It’s Ridiculously Hard to Start a Charter School in Oregon

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

This article about a proposed Spanish-immersion charter school (linked to by the Panama City Renaissance School Blog) illustrates how outrageous the charter application process is in Oregon.

First, let’s look at Missouri’s charter school law. I wouldn’t say that it’s easy to get charters approved in Missouri, but at least the requirements for proposals are reasonable. Applications must include a description of curriculum, a financial plan for three years, an admissions policy, and so on. The school board of the traditional district in which a proposed charter would operate is able to file objections with the state board of education.

Now, how does Oregon compare? Potential charters have to apply to their local school boards, which then make the decision themselves. The school boards don’t just get to object — it’s entirely in their hands. School boards can turn down applications for all kinds of reasons; one objection cited against a Spanish-immersion charter was “lack of community support.” Needless to say, it’s difficult to rally a community around a not-yet-existent school that’s forced to constantly go back to the drawing board and change its plans.

And by “change its plans,” I mean change even the minutest details. After prolonged back-and-forth with the school board, the Spanish-immersion charter intends to use Singapore Math. I love Singapore Math, so I commend them for that decision — but how can any charter proposal go through when the school board quibbles about every textbook choice? A charter should demonstrate that it has a curriculum in place, and I would be sympathetic to denying a charter if an application made no mention of instructional materials. Listing textbooks, though, should be enough. A charter shouldn’t have to switch from one book to another to please a school board.

And, once the school board approves a proposal, the work has only begun:

The next step is for the district and charter school to negotiate a contract, which the school board will approve.

After that tortuous approval process is complete, the charter is supposed to contract with the very district it will be competing against.

Great Op-Ed About Our Government by David Steelman

Posted on by David Stokes

David Steelman, the former state rep., and his wife, Sarah, our former state treasurer, are both great friends and supporters of the Show-Me Institute. A few days ago, John Combest linked to an op-ed by David that had been published in the Columbia Daily Tribune, a piece I think would be well worth your time to read. I enjoyed the entire thing, but especially the history involved with this paragraph:

Nassim Taleb, today’s most effective free-market philosopher, points out that of the 500 largest American corporations that existed in 1947, only seven still belonged in Standard & Poor’s 500 just 50 years later. Most had shrunk or collapsed. Yet during this period, when big could and did fail, America’s economic growth was so dynamically powerful it pushed the world to more prosperity and greater freedom. Entrepreneurs filled the void left by failed behemoths. Taleb also points out, unfortunately, that entrepreneurial geniuses cannot compete and therefore cannot innovate if government has a policy to not let the big boys fail — a policy common in communist and socialist regimes.

Ideas Don’t Come From Washington, But Money Does

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The following excerpt comes from an article in the Christian Science Monitor about Arne Duncan’s approach to education policy:

Indeed, the practice of finding and highlighting innovative solutions that exist somewhere outside Washington seems to be at the core of Duncan’s approach. It’s the rationale for the $5 billion “Race to the Top” stimulus money, which he hopes to use to reward schools that are centers of successful innovation.

The “Race to the Top” would reward innovation if it gave schools money for implementing programs that the schools came up with on their own. Administrators would think, “We need to create something innovative to get the money.” They would experiment, and the best ideas would earn “Race to the Top” dollars.

That’s not how the “Race to the Top” actually works. Duncan has decided in advance which practices he prefers, and he intends to use the “Race to the Top” money to induce schools to conform.

An extended school year is one such favored policy:

“Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

National standards are another:

“We need national standards, and assessments to measure them,” Duncan said. “The idea of having 50 states designing their own standards is crazy.”

Duncan is right when he says the best ideas often don’t come from Washington. Unfortunately, schools sometimes ignore good ideas when Washington pays them to follow the crowd.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished in Michigan, the Literal Nanny State

Posted on by Christine Harbin

Lisa Snyder watches her neighbors’ children for less than an hour every day while they wait for the school bus. She is a stay-at-home mom and she does not accept any money in exchange for doing this. According to the Department of Human Services in Michigan, however, she is running an illegal daycare center. Department officials have notified Snyder that she needs to get a license in order to continue this informal babysitting, or she’ll go to jail for 90 days or pay a $1,000 fine. Even if it is raining or snowing, and even if the arrangement has been agreed upon by the parents, the DHS says that it is illegal for the children to come into Snyder’s home (or even into her garage).

Snyder’s story is getting a lot of attention in the national media. “The Today Show” and Fox News have both reported on it.

By requiring licenses, the government is telling individuals that it knows better than they do. It’s paternalism in another form. The parents in Snyder’s neighborhood know her very well, so they are in a much better position to determine whether her home is a safe environment for their children.

Furthermore, having a daycare license does not ensure that a person is fit to supervise children. Earlier this year, for example, a woman running a licensed daycare in Arkansas accidentally placed windshield wiper fluid in her refrigerator and later served it to children! As a parent, I would much rather leave my kids under the supervision of a person like Lisa Snyder than a person who can’t tell the difference between wiper fluid and Gatorade. The Department of Human Services would feel differently, apparently.

Daycare licensure requirements do not result in better outcomes (e.g., fewer ER visits), nor do they improve the general welfare. In this case, all the involved parties (i.e., Snyder, parents, and children) are happy with their current arrangement. If the DHS gets its way, the parents will either have to stay home from work or pay a licensed daycare provider to watch their children.

Professional licensing has many negative consequences, which contributors to this blog have discussed extensively. The Show-Me Institute has produced scholarly work on this subject, as well.

Incentives for Teachers: Empirical Evidence

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Alex Tabarrok is blogging about merit pay for teachers. An experiment in India found that incentives for teachers have a significant, positive effect on students’ test scores.

One of the most interesting results of this study is that incentives created a spillover effect. The teachers facing incentives were rewarded if students did well in two subjects, but the benefits weren’t limited to those subjects. This is good news, showing that a little incentive can go a long way. It also indicates that the test score gains reflect real learning rather than cheating, for if teachers were to artificially inflate scores in hopes of a reward, they would have no reason to distort scores in subjects that are unrelated to the incentive.

How do incentives for one subject improve test scores in a separate subject? It could be that students are taking the skills they learned in reading or math class and applying them in other areas; students who are well-prepared in math can go farther in science, for example.

The spillover could also be because of another effect of merit pay: Incentives change the way people view their profession. When teachers are paid according to a set schedule, they may feel, “I’m just like any other teacher with the same amount of experience. We all do the same work, and we earn the same amount. I don’t need to try to be exceptional.”

But when teachers are rewarded for student achievement, they think, “My students’ success depends on my individual effort and creativity. I don’t have to wait years for a pay raise; I can get one immediately if I bring achievement up far enough. We earn bonuses because outstanding teachers are valuable, and I want to be outstanding.” This attitude can motivate teachers across all subjects, not just in the areas linked to a monetary incentive.

For more about why I like merit pay for teachers, see this recent post.

Quick Clarification on Quote in the Columbia Maneater

Posted on by David Stokes

I was quoted this morning in the University of Missouri–Columbia’s student newspaper, The Maneater, as part of a story about a proposal to have a state bond issue for education construction. I briefly want to explain a little further what I meant. The reporter quoted me accurately, but my original quote could have been a little more clear, and because I got a call from a state rep this morning asking me to clarify, I should probably do so.

This is my quote about the bond issue, from the article:

“The legislature shouldn’t just pass this onto the people,” he said. “If they believe the benefits outweigh the costs, then they should pass it, but this is something they should think carefully about.”

When I said they should not just pass it on to the people, I didn’t mean that they should pass the bond issue without allowing Missourians to vote on it — a process that is legally required for almost all bond issues. I am fully aware that bond issues require voter approval. Rather, I meant two things: First, the legislature as a whole should not just use the fact that voters will vote on this as an excuse simply to put it on the ballot without first fully debating the costs and benefits of the proposal. Second, in a related way, individual legislators should not say, “I don’t support this proposal, but I want to let the voters make the decision, so I’ll vote to put it on the ballot.” I want the legislators to consider the issue fully, from all sides, and if the majority of the legislators believe it will benefit Missouri, then — and only then — should they put it on the ballot so that the voters can have the final say.

I generally prefer the traditions of a representative republic over more direct action democracy. I prefer elected officials to make the tough decisions, and to have voters then judge whether to reelect them based on those decisions, rather than having those decisions made through referendums and the like. I don’t prefer that process because I believe elected officials are smarter than the voters, nor because I think elected officials make better decisions than the voters. Instead, I prefer it because I think that, in general, the legislative process is slower and more deliberative than the type of constant voter initiatives they have in California. There are certainly some issues, such as smoking bans and concealed carry, for which the general public intrinsically understands the questions at hand every bit as well as elected officials do, and I think those types of questions are better suited to go straight to the voters. (Let’s leave aside the difficult question of whether people should be able to vote on the fundamental rights of others in the first place.)

I think that a major bond issuance entails enough complications that both legislators and the general public need to give their separate approvals to before it goes forward.

For All Those Who Were Wondering …

Posted on by Dave Roland

A couple of weeks ago, the Show-Me Institute hosted events in Kansas City and St. Louis at which Jeff Benedict discussed his book Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage, the story of Susette Kelo’s fight to save her home in New London, Conn. As most will know, Susette lost her fight when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution permits cities to take private property on behalf of new private owners, so long as those owners are considered more likely to generate more tax revenue for the city.

Many people at these events asked whatever became of the planned development once the city won the case. Did they ever build the luxury hotels and condominiums, or the high-end retail shopping establishments that were promised? New London’s local newspaper, The Day, has produced a video that lets you see for yourself how the development is faring, four years after Mrs. Kelo’s neighborhood was leveled. I hope the city is satisfied with the Fort Trumbull neighborhood’s new residents.

Incentives for Teachers

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Dan Pink argues in this talk that extrinsic rewards like bonuses don’t motivate people to do well when charged with complex tasks. His conclusion: Businesses need to change the way they reward employees, by moving away from performance incentives and by emphasizing greater autonomy for each worker.

Does this apply to merit pay for teachers? Here are a few reasons merit pay is still good policy:

  1. The experiments Pink cites as evidence involved tasks that took just a few minutes to complete. In each of these tests, one group of people was asked to solve a puzzle in order to get a reward, while another group was asked to solve the puzzle without an incentive. The group facing the incentive took a little bit longer to complete the task. That group might have dawdled for a minute or two at first because the members were distracted by thoughts of what they would do with the reward. For activities that take up a short amount of time, every minute counts, and a few minutes of divided attention can set you back. But it doesn’t follow that people offered larger incentives for work done over the course of a year would spend a sizable chunk of that time dreaming of the reward. Maybe they would be distracted for a couple minutes — and then go on to work really hard for the rest of the year.

  2. In real life, people are not randomly assigned to professions the way subjects of an experiment are assigned to control groups. If certain people work harder than others for rewards, and if they make good teachers, an incentive system could attract the best people for the job. It wouldn’t matter if the average person responds better to a different pay structure.

  3. Merit pay doesn’t have to come in the “If you do this, then you get that” form that Pink warns against. If tying bonuses to test scores is counterproductive, there are other ways to use merit pay. Schools can reward teachers for their knowledge in subjects like math and science, to prevent valuable teachers from leaving for more lucrative careers. Schools can reward teachers who put in the most effort, or teachers with whose performance parents are most satisfied.

I’m still in favor of merit pay, but it can’t solve all of the education system’s problems. Merit pay alone won’t induce anyone to work hard in a system of few choices. Bonuses can’t outweigh the harmful effects of quashing new ideas, or of assigning teachers to schools based on arbitrary factors like seniority. That’s where Pink’s ideas about autonomy are important. A competitive education market would present teachers with more possibilities, some of which might include merit pay.

Show-Me Institute Study on High-Speed Rail

Posted on by David Stokes

Today, we released a new study about the proposed high-speed rail corridor that, if constructed, would connect Saint Louis, Kansas City, and Chicago. The study was written by Randal O’Toole, one of the nation’s leading thinkers on transit and planning. Missourinet covered the study this morning, and I’d like to thank Combest for linking to it. Randal appeared on The McGraw Show this morning on KTRS, and I’ll put a link up to that interview when it gets put online. This afternoon at 2 p.m., Randal will be guesting on the Mark Reardon Show on KMOX, and I encourage you all to listen in.

Be sure also to read the briefing paper and the op-ed that go along with the full study.

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