for Congress to reauthorize the program. He is set to announce plans Thursday to offer the reauthorization as an amendment to legislation moving in the Senate, and he’s hoping for help from Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), majority whip and chairman of the subcommittee that funds the program. Mr. Durbin gave lip service to his possible support but has been content for Congress to let the program go down the tubes.

And from the Washington Times this week:

A letter sent to the White House on Wednesday was appropriately circumspect, but in effect, it boiled down to this: “Dear Mr. President, when it comes to educating America’s children, please, just this once, live up to your own words.”

The subject was the popular and successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. The letter writers were Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, and Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader.

The president touched on education during his State of the Union address last week. “The idea here is simple: Instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success,” he said. “Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform. … In this country, the success of our children cannot depend more on where they live than on their potential.”

Mr. Obama’s words sound nice, but in public education today, the reality is that most children are assigned a school based on where they live. Most families don’t have the opportunity to choose their children’s schools. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarships – which are funded by Congress – change all that without taking a dime from the public school system by helping children (more than 3,000 so far) attend non-public schools that are safer and more effective.

Mr. Boehner and Mr. Lieberman say the program works and that young lives will be lost if educational opportunity is sacrificed for political expedience. “According to Patrick Wolf, the principal investigator for the study conducted under the auspices of the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, this program has met a tough standard for efficacy,” the lawmakers wrote. “Dr. Wolf found that ‘the D.C. voucher program has proven to be the most effective education policy evaluated by the federal government’s official education research arm so far.’ ” Based on Mr. Obama’s own words about investing in reform and rewarding success, Mr. Boehner and Mr. Lieberman argue that D.C. Opportunity Scholarships should not only be reauthorized but expanded to serve additional students.

The program is wildly popular in the District, including among Democrats who are strong supporters of Mr. Obama. According to the letter, the scholarships enjoy “the overwhelming support of D.C. residents, parents, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, [D.C. Public Schools] Chancellor [Michelle] Rhee, former D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams and a majority of the D.C. City Council.”

Instead of listening to those closest to D.C. students and their challenges, the Obama administration has backed plans to pull the plug on the scholarship program. This is transparent pandering to school workers unions that don’t want the competition provided by such scholarships.

While Mr. Obama sends his daughters Sasha and Malia to private school, he ignores heartfelt pleas from parents and children to allow more youngsters a chance for a quality education. The scholarship program is an unambiguous test of whether or not this president means what he says. If he allows the program to die, the hopes of many D.C. children will die with it.

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

UPDATE — Andy Smarick agrees over at Flypaper.

3 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Robert Enlow on Vouchers and School Safety

February 3, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Robert Enlow, my boss at the Foundation for Educational Choice, writes in this morning’s Chicago Sun-Times that school vouchers are a safety issue:

When Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan visited the community in October, Holder said the Albert murder was “a call to action” and that youth violence had to come to an end…

In October, Holder said, “We are not going to protect any sacred cows. The status quo is not acceptable.” If that is truly the case, if Chicago parents, community leaders and politicians have had enough bloodshed, justice will no longer be delayed.

If you’re in Chicago Friday morning, or can be, don’t miss the big event the Illinois Policy Institute will be putting on. Rev. Senator James Meeks will be giving a barn-burner of a speech, from what I’m told. You’ll want to hear it.

(Oh, and yours truly will be on stage as well, to talk about this. But come anyway.)

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Posted by Greg Forster

Brookings School Choice Task Force

February 3, 2010

I’m a co-author on the Brookings School Choice Task Force report that was released yesterday in DC, following briefings on the Hill.  Andrew Coulson has already raised concerns about the report because he fears expanding the federal role in education even if it is in expanding choice.

I’m sympathetic to Andrew’s position but I should note that he wrote his post prior to the release of the report.  After reading it he might have a lot less to be concerned about.  The Task Force did not recommend a large federal program on school choice.  Instead, we emphasized improving the quality of information and providing incentives for states and localities to expand choice.  And we conceived of choice broadly, including vouchers, charters, virtual learning, magnets, inter-district, etc…

These measures are nowhere near the kind of choice that Andrew and I would ultimately like to see, but we have to understand political realities and embrace incrementalism.  I think there are a lot of sensible ideas in the report but you should read it and judge for yourself.  It can be found here.

3 Comments | charter schools, vouchers | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Op-Ed on Head Start and DC Vouchers

February 3, 2010

I have an op-ed in today’s Washington Examiner that will also be on City Journal’s web site on how the Obama administration has betrayed its pledge to do what the evidence says works in education.  It starts:

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Attack of the Killer Vouchers!

February 2, 2010

Bruegel’s “The Triumph of Vouchers”

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Yesterday we learned about the horrible massacre of the innocents in Milwaukee Public Schools. Confronted with evidence showing substantially higher graduation rates in private schools participating in the city’s voucher program than in public schools, a public school official cited “mortality” as an excuse.

No doubt it won’t be long before they announce that Milwaukee public school students are dying in such large numbers because of the voucher program!

You doubt it? The journal Environmental Science and Technology has already published an article – carefully peer reviewed using the same totally neutral and non-corrupted system they use for all the other climate science – finding that school vouchers cause global warming. You see, vouchers irresponsibly permit parents to choose whether and how far to drive their students to school, thus recklessly increasing the levels of the dangerous chemical globalwarmic hysteriphate in the atmosphere, further sapping the purity of our precious, precious bodily fluids.

And since it’s already an established scientific fact that global warming causes everything bad, it follows as night follows day that vouchers, by causing global warming, cause mortality in Milwaukee public schools.

Now if only we could find a way to protect our children from this threat . . . if only there were an education policy that were proven to improve school safety by moving students from less safe schools into more safe schools. Hmmm…

HT Dan Lips

8 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Milwaukee Voucher Students Have Higher Grad Rate

February 2, 2010

In a new analysis released today by School Choice Wisconsin, University of Minnesota sociologist Rob Warren finds that voucher students in Milwaukee graduate high school at a higher rate than students in Milwaukee Public Schools.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s coverage this morning:

For 2007-’08, Warren estimated the graduation rate in voucher schools to be 77%, and the graduation rate in MPS to be 65%, a difference of 12 percentage points. The information includes comparisons between seven choice schools and 23 public high schools that could provide complete data for all six years studied, and adjusted to account for an expected 5% ninth-grade retention rate in choice schools and an expected 25% ninth-grade retention rate in MPS.

And from the report’s summary we get an idea of how big that difference in graduation rate is:

As Professor Warren illustrates here, had MPS attained the same graduation rate achieved in the MPCP, an additional 3,352 students would have received diplomas between 2003 and 2008. According to the research cited in the Journal Sentinel, the annual impact from an additional 3,352 MPS graduates would include an additional $21.2 million in personal income and about $3.6 million in extra tax revenue.

Warren is careful to note that his analysis does not determine whether vouchers caused the higher graduation rate or attracted students who were more likely to graduate, but he is pretty confident that the voucher students do graduate at higher rates.  the public school officials are not so convinced: “You have to take into account things like mortality, and the number of students who move to another school,” St. Aubin said.

Mortality?  Is that a plausible explanation for the difference?  Warren’s method is similar to earlier work that Greg, Marcus, and I have done in estimating graduation rates and while not absolutely precise is likely to be reasonably accurate.  A forthcoming analysis by the School Choice Demonstration Project led by my colleague at the University of Arkansas, Pat Wolf, and with which I am involved will be able to examine this issue tracking individual students over time.

3 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Obama Seeks Big NCLB Changes

February 1, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

So says Sam Dillon in today’s New York Times. Apparently the administration says it is going to get rid of the things that drive  school boards and teacher unions crazy, but maintain a strong system of accountability. So, we’ll see about that, but color me skeptical. The 2007 sop involved throwing ELL kids under the “porfolio assessment” bus.

On the positive side, the administration is going to propose getting rid of the 2014 100% proficiency standard that will otherwise push states to dummy down their state standards.

2 Comments | NCLB | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

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