Greg Wins Forster-Mathews Bet Yet Again

July 10, 2019
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Greg Forster after his 9th consecutive win.

(Guest Post by Jason Bedrick)

As regular Jayblog readers know, back in 2011, Brother Greg challenged WaPo’s Jay Mathews to a bet in response to the latter’s prediction that the school choice movement was petering out. Mathews accepted the challenge. Forster would win “if at least ten legislative chambers pass bills in 2011 that either create or expand a private school choice program.” Forster not only won in 2011, he has won in every year since. (For a few examples, see 2015 Part 1 / 2015 Part 2, 2016, and 2017. Note: I’m only including states that added a new program or increased appropriations or available tax credits for an existing program, not those, like Virginia, that only expanded eligibility.)

Here’s a brief list of the new and expanded programs signed into law this year:

  • Arkansas: Tripled the appropriation for the Arkansas Succeeds voucher program for students with special needs or in foster care.
  • Florida: New school voucher program for 18,000 low- and middle-income students that automatically grows by about 7,000 vouchers each year. $23 million additional funding for Gardiner education savings account program for students with special needs.
  • Indiana: Increased the tax-credit scholarship program by $16.5 million over the biennium.
  • Iowa: Increased the tax-credit scholarship program by $2 million over the biennium.
  • Mississippi: Increased funding for the education savings account program by $2 million.
  • Ohio: Increased funding for three voucher programs (the EdChoice Scholarships, the Income-Based Scholarships, and the Cleveland Scholarships) and expanded eligibility for two of them (EdChoice and Income-Based).
  • Pennsylvania: $30 million increase in tax credits available for tax-credit scholarship programs.
  • Tennessee: New school voucher program for low-income students in Davidson and Shelby counties.

Additionally, by my count, here are the states in which at least one legislative chamber passed a new or expanded school choice program:

  • Arkansas (SB 539)
  • North Carolina (HB 966)
  • Oklahoma (SB 407)
  • Utah (SB 177)
  • West Virginia (SB 1040)

Let me know in the comment section if I missed any!

[Note: Updated on July 19 to include the recently signed Ohio expansion and updated July 25 to include the Arkansas expansion.]

4 Comments | Greg Forster, school choice, Uncategorized | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Jason Bedrick

Against Federal School Choice (Even Tax-Credit Scholarships)

May 16, 2017

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(Guest post by Greg Forster)

OCPA’s Perspective has posted the second of my two articles making the case against any federal school choice program that goes beyond D.C. schools – or other legitimately federal jurisdictions (other territories, military bases, etc.). This is only my own opinion; I recognize the reasons why others, including at EdChoice, are supportive of federal choice or are at least fed-curious. But I’m here to make the case in opposition.

Having already argued against federal vouchers, through Title I or by other means…

If we want to continue living in a democratic republic and not in a technocratic oligarchy, we should be fighting tooth and nail to resist the process of federal takeover, not strengthening it…[Moreover,] it would be the states, not the federal government, which would create systems for parents to access choice through Title I portability. And not just the states, but the education bureaucracies of the states. So the bureaucrats most directly threatened by school choice would be the ones designing the programs. In other words, these programs would be designed to fail.

…in my latest article I argue against federal tax-credit scholarships:

The idea behind federalism is that governance should be kept as close as possible to local communities. That is partly because big, distant legislatures and bureaucracies are not likely to serve people well if they’re not directly connected to them. And that’s still going to be a problem even if you do find a clever way to circumvent the Constitution’s legal barriers to national education policy…

I never thought I’d live to see freedom-loving activists demanding to have the future of school choice put into the hands of the IRS. I feel like Rip Van Winkle. What did I miss here?

Federal choice of any kind also involves a sacrifice of moral legitimacy, which is destructive for any policy and fatal to a reform movement:

Lately I’ve heard a lot of talk from my conservative friends about how wrong it is when distant, powerful elites who are culturally alienated from the population at large shove laws down our throats that we regard as unjust. The question is, do we dislike that because we would rather it was our distant, powerful elites imposing our preferred laws upon populations from whom we are culturally alienated, and who view those laws as unjust? Or because elites shoving things down people’s throats is inherently wrong, whoever does it?

I also canvas the danger we run of a high-profile, national political loss should the bill fail, and other fun topics.

The school choice movement has gained enormous ground by focusing on the states. Let’s stick with what works and not sell our birthright for a D.C. mess.

4 Comments | Greg Forster, politics, school choice, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Bedrick BOOOOM at Bradley

May 1, 2017

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

As the inevitable breach between technocratic and choice reforms looms larger and larger, seems like a great moment for an ICYMI on Jason’s appearance at the 2017 Bradley Symposium. Jason argues that – well, that a breach between technocratic and choice reform is inevitable, and we ought to embrace choice fearlessly. Check it out!

5 Comments | common core, Greg Forster, National Standards, school accountability, school choice | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Pay No Attention to the Research Consensus Behind the Curtain

April 6, 2017

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(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Noah Smith dresses up a few fussy methodological quibbles and one big, really dishonest bit of fakery in order to cast aspersions on my Win-Win report and distract you from the research consensus behind the curtain.

My report reviewed over 100 empirical findings on private school choice programs, showing that there is a very strong research consensus in favor of positive effects from such programs. Smith identifies two (2) cases where he thinks I ought to have used a different method to classify the findings. I disagree, but frankly, it’s not worth quibbling about. The research consensus in favor of school choice is still clear even if we were to accept Smith’s cavails.

His statement that “vouchers have generally disappointed” is totally unsupported by the evidence – and if he read my report, he knows it.

But his big, dramatic “gotcha!” is that I allegedly omit a well-known study with a null finding. That would indeed be a serious omission.

Unfortunately for Smith, the study he dramatically accuses me of omitting is not a study of private school choice. Here is the abstract with emphasis on Smith’s dishonesty added:

School choice has become an increasingly prominent strategy for enhancing academic achievement. To evaluate the impact on participants, we exploit randomized lotteries that determine high school admission in the Chicago Public Schools. Compared to those students who lose lotteries, students who win attend high schools that are better in a number of dimensions, including peer achievement and attainment levels. Nonetheless, we find little evidence that winning a lottery provides any systematic benefit across a wide variety of traditional academic measures. Lottery winners do, however, experience improvements on a subset of nontraditional outcome measures, such as self-reported disciplinary incidents and arrest rates.

From the very first sentence, Smith explicitly frames his whole article as an article about private school choice. For him to accuse me of omitting a study on private school choice because I omitted this study is dishonest.

Smith owes me an apology and a retraction. If he refuses, Bloomberg owes me a correction.

I’ll hold my breath waiting.

Leave a Comment » | Greg Forster, journalism, research reports, school choice, vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

For a Lifetime Achievement Higgy: Joe Biden

April 4, 2017

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(Guest post by Greg Forster)

In this golden age when Higgyworthy candidates are so numerous that last year’s Higgy convention almost failed to nominate one because the delegate was paralyzed by choice, it takes something special to stand out among the crowd. But one sure way to find the heroes whose “arrogant delusions of shaping the world to meet their own will” truly tower over the rest is to look to your elders – to those special people whose decades-long commitment to diligent and sustained blowhardism has not only accumulated a distinguished track record of inane interference and pointless posturing, but has moved the all-important “Higgyton Window” so future generations of aspiring PLDDers can sink to new depths that their elders only dreamed of.

With that in mind, I’d like to nominate recently retired Vice President Joe Biden not only for 2017 William Higginbotham Inhumanitarian of the Year but also for a Lifetime Achievement Higgy Award.

With Biden recently talking about how he totally would have won the presidency if he had run, it seems like a perfect time to recognize him with The Higgy. I submit the following achievements for the judge’s consideration:

World-Class Dispropotion of Reputation to Achievement

As Mark Hemingway pointed out when the race for the 2016 nomination was getting underway, one reason Biden had a strong incentive to run against Clinton was also a reason he might have had trouble gaining traction against her: He, like she, wanted to win the presdiency in order to secure a legacy – because he, like she, had built a strong reputation as a Very Serious Political Leader based on a long and distinguished career of accomplishing nothing in public service: “Biden spent 36 years in the Senate beginning in 1972, and if you blinked, you’d miss the highlight reel.”

His Vice Presidency did little to augment this record, as The Onion constantly reminded us.

Truly Epic Mouthrunning

Joe Biden’s mouth has been a running gag for so long, it’s hard to recapture an appreciation of just how unique his talent for blowhardism is. This, mind you, is a man in a line of work where the standards for blowhardism are very high. Don’t bring your complaints about listening to you boring uncle around here, kid – in DC, that stuff doesn’t even get past the bouncer.

But in a field of top-notch blowhards, Biden is literally a blowhard’s blowhard. A while back (can’t find it now) a Weekly Standard profile opened with the observation that Biden’s tendency to blowhardism is a running gag even to Biden himself; he arrives on the scene of a speech he is to give and when the host pleads with him not to run over, he smiles and blows her off, and proceeds to run something like double his allotted time.

He Totally Helped Invent Borking But Also Totally Didn’t!

Among the many ups and downs of the American republic, there have been only a handful of really disastrous, unambiguously bad and wrong changes in our constitutional structure – like direct election of senators (bye bye, federalism). One of the worst of these was the decision to import the politics of dishonest personal destruction into judicial nominations. Now, it is important not to romanticize the political past. But the reasonably fair treatment of judicial nominees really was a bipartisan tradition that we relied on to make American democracy work. There is now no realistic path to restore it and no serious substitute.

If we were talking about Ted Kennedy’s role in the original Bork hearings, I would say there’s a case that he was more BSDD than PLDD. Kennedy destroyed the career of an innocent man by abusing power – like that notorious asterisk in the Higgy record books, David Sarnoff.

Biden’s role was Higgyworthy because he did his best to eat his cake and have it too. He tried to appease his party’s irresponsible Left while also trying, as chairman of the hearings, to look fair and respectable. He thus positioned himself for his long career run as a Very Serious Man who is not to be taken seriously.

Eww.

Just eww.

Plagarism and Lies

I’m actually inclined to give Biden a break for the infamous Kinnock incident. Biden had used the Kinnock line with attribution on multiple previous occasions; it seems clear to me that he just didn’t remember to include the attribution this one time. A mistake, but it shouldn’t be a hanging offense. This strikes me as akin to the famous Howard Dean Howl – something that wouldn’t have been a big deal except that it could be interpreted in light of a larger public predisposition toward the candidate, fair or unfair (Dean was seen as ideologically nutty, Biden as a phony).

But let’s not forget that Biden also committed plagarism in law school! And told a series of lies about his law school accomplishments:

A few days later [after the Kinnock kerfuffle], Biden’s plagiarism incident in law school came to public light. Video was also released showing that when earlier questioned by a New Hampshire resident about his grades in law school, he had stated that he had graduated in the “top half” of his class, that he had attended law school on a full scholarship, and that he had received three degrees in college, each of which was untrue or exaggerations of his actual record.

What could be more Higgyworthy, more an expression of “arrogant delusions of shaping the world to meet their own will,” than plagarism and lying about your academic accomplishments?

Medal of Freedom

No, seriously, Joe Biden totally got the Medal of Freedom:

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Tell me that alone is not Higgyworthy.

Remember, The Al got its glorious start largely as a response to Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Let’s keep the tradition alive!

4 Comments | Greg Forster, William Higginbotham Inhumanitarian Award | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Setting the Ostrich Straight on Choice and Segregation

March 31, 2017

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Anna Egalite sets the record straight on her study that was misrepresented by the ostriches at the Century Foundation:

Potter cannot refute our findings, so she seeks to obfuscate them by carefully merging categories so as to define a “tie” as a loss.

Even to call the finding a “tie” is going too far. On net, which is all that counts, it was a win, not a tie. Big gains in public schools far outweighed the trivial negative effect in private schools. As I wrote:

When you’ve been in the education research business long enough, your eyes automatically roll by reflex whenever they read the words “mixed effect.” A mixed effect is a positive effect produced by a policy that the researcher doesn’t like.

3 Comments | civic values, Greg Forster, research reports, school choice | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Justice, Equal Opportunity, Diversity and School Choice

March 21, 2017

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(Guest post by Greg Forster)

This weekend I was delighted to participate in an hour-long school choice debate on Moody radio’s coast to coast network. The experience left me all the more convinced that choice advocates must continue to de-emphasize the rhetoric of markets and competition, and emphasize instead justice, equal opportunity, diversity and freedom. In that order.

The proponent of the other side had come armed with empty, superficial anti-market talking points. Her argument against choice was basically “we want justice, equal opportunity and diversity, not markets and competition.” So when I opened my case with “we want justice, equal opportunity, diversity and freedom, and here’s how school choice delivers them,” and didn’t use the words market or competition, she was flummoxed.

Her superficial talking points would have been highly effective if I had said “we want justice, equal opportunity, diversity and freedom so we ought to embrace competition and markets.” That is, sadly, because reason and logic are not the only forces in public debate. Her strategy (consciously or unconsciously) seems to have been to use certain trigger words and phrases to prompt emotional responses in the audience – responses unrelated to logic. This is, as JPGB readers know, the nearly universal strategy of choice opponents.

If we stop using the words that allow them to do this to us, we take their toy away.

Of course the quesiton of why choice improves public schools did come up, and here it was necessary to make the point that choice prevents schools from taking students for granted. The body of empirical studies on choice and what they find also came up a number of times. One can make these points without 1) making them the be-all and end-all, or 2) using the specific trigger words that allow the other side to work their emotional trickery.

A final point: personal experience, unfortunately, trumps data. I talked about having visited several private schools in Milwaukee whose existence depends on the voucher program, and the amazing things these particular schools are doing. Then I mentioned the studies finding that choice is impoving education in Milwaukee. I played this card again when a caller raised the inevitable racist talking point “parents in the suburbs are involved with their children’s education but people in those neighborhoods aren’t.” Instead of saying “the data show urban parents make good choices for their kids; that’s a stereotype we shouldn’t be spreading” I said “my experience in urban neighborhoods leads me to believe they care about their children as much as other parents; that’s a stereotype we shouldn’t be spreading.” And then I tried to squeeze in a mention of the data.

Of course if there were a clash between my experience and the data, I’d have to go with the data. But we have to limit our appeals to data when speaking in public. In general, we should present opinions based on experience and then briefly validate them with appeals to data.

12 Comments | competitive effects, Greg Forster, money myth, school accountability, school choice | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Illiberal Education Is Not a Public Good

March 10, 2017

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

University education isn’t a public good deserving taxpayer subsidies if it’s going to actively undermine our democratic and republican form of government, I write in OCPA’s Perspective in light of recent events at OU. Among other examples, this one stands out:

Recently, OU expelled students for using racial epithets, in flagrant violation of long-established First Amendment law. Six months later, the university paid $40,000 for a performance by a hip-hop artist who uses the same derogatory epithets. He also insults homosexuals, brags about physically abusing women in their genitals (hello, Donald Trump supporters!), and calls for the murder of police officers. Respect and toleration for others apparently go only one way at OU.

The question here is not whether the people targeted by OU in these cases are right or wrong. The question is whether OU believes that wrong ideas are best corrected and right ideas are best vindicated through open discussion and debate in a social atmosphere of free inquiry for all sides. The particular merits of the speech acts at issue in these controversies are, here as always, irrelevant to the question of whether everyone ought to have free speech.

Today, there is no longer a unique need for universities because they produce technical knowledge. Two hundred years ago, that may have been a key argument for institutions of higher learning; today, it is the universities who are constantly striving to catch up to Google and other leading technical innovators.

If universities are a public good, it can only be because there is an inseparable connection between truly liberal education and political freedom – because liberal education inculcates a respect for the integrity of the human mind that is the only possible justification for political freedom.

A hundred years ago, educator J. Gresham Machen summed up the connection between liberal education and political freedom: “Reasonable persuasion can thrive only in an atmosphere of liberty. It is quite useless to approach a man with both a club and an argument. He will very naturally be in no mood to appreciate our argument until we lay aside our club.” Machen even testified to the U.S. Congress against a scheme for federal control of education on grounds that it would remove freedom for diverse ideas in education. (The more things change, the more they stay the same!)

Because I’m not a university administrator, I welcome your free thoughts in reply!

4 Comments | civic values, Greg Forster, higher education, politics | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

When “Helping the Poor” Means “Keep Out”

February 3, 2017

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(Guest post by Greg Forster)

OCPA’s Perspective carries my latest on the unwisdom of means-testing school choice programs:

Sometimes the worst thing you can do for the poor is “help the poor.” What we want to do is tear down the walls that prevent poor people from making themselves into non-poor people. That’s what “helping the poor” ought to mean. But all too often, it really means building walls between poor and non-poor people, reinforcing the divide rather than tearing it down.

Throwing middle- and upper-income people out of school choice programs is a classic example of hurting the poor by “helping” them. It creates a sharp, government-enforced division between two separate and very unequal populations. On one side of the wall are poor people, who receive school choice; on the other are non-poor people, whose tax dollars provide them with school choice.

This division shuts down educational innovation, greatly weakens the political coalition in favor of choice (and of protecting private schools from government interference, which is clearly going to become a threat whether there are school choice programs or not) and in the long run creates an us-versus-them power competition between the poor and the non-poor that the poor are going to lose.

As always, your thoughts are welcome!

9 Comments | civic values, Greg Forster, politics, school choice | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Jason and EdChoice Hit the Big Time

January 28, 2017

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Jason and EdChoice have both hit the Big Time bigger than Blank Reg – Jason is joining the EdChoice team as national policy director.

Not sure whom this is a bigger win for! Jason hits the big time by joining EdChoice and EdChoice hits the big time by hiring Jason.

What I do know is that thanks to his work here at JPGB, an image search for Jason’s name turns up Dawn of the Dragon Slayer, Emperor Palpatine and “Who Watches the Watchmen?” Let’s make sure we keep Jason in the think tank business and well away from the Imperial Senate!

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In time, you will call ME National Policy Director!

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Posted by Greg Forster

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