I won’t add much to my TIF post from the other day, I just want to note and link to this Kansas City Star article about the TIF lawsuit in Jackson County. As promised in the press conference the other day by Co. Exec. Mike Sanders, the county has sued the city over the makeup of its TIF Commission. This should be an interesting case, and while much of it focuses on some narrow issues of the board’s procedures and make-up, I hope it can lead to larger debates over who should be making these decisions.
Homeschoolers Ask for Charter Status
A group of homeschooling parents in Oregon have applied to form a charter school. They want to continue homeschooling, and to use the charter for in-school resources and to meet weekly with a teacher.
Given Oregon’s track record on charters, I’m not expecting the idea to be approved easily. And I actually hope the district turns down this proposal. I see a few problems with it:
- The charter would give each student $1,000 to use for their education. Families’ ideas of educational purchases vary so widely that this is sure to lead to conflicts or allegations of misuse. What if a family thinks a golf lesson is physical education but the charter doesn’t?
- It seems extravagant to establish a school resource center for a couple hundred families who won’t spend much time there. People could just go to a public library and access most of the books, maps, or CDs that the charter would provide.
- If students in the homeschool charter perform poorly on state tests, other people might view that as an indictment of all homeschoolers. An unsuccessful homeschool charter could provoke stricter regulation of other homeschoolers who were never involved with it.
I would support a charter for homeschoolers if it were structured more like a part-time school. Students could attend the school two or three full days a week, and it could assign homework for them to do with their parents on the other days. Rather than give students money to spend, the school could lend them computers, musical instruments, or other things they need for their studies. Students would still get to spend lots of time at home, but it would be clear to everyone that the charter was a real school and not just a place to stop by for an hour.
Is a part-time charter a good idea for Missouri? Charters can form in St. Louis and Kansas City, so out-state homeschoolers won’t have this option. St. Louis families that want to combine homeschooling and public education are already free to choose the SLPS Virtual School. There might not be enough demand for a homeschooling charter there. That leaves Kansas City. I can imagine homeschooling families in Kansas City forming a charter, especially if they participated in the Missouri Virtual Instruction Program and are looking for something to take its place. However, the charter idea won’t go very far if homeschoolers are satisfied with existing homeschool coops and don’t want help from the state.
How to Build a More Effective Parents as Teachers Program
I’ve criticized the Parents as Teachers program for, among other things, giving services to kids who don’t need help and sending a stiff bill to taxpayers. I’m probably the only one who’s happy to see Parents as Teachers take a $4 million cut in Missouri’s budget.
I don’t like Parents as Teachers the way it has been run for the past couple decades, but I’m optimistic that it can evolve into a better program. Parents as Teachers could move in one of two directions to control costs and better serve families. It would also be possible to split it into two separate programs with different missions.
Here’s the first route Parents as Teachers could take: Continue to serve all interested families, including wealthy ones, but do away with home visits. A Parents as Teachers educator could be stationed at a public library or in a public school. Parents could make appointments to bring their kids to the educator, and there might be drop-in hours too. Some services could be provided to multiple families at once. For example, an educator could teach a group of parents about activities for toddlers, and only parents who still had questions would consult with the educator one-on-one. Holding sessions in a public building would allow educators to direct parents to other resources (such as children’s books in a library), but its main advantage would be efficiency. Home visits to individual families are expensive — and also unnecessary, because educators give much of the same advice to everyone.
The other option is to model Parents as Teachers on the Harlem Children’s Zone’s Baby College program, providing intensive help to the people who need it most. Baby College serves disadvantaged families by restricting enrollment to residents of a neighborhood; Parents as Teachers could likewise confine itself to poor neighborhoods, or it could limit enrollment by family income. Baby College incorporates home visits, but it also brings parents together for a class one morning a week. The group sessions allow parents to get support from each other, and they also allow Baby College to bring in outside speakers. The once-a-week format means Baby College can reinforce what it teaches in a short period of time, unlike Parents as Teachers’ home visits, which might be spread apart by a few months. A Parents as Teachers program resembling Baby College would still be expensive, but at least it would be targeted, and families would get more out of the experience.
Show Me Liberty!
Do you have plans tonight? The Saint Louis chapter of Liberty on the Rocks is meeting today at 6 p.m. at Sasha’s on Shaw for wine and, of course, to discuss issues of personal freedom.
Our last meeting, at the Martini Bar, included some heated discussion with the Motorhome Diaries guys about whether anarchy is feasible. It’s cool, though — we’re all Facebook friends now.
Liberty on the Rocks is not a Show-Me sponsored event, but I figured that a lot of our blog readers would be interested in attending. If you’re looking for good wine and good discussion, drop by.
Baumol and Health Care Costs
The New York Times has a nice analysis of health care cost control using the insights of economist William Baumol, whose work reminds us to be wary of indulging in excessive optimism about cutting health care costs with new legislation. Essentially, Baumol has argued that technological improvements do not significantly reduce the demand for health care professionals. Given the inflation of wages and other commodities relevant to health care, Baumol’s work predicts that health care costs are unlikely to rise slower than inflation.
Here’s a good bit:
Dr. Baumol and a colleague, William G. Bowen, described the cost disease in a 1966 book on the economics of the performing arts. Their point was that some sectors of the economy are burdened by an inexorable rise in labor costs because they tend not to benefit from increased efficiency. As an example, they used a Mozart string quintet composed in 1787: 223 years later, it still requires five musicians and the same amount of time to play.
Despite all sorts of technological advances, health care, like the performing arts, suffers from the cost disease. So do other public services like education, police work and garbage collection. While some industries enjoy sharp increases in productivity (cars can be built faster than ever, retail inventory can be managed better), endeavors like health care are as labor-intensive as ever.
Here’s another:
At the same time, demand for health care never lets up. So while slow sales of video games or clothing can reduce prices, health care prices never ease. And while the robots that help build cars have replaced human beings on the assembly line, robots that help out in modern operating rooms are not as economically efficient.
“We do now have robots performing surgery, but the robot is under constant supervision of the surgeon during the process,” Dr. Baumol said. “You haven’t saved labor. You have done other good things, but it isn’t a way of cheapening the process.”
It’s important to note, then, that the most effective ways to cut cost inflation given Baumol’s insight is through market-based means: shock the supply or rein in demand in the market. The current health care proposals passed by the United States Senate and House of Representatives do the opposite. As I’ve written before, both proposals would, by expanding coverage or insurance, impose an economic wedge between the price consumers pay and the price producers receive. When this wedge occurs, over-consumption of resources is all but guaranteed. So, effectively, the health care bills will increase demand and thus increase costs beyond the baseline level of inflation.
Fortunately, there are other options. The Show-Me Institute has written before about certain health care reform proposals, like health savings accounts (HSAs), that restrain demand without exacerbating the harmful effects of an economic wedge. Unfortunately, the House bill and especially the Senate bill attack HSAs and make them significantly less attractive.
Open Enrollment Could Ease Pressure on Districts
One objection to open enrollment is that districts would have trouble accommodating changing numbers of students. I explained in this post why open enrollment needn’t hamper districts’ planning; one reason is that districts could limit the number of additional students they’d accept. In my argument that open enrollment wouldn’t do any harm, I neglected to point out that open enrollment could actually make planning easier for some districts. In particular, districts like Ladue that are experiencing enrollment booms and space shortages would benefit from a policy that allows students to transfer out.
As more people move into the Ladue district, class sizes go up and its schools have to scramble to find space. Some of that enrollment growth is inevitable, because Ladue has a good reputation. But the problem could be mitigated if students were able to choose schools in neighboring districts. Not every family that moves into Ladue does so for education; some choose a house in Ladue for other reasons, and would prefer a school that’s less crowded. Those people wouldn’t mind transferring their children to nearby districts. Other parents originally moved in for the district’s academics, but after class sizes reached a certain point, they no longer thought it was worthwhile to stay. They would also choose to transfer under open enrollment.
Under the current system, people with the preferences I just described can’t send their children to a different school unless they sell their houses and move. That’s a time-consuming process, and many would consider it a last resort in today’s real estate market. So, people stay put and keep their kids in the district, contributing to the crowding problem.
This is not to say that if Missouri institutes open enrollment, everyone would flee Ladue. Rather, some families that care about class sizes would send their children to other districts — perhaps just for a few years, while Ladue acquires more space. Open enrollment would act as a safety valve so that enrollment doesn’t increase faster than Ladue can open new classrooms.
Race to the Internet
Missouri intends to give only half of its Race to the Top grant, should it receive one, to districts. The rest would pay for expanding high-speed Internet access.
When a state plans to spend a large portion of Race to the Top grant money outside of schools, that’s a sign that the Department of Education is offering too much money.
Jefferson City Wants Tattoo Parlors to Be Like Chameleons
Jefferson City has grudgingly lifted its ban on tattoo parlors. They are now legal, but subject to several regulations: The shops can’t open before 9 a.m., and must close by 8 p.m. They can’t display any neon lights. And they can’t stand out:
The Jefferson City News-Tribune reports that another stipulation requires the businesses to aesthetically blend in with their surroundings.
That last requirement is the least reasonable. No store can look just like the establishments surrounding it while simultaneously advertising itself to customers. And the burden of this regulation will only increase over time, for if neighboring businesses come and go, a tattoo shop will have to continually redesign itself to blend in with the changing scene.
I can’t imagine what tattoo shops will look like under this ordinance. Will a tattoo parlor next to an office building have to masquerade as corporate headquarters?
The new policy doesn’t satisfy all tattoo shop critics; some would prefer that tattoo shops stayed out of Jefferson City. One council member explains why he opposed ending the ban:
“Many times these things are done randomly without much forethought and individuals do regret this,” said Pope.
I would expect people who share this opinion to call for waiting periods before anyone can get a tattoo, rather than bans. Completely banning tattoo parlors prevents people who do exercise foresight from getting tattoos — and why should they be punished for someone else’s lack of judgment? This council member should at least be happy with the new policy’s regulation of operating hours, because whoever decides to get a tattoo after 8 p.m. will have all night to reconsider.
Now With 95% More Transparency
Today, the Show-Me Institute launched four new online tools that enable Missourians to track state spending, employee pay, tax credits, and stimulus projects. These tools take state-provided datasets and make them understandable and intuitive for just about anyone. You can create your own graphs or quickly compare detailed information among state agencies.
In my opinion, there couldn’t have been a better time for Missourians to have these tools. At 7 p.m. today, Gov. Jay Nixon will deliver his State of the State address. Given the continuing decline in state tax revenues, Nixon could soon announce another round of budget cuts, on top of the hundreds of millions already cut from the state budget this fiscal year.
Sen. Jason Crowell has argued that tax credits should be part of the state budget process, instead of allowing government agencies to dole out credits with little regard for how much the state can afford to give out each year. And, of course, state agencies and local governments across the board have accepted hundreds of millions in federal “budget stabilization” dollars, which lets them stave off cuts, for now.
Our online tools can help you put these issues into perspective.
Although a $200 million round of budget cuts may seem drastic, state expenditures in 2009 were up more than $1.5 billion from 2008 (see the “Spending Overview” tab). As for state tax credits, I was surprised to see that the amount issued each year varies wildly (see the “Overview” tab) — from a high of more than $500 million in 2006 to less than $150 million in 2009. Most startling is the amount of federal money that state agencies and local school districts are leaning on. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has spent nearly $350 million of federal budget stabilization money, and has less than $100 million left (See the “Spending & Revenue by Program” tab).
The data behind these tools will be updated each week, which means you can check back periodically to see what’s new. It’s my hope that these tools are an easy way to keep up with what the state is actually doing, instead of the latest political rhetoric.
