Alaskan Schools Should Consider Charter Status

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

This article in the New York Times explores the plight of Alaska’s rural public school districts. These schools serve only a handful of students, and to survive, they have to try to convince families to move into homes within their boundaries. One district advertised on Craigslist.

Few parents are eager to move to remote parts of Alaska, so the districts are in for a struggle if they stick to that strategy. Here’s a better idea: These districts could convert to charter schools, like the district in rural Oregon that reopened as a charter. The Alaskan districts wouldn’t be able to physically bring in many new students to class every day — the bus ride would be too long. But they could enroll additional students online. The districts could continue to hold classes in person, while conducting parallel lessons over the Internet for students who live far away.

It’s Nice That the USPSTF Isn’t NICE … For Now

Posted on by Caitlin Hartsell

Christine Harbin recently wrote an interesting post about the new mammography guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. This is a hot topic in the public health field at the moment, and we have talked about it in a number of my graduate classes. I agree with Chrissy’s ultimate reasoning: When something is paid for with tax dollars, the taxpayers should be getting the best bang for their buck. However, I disagree with the USPSTF’s new recommendations, because they did not use sound reasoning in formulating them. Their recommendations have potentially negative ramifications for future coverage when one considers them in light of the pending federal health care legislation.

The USPSTF based its guidelines on the results of a poorly conducted study. Some of the data is predicated on decades old studies, which were conducted when mammography was very different than it is today. The American Cancer Society looked at the all the data and additional studies, and came to the opposite conclusion. Out of all breast cancer deaths, 17 percent occurred in women who were diagnosed from ages 40 to 49, and deaths of similar women would substantially increase if women were not screened until their 50s.

Additionally, the USPSTF study did not take into account more recent studies or changes in health technology, like digital mammography, which is more effective for finding tumors in dense breast tissue — something more common in women aged 40 to 50, the very group that USPSTF recommended against receiving annual mammography. The group’s recommendation may have made sense a few decades ago, when some of the studies originally came out, but it does not make sense in light of today’s constantly improving technology.

Potential anxiety over false positives and overtreatment supposedly justify the USPSTF’s recommendation. Yes, overtreatment might be a problem, but most women (if they are going to get a mammogram) are trying to detect a potentially deadly disease. Personally, I would prefer to get a false positive than to miss a fatal true positive. When I turn 40, I want to be able to get a mammogram. I want to have the choice either to select an insurance company that covers it, or to be able to pay for the test out of pocket.

This may not be an option very soon. At the end of her post, Chrissy wrote:

Paranthetically, I want to point out that the guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are normative and non-binding. The panel isn’t banning anything. A person can get a mammogram or a PSA test at any age if she or he has both the desire and the ability to pay for them, either via insurance or out of pocket.

This is true — but not entirely true. The recently proposed federal health reform legislation specified that insurance companies and Medicare will cover what USPSTF recommends. Even now, certain insurance companies and Medicare base their compensation decisions in part on the USPSTF guidelines. This is a real problem. It is illegal to accept Medicare money outside of the Medicare system (if a doctor takes any Medicare patients), so it could conceivably become illegal for non-recommended breast exams. This may not have been USPSTF’s intention, but unintended consequences always need to be considered.

The USPSTF’s recommendtion is a great preview of what it would be like if the National Health Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) or a governmental group were making health decisions for the United States. The USPSTF’s study was poorly conducted — but it will still have repercussions for insurance coverage if it or any government entity chooses what constitutes a proper private insurance plan.

I completely agree with Chrissy that when taxpayer funds are involved, cost-effectiveness needs to be considered. But, when health is involved, most individuals would like to make the decision — and pay for it themselves — than to let a government organization like USPSTF base life-and-death decisions on questionable science.

Oregon’s Puzzling Response to a Successful School

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Oregon Connections Academy (ORCA), an online charter school, received an “Outstanding” rating from the Oregon Department of Education for its students’ test scores. That’s the highest rating that the Department of Education gives schools. ORCA is, by the state’s evaluation, one of the best public schools in Oregon.

In any other state, I would expect new students to enroll in a great charter school like ORCA. But this is Oregon — not a welcoming place for charters in general, or for online schools in particular. Additional students can’t enroll in ORCA, because a law that became effective this past summer capped ORCA’s enrollment at 2,574 students.

The ostensible purpose for the enrollment freeze was to give legislators time to study online schooling. I say, study it all you want — but, in the meantime, let new students enroll and do some studying of their own.

You, Too, Can Be a McCarthyite!

Posted on by Dave Roland

I was very pleased with how this morning’s interview went with Charlie Brennan. I hope you’ll give it a listen.

It has been brought to my attention, however, that at least one person in a position of relative influence in the city of St. Louis was not pleased with what I had to say. He claimed that Mr. Brennan and I were both “McCarthyites,” attempting to scare citizens with false claims about imagined evils. I’ll explain the critic’s displeasure as best I can, and I hope that our readers will offer their own perspectives in the comment section.

The central point I wanted to make in the interview was that I see in Missouri an unsettling pattern of powerful people working to prevent citizens from having their say on matters of public importance. Mr. Brennan and I discussed several examples of such behavior — most of which were noted in yesterday’s blog post. My critic felt that we were unfairly assigning blame to government officials. He also claimed that the examples we cited in no way constituted a “pattern” of bad behavior.

My critic’s first argument was that I was leveling baseless charges against government officials. Specifically, he said that I had accused a particular elected official of ordering Gustavo Rendon’s arrest. In fact, if you listen to the interview, it is clear that I did not do so, and I continued to refrain from doing so even as this critic was trying to goad me into it. As I tried to communicate in the interview, it may well be a coincidence that Mr. Rendon’s arrest took place outside of the church attended by a city official who champions the plan that Mr. Rendon’s flyers criticized. But, regardless of what the facts eventually show about whether this official actually played a part in Mr. Rendon’s arrest, the circumstances allow for a reasonable inference that this was the case because of previous (and ongoing) situations in which powerful people have tried to squelch the voices of those who oppose them. My conversation with Charlie Brennan simply laid out part of the reason why I am concerned that it may not, in fact, have been a coincidence — but it is up to everyone else to draw their own conclusions.

As for those other situations, my critic acknowledged that the Northeast Ambulance and Fire District is a concrete example of powerful people attempting to intimidate and silence opposition (although he wrote off those officials as “a bunch of crooks”). But he took issue with the rest of my examples. In regard to the governmental effort to eliminate Jim Roos’ “End Eminent Domain Abuse” sign, he first tried to say that matter was settled years ago (I reminded him that, in fact, it is still being litigated), then he tried to say that the sign was “an eyesore” that is bad for the community. I responded that one man’s eyesore is another’s call to action, and pointed out that the Constitution does not generally permit aesthetic considerations to trump a citizen’s right to express a political opinion. My critic was (apparently) unpersuaded by that point.

When I pointed out how, at a meeting in which Paul McKee addressed residents about the proposed NorthSide Regeneration Project, public officials sent staff members to prevent a resident from filming the meeting, my critic argued that because I could not at the moment recall whether the meeting was held at a public facility (it was) and whether the meeting was open to all interested citizens (again, it was), my concern was not valid. As for the Missouri Municipal League’s efforts to prevent Missourians from voting on a constitutional amendment that would restrict eminent domain abuse, I don’t recall any specific objection by my critic, just a return to the claim that these were (in his words) unsubstantiated claims about isolated incidents, and that no fair-minded person could draw from these my conclusion that they represented a pattern of powerful people trying to prevent citizens from having their say on issues of public importance. He demanded that I offer more examples.

Now, I don’t believe this critic will ever really be satisfied — but my call to you, gentle readers, is to think of further examples (from anywhere in the state) that also seem to fit this pattern, then please post them in the comments. I’d love to start keeping a running tally.

Permits for Chickens

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Urban chickens are legal in Minneapolis. Legal, but regulated:

Those interested in keeping chickens in the city must apply for a permit and get approval from 80 percent of their neighbors within 100 feet of their property.

Just 120 people have the permits, although a chicken owner estimates that more than 1,000 people in Minneapolis raise chickens.

I can understand why most people don’t comply with the law (Title 4, Chapter 70). Getting those signatures must be a hassle, and then there’s the $30 fee you have to pay each year. It’s not an exorbitant amount, but for people raising chickens in hopes of saving money on a few eggs, it could mean the difference between profit and loss.

A better system would allow anyone to keep a few chickens, and require a permit only for a large number of poultry — as is the law in St. Louis.

The Role of the Lieutenant Governor in Missouri

Posted on by David Stokes

A few days ago, the Joplin Globe ran an editorial that discussed the micro issue of the relationship between Gov. Jay Nixon and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder and the macro issue of the role of the lieutenant governor in Missouri government. It was a nice article, using a recent news issue as an opening to discuss a much larger question, which was a lot of fun to read and consider.

The Globe thinks that the political infighting between the governor and the lieutenant governor could be ended by having them elected on a ticket, as opposed to the current system in which they each run independently. Our current system has resulted in Missouri having a governor and lieutenant governor from opposite parties five times, or for 20 cumulative years, since World War II. From 1977 to 1993, we had different parties holding the two offices every year. The Globe is certainly right that changing that system might end the infighting, although the governor and lieutenant governor in Illinois were both Democrats, and they hated each other before the governor was forced to (how should I put this nicely?) step aside in preparation for a lifestyle change. But anyway …

Even though the Globe is correct that political sniping might decrease, I don’t support electing the lieutenant governor on a ticket with the governor. My antennas go up whenever anyone advocates making government run more smoothly so they can go out and get things done for the working people of this state! (The last sentence should be read aloud, like a politician giving a stump speech.) The Globe quotes former state Sen. Richard Webster:

He proposed that the candidates for the two offices appear together as a unit on the ballot, thus encouraging a spirit of cooperation and heading off the sort of political gamesmanship evident now.

I take P.J. O’Rourke’s attitude that preventing politicians from governing is like preventing a pit bull from eating your child, so needless to say I don’t give a whit about making government function more smoothly. (Streamlining government services in order to save tax dollars is a different story.)

When Missourians go to the polls on vote on the lieutenant governor, they know (at least, some of them know) that they are electing someone for two main jobs: to step in as governor during extreme circumstances (which just happened in 2000), and to serve as a tie-breaking vote in the Senate. If the people of the state want someone who belongs to a different party than the governor to serve in those roles, that should be up to them.

The fact is that Missourians chose Jay Nixon to be governor and Peter Kinder to be lieutenant governor. If they had run on a ticket, Missouri would have gotten a lieutenant governor that the majority of the state did not want to elect. I think that giving people the fullest choice possible, so they can elect the person that they wanted to elect, is the most important thing. If we have to live with a poorly functioning tourism board as a result, that is fine with me.

Does “Green” Behavior Translate to Greedy Behavior?

Posted on by Alyssa Curran

Can guilt really be a good thing when it comes to the choices we make, and can ethical — namely, “green” — behavior be a bad thing? George Monbiot recently wrote a post on Guardian News about green buying habits and their lingering effects on the moral psyche of the public. He mentioned a recent study released by the University of Toronto, “Do Green Products Make Us Better People?”

The study provides evidence that consumer choices — in this case, choosing green versus conventional products — affect not only price and other economic factors, but they affect social and moral attitudes as well. The authors, Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that buying green products, to which people attach a high social and moral value, actually produces a licensing effect: Those who behave in a nominally ethical and pro-social way in one instance will be less likely to regulate their subsequent behaviors. Buying green products establishes moral credentials, and this can lead to less ethical behavior in other areas — essentially, instilling in some people’s minds the idea that they can act more selfishly than before they performed the instance of ethical behavior.

The authors performed three experiments, one of which demonstrates the licensing effect in action: Participants who purchased green products were shown to lie, cheat, and steal more often. The psychological term “licensing effect” is, in my mind, analogous to the economic concept of “moral hazard,” which characterizes a situation in which an economic actor behaves differently when he is partially insulated from a risk than he would if he were fully exposed to it. When a person purchases car insurance, he may feel that he has purchased a “license” to drive more dangerously than before, to some degree, because of the compensatory reassurance that insurance provides. The psychological licensing effect may produce an impact on the public that is similar to that of economic moral hazard.

We may not be able to alter our psychology, but structural incentives can be changed. Monbiot’s Guardian piece mentions that we are living in a consumer democracy, and in such a system some people hold more “votes” than others. Those who possess disproportionately more votes are less inclined to change a system that has served them well, which ultimately means that those seeking change must look to a different mechanism, such as the political process.

These insights into human nature, and their potential implications, should be kept in mind as public policy is developed. Missouri has joined the ranks of many other states by instituting green legislation, such as a 2008 bill pertaining to green cleaning in schools, which the governor signed into law only after altering the legislation so that it would suggest guidelines and recommendations rather than mandate requirements for green cleaning. The licensing effect ties into this as well: A suggestion to behave responsibly may be more likely to result in moral credentials that justify irresponsible behavior elsewhere than if that behavior were mandated. This is not to suggest that policymakers should always use mandates, but the potential unintended consequences are worth thinking about.

Local Food at Any Price

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

As I wrote yesterday, school districts that give preference to local food suppliers incur significant costs. Processing crops obtained directly from nearby farms calls for more labor, or new equipment, or both:

Eric Cartwright, the executive chef of the MU’s Campus Dining Service, spoke about the problems with getting produce from local sources.

“Without laser cutters or big machines, it’s much more time consuming to cut tomatoes and vegetables,” he said.

Those are the costs of preparing produce in season, when it’s cheapest. Serving local food at any other time calls for even more hard work and money. But local food advocates seem to enjoy the challenge — and to disregard any cost-benefit analysis. In New Jersey, Rutgers is bending over backwards to bring local food to schools during the winter:

The East Broad Street facility is assisting the school in finding ways to better preserve New Jersey-grown produce so the food can be served at school cafeterias year-round, even when the produce is out of season.

The push to better preserve and package fruits and vegetables is part of the larger Rutgers Against Hunger initiative […]

I thought people bought local in order to avoid preserved and packaged food, because fresh food is healthier. Why go to all that trouble to preserve local food when you can fly it in fresh from a warmer climate?

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