Union Labor for Thee But Not For Me.
Unions like to force taxpayers to pay the union scale for public works projects.

So what did one union in Texas do when it built a new hall?

Used non-union labor, of course.

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HT: Tonight Show. (permalink)

Forcing Granny Out of Her Nursing Home?
The WSJ (link for subscribers) reports that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is encouraging states to get nursing home patients to go ... back home.

One reason for the move is the thought is that most people would prefer to be treated at home than in an institution. No doubt that's true. The other reason is that it's usually cheaper to treat someone at home. This is true as well, but from the numbers I saw (about a year ago) while part of a long-term care committee, the costs are still substantial. In other words, home care does give financial savings, but the costs are still substantial. If the state takes the per-person savings and adds more beneficiaries to Medicaid, the result is no lessening in overall demand.

Federal aid will come in two parts. The first is $1.75 billion in one-time grants to help states move people out of institutions. The second part will be ongoing, in the form of a higher matching rate for state funds spent on home care.

Labels: Medicaid

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Get Your Medicaid Information Here.
You think Social Security is a problem? Wait until you look at Medicare and Medicaid!

The National Center for Policy Analysis has opened the Medicaid Reform Service Center. it should be useful for lawmaker and citizen alike.

Labels: Medicaid

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NEA Fights NCLB, $8 million worth.
The National Education Association--the union of many public school teachers--doesn't like the No Child Left Behind law.

Now, some folks who have taken a look at the union's documents find that it has given $8 million to groups that have produced publications against the act.

Labels: Education

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School Bill in Congress Offers Funds for Trapped Students.
Federal funding for schooling isn't idea by any means. But if it is to be, initiatives such as the following would be useful. It comes from the offices of Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn) and a few other politicians.

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House and Senate Education Leaders Introduce Legislation to Give Children Trapped in Under-Performing Schools More Opportunities to Achieve

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and John Ensign (R-NV) and U.S. Representatives Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) and Sam Johnson (R-TX) today introduced bicameral legislation to implement the Bush administration’s America’s Opportunity Scholarships program to give children who are trapped in under-performing schools more choices and opportunities to improve their educational experience.

“America’s Opportunity Scholarships give meaning to the promise of No Child Left Behind,” said Sen. Alexander, Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Education and Early Childhood Development. “This is about giving low-income families whose children are stuck in low-performing schools the same opportunities as other families. A recent poll found that 62 percent of public school parents have transferred a child out of one school into a better school or have decided where to live based on the schools in that district. This offers a way out for students whose families don't have the money for tuition or the luxury of moving.”

“Educating America’s youth must be a priority for the people of our nation, and our government,” said Sen. Ensign. “America’s Opportunity Scholarships program opens greater avenues to make certain that all children in our nation are given a chance to succeed. This legislation will help to ensure that our most disadvantaged children can receive a better education and will ensure that our nation’s next generations have the skills they need to succeed in the future.”

“Not only does the America’s Opportunity Scholarship for Kids Act expand upon the great success of No Child Left Behind by increasing parental choice, but it also shines a brighter light than ever on the need for more educational opportunities and – ultimately – higher achievement in our classrooms,” said Rep. McKeon, Chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

“Children may be a fraction of today's society but they are 100% of our future. It's time we empower students - and their parents. I want to give these children a choice and a chance,” said Rep. Johnson.

The America's Opportunity Scholarships for Kids Act would authorize the Department of Education to provide $100 million in fiscal year 2007 for competitive grants to states, school districts, and non-profit organizations to provide scholarships of up to $4,000 to low-income children in persistently under-performing schools to attend the private school of their choice.

States, school districts, and non-profit organizations would also be authorized to provide up to $3,000 to low-income students for intensive, sustained supplemental educational services if students don’t want to attend a different school. This would include high-quality tutoring, after-school or summer school programs designed to help improve the student’s academic achievement.

Under the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act, schools are identified for restructuring after failing to meet their Adequate Yearly Progress goals for six years. The U.S. Department of Education reports that in the 2004-05 school year, 1,065 schools were identified for restructuring. Preliminary estimates suggest that an additional 1,000 schools will be identified for restructuring in the 2005-06 school year.

“You shouldn't need to win the lottery to send your child to a high-performing school,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings who joined the bill sponsors at a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce the legislation. “President Bush believes we must give parents options, and the America’s Opportunity Scholarships program will empower parents to demand more from our schools and enable them to make choices for their kid’s education and future.”

The bill’s sponsors noted a pair of studies that illustrate the effectiveness of school choice:

- a Harvard-Georgetown-University of Wisconsin study published in 2000 found that African-American students receiving private scholarships in three regions – Ohio, New York, and Washington, D.C. – scored significantly better than their public school peers; and

- according to the 2002 book, “The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools” by William Howell and Paul Peterson, African-American students using vouchers in New York cut their achievement gap in half over three years

Labels: Education, School choice

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Milton Friedman 101
Imprimis has a short Q&A with Milton Friedman. Here's the section about education. LA is Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, which publishes the monthly periodical.


LA: I want to talk now about education and especially about vouchers, because I know they are dear to your heart. Why do you think teachers unions oppose vouchers?

MF: The president of the National Education Association was once asked when his union was going to do something about students. He replied that when the students became members of the union, the union would take care of them. And that was a correct answer. Why? His responsibility as president of the NEA was to serve the members of his union, not to serve public purposes.

I give him credit: The trade union has been very effective in serving its members. However, in the process, they've destroyed American education. But you see, education isn't the union's function. It's our fault for allowing the union to pursue its agenda.

Consider this fact: There are two areas in the United States that suffer from the same disease—education is one and health care is the other. They both suffer from the disease that takes a system that should be bottom-up and converts it into a system that is top-down. Education is a simple case. It isn't the public purpose to build brick schools and have students taught there. The public purpose is to provide education. Think of it this way: If you want to subsidize the production of a product, there are two ways you can do it. You can subsidize the producer or you can subsidize the consumer. In education, we subsidize the producer—the school. If you subsidize the student instead—the consumer—you will have competition. The student could choose the school he attends and that would force schools to improve and to meet the demands of their students.

LA: Although you discuss many policy issues in Free to Choose, you have turned much of your attention to education, and to vouchers as a method of education reform. Why is that your focus?

MF: I don't see how we can maintain a decent society if we have a world split into haves and have-nots, with the haves subsidizing the have-nots. In our current educational system, close to 30 percent of the youngsters who start high school never finish. They are condemned to low-income jobs. They are condemned to a situation in which they are going to be at the bottom. That leads in turn to a divisive society; it leads to a stratified society rather than one of general cooperation and general understanding.

The effective literacy rate in the United States today is almost surely less than it was 100 years ago. Before government had any involvement in education, the majority of youngsters were schooled, literate, and able to learn. It is a disgrace that in a country like the United States, 30 percent of youngsters never graduate from high school. And I haven't even mentioned those who drop out in elementary school. It's a disgrace that there are so many people who can't read and write. It's hard for me to see how we can continue to maintain a decent and free society if a large subsection of that society is condemned to poverty and to handouts.

LA: Do you think the voucher campaign is going well?

MF: No. I think it's going much too slowly. What success we have had is almost entirely in the area of income-limited vouchers.

There are two kinds of vouchers: One is a charity voucher that is limited to people below a certain income level. The other is an education voucher, which, if you think of vouchers as a way of transforming the educational industry, is available to everybody.

How can we make vouchers available to everybody? First, education ought to be a state and local matter, not a federal matter. The 1994 Contract with America called for the elimination of the Department of Education. Since then, the budget for the Department of Education has tripled. This trend must be reversed.

Next, education ought to be a parental matter. The responsibility for educating children is with parents. But in order to make it a parental matter, we must have a situation in which parents are Free to Choose the schools their children attend. They aren't free to do that now. Today the schools pick the children. Children are assigned to schools by geography—by where they live.

By contrast, I would argue that if the government is going to spend money on education, the money ought to travel with the children. The objective of such an expenditure ought to be educated children, not beautiful buildings. The way to accomplish this is to have a universal voucher.

As I said in 1955, we should take the amount of money that we're now spending on education, divide it by the number of children, and give that amount of money to each parent. After all, that's what we're spending now, so we might as well let parents spend it in the form of vouchers.

Labels: Education

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One of those blog entries I just hate.
"Posting will be light."

One, it's summer. Two, I'm taking up additional blog duties elsewhere for a while. Launched a new web site, and started making entries on yet another one.

Ain't publishing grand? (permalink)

Who Will Challenge Big Sunshine?
If you're interested in the topic of smoking bans, you've got to read Who'll stop the sunshine? from Craig Westover. (permalink)

Praise the Pursuit of Profit and Crank Up the AC.
As you seek an air-conditioned retreat from the oppressive heat and humidity of summer, be sure to thank the profit-seeking businessman, who, as the Wall Street Journal points out today, is prime-time TV's favorite criminal.

Air conditioning started in the 1900s, as businesses used it to make themselves more productive and profitable. Perhaps the first introduction of man-made climate change to the public at large was made in 1924, by Detroit's J.L. Hudson store. Movie theaters, too, saw AC as a good way to attract business.

Doubtless, when AC came into the residential market, it was so costly that only the rich could afford it. In other words, the wealthy served a socially useful function by providing the incentive for businesses to extend a new product to a new market--a trend that would later by replicated by televisions, computers, antilock brakes, and a host of other products that are available to today's working man.

So when you issue a sigh of relief upon entering the great indoors, remember that an economy that allows people to reap the rewards of their inventions and labor brings widespread benefits. (permalink)

School's Out for Summer. Is that a Good Idea?
The Brookings Institution's Frederick M. Hess makes the case for year-round school.

One problem with entrusting an important function (such as the education of children) with government is that governments are by design and by nature slow to respond to changing times. (Private companies can have the same problem, but eventually the discipline of market competition catches up with them. See: GM, Ford, Sears, etc.)

One once-useful, now not-quite so useful feature of schooling today is the 9 month calendar. As Hess points out, it originated in a different age, when agricultural production took up a substantial portion of the workforce. (Today it's, what, under 3 percent? Or is that 2 percent?)

Of course, the needs of business still hold sway--the summer recreation industry depends on cheap teen labor, Hess reminds us--but social inertia and political interests play a role as well.

Hess, writing in the Washington Post, does not call for government imposition of summer school, at the federal or even the state level. Instead, he calls for striking down laws that prohibit a year-round calendar.

He also calls for increased school funding, which could be argued with. We've been increasing funding of schools for decades, and yet achievement (as reflected by NAEP scores and graduation rates) remains flat. Even if the "summer forgetfullness" is addressed by going to a year-round program, more funding alone is likely to give us unsatisfactory results.

But the idea of changing the school calendar? It's a reminder that we need not more money as much as systematic changes.

Labels: Education

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Virtual Schools Show Promise.
Bricks and mortar as the only operating model is losing steam in retail. Carolina Journal describes how it's giving way as the only model for K-12 education.

The A.L. Brown Cyber Campus is one case of putting new technology to use for the benefit of groups of students separated by distance or interests.

Labels: Education

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It's Easy to Hate the Cable Company, but Government-Run Cable is No Solution.
The city of Lebanon, Ohio, entered the telecommunications business nearly a decade ago, offering high-speed internet today.

The Buckeye Institute takes issue with the practice, describing the history of the Lebanon experiment, and pointing out the perils of government-run business.

The 17-page (pdf) report, When Government Competes with Private Enterprise finds that

1. The city used its legal powers to undermine the competitive position of a commercial company, Time-Warner cable.

2. Taxpayers are on the hook for start-up expenses incurred by the municipal system.

3. The true operating costs of the system are obscured by implicit subsidies granted by various city departments. (permalink)

Oil and the Basics of Economics.
No, gas prices have not risen because George W. Bush is keeping all the world's oil hidden in his Oval Office desk. The Taxpayers League of Minnesota offers a popular-level (that is, non-technical) explanation of the recent run-up of gas prices.

It's in a tabloid size, and the Acrobat file comes out as 11x17, so it's a bit difficult to deal with in electronic form. But you can read it here. (permalink)

Paging Dr. Friedman.
Dr. Milton Friedman long ago said, in the words of the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics "that state licensing procedures limited entry into the medical profession, thereby allowing doctors to charge higher fees than if competition were more open."

Some 60 years later, anti-competitive behavior is continuing. As the Chicago Tribune (registration required) reports, the AMA is calling for increased state regulation of retail health clinics.

The AMA's worries come as the number of retail health clinics has mushroomed from less than a half dozen five years ago to several hundred projected by the end of this year. The clinics are well funded, with some of the nation's biggest retailers and groceries opening kiosklike clinics, usually near their pharmacy counters.
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When Pension Plans Encourage Costly Early Retirements.
While in questions of morality, the role of individual choices cannot be denied, public policy makers deal in providing incentives—incentives that either harm or benefit the public. The harmful effects of some incentives can be seen in California’s state pension plans.

Most state employees are still in defined benefit plans, in which the retiree draws a pension whose amount is based on length of service and earnings history. Many states use the average of the three highest-paid years of an employee; some use five. The longer the averaging period, the less the average, the lower the payout to the employee—and the smaller obligation to be shouldered by taxpayers.

As part of a political deal made over 15 years ago, California employee pensions are calculated without any income averaging. The highest salary in an employee’s history is the salary used to calculate pension benefits.

It’s not unusual for an employee to get a promotion, work for a short time, and then retire at the higher rate. The costs of this phenomenon—“Pensions Spiking”—are substantial, says Anthony P. Archie of the Pacific Research Institute. The extra pension costs alone are $100 million per year. Since this arrangement serves as an enticement to early retirement, an additional cost is the time and money that must be spent to replace employees who retire prematurely. In the first year the rule was in place, the number of retirees increased from less than 3,700 to over 6,400. Today, state workers retire, on average, two years earlier than employees in the private sector.

So much for the hardship of public service.

The state is finally making a move away from this arrangement. Though this generous provision cannot, for political and perhaps legal reasons, be revoked to existing employees, those who hired after January 1 of next year will be subject to income averaging in the calculation of their benefits.

While this problem is unique to California, public pensions are in trouble across the country, in large measure due to political deals like the ones that lead to pension spiking in the first place.

Perhaps California will lead the nation for pension reform.

Labels: Public employee pensions

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Housing Prices Through the Roof.

In creating public policy, it's useful to have good intentions. It's better, however, to create policies that work and have few ill effects.

That's the conclusion that one might take away from any number of areas, whether it's education, health care, technology, or housing.

Adrian Moore, of the Reason Foundation, notes that regulations on housing and land use--though perhaps well-intentioned--make housing less affordable. Though he writes from California, the problems are nationwide.

I am regularly astonished to see affordable housing issues pop up in places I thought unlikely. Looks like a town doesn’t have to be too large or a state too urbanized to see rising housing prices driving more people out of the market. I live in a rural area in California--and the CA effects swamps the rural effect and housing prices are ridiculous here.

In the July issue of Reason "The Politics of Sky-High Housing Prices” looks the interaction of politics and housing prices. The oversimplified story is that the way to lower housing prices is to build more houses, and the way to raise housing prices is with regulations that limit or stop building. As a 2005 HUD study put it “It is clear that the costs of regulation in suburban and high-growth areas are causing large numbers of households to forgo their dreams of homeownership or to make difficult tradeoffs involving very long commutes.”

Of course the story is more complicated than that. [Overly excited investors may play a role, for example, as do rising incomes.] Many rules having good intentions, but regulations are like pharmaceuticals: Even the beneficial ones have side effects. The article looks at those tradeoffs.

The most famous case of sky-high housing prices may be the San Francisco Bay area. To quote from the Reason article, "In 1985, according to the National Association of Realtors, the median price for a home in the San Francisco Bay Area was about $258,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars; today, it’s over $720,000."

One reason for the rise: the booming economy of the region. An overlooked one: regulations that limit the availability of land and make homebuilding more costly. Among the regulations and their effects: $7 per square foot for permit approvals that take 6 months or more; and $2,000 an acre to deal with garter snakes. One report suggests that 22 percent of the price of a new house stems from regulations.

The Reason article--which would be more useful if it included links to the many studies it cites--also addresses critics of zero-down payment financing, the effects (often counterproductive) of "affordability" programs, and the phenomenon of increasingly childless cities. (permalink)

California Rejects Another Preschool Proposal.
Since K-12 education isn't working out so well (at least in some schools), the logical step is to ... expand the school system to an even younger age?

(Here's an entry that has been stuck in the "draft" stage for several months. I just noticed it this morning.)

California, the trendsetting state, takes a step back from universal preschool.

Writes K. Lloyd Billingsley, for the Pacific Research Institute, "On Tuesday, 61 percent of California voters improved the state's educational and fiscal prospects by rejecting Proposition 82, an expensive government pre-school measure of dubious merit that would have raised already high taxes and expanded state power."

Citing a number of previous ballot measures that were disregarded by state officials, he wonders if the program will be implemented anyway.

Meanwhile, Billingley's associate, Xiaochin Claire Yan, explains Why Voters Did the Right Thing:

The program designed by Prop. 82 lacked components that were critical to the success of preschool programs in other cities. It also didn’t help that Rob Reiner had to resign from the state preschool commission due to allegations of questionable use of classroom funds to help the campaign on 82.

Labels: Education

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More school choice news.
In case you missed it, Iowa takes a step towards school choice. It looks similar to a program already established in Arizona. The approach is an indirect approach to giving vouchers for education to families.

From the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation:

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For Immediate Release
June 2, 2006


Iowa enacts new scholarship tax credit program
Unprecedented bipartisan support marks a growing trend among the states

INDIANAPOLIS-Today, Gov. Tom Vilsack (D-IA) signed the Educational Opportunities Act (EOA), a law that will allow thousands of Iowa students the chance to receive scholarships to attend a school of their parents choice. The bill, which reached the governor's desk after getting overwhelming support from both sides of the political aisle, is the second time this year that a democrat governor has signed a school choice law.

"This is a great day for all Iowa families," said Sara Eide, executive director of the Iowa Catholic Conference. "While the Catholic Conference has been working on this issue for nearly twenty years, it took the combined efforts of parents, educators, community leaders, organizations such as the Iowa Alliance for Choice in Education, and our national allies to make policymakers understand that expanded school options is a critical need in the state."

The program establishes a 65 percent tax credit for individuals who make contributions to approved school tuition organizations (STOs), which then distribute scholarships to families to be used at a school of their choice. To qualify, families must have an income that is at 300 percent or below of the federal poverty level. STOs must spend 90% of funds raised on scholarships, and scholarships may not exceed tuition at the child's private school. In addition, while the program will be capped at $2.5 million for 2006, the cap will rise to $5 million for subsequent years.

Following a growing trend occurring around the country, the EOA received overwhelming bipartisan support from Republicans and Democrats alike. In the Senate, which is evenly split between the two parties, the bill passed 49-1: and in the House, where Republicans hold only a one vote majority, the bill passed by a vote of 75-19.

"We are so thankful for the strong bi-partisan support for expanded educational options in Iowa, including the leadership in both houses and educational opportunity champions like Representative Carmine Boal and Senator Joe Seng," said Eide.

In 2006, school choice has seen growth in the number of Democrats who back educational freedom. Earlier this year, Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona became the first Democrat governor to sign a new school choice bill into law. Gov. Vilsack becomes the second governor to do so. Democrat Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin signed a bill expanding the cap of the Milwaukee school choice program by nearly 7,000 students. Also, the Democrat leaders of the Missouri Black Caucus were among the top proponents of a school choice bill before its legislature.

"We're seeing an important shift in the support for school choice," said Robert C. Enlow, executive director of the Friedman Foundation. "More and more legislators, parents and opinion makers from all sides of the political spectrum are realizing that the ability to choose a school is a fundamental freedom and that there are immense moral implications that come from denying families educational choice."

Labels: Education, School choice

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Discussion of School Choice Gets Nasty.
I know that headlines are meant to be provocative. But the LA Times went wild when it titled its discussion of school choice "A Satanic Idea?"

Bob Sipchen relates a recent visit with Milton Friedman. Says the Nobel-prize winning economist: "It'?s very clear that the people who suffer most in our present system are people in the slums -? blacks, Hispanics, the poor, the underclass."

On funding, "In the last 10 years, the amount spent per child on schooling has more than doubled after allowing for inflation. There'?s been absolutely no improvement as far as I can see in the quality of education. . . . The system you have is like a sponge. It will absorb the extra money. Because the incentives are wrong."

If you read the comments--which are remarkably civil for a newspaper-sponsored blog--remember to read from the bottom of the page up.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Do the Fraters Know About This?
Here's a message for the MOB (you know who you are): drink and smoke to freedom.

The Washington Times and Denver Post report on a recent politically incorrect event in Colorado, called the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms party.

Now all they need at Keegans is some way to shoot clay pigeons without inflicting collateral damage. (permalink)

Arizona may have been the last of the continental states to be admitted to the union, but it's leading the country in school choice.

Here's a press release (a couple weeks old by now) from the Alliance for School Choice:

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We are poised for a miracle for school choice in AZ.

As you know, earlier this year, after a pitched battle, Gov. Napolitano finally allowed a $5 million corporate scholarship tax credit for economically disadvantaged students to become law without her signature, after two vetoes. We assumed this would be the high-water mark for school choice given that it was the first time a new school choice program was enacted in a state with a Democratic governor. (Later, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack signed a corporate scholarship tax credit bill.) But because we have a very pro-school choice legislature, we kept pushing for more.

Last week, in return for increased teacher salaries and full-day pre-K, Napolitano agtreed to three more bills as part of a budget deal:

1. a doubling of the corporate tax credit to $10 million, plus automatic 20 percent annual increases until 2010 when it will total nearly $21 million and over 6,000 students;

2. a voucher program for children with disabilities; and

3. a first of its kind voucher program for foster care children.

All three passed the Legislature yesterday. Napolitano has agreed to transmit the bills to the Secretary of State without her signature. If so, these will be the first voucher programs to be enacted in a state with a Democratic governor.

Our hero is Senate President Ken Bennett (who received an award at our Board dinner last November), who twisted arms until the very end to squeak out the necessary votes, even on his LAST DAY as a legislator. He deserves our thanks.

I am enormously proud of our state coordinators, Matt Ladner and Robert Teegarden; our lobbyists, Sydney Hay (Republican) and Barry Dill (Democrat); and our partners, the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options and the Friedman Foundation.

Labels: Education, School choice

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The Limits of Charity Vouchers
Milton Friedman (PDF article, 4 pages) reflects on the prospects for school choice 50 years after his influential essay.

He notes that competitive industries produce economic growth through "bottom up" innovations, while schooling, by nature of it being government-directed, is top-down. It's also seen "little, no, or even negative improvement in the product." We spend more and get less.

He faults current voucher programs (which he calls "charity vouchers") as being limited in scope (generally they are available only to the poorest of families in the worst performing of school districts).

Even worse for the cause of educational excellence is the fact that in current voucher programs parents are prohibited from adding onto voucher amounts. What drives innovation in other industries, Friedman notes, are consumers who are willing to shell out big bucks. It sounds like a typical parody of economic conservatism, but it's true: the early adapters who pay $2,000 for a VCR lead the way for the development of $99 DVD players.

One major obstacle to real vouchers--though not the only one--is the wealth ($1.5 billion) of teacher unions, who benefit from the current system.

Given the strength of the opposition to school choice, Friedman predicts that when true competition and choice are ushered in, they will do so through a swift collapse of political support for the status quo.

Labels: Education, School choice

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Schools Slow to Publicize Family Options in NCLB.
The federal law No Child Left Behind offers families a tiny element of school choice, provided that they put in enough time in an abysmally performing school district. But school districts have strong financial incentives to neglect their obligations to inform families of their options.

This comes out in a several-month old announcement from the Alliance for School Choice (cleaning up the old in box today!). Here's a press release that gives some details:

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 23, 2006

Contact: Laura Devany, Alliance For School Choice 602-468-0900/ 602-615-8897


NATIONAL TEST CASES FILED AGAINST LOS ANGELES AND COMPTON SCHOOL DISTRICTS DEMANDING PUBLIC SCHOOL TRANSFER OPTIONS UNDER NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT

PHOENIX-- In a major legal development that could test the vitality of the No Child Left Behind Act and impact educational opportunities for children in large urban districts across the nation, the Alliance for School Choice today joined the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (CURE) in a legal filing. The action demands that the Los Angeles and Compton Unified School Districts immediately provide and publicize public school transfer options for children in failing schools as required by the law.

The Alliance also called upon U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to cut off applicable federal funds to the districts until they comply with the law or make other suitable educational opportunities available to children in failing schools.

"The No Child Left Behind Act isn’t worth the paper it’s written on so long as children are forced to remain in failing schools," declared Clint Bolick, president of the Phoenix-based Alliance for School Choice, the nation’s leading advocacy group for school choice programs for disadvantaged schoolchildren.

"NCLB shined a spotlight on what we already knew exists in our community; now it's time for our children to know that their parents aren't leaving them behind," said Star Parker, president of CURE. "If anyone needs the opportunity to improve the educational options for their kids, it's the most vulnerable members of our society."

NCLBA requires that school districts offer to children in schools that have failed to make "adequate yearly progress" for two years under state standards the option to transfer to better-performing public schools within the district. Lack of capacity is not a basis to fail to provide transfer opportunities under the law.

A 2004 report by the General Accounting Office found that more than 3 million schoolchildren -- overwhelmingly low-income and minority children -- were entitled to transfer, but only 1 percent of those eligible actually transferred.

The complaints filed against the school districts charge that of at least 250,000 schoolchildren eligible for transfer in Los Angeles, only 527 (.2 percent) received transfers to better-performing schools; while in Compton, zero students have received transfers despite appalling educational conditions. The complaints charge that the districts have failed adequately to make information available to parents or to provide sufficient options.

Los Angeles has by far the nation’s highest number of students in failing schools who are eligible to transfer. Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa has called for mayoral takeover of the school district, declaring that to serve the students it is necessary to "take on the powerful and entrenched interests" and "shake up the system." Compton, meanwhile, was already under state control, which did not significantly improve educational conditions.

"I don’t think it’s fair that the school is failing the parent and the child," said Linda Braxton, speaking of her 13-year-old son Jamal, who she would like to transfer out of a Compton high school. "The Compton system failed him, period."

"The conditions in Los Angeles and Compton are the tip of a national iceberg," Bolick stated. "The problem is that the number of children in failing schools vastly exceeds the number of available slots in better-performing public schools. Public schools alone cannot solve the crisis of inner-city education."

Because NCLBA does not provide a private right of action, the parents and their organizational partners must file complaints in the first instance with the school districts, demanding compliance. That is what they did today, in a pair of complaints prepared by Robert Boldt, partner in the Los Angeles office of Kirkland & Ellis, but Secretary Spellings has authority to take action to cut off certain federal funds to the districts until they comply.

In January, the Bush Administration proposed a $100 million demonstration project to add private school options to NCLBA for children in "restructuring" schools Â? that is, schools that have been failing for at least six consecutive years. More than 1,000 schools across the nation are in that category.

Bolick said that similar actions could be filed in almost every large district in the United States. "Millions of children are being left behind in failing schools," Bolick declared. "They deserve immediate access to better educational opportunities, to which federal law clearly entitles them."

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And here's a more recent announcement, which suggests that little has changed:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 9, 2006

SPELLINGS ASKS CALIFORNIA OFFICIALS TO TAKE ACTION ON SCHOOL TRANSFER COMPLAINTS


PHOENIX— Responding to complaints against the Los Angeles and Compton school districts’ failure to provide public school transfer options to children in failing schools, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings last week asked top California school officials to take action.

While “it is usually best to allow matters such as these to be resolved at the local and state level,” the U.S. Department of Education is “mindful of our own compliance responsibilities and remedies,” Spellings said in a May 1 letter to California State Board of Education President Glee Johnson and Superintendent of Public instruction Jack O’Connell.

The Alliance for School Choice and the Los Angeles-based Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education filed the complaints in March, charging that the two districts failed to provide meaningful notice or transfer options for thousands of eligible students. Federal law requires the school districts to make findings within 60 days, and authorizes the Secretary of Education to cut off federal Title I funds for failure to provide transfer options.

In her letter, Spellings also notes concerns about compliance by the Oakland and Stockton school districts. She noted that department officials will “gather further information on the implementation of public school choice and SES (supplemental education services) in your state.”

“We are encouraged that the secretary is taking seriously the rampant noncompliance of school districts with their public school transfer obligations,” declared Clint Bolick, president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice. “Millions of children are languishing in failing schools around the nation. That is neither morally nor legally tolerable.”

Labels: Education, School choice

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Blogs for Home Schooling.
Blogging, meet home schooling. Homeschoolblogger is a collection of homeschooling parents who blog.

The site looks like an interesting merger of blogging, home schooling, and social networking. There is a key blogger for each state. All the ones that I looked at are conservative Christians, but there's no reason why the model can't be extended to people of other faiths, or of none. (permalink)

A Place for Everything.
Just as economics teaches us the benefits of specialization and division of labor, so too society as a whole benefits when different spheres of human activity--government, family, religious institutions, etc.--are active and do what they do best.

What follows below is an op-ed that suggests that the blending of different spheres is socially and economically hazardous.

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Social programs did harm by making fathers less needed
Star Tribune, July 2, 2006
By Mitchell B. Pearlstein

Last Sunday's Star Tribune had another superb editorial in its series of pieces on crime, disorder and vulgarity in Minneapolis. Just inches away, Lori Sturdevant's column discussed an ad placed in the paper by Growth & Justice, a very good "progressive" think tank, which contended that Minnesota is undertaxed, and that if income taxes were raised we'd all be better off.

Among those who read the two pieces, many surely concluded that if taxes were raised, Minneapolis streets indeed would grow safer and more civil. Let me suggest a different link.

There's never any one root cause of any intricate problem. But evidence is compelling that the largest reason for the radical increase in crime over the last 40 years has been radical changes in family life. The numbers are numbing. For example, the nation's out-of-wedlock birth rate in 1960 was about 5 percent. It's now in the vicinity of 33 percent, with the figure reaching 80 percent and more in inner cities. The United States may have the highest divorce rate in the industrial world.

What do data and trends like these have to do with taxes?

Scores of welfare, housing, health care and related programs regularly help people in need. They're often lifelines, and when they are, I applaud them. Yet inescapably, many of these same programs, which have grown gigantically in quantity and reach in 40 years, simultaneously have weakened families by making marriage -- and more to the point, husbands -- less financially essential for bringing children into this world. This, in turn, has led to major increases in crime, as many more boys and girls have been forced to grow up without the guidance, discipline and love best provided by mothers and fathers living together and parenting as a team.

When it comes to social welfare programs of various kinds, Minnesota is unusually generous -- often to the point, in fact, of encouraging troubled people from less generous states to relocate here. Question: Is it possible, at least partially, that uncommonly persistent crime problems in Minneapolis are an unintended consequence of such comparatively well-funded, tax-supported programs?

Another question: Might the same family-eroding dynamics propelling crime also have something to do with achievement and graduation gaps between minority and majority students in Minneapolis that are among the highest in the nation -- even though per-student spending in Minneapolis public schools, at more than $13,000 annually, is already higher than most any other place in the country?

This is not an-across-the-board argument for government never spending more money. I see no escape, for example, from spending more on law enforcement in Minneapolis. I also see no escape from expanding mental health programs for young people seriously damaged by breakdowns all around them. And when it comes to more straightforward issues like transportation, the need for improvements is obvious.

How difficult is it for government to align incentives and disincentives so that intact, two-parent families are encouraged rather than discouraged? Even attempts to enrich early childhood programs -- a goal that just about every Minnesota leader has come to equate as an unqualified good -- undoubtedly will further embolden some people to believe that "quality" educational programs for 3- and 4-year-olds can substitute for the benefits of marriage.

If we've learned anything over the last two generations, it's that "programs" can't substitute nearly well enough for traditional and practiced ways of raising boys and girls, no matter how well-endowed such programs may be. (permalink)

LTC Insurance: A Modest Beginning.
Taxes, and tax credits, provide incentives. But how much incentive is enough?

If you read far into the literature on state finances, or health care, you'll find that the need for long-term care threatens to crowd out every other priority for government spending. Simply put, long-term care is expensive (running well over $50,000 a year for some services). The aging of the population means that more demand for long-term care (including but not limited to nursing homes) is going to rise, and the bulk of LTC spending is paid for by governments.

One way to avoid the budget disaster is for policy makers to do what they can to encourage the purchase of long-term care insurance. Various laws and policies (including a nursing home entitlement) mitigate against that. With premiums for such insurance amounting to thousands of dollars per year (perhaps per month--it's been a while since I have looked at the numbers) and a small industry of lawyers (who can help middle-class people eligible for Medicaid), it's little wonder that the LTC insurance market is stunted.

Offering a tax credit for long-term insurance could, in this light, be a useful means to shift some of the demand for LTC care payments out of the public sector.

Minnesota offers such a tax credit. But it's limited to $100 a year per individual.

That's not much of an incentive, is it?

Labels: Health care, Medicaid

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