Arizona Supreme Court Rules Vouchers Unconstitutional

March 26, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The dead hand of anti-Catholic Know-Nothing bigotry reached out from the grave to strike down two voucher programs yesterday. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled against voucher programs for children with disabilities, and for children in foster care. The almost 500 children in those two programs, passed in 2006, will be allowed to finish out the current school year under the voucher program.

The Arizona Supreme Court explicitly rejected similar arguments in Kotterman v. Killian, which decided the constitutionality of the Arizona tax credit program. The court recognized the Blaine amendment as a product of 19th century anti-Catholic bias, writing that, “We would be hard pressed to divorce the amendment’s language from the insidious discriminatory intent that prompted it.”

Saddly, the current Arizona Supreme Court felt no such constraints.

I thought I would share one of the idiotic comments made by an anonymous poster on an Arizona newspaper site:

Vouchers was just a scam to give money to parents rich enough to send their kids to private schools.

There is no private school that can compete with public (“no profit motive”) school, hence the voucher cannot fully fund a private school education.

It’s a giveaway, plain and simple, with the bonus side effect of destroying the education system for people too poor to send their kids to private schools.

Nice try, but no cigar!

I’d love to see this ignorant fool explain this to one of the plaintiffs in the case, a single mother of a child with multiple disabilities who works in a beauty salon.

The people who brought this suit should be ashamed of themselves. In the greatest of ironies, these so-called progressives have removed the most direct method for progressive school choice, that is to say, school choice which differentiates between students based upon need. Arizona legislators could pass a personal use tax credit for private school expenses, and it would survive court challenge. We won’t do that, mind you, but it is the corner that these people are trying to paint us.

For years, ideologically blinded idiots like the one quoted above have accused choice supporters of wanting to provide school choice for rich kids, blah blah blah. Don’t confuse us with any facts. Of course, they never blink at shelling out $18,000 for the son of a billionaire to attend a public economic segregation academy in North Scottsdale.

School choice for rich kids? Open your eyes- it’s all around you.

 

3 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Watch this video…right now!

March 25, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

2 Comments | economics | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

The Fordham Accountability Study

March 25, 2009

showcase-firstcontact

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

So I have been off in Miami for a couple of days and return to find Greg and Jay busting on the new Fordham report on school voucher accountability. My take is different.

Let me preface my remarks by saying I haven’t read the final report, but rather an almost final report.

So, if you recall the only Star Trek the Next Generation movie worth watching, there is a great scene where the crew try to convice Captain Picard that the Borg have captured the ship, and that they ought to abandon it and set the auto destruct.

Picard, consumed with hatred for the Borg, refuses to do so. “The Line Must be Drawn HERE! This far, no farther!” Picard bellows with rage.

We get that reaction from many people when the subject of accountability for private schools participating in choice programs comes up. I agree that there are lines that ought not to be crossed, most obviously, forcing private schools to take state exams. Otherwise, you slide down the path to homogenized private schools on the French Catholic model, which can essentially only be distinguished from public schools by a religion class or two. Lines must be drawn- this far and no farther.

The appropriate line, however, is not at zero transparency.

Going into the reasons why I belive this is the case is a longer post than I can write at this time. I believe it is our interests as school choice supporters to embrace a reasonable level of financial and academic transparency in choice programs.

Further, I believe that what the Fordham Foundation has published (at least the draft I saw) developed a very reasonable approach.

More later…

7 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

The Professional Judgment Un-Dead

March 25, 2009

It’s time we drive a stake through the heart of “professional judgment” methodologies in education.  Unfortunately, the method has come back from the grave in the most recent Fordham report on regulating vouchers in which an expert panel was asked about the best regulatory framework for voucher programs.

The methodology was previously known for its use in school funding adequacy lawsuits.  In those cases a group of educators and experts was gathered to determine the amount of spending that is required to produce an adequate education.  Not surprisingly, their professional judgment was always that we need to spend billions and billions (use Carl Sagan voice) more than we spend now.  In the most famous use of the professional judgment method, an expert panel convinced the state courts to order the addition of $15 billion to the New York City school system — that’s an extra $15,000 per student.

And advocates for school construction have relied on professional judgment methodologies to argue that we need $127 billion in additional spending to get school facilities in adequate shape.  And who could forget the JPGB professional judgment study that determined that this blog needs a spaceship, pony, martinis, cigars, and junkets to Vegas to do an adequate job?

Of course, the main problem with the professional judgment method is that it more closely resembles a political rather than a scientific process.  Asking involved parties to recommend solutions may inspire haggling, coalition-building, and grandstanding, but it doesn’t produce truth.  If we really wanted to know the best regulatory framework, shouldn’t we empirically examine the relationship between regulation and outcomes that we desire? 

Rather than engage in the hard work of collecting or examining empirical evidence, it seems to be popular among beltway organizations to gather panels of experts and ask them what they think.  Even worse, the answers depend heavily on which experts are asked and what the questions are. 

For example, do high stakes pressure schools to sacrifice the learning of certain academic subjects to improve results in others with high stakes attached?  The Center for Education Policy employed a variant of the professional judgment method by surveying school district officials to ask them if this was happening.  They found that 62% of districts reported an increase in high-stakes subjects and 44% reported a decrease in other subjects, so CEP concluded that high-stakes was narrowing the curriculum.  But the GAO surveyed teachers and found that 90% reported that there had not been a change in time spent on the low stakes subject of art.  About 4% reported an increase in focus on art and 7% reported a decrease.  So the GAO, also employing the professional judgment method, gets a very different answer than CEP.  Obviously, which experts you ask and what you ask them make an enormous difference.

Besides, if we really wanted to know about whether high stakes narrow the curriculum, shouldn’t we try to measure the outcome directly rather than ask people what they think?  Marcus Winters and I did this by studying whether high stakes in Florida negatively impinged on achievement in the low-stakes subject of science.  We found no negative effect on science achievement from raising the stakes on math and reading.  Schools that were under pressure to improve math and reading results also improved their science results.

Even if you aren’t convinced by our study, it is clear that this is a better way to get at policy questions than by using the professional judgment method.  Stop organizing committees of selected “experts” and start analyzing actual outcomes.

5 Comments | methodology, school accountability, vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Fordham Splits the Baby

March 24, 2009

hemisphere

Extremist position #1: The earth is flat.

Extremist position #2: The earth is round.

Reasonable middle ground: The earth is a hemisphere.

HT Math Is Fun

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Fordham has just released a new report on how voucher programs should be regulated. Their methodology seems to be that they don’t care about finding the truth, they only care about finding “middle ground.” It doesn’t matter whether a policy makes any sense, as long as falls 50% of the way between the policy on the right and the policy on the left, it must be the best policy.

They collect opinions from a bunch of education experts and then propose, as their preferred policy, something that falls roughly in the middle of the spectrum – they want to subject different voucher schools to different levels of regulation based on how many voucher students each school has. Naturally, since their proposal isn’t guided by any principle other than that of political triangulation, it accomplishes neither the goals held by one side nor the goals held by the other side, and will therefore please nobody. But no one can accuse Fordham of not seeking middle ground!

They’re just like Solomon splitting the baby – except that Solomon’s proposal was a ruse. Fordham really wants to actually take out their knives and split the baby.

Inspired by their example, I’ve decided to end the age-old debate over the shape of the earth. Some people hold the earth is round, which has the merit of providing a parsimonious explanation of the observed data. Other people hold that the earth is flat, which has the merit of being an ancient, time-tested view. But this tired old debate between two extremist positions is getting us nowhere.

First I convened a panel of experts, some from the National Astronomical Society and some from the Flat Earth Society. The experts achieved consensus on the following important points:

  • The shape of the earth is an important subject.
  • The earth is not cubical.
  • The earth is not made of green cheese.

Unfortunately, we were not able to achieve consensus on one issue: the earth’s actual shape.

To move beyond this tired old debate and find reasonable middle ground, I propose that the earth is hemispherical – flat on one side and round on the other. Since this position is 50% of the way between the two extremist positions, it must be true. QED.

Now we move on to the next great debate: which side do we live on, the flat side or the round side? I’m convening a conference in the Antipodes to begin exploring new research on this question.

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

Obama Hearts Wall Street Fat Cats, TLF

March 24, 2009

We had spring break last week, so I’ve been a bit absent from the blog.  No fears, we’ll make up for it. 

I know much ink has already been spilled on the AIG bonuses, but let me add just one thought.  AIG had contracts with executives to pay them bonuses even though many of those executives made catastrophically bad decisions.  AIG also had derivative contracts with other financial companies, including Goldman Sachs, even though those companies never fully considered the risk that AIG would be unable to pay.  Of course, if AIG went bankrupt, then all of its contracts would be nullified and everyone would have to get in line to see if they would be paid anything.  But we didn’t want AIG to break its contracts with Goldman, et al for fear that it would spread a panic, so the public assumed AIG’s obligations and guaranteed Goldman, et al every penny. 

Why should Congress be any more outraged over AIG keeping its contracts with its own executives to pay bonuses than keeping its contracts with Goldman et al to pay for bad mortgage bets?  The bonuses only cost us $163 million while the Goldman et al contracts cost us tens of billions.  And the Goldman et al executives were as guilty of gross miscalculation in failing to properly consider counter-party risk as the AIG executives were guilty of writing bad derivative contracts.

As much as I hate to say it, I have to agree with Paul Krugman that the Obamaadministration appears to love Wall Street fat cats.  They love those fat cats at least as much as the Bush Administration. 

Let’s take a look at the new Geithner plan to count the ways.  The plan creates as many as 5 entities in which the Treasury and private investors put in an equal amount of capital, totalling about $150-$200 billion.  Those entities can then borrow as much as 6 times that amount, or a total of  about $1 trillion, from the FDIC (another branch of the government).  Those would be non-recourse loans, meaning that private investors would have no more than $75 to $100 billion on the line and could not lose more.  Meanwhile they get to buy $1 trillion of assets with highly subsidized loans and almost no down-side.    No wonder the stock market loved this.  It’s a great big smooch from the Obama administration.

One of the supposed benefits of this plan is that it will create a “market price” for the currently illiquid “toxic assets.”  But of course the price that this will establish will be a phony one from a market with five selected bidders playing with the government’s money at highly subsidized rates.  This mechanism sets market prices about as well as handing my kids ten bucks and letting them loose at a flea market. 

And if this whole deal is fair, how about if they let me and other individual investors buy shares in these 5 joint ventures.  I’d like to own a piece of a game where I gamble with the government’s money and can experience 1/12 of the losses.

1 Comment | economics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Steyn Nails the Buildingpalooza

March 23, 2009

fancy-church

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

In the back of the new National Review, Mark Steyn’s column absolutely nails the giant new gusher of money for school buildings. Subscribers can read it online; for everyone else – well, for everyone else, online subscriptions to NR are cheap and you should have one. But here’s a taste, just in case you don’t believe everything I say implicitly:

Steyn follows up on the supposedly awful school bulding in Dillon, S.C. highlighted recently by the president and finds a number of holes in the story, such as:

Incidentally, you may have read multiple articles referring to the “113-year-old building.” Actually, that’s the building behind the main school — the original structure from 1896, where the school district has its offices. But if, like so many people, you assume an edifice dating from 1896 or 1912 must ipso facto be uninhabitable, bear in mind that the central portion of the main building was entirely rebuilt in 1983. That’s to say, this rotting, decrepit, mildewed Dotheboys Hall of a Gothic mausoleum dates all the way back to the Cyndi Lauper era.

He then moves on to the larger issues:

If a schoolhouse has peeling paint and leaking ceilings, what’s the best way to fix it? . . . Dillon, S.C., is a town of about 6,000 people. Is there really no way they can organize acceptable accommodation for a two-grade junior high school without petitioning the Sovereign in Barackingham Palace? . . . The issue is not the decrepitude of the building but the decrepitude of liberty. Maybe the president can spend enough of our money to halt the degradation of infrastructure. The degradation of citizenship will prove harder to reverse.

Leave a Comment » | money myth | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Get Lost — The Pause that Refreshes

March 21, 2009

In the most recent episode, Namaste, Jack comes to Sawyer to figure out what they are supposed to do next.  Sawyer, who is reading a book, says that he is going to think.  The problem, he says, with Jack’s previous leadership was that he was always reacting and not really thinking about what to do.  Sawyer was going to read his book and think.

It almost felt as if this was a discussion among the writers.  One asks, “What are we supposed to do with the plot now?”  The other replies, “I have no idea how to unravel this mess.  The writers have just been reacting, making stuff up as they go.  But I’m going to have a pause in the plot so we can think about where to go with it next.”

So, not too much happened in this episode but perhaps the writers are pausing to figure out how to make sense of everything.  Don’t get me wrong.  I still really enjoy Lost.  The characters are well-written and engaging.  The drama within each episode is exciting.  And the overall mystery cries out for resolution.  I just hope that the writers take some time to read a good book and think about where to go next.

5 Comments | Lost | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

President Obama’s Teleprompter Starts a Blog

March 20, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Check it out for yourself.

Leave a Comment » | blogging | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Obama Compares AIG to Suicide Bombers

March 20, 2009

obama

Photo from the LA Times

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

A while back, a certain secretary of education compared the teachers’ unions to terrorists and got in super-major hot water. Remember?

I just wanted to put that on the table so everybody bears in mind the standard for civil discourse that was established during that episode. Of course that standard would apply equally to both parties, right?

The LA Times is reporting that at a California town hall meeting, President Obama compared AIG to a suicide bomber:

Well, OK, that all made sense, but then he compared AIG to a suicide bomber, and at that, we really perked up.

“Same thing with AIG,” Obama said. “It was the right thing to do to step in. Like they’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger, you don’t want them to blow up, but you’ve got to ease them off the trigger.”

And the president held out his arm and pantomimed a hand on a trigger, and we were rapt, waiting for what would happen next.

But then he called for a final question from the crowd.

HT Campaign Spot.

When he’s off the teleprompter, he’s really off the teleprompter.

Steyn is telling Hugh Hewitt that now he’s recycling all the jokes Frank Sinatra used to do about Bob Hope’s reliance on cue cards as Obama teleprompter jokes, and they’re going over really well.

3 Comments | economics, politics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

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