MJS Showdown: Enlow Annihiliates

March 10, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

I’m late getting this up, but check out yesterday’s battle royale on the op-ed page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In this corner, the title holder – the champion of choice, the vizier of vouchers, the BMC of ESAs – Robert Enlow!

And in this corner, the challenger – the canard kid, the defenestration of education, the unionbomber – O. Ricardo Pimentel!

The subject: Gov. Walker’s proposal to lift the income restriction on the Milwaukee voucher program from 175% of the poverty level to 325%, or $72,635 for a family of four. Walker has an eye toward eventually lifting both the income restriction and the cap on the number of participants – which would make Milwaukee a universal voucher program.

They’re getting mental in the Sentinel!

There’s the bell, and here comes the champ!

CHOICE PLAN PUTS KIDS FIRST

Looks like he’s confident. Now we’ll see what the challenger’s got.

YES, YOU WERE ALL DUPED BY CHOICE

Ouch! That snooty condescention is going to cost him. But he’s on fire and the hits start coming: 

Now, $72,635 is not what it used to be, but it’s not low-income…

 The champ fires back:

There are almost 210,000 households in Milwaukee, with more than 90% of them earning less then $100,000. That’s less than the average Milwaukee Public Schools teacher earns in annual compensation, according to the Journal Sentinel.The point isn’t to attack teachers but to show that what many consider “poverty” to qualify for a school voucher is not the same amount of income it actually takes to survive – and thrive – in America.

The challenger’s reeling under the punishment. But he comes back with another attack!

If schools need fixing, the community needs to pull together to do that. Walker’s budget cuts $834 million in school aids. MPS says it will have to cut $74 million from its preliminary budget.

This prompts a round of stunning brutality from the champ:

School choice saves taxpayers big bucks. The per-pupil cost to educate a child in Milwaukee is $13,229, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Yet the voucher program funded by the state is about half that at $6,442, which covers a good portion of tuition at many parochial and private schools.

The challenger’s down! No, wait, sorry, he’s just looking for his teeth.

Okay, now he’s back in the fight.

Bet on it: If families that aren’t precisely low-income “need” help here in Milwaukee, it is just a matter of time that he’ll reason they need help in other communities with challenged school districts or perhaps even those in higher-performing districts.

So, this begs the question: Were low-income students – mostly youngsters of color – just useful pawns for the right?

Wow, he must really be hurting to play the race card so flagrantly. Still, there’s something vaguely resembling an argument in there somewhere. Let’s see how the champ handles it.

With a ceiling on the number of students who can participate, the program’s impact has been limited although still positive. That’s why Walker’s plan to open the program to all students is welcome news, as unrestricted freedom will work even better to improve MPS and increase the academic achievement of children.

For example, if a large grocer has a monopoly in a neighborhood and a convenience store opens on the corner selling milk and bread, there isn’t enough competition to force the large grocer to offer better products. However, if three convenience stores and two other larger grocery stores open, customers suddenly will see an improvement in the products available. The same happens in education, as parents always win with multiple education choices. Such will be the case in Milwaukee when all parents have the choice of a private or public school.

How is the challenger still on his feet? An amazing sight, ladies and gentlemen!

I never would have thought Robert Enlow was capable of brutalizing another human being so totally. Why isn’t the ref putting a stop to this inhumanity?

It looks like the challenger can’t even see where he’s punching. He’s just flailing now.

Gov. Scott Walker is on the cusp of making the much desired entanglement of public dollars and private schools – many of them religious – an unassailable reality.

Yes, unassailable. See what happens if middle-class folks are given vouchers and some subsequent governor or Legislature tries to take them away. Won’t happen…

Choice made sense as a matter of equity for low-income children with no options in a district that demonstrably served them poorly…

Yes to choice – but for those who really have none. And if extended for families beyond that? We can consider ourselves duped.

Did I hear that right? Vouchers violate the separation of church and state – but only when rich white kids use them. When poor black kids use them, they’re fine. And remember, it’s voucher supporters who are using poor black kids as political props.

And, sure enough, the challenger’s self-contradictory idiocy has prompted the ref to step in. Clearly this is one fighter who’s taken a few too many hits.

Enlow is carried out of the ring by a cheering throng of supporters!

No, wait – that’s the mob of union protestors who were bussed in from Madison to watch the fight. I guess Robert is headed for an “undisclosed location.”

And now over to Jay and Matt for the post-match show.

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

Wisconsin Republicans Bypass Missing Democrats

March 9, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The race is on to make a Hitler meltdown video for Wisconsin public sector unions– funniest one gets a highly coveted JPGB No-Prize!

In the meantime, here is a good one of the housing bubble.

 

1 Comment | politics | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Universities as Non-Profit Conglomerates

March 8, 2011

Mission creep is the bane of the modern university.  Once upon a time universities believed that their mission was the discovery and dissemination of knowledge.  Accordingly, they focused on teaching and research.

Universities are now straying far from this core mission and launching an array of new enterprises.  They run health-care systems, engage in property re-development, serve as venture capitalists for start-up businesses, etc…

To reflect their new status as non-profit conglomerates, universities espouse missions that are only tangentially related to their previous core function of education.  No longer do universities emphasize their founding mottos, such as “veritas” or “disciplina in civitatem.”  Instead, we see Ohio State University calling itself the “economic engine” of Ohio and declaring “We’re in the progress business.”

No they aren’t.  At least, they shouldn’t be.  They are in the knowledge business.  Universities forget this at their and everyone else’s peril.

The more that universities see their mission as progress or being an “economic engine,” the more they are straying into business at which they are less competent, on which they lose more money, and which distract them from their core responsibilities.

We have had experience with profit-seeking industrial conglomerates in the 1970s and it didn’t go very well.  Businesses grew large, unfocused, and overly bureaucratic.  But in the business-world, there is a remedy for this type of gross inefficiency.  Corporate raiders took-over these conglomerates and made a fortune breaking them up and selling off the pieces.  They realized that these businesses would be much more effective if they weren’t combined in a conglomerate.

The non-profit sector lacks a similar remedy.  Universities are expanding into a variety of businesses and there is no one to stop them other than a board of trustees which has been fully-co-opted by administrations (just as the boards of industrial conglomerates were co-opted by their management teams).  Raiders can’t purchase the grossly inefficient non-profit conglomerates masquerading as universities and make a fortune by breaking them up and selling off the pieces.  Instead, we increasingly suffer from administrative bloat and inferior quality education.

The only prospect for these non-profit conglomerates to be broken-up is that they tend to lose more money with each new venture.  We shouldn’t expect universities to be efficient at operating health-care systems, property re-development, or venture capitalist operations.  They claim to be attracted to each new enterprise as a way of making money to subsidize their core functions, but the reality is that their losses pile-up and their administrative over-head swells as they experience mission creep.  They all fantasize that their venture capitalist efforts will spawn the next Google, but I am willing to bet that the average return on start-up businesses for universities is negative.

Returning to our Ohio State University example, their total annual revenue has grown to $4.7 billion.  It becomes very difficult to run a $4.7 billion business that also teaches individual students well and conducts quality research.  As OSU’s president, Gordon Gee, describes his institution: “Universities are large and complex — ours more so than any other. Trying to describe all that we do in one sentence seems a daunting task.”  Gee, President Gee, maybe that should be a sign that OSU is trying to do too many things.

Of the $4.7 billion in annual revenue, OSU gets $2.3 billion from its Medical Center.  Why should universities also operate gigantic health care systems?  I understand that universities may want a relationship with hospitals to help train their students and provide opportunities for research, but frankly that can be done without having to own them.  And even if it were efficient to own a hospital for teaching and research opportunities, there is no reason to own an entire network of medical  facilities and services.

I’ll bet that OSU requires large government subsidies for both its medical and traditional educational operations.  And I’ll further bet that those loses could be reduced, on both ends, if they spun off their Medical Center.  The reasons to combine them and to add a host of other “economic engine” activities is not financial or educational efficiency.  The reason is to satisfy the desire for empire building among senior university officials and their compliant boards.

We may not have corporate raiders to break-up these non-profit conglomerates, but we will eventually have angry taxpayers who grow tired of subsidizing their losses.  When the subsidies get cut, universities will be forced to shed these extraneous and money losing ventures and focus once again on teaching and research.

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

Iowahawk Demolishes Krugman

March 5, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

When you have a Nobel Prize in economics, shouldn’t you refrain from making wild assertions easily dismissed with a casual amount of data analysis?

4 Comments | teacher union | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

I’m Now a Two-Fisted Blogger!

March 4, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Or something like that. First Things has anointed me to contribute to one of their blogs, First Thoughts. My debut post, responding to a new manifesto on the debt crisis by leaders of the evangelical left, is up.

2 Comments | blogging | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Transition to the Foundation for Excellence in Education

March 4, 2011

 (Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

I will be making a transition from full-time staff to a Senior Fellow with the Goldwater Institute after today, and joining the staff of the Foundation for Excellence in Education on Monday.  I am thrilled about joining Team Jeb, and plan to help GI find a great replacement to carry on our vital work. I will continue to be based in Arizona.

I am especially proud of the work that we did with our allies to improve the transparency in Arizona schools.  A large bipartisan majority of the Arizona legislature took action to replace an obviously inflated version of a national norm referenced exam.  Two years later, a large majority decided to replace fuzzy labels for public school achievement like “performing plus” and “excelling” with letter grades A-F based on the Florida formula.

Much work remains to be done, but I honestly think that we are on the right track for some significant improvement in Arizona public schools.

Arizona’s parental choice coalition has been busy as well. In the past few years, our coalition has taken action to improve the transparency, financial accountability and size of the scholarship tax credit program.  We lost our special needs voucher program in the Arizona Supreme Court, but have worked this session to replace the program with what we hope will be the nation’s first system of public contributions to Education Savings Accounts.

Since 1994, school choice programs in Arizona have mostly taken the edge off of an enormous amount of public school enrollment growth. The enrollment growth has stopped, and may prove absent for some time. Interesting and challenging days lie ahead for parental choice in Arizona.

Major elements of the Florida model are advancing this year. Here in my neighborhood out west, lawmakers have introduced reforms based upon the Florida experience in Arizona, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. The PISA exam reveals just how vast our K-12 problems have become but progress is not only necessary but possible.

I want to thank Darcy, the Goldwater Institute board of directors, staff, donors and allies for what has been one hellacious run. The best is yet to come for GI.  While it is sad for me to leave today, it is very exciting for me to join Team Jeb.

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

A Teacher’s Comment

March 3, 2011

I’ve pasted below, in full, the comment that a teacher wrote in response to Bob Costrell’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the expense of teacher health and retirement benefits in Milwaukee.

Before you read it, I just want to make a few points.  First, this type of comment is not nearly as rare as you might hope.  I’ve written on teacher pay myself and let me tell you that a non-trivial number of teachers react like this.  Second, when I read comments like this I wonder why their authors are still teaching.  They seem to hate their job, hate the kids, and are filled with rage.  If things are that awful perhaps they should look for other lines of work.  Third, comments like this make me worried about how bright these teachers are.  This guy clearly has difficulty with written English.  He also has a hard time rationally processing the argument raised by Bob Costrell’s piece.  The op-ed was about how Milwaukee teachers are paid 74.2 cents in benefits for every 1 dollar in salary.  That rate is unsustainable and lacks transparency because fringe rates are less visible than salary.  The comment does not rationally respond to any part of that argument.  How can this person teach anything if he can’t read and understand an argument?

Let me be clear, I do not think all or even most teachers are like this guy.  But a non-trivial number of them are.  All of us, especially the good teachers, should be focused on how we can get people like this out of the classroom as quickly as possible.

Here’s the comment:

Mr. Costrell (and anybody who agrees with Bob),

You obviously have never experienced “teaching” to its fullest.

Teachers are not typical workers.

You obviously haven’t made a life-long career of “teaching” which cannot be expressed/explained in one word “teaching” let alone a discussion blog: You stand in a room for 7 hours a day 25-35 kids, unmotivated, sometimes you[‘re the best they’ve got, many with broken homes and social issues, baggage. A teacher enters the profession to make a positive difference in the world, then a kid in the class tells you “F U, I’m not doing this…”

Why don’t you take a Special Ed Teacher’s place for one day, and get SPIT on, kicked, smacked, get your hair pulled, get called names, and I dare you to come back the next day, and do it all over again.

Why don’t you stand in a teacher’s place, and put in your 7-3 with barely a lunch, cramming it down your throat in 10 minutes, because you spend your “LUNCH” calling parents, helping kids, tutoring, and planning awesome lessons.

Why don’t you, after your 7-4 shift, continue to coach until 6pm, and then continue to coach at the game, so the bus can return to the school at 10pm, and you can get home by 11pm, just to wake up at 5am and do it again the next day…I dare you. (and you wonder where our extra pay comes from).

I dare you to try to eat your lunch after a kid tells you sick stories, stories that would make you sick for weeks, where DCFS gets involved, that I can’t even share due to confidentiality and legality.

Why don’t you give it 150% everyday, all of the above, in addition to accepting constructive criticism from administrative and government demands for higher test scores, while balancing trying to teach your kids “critical thinking” skills, in addition to solely passing a standardized test, just to meet NCLB.

I dare you to step in a teacher’s footsteps for a day, and then standing up for what you believe in, and trying to keep your basic bargaining rights, and then losing your rights, and go back and give it 75% or more….do you seriously think a teacher would give it their all from that point on.

Why don’t you call all your teachers and thank them for everything they taught you: the ability to write what you believe, even though what you believe is a bunch of B S.

I dare you to send your kids to a school now, after posting your opinion.

Actually, good luck to anybody sending their kids to Wisconsin public schools after insulting the Wisconsin teachers like that. Teachers are more than just “teachers”. Don’t you forget it.

Mr Costrell, why don’t you walk in a teacher’s footsteps, and make a lifelong career out of it, before you open your stupid mouth.

FYI-you’re not a teacher, you’re a Harvard professor. Get off your high horse.

9 Comments | teacher quality | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

School Choice Is Back!

March 3, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Check out my latest for the OCPA – school choice is back!

So vouchers are back from the dead. The question now is, are they resurrected in triumph, or are they really an undead abomination? Are vouchers, like Gandalf, “returned from death” in a new and more powerful form, ready to do battle with evil once again? Or are they like zombies, mindlessly dragging themselves up out of the grave with no will of their own and no purpose?

The smart people will say it’s the latter. Vouchers don’t work—after all, Milwaukee schools are still awful. They’re a moribund idea with nothing new to contribute. Republicans favor them because they’re mindlessly enslaved to a failed free-market ideology, just like the walking dead under the control of a wicked sorcerer.

They’re wrong on the facts. Vouchers do, in fact, work. Ten studies have examined how vouchers impact students who use them—studies using the gold-standard method of social science, random assignment that separates treatment and control groups by lottery. Nineteen studies have examined how vouchers impact public schools. This large body of high-quality evidence consistently finds that vouchers improve results. (See the forthcoming updated edition of my report for the Foundation for Educational Choice, “A Win-Win Solution.”)

However, although the smart people are wrong on the facts, they inadvertently point to a real danger.

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

Fordham Zig-Zags Again

March 3, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Back on September 9 of last year Jay told you to mark your calendars so you’d remember exactly when Fordham began its inevitable backtracking on the rush to fix education through the iron fist of federal power.

Check this out from the latest Gadfly. Here’s the key part:

But as the two federally funded assessment consortia go about their work and flesh out their plans to develop tests aligned to the Common Core, danger lurks. One big challenge arises from their enthusiasm for “through-course assessments”—interim tests that students would take three or four times a year in lieu of a single end-of-year summative assessment…[O]nce a state adopts a new testing regimen that compels instructional uniformity, only private schools will be able to avoid it. This is particularly problematic for public schools—like charters—that were designed to be different. We still favor the Common Core effort and the trade-off of results-based accountability in return for operational freedom. (We also favor the development of high-quality curricular materials that help teachers handle the Common Core.) But it’s time to ask whether the move to high-stakes interim assessments will make that trade-off untenable.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Fordham position now appears to be:

  • A single national standard is OK.
  • A single national curriculum is OK.
  • A single national assessment test at the end of each year is OK.
  • Attaching “high stakes” to that single national test is OK.
  • Having the federal government fund and “co-ordinate” all the above is OK.
  • But if you give the national high-stakes test more than one time per year, THE WORLD IS ENDING and the whole package of national standards/curricula/assessments may need to be called off entirely!

Those of us who saw all this coming and were called cranks and paranoiacs for predicting it are still waiting for our apology.

2 Comments | instructional reform, school accountability | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Have I Lost My Counter Culture Street Cred?

March 2, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Teacher Beat Blog over at Ed Week has written on the Bill Gates endorsement of the Rock Star Pay for Rock Star Teachers concept. Teacher Beat notes that the Goldwater Institute published a study promoting this concept a couple of years ago, noting:

But the endorsement by Gates, reinforced by his NGA presentation, will presumably push the class-size proposal into mainstream thought, given the level of support shown him by his primary audience.

Wait, I thought I was mainstream. Does this make me a crossover?

Or someone who sold out?

Maudlin existential crisis alert!

I need to let Mr. Gates know about Carpe Diem. I still think this idea has merit, but practioners have already advanced beyond this concept.

Leave a Comment » | class size myth, instructional reform | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

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