Team Maverick?

December 15, 2008

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin: “John McCain and I, we’re a couple of mavericks, and gosh darn it, we’re gonna take that maverick energy right to Washington and we are gonna use it to fix this financial crisis and everything else that is plaugin’ this great country of ours.

Queen Latifah as Gwen Ifill: How will being a maverick solve the financial crisis? What will you do?

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin: You know, we’re gonna take every aspect of this crisis, and look at it, and ask ‘What would a maverick do with this situation?’ and then, you know, do that.”

Mike, pally, careful with the maverick talk! You’ve got to at least give us all some space from the election so that just hearing the word doesn’t sound like fingernails scratching a chalkboard.

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Posted by matthewladner

The Year That Was

December 15, 2008

It’s getting to be that time when people make lists of good and bad things that happened during the preceding year.  Here’s mine from an interview with Michael F. Shaughnessy of EducationNews.org:

What were the 5 most important developments during 2008 that contributed to reform of K-12 education?

 1)     Barack Obama strongly endorsed the idea that expanding choice and competition is an important part of improving public schools.  He limited his support to expanding choice and competition through the introduction of more charter schools, but the theory is not fundamentally different than doing the same with vouchers.  Whether Obama follows through on this campaign position or not, it is now clear that it is considered politically desirable among both Democrats and Republicans to support choice and competition.  Holdouts from this view, including the teacher unions on the left and curriculum-focused reformers on the right, are being increasingly marginalized.

2)     Sarah Palin, in her only major policy speech, pushed the idea of special education vouchers.  Like Obama embracing choice and competition, Palin embracing special ed vouchers is a symbol of the political attractiveness of the policy.  Special ed voucher programs already exist in Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Utah, and Arizona (pending the resolution of a court case).  I’d expect the idea to spread to several more states in the next four years regardless of Sarah Palin’s political prospects.

3)     Reform ideas, including choice, merit pay, curbing teacher tenure, and promoting alternative certification, are gaining mainstream acceptance in the Democratic Party largely thanks to the efforts of Democrats for Education Reform.  An important indication of this political shift was an event at the Democratic National Convention organized by the Democrats for Education Reform at which an audience of about 500 cheered speakers denouncing the teacher unions and embracing reform ideas. The Democratic supporters of reform largely (but not exclusively) consist of urban minority leaders, including Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Adrian Fenty, Cory Booker, Kevin Chavous, Al Sharpton, and Marion Barry.  Go ahead and make all the Sharpton and Barry jokes you like, but this (mostly) minority defection of urban Democrats from union orthodoxy is like a political earthquake that will have important implications for future reform politics.  And it’s true that some conservatives have begun backtracking on reform ideas, including Sol Stern, Diane Ravitch, and depending on the day of the week, Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli.  But if the reform movement has traded some conservatives for the new generation of minority Democratic leadership, I think we’ve come out ahead.

4)     We saw a string of new or expanded school choice programs in 2008.  Georgia adopted a universal tax-credit supported voucher program.  Louisiana adopted a voucher program for New Orleans as well as a personal tax deduction for private school tuition.  Florida expanded and decreased burdensome regulation on its tax-credit supported voucher program.  And Utah increased and secured a source of funding for its special ed voucher program.  For a movement declared dead more times than Generalissimo Francisco Franco, school choice continues to grow.

5)     I’ll take the privilege of the final development to brag about the launch of the new doctoral program in education policy in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.  It may not have been among the 5 most important developments in the whole country, but it was a big development in my little world.  With the first cohort of students starting in the Fall of 2009 (supported by a pool of generous fellowships) and a collection of outstanding faculty, we have the potential to significantly increase the number of reform-oriented researchers in academia, think-tanks, and foundations.

What were the 5 most important developments during 2008 that hindered reform of K-12 education?

1)     The reform movement lost two great champions this year with the passing of John Brandl and J. Patrick Rooney.  Brandl, who had been the Democratic leader of Minnesota’s state senate and Dean of the University of Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey School of Public Policy, contributed significantly to the argument that choice was not only efficient, but also enhanced opportunities for the disadvantaged.  He helped create the state’s pioneering charter school law and other choice programs.  Brandl also served as mentor to many of today’s leading choice researchers.  Rooney, who had always been active in the civil rights movement, personally sponsored scholarships for disadvantaged students to attend private schools.  His privately financed program became a model for publicly funded voucher and tax-credit supported scholarship programs.

2)     In 2008 we saw a number of “implementation” problems undermine otherwise promising reform initiatives.  For example, Georgia adoption a social promotion policy that required students to pass a test or follow a formal exemption policy to be promoted in certain grades.  My research with Marcus Winters on a similar policy in Florida suggested that it would improve student achievement.   But in several districts around Georgia more than 90% of students were promoted without passing the test and without following the formal exemption procedure.  They simply disregarded the law on a large scale with no consequences for any district or school employee.  Another promising idea undermined by implementation was Reading First. There is a lot of rigorous science to support a phonics-based reading approach, but getting public schools to do it well is a completely different matter.  Implementation also appears to have done-in a promising teacher mentoring program.  I could go on, but the point is that there is no shortage of clever reform practices out there.  The problem is that without addressing the lack of proper incentives in the public education system to improve, we regularly see these clever practices fall flat. We need incentive-based reforms along with reform of educational practices.

3)     Earlier this year an Arizona court struck down voucher programs for students with disabilities and students in foster care on the grounds that the state constitution forbids aid to private schools.  This month defenders of the program argued on appeal to the state Supreme Court that the program aids students, not schools.  And the state already sends disabled students to private schools when it is determined that the public schools are unable to provide adequate services.  That practice may also be in jeopardy, even though it is actually required by federal law (IDEA).  Who knows how this will all be resolved, since courts can adopt any interpretation they like, reasonable or unreasonable.  But court action has prevented these beneficial programs from operating and threatens to kill them.

4)     A Florida court struck down the ability of a state commission to approve charter schools.  If upheld by the (notorious) Florida Supreme Court, only school districts could approve charters and existing charters approved by the state commission may have to be closed.  Giving districts the exclusive power to grant charters essentially allows the districts to decide with whom they will have to compete.  It’s like giving McDonalds the exclusive power to approve the opening of all new restaurants.  The state Supreme Court used the same narrow interpretation of clauses in the state constitution to strike down the Opportunity Scholarship voucher program, so the prospects for a vibrant and competitive charter sector in Florida are not good.

5)     And finally the most disappointing development of 2008 is that we spent another half trillion dollars on public education without significantly altering the dysfunctional system that fails to teach a quarter of 8th grade students to read at a basic level or get them to graduate from high school.  Results for minority students are significantly worse.  The economic bailout may be a $700 billion enterprise, but the public school system spends almost that much each and every year.  Every year that we spend that money without fundamentally altering how we operate public education is another fortune wasted and another year lost for millions of students.

(Note: corrected spelling of Marion Barry’s name)

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

Update on Fiscal Impact of Milwaukee Vouchers

December 15, 2008

(Guest Post by Robert Costrell)

Does the funding formula for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) adversely affect Milwaukee taxpayers, even as it benefits taxpayers statewide?  The answer I gave in my recent Education Next article is yes, based on data through the 2007-08 school year.  Since publication, some confusion has arisen as to whether this result still holds for the current school year, as reported in the news and opinion columns of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (“Fairness is in the Eye of the Beholder,” by Alan J. Borsuk and “Taxpayers, Parents on the Same Side,” by Patrick McIlheran) as well as an early version of Greg Forster’s post, since corrected here.

So let me update my Ed Next figures to the 2008-09 school year (hereafter FY09, for fiscal year).  The answer, in short, is still yes:  the adverse impact of the MPCP formulas on Milwaukee taxpayers continues unabated, even as the statewide benefits grow.  This is true, despite some modest efforts over the last two years by the Wisconsin legislature to address the problem.

First, let’s consider the size of the pie — the net savings available from the voucher program.  These savings derive from the fact that voucher expenses are $6,607 per child, while state and local revenues for MPS are set by the revenue limit at $9,462 per child.   These public savings are partially offset by the voucher expenditures on students who would have attended private schools anyway.  My best estimate is that these students comprise 10 percent of MPCP’s 19,500 students (see my full report for an explanation of this estimate, as well as my evaluation of different estimates).  Under this assumption, the net savings available to taxpayers totaled $37.2 million in FY09, up from $31.9 million in FY08 (the figure given in my Ed Next article).

The problem lies in the distribution of these benefits.  The savings accrue entirely to property taxpayers outside of Milwaukee and to Wisconsin state taxpayers:  Milwaukee property taxpayers do not share in these savings. 

The fiscal impact of MPCP on Milwaukee property taxes is driven by the fact that 45% of voucher expenditures are deducted from MPS aid, even though MPS receives no aid for these students.   As I explain in Ed Next, it certainly made sense to remove MPCP students from MPS enrollment counts when the system was reformed in 2000, but it made no sense to continue to deduct any of the voucher expenses from their remaining aid.  Milwaukee is allowed to raise its property taxes to recoup this deduction (the “choice levy”), and has to do so if it wants to maintain MPS’ per pupil revenues at the level specified by the revenue limit formula.   That is the essence of the “funding flaw.”

This is partially offset by 2 things.  First is that the removal of MPCP students from MPS enrollment counts saves the state aid money and some of that is passed on in statewide property tax relief; Milwaukee receives a small share of this.  The other offset, which began last year, is “high poverty aid,” an ad hoc appropriation to alleviate a portion of Milwaukee’s choice levy.

For FY09, these 3 pieces are $58.0 million (45% of voucher expenditures) minus $3.4 million (my estimate of Milwaukee’s share of statewide property tax relief) minus $9.9 million (“high poverty aid”) equals $44.7 million.  This is the adverse impact on Milwaukee property taxpayers of the voucher funding mechanism. 

It is worth emphasizing that this impact is on property taxpayers, not Milwaukee Public Schools.  Per pupil revenues available to MPS are unaffected by the voucher program, so long as Milwaukee fully utilizes the tax capacity granted to it under the MPCP formulas.   Milwaukee did utilize its tax capacity in FY09 (as it has done in all other recent years, with one exception noted below).

The picture is different for the rest of the state.  For FY09, I estimate the net benefit to property taxpayers outside of Milwaukee at $52.0 million, and the net benefit to state taxpayers at $30.0 million.   (The assumptions underlying these calculations and the basis for them are laid out in my Ed Next piece and my longer report for the School Choice Demonstration Project, along with details of the calculations.)

Taken all together, the net benefit to Wisconsin and Milwaukee taxpayers from the voucher program is $52.0 million (benefit to property taxpayers outside Milwaukee) plus $30.0 million (benefit to state taxpayers) minus $44.7 million (adverse effect on Milwaukee taxpayers) equals $37.2 million.   This is the net savings figure given above.

The pattern of winners and losers is depicted below, in the update of my Ed Next Figure 4.  The loss to Milwaukee property taxpayers is depicted by the blue bars in negative territory; the gains to other property taxpayers and state taxpayers are depicted by the maroon and tan bars in positive territory.

What was the impact of the “high poverty aid” program, enacted last year to alleviate the “funding flaw?”  As the diagram indicates, because of this additional aid, the adverse impact on Milwaukee property taxpayers for FY09 is no worse than in FY07, which is to say it did not grow as it would have without the aid. 

In addition, last year Milwaukee chose, for the first and only time in recent years, not to tax all the way up to the limit allowed by law.  There was $15.1 million of unused tax capacity.   Consequently, the diagram’s blue bar depicting the adverse impact on Milwaukee property taxpayers is shorter than it would otherwise have been for FY08.   This means that MPS received less than the per pupil revenue limit.   The figure attained was $8,978 instead of the revenue limit of $9,141.  The per pupil revenue still exceeded the FY07 figure, but did not increase as much as state law allowed.  In other words, this $15.1 million represents the shortfall for MPS, relative to the per pupil revenue limit.  This is depicted in the figure by the green bar for FY08, in negative territory. 

This year, Milwaukee has resumed its past practice of taxing up to the revenue limit, so the green bar disappears and the blue bar is no longer truncated:  there is no adverse impact on MPS, as the property taxpayers of Milwaukee make good on the full amount of the choice levy.

To summarize: 

(1)  Net savings from the Milwaukee voucher program continues to grow along with MPCP enrollments, and the widening gap between the voucher and the MPS revenue limit.   I estimate the net fiscal benefit at $37.2 million for FY09, up from $31.9 million for FY08.

(2) Milwaukee property taxpayers do not share in these benefits.  I estimate the adverse impact for FY09 to be $44.7 million.   The “high poverty aid” enacted in FY08 has kept the adverse impact from growing beyond its FY07 level, but has not materially reduced it either. 

The “funding flaw” persists.  As I stated in the conclusion of my Ed Next piece, “It remains to be seen whether, as the program grows, this flaw will undermine it or instead lead legislators to complete the reforms … so the benefits can be shared by all.

bob-3

 (Note 1:  the bars depicted for FY08 are revised from those published in Ed Next.  There I assumed Milwaukee taxed up to the revenue limit, as it had for preceding years.   This one-year departure from past practice came to my attention when the article was in press, too late to amend Figure 4.)

(Note 2: Alan Borsuk’s article, “Fairness is in the Eye of the Beholder,” includes a short summary of my Ed Next article, which states that I conclude “MPS is losing money […] on a per-pupil basis.”  My article actually states, “To avoid this result [MPS revenue loss on a per-pupil basis], MPS is still allowed to offset the [voucher] deduction by raising property taxes and it has chosen to do so.”  As the diagram above shows, the loss is for Milwaukee property taxpayers, not MPS, except for FY08, when Milwaukee chose not to offset the entire choice levy.)

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Is Lost Like Riverworld?

December 12, 2008

It recently dawned on me that the TV series, Lost, resembled the Riverworld series of books written by Philip Jose Farmer.  Given that I hadn’t read these books since I was about 13, I started to re-read them to see if there really were similarities and if the resolution of Riverworld might tell us something about what will happen in Lost.

Let me first say that you should re-read books you really liked at 13 with caution.  It wasn’t quite as great as I remembered.  I wonder what else I thought was really cool at 13 that turns out to be mediocre.  No wait, I don’t want to know.  In any event,  I was struck by the plot and thematic similarities to Lost.

The basic premise  of Riverworld is that every person who ever lived on Earth up until 2008, all 36 billion or so, is resurrected on a giant planet that consists of one super-long river that zig-zags from pole to pole and back again.  The river is lined by impassably huge mountains, so one can only move up or down the river, not over the mountains.  Everyone is reborn healthy at the age of 25 and is provided with food daily from special stones.  If they die in the Riverworld, they are just reborn somewhere else along the river.

The hero of the plot is the explorer, Sir Richard Francis Burton.  He is determined to discover who created the Riverworld and why.  He decides to find the headwaters of the great river, just as he strove to discover the headwaters of the Nile in real life.  Along the way he encounters all sorts of historical figures from different places and eras, including the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland (Alice Liddell), Hermann Goering, Samuel Clemens, and others.

Here are the similarities between Riverworld and Lost:

  • In both people are stranded (perhaps after “dying”) in a place and are trying to figure out who made that place and why they are there.
  • In both the need for food and shelter is largely eliminated — in Riverworld the stones provide food and clothing and the weather is mild, while in Lost the Dharma stockpiles provide food and the weather is mild.
  • In both the purpose of their being there seems to have something to do with their moral development.
  • In Riverworld the people controlling the planets (The Ethicals) plant spies among people when they are resurrected.  In Lost the “Others” also plant spies among the Losties.
  • In both the spies are detected and the control of the Ethicals/Others is challenged.
  • Both the resurrectees and the Losties form new “governments” and split into competing factions that fight against each other.
  • People do not appear to age on the Island or in the Riverworld.
  • In both it appears that dead people come back.  In Riverworld it is more obvious.  But in Lost the dead regularly visit the living (e.g. Christian Shephard, Harper Stanhope, Mikhail Bakunin, etc…). 
  • Amazingly there is also a character (based on the historical figure) Mikhail Bakunin in Riverworld.

And I’m not the only person who sees connections between Riverworld and Lost.  While searching for material to verify similarities between the two I cam across this post on the Entertainment Weekly site by “Doc Jensen” that concludes: “C’MON, PEOPLE! There MUST be a CONNECTION!”

Let’s say that the Lost writers were at least partially inspired by Riverworld.  If that’s the case we might expect that the purpose of the Island will be like the purpose of the Riverworld.  Both may be designed to identify who is morally worthy to reproduce and create future civilizations.  Perhaps the whispers are the spirits of the deceased who sometimes find a way to materialize in a new body.  Perhaps the obsession the Others have with getting babies born on the Island is to re-embody those spirits or to figure out a way to create the future civilization.  Perhaps Aaron is important either because he embodies an old spirit or because he has passed the test to carry-on the new civilization.

Of course, Lost is not bound by Riverworld.  And maybe the connections are largely coincidence or just common themes in sci-fi.  But I’m guessing that J.J. Abrams and the writers were influenced by Riverworld. After all, Abrams is my age and may well have read the same books when he was 13.  So, Riverworld may give us some clues about where Lost is heading.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Correction on MJS and the “Funding Flaw”

December 12, 2008

white-out

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Yesterday I posted an analysis of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article. The article reported as fact, not opinion, that the Milwaukee voucher program has a “funding flaw” because it fails to pay the Milwaukee public schools to teach students whom the Milwaukee public schools do not teach.

The occasion for the article was a debate over whether it was still true, as it had been in previous years, that the Milwaukee voucher program increases costs for local property taxpayers – this is what people had always meant in the past when they talked about the “funding flaw” in the program.

The claim made by the local voucher movement that the program no longer increased costs for property taxpayers seemed solid to me at the time, and the voucher opponents quoted in the article tacitly accepted it by desperately trying to change the subject. To my knowledge, nobody else had disputed the claim. So I reported the claim as true.

Robert Costrell, who knows more about this than anyone, now says he thinks the claim that vouchers no longer cost extra in local property taxes is incorrect. Apparently it comes down to whether a certain element in the formula varies by enrollment or not.

So I’ve attached a correction to the original post, and I apologize that I didn’t wait longer to hear from more people before reporting the claim as true.

That said, the bulk of my post was on another subject (the attempt by some Milwaukee politicians to use the voucher program to fleece state taxpayers, and MJS’s docility in reporting their obviously specious claims as true) and on that subject I stand by everything I wrote. I only hope my carelessness on this other point doesn’t help get MJS off the hook for its irresponsibility.

(Edited to more clearly differentiate Costrell’s thoughts from my own.)

(UPDATE: Bob Costrell’s new analysis is here.)

1 Comment | blogging, journalism, school funding, vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Why JPGB Beats Edwize

December 11, 2008

 

  Edwize is a blog by Leo Casey that is sponsored by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the New York affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers.  The UFT has tens of millions of dollars at its disposal and thousands upon thousands of members.  Jay P. Greene’s Blog (JPGB) by contrast has a $25 registration fee for the domain name and a couple of laptops. 

Despite this huge disparity in resources, JPGB has a significantly larger audience than does Edwize.  According to Technorati JPGB has an authority rating of 95 while Edwize has a rating of 74.  An authority rating measures how many other blogs link to a given blog during the last 180 days, which is meant to capture how much influence a blog has in the blogoshpere.  In addition, each post on JPGB generates about 4 or 5 comments, on average, while posts on Edwize generate about 1 or 2 comments, on average.  Fewer comments suggest fewer readers and/or material on which people do not care to comment. 

None of these measures is perfect, but it is clear that JPGB beats Edwize.  Why?

The primary challenge for Edwize is that it has to tout teacher union views on education issues.  And those views are mostly junky.  So, Edwize suffers because it takes significantly more resources to interest people in crappy ideas than in sensible ones. 

In case you doubt that the unions have to push junky ideas, ask yourself whether it is sensible to have a system of education in which students are mostly assigned to schools based on where they live; where teachers are almost never fired, no matter how incompetent they are; where teachers are paid almost entirely based on how many years they’ve been around rather than on how well they do their job; where teachers are required to be certified even though there is little to no evidence that certification is associated with quality; and where all teachers are paid the same regardless of subject, even though we know that the skills required for expertise on certain subjects have much greater value in the market than other subjects.

The mental gymnastics required to sustain the union world view has a much greater “degree of difficulty” than the views that are regularly expressed on JPGB.  And the resources required to generate support for these union views are enormous.  You need millions of people financially benefiting from these policies to volunteer as campaign workers.  You need millions of dollars in union dues for campaign contributions.  You need a large team of paid staff in every state and in Washington, DC.  It takes an army and a fortune for the unions to hold their ground.

This not only helps explain why JPGB beats Edwize, but also why reformers are able to beat the unions in the policy arena.  It’s true that the unions win most of the time.  But given their enormous advantage in resources, it is amazing that the unions ever lose.  The reason that the unions lose as often as they do is that their policy positions are much more difficult to defend intellectually.

So, we should feel sorry for Leo Casey and his union comrades.  They may have a lot more money and a lot more people, but they constantly have to defend obviously dumb ideas.

(edited for clarity and to add photo)

3 Comments | blogging, politics, teacher pay | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

MJS: Failure to Steal Money Is a “Funding Flaw”

December 11, 2008

pickpocket

“I beg of you, Monsieur, watch yourself. Be on guard. This place is full of vultures . . . vultures everywhere. Everywhere.”

HT mcgady.net

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Update: Robert Costrell says he thinks the claim that vouchers are now saving money for local taxpayers is incorrect. Apparently it comes down to a question of whether a certain item in the funding formula varies by enrollment or not. Costrell knows this stuff better than anyone, so I’m happy to defer to him.

At the time I wrote this post, I only had the MJS story to go on, and even the school choice opponents quoted in the article (Mayor Barrett and Superintendent Andrekopoulos) weren’t disputing the savings claim. So I wrote the post as though the savings claim had been implicitly accepted by voucher opponents because it had, in fact, been implicitly accepted by them. But I shouldn’t have actually reported the claim as true just because voucher opponents were implicitly accepting it as true, and I apologize for my carelessness.

That said, the MJS story is still amazingly irresponsible and I don’t regret a word of what I said about its complicity in Barrett and Andrekopoulos’s attmept to fleece Wisconsin taxpayers. I only hope that my own carelessness doesn’t help get MJS off the hook for printing this stuff.

(This update has been edited to more clearly differentiate Costrell’s thoughts from my own.)

For years, the Milwaukee voucher program had what the locals call “the funding flaw,” under which some local Milwaukee property tax revenues were diverted for every student who used the voucher. When the program was first enacted in 1990, there was no “funding flaw,” and it saved money for both the state and local Milwaukee taxpayers, just like most voucher programs. But in 1999 the rules were changed, and the program began diverting property taxes; the state profited handsomly at the expense of the city, using the voucher program as an intermediary. As a result, from 1999 until 2007, the program was a drain on local resources. The school choice movement in Milwaukee never supported this practice and worked to help stop it, but of course state politicians were never interested in helping, and the voucher program was always blamed for the local tax drain.

But now things have changed. This year, the program is once again saving local money – the amount the city loses from the program is now down below what it saves in reduced educational costs because it doesn’t have to teach the students in the program. So there is no more “funding flaw.”

Not so fast! Over the weekend, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a very strange story claiming, not as opinion but as fact, that the “funding flaw” was never just about property taxes. Another, much more serious “funding flaw” has been lurking unnoticed in the bushes for all these years – namely, that the program fails to steal money from state taxpayers and transfer it to Milwaukee public schools.

I’m not sure anyone had ever heard about this “other” funding flaw before now. Call it the super double secret funding flaw.

1) The article begins by citing an argument between voucher proponents and opponents over whether the “funding flaw” still exists. It evenhandedly reports the claims on both sides: on the one hand, the school choice movement has facts and figures showing that voucher kids are now a net gain, not a net drain, for Milwaukee taxpayers. On the other hand, property taxes are going up and the people who run the public school system “associate a lot of that increase” with the voucher program. Facts and figures on one side versus mere assertion on the other – well, obviously there are two equally valid points of view about this controversial question! Who says the media aren’t evenhanded?

 

2) The article then lays out the facts: the “funding flaw” was always that a voucher student cost Milwaukee more than a public school student in property taxes. Now that’s not true anymore. The school choice folks are pointing out this inconvenient truth and saying, reasonably enough, that there’s no more funding flaw.

Then we get this: 

[Milwaukee Mayor Tom] Barrett and MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos dismiss that notion, saying the amount of property tax dollars per student illustrated only one part of the flaw. It was the main thing they pointed to because, frankly, it was easier to understand than other aspects. But, they say, the other aspects are actually a bigger deal.

So all these years they’ve been making a big deal over less important issues while concealing the real problem, but now, at last, they’re prepared to come clean and talk about the real problem.

Did you catch the casual insertion of the word “frankly” in the second sentence? This is the MJS reporter speaking in his own voice rather than quoting – but he’s such a puppet of the system’s defenders that their “frankly” comes out of his mouth. When Barrett stubs his toe, do MJS reporters say “ouch”?

 

 3) Then comes the really amazing part. MJS reports, as fact and not opinion, that the funding flaw always consisted of two problems. The first was the property tax issue, which now favors vouchers rather than public school kids – although when the story gets into the details of this, it never directly admits this as fact; it is reported as a claim being made by school choice proponents, and only sophisticated readers will be able to figure out from the reporter’s convoluted words that what the school choice proponents are saying is, in fact, indisputably true.

The alleged other part of the funding flaw, the super double secret one, is that voucher students are not counted as students being educated in Milwaukee public schools for purposes of setting the funding levels for Milwaukee public schools.

 

Got that? MJS reports as fact, not opinion, that the voucher program is flawed because it fails to force the state to pay Milwaukee public schools to teach kids that Milwaukee public schools do not, in fact, actually teach.

 

But of course the story doesn’t say this as clearly as I’ve just put it, or it would be obvious that this is sophistry in the service of a naked political agenda. A reader who didn’t already know the ins and outs of school finance would never realize from the article that the supposed other “flaw” is that the program doesn’t pay Milwaukee schools to teach students whom they don’t teach.

 

4) The article then goes on to note that fixing the super double secret funding “flaw” would be deeply unpopular because it would take money away from other areas of the state. The unstated implication is that it would be much more sensible to scrap the unworkable voucher program altogether.

Well, no kidding it would be unpopular for MPS to try to use the voucher program as an excuse to take money from state taxpayers to teach students that MPS doesn’t teach. Taking money to do something that you don’t do is called stealing.

What’s really galling is that this attempt to steal from state taxpayers is framed (by MJS as well as by Barrett and Andrekopoulos) as an attempt to “fix” an alleged funding “flaw” – the implication being that money is somehow being unfairly withheld from MPS. So the guy warning you about thieves is in fact the thief. I think that may actually be Andrekopoulos’s picture at the top of this post.

 

5) The article then parades Robert Costrell’s big cost analysis showing that vouchers cost more than they save for local taxpayers. At the very end of the paragraph, it quickly notes that this analysis “does not include figures from this fall.” In other words, the conclusion that the voucher program costs Milwaukee money is out of date because the facts on the ground have changed, and it has no relevance to the story (except by confusing readers who aren’t paying close attention).

 

6) Finally, at the end, the school choice movement is allowed to come back onstage and point out that Milwaukee public school spending and state aid to Milwaukee have both been growing relentlessly for years. Then we get this:

 

Andrekopoulos said in an interview that the main point is that something has to be changed, and the state funding system, including how vouchers are paid for, is the place to turn.

He said that Milwaukee residents are facing a 14.6% tax levy increase this year, even though the actual MPS budget went up less than 2%.

“Doesn’t that seem wrong?” Andrekopoulos said. “Something’s not right.”

This, like the previous claims about the super double secret “other funding flaw,” is sophistry pure and simple. Property taxes pay for much more than just schools, and the MPS budget gets a lot of revenue from sources other than property taxes. So these figures are apples and oranges; you can’t compare the two.

 

It would be like the UAW arguing that Rick Wagoner’s salary costs GM more than the UAW jobs bank, because budget category A (which includes spending on Wagoner’s salary, engine parts, steel bolts, and the company health plan) costs more than budget category B (which includes spending on the jobs bank, tires, car doors, and lunches in GM company cafeterias).

 

Until you break down the categories and look at what the individual components cost, you’re just blowing smoke. And when you break down the categories, vouchers save Milwaukee money – which is exactly what the MJS article established all the way back at the beginning.

I’ve seen a lot of irresponsible journalism, but this article just leaves me dumbfounded.

(UPDATE: Bob Costrell’s new analysis is here)

2 Comments | journalism, school funding, vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

AFT suggests LBO for Public Schools

December 11, 2008

end-wall-st-bull-collapsed-slide

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Leo over at EdWize (the AFT blog) has posed the question: “When you have spent that last decade telling everyone who would listen that public schools should be for sale, on what grounds do you complain about someone who would sell a Senate seat to the highest bidder?”

Leo has a different recollection of my past decade than I do, as I don’t remember ever telling anyone that public schools ought to be for sale, much less doing it constantly. Never mind that however, I think that Leo is on to something here. The prime targets for leveraged buyouts are companies whose stock valuation falls below the value of their assets. This of course only occurs through gross mismanagement, where companies become worth less than the stuff they have lying around. The management of such companies should be seen at best as incompetent, and at worst as rent-seeking leeches drawing paychecks while destroying value.

Many American school districts likely fall squarely into just such a state of mismanagement- taking $10,000 per year per student, but failing to teach 36% of 4th graders how to read, and failing to get half of African American and Hispanic student to graduate from high school. These are simply averages, and obviously many districts contribute far more than others.

Leo, you are a genius. We can put together a LLC to do the LBOs once the credit crunch ends. Who could be better at defeating the poison pill strategies of the leeches than a former AFT guy?

Leo, you do not yet realize your importance: with our combined power, we can destroy the leeches- they have foreseen this. Join me, and we can put an end to this destructive conflict, and bring learning, order and profit to the nation’s schools.

It is your destiny.

6 Comments | teacher union, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Barack Obama’s Senate Seat For Sale on Ebay

December 10, 2008

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

See for yourself

1 Comment | politics | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Great Minds Think Alike

December 10, 2008

I’m not the only one to compare the auto bailout to K-12 education.  Andrew Coulson has a great piece with that theme over at Cato.

Also, I’m not the only one to see Rorschach (or is it Horshack) inkblots in the TIMSS results spin-fest.  Rob Pondiscio over at Core Knowledge also references Horshack — er, I mean, Rorschach.  And in the forthcoming Gadfly a little birdie named Mike Petrilli told me that he also has a Rorschack/Horshack piece forthcoming.

If this continues I’m going to have to re-position my lead helmet that keeps others from reading my thoughts with their Alpha rays.

Leave a Comment » | myth of helplessness, school accountability | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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