Policy Pulse Coverage Highlights Crucial Issues

Posted on by Eric D. Dixon

I’d like to take a moment to point out the excellent work being done by Audrey Spalding over at the Show-Me Institute’s Policy Pulse website. She’s been providing detailed coverage of breaking events like health care protests and town hall meetings, a court case involving school districts and property assessments, community meetings regarding the proposed north side development project in Saint Louis, and more. One piece about a Missouri health care forum, by Show-Me Institute intern Caitlin Hartsell, even garnered notice from the widely read national blog Instapundit.

So, be sure to stay tuned to Policy Pulse as Audrey and a few other talented writers bring you perceptive coverage of events that you won’t always be able to find in other media outlets.

Here are some recent headlines, to get you started:

Accommodating a Service Dog

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The Grade has posted excerpts from the Columbia Community Unit School District’s statement about the service dog a judge has ordered it to accept (which I’ve written about here and here).

This part doesn’t make sense to me:

“The District’s compliance with the Preliminary Injunction will have a direct and negative impact on at least one other student who attends the Early Childhood Program,” the statement said. “Specifically, the District is aware of at least one child who will suffer serious physical harm if he is exposed to animal hair. Additionally, the District is aware of multiple other children with medical conditions which may be impacted by the presence of a dog.”

Accommodating the dog “is not a simple matter of moving students from one room to another, or even one building to another,”  the statement goes on to say.

I can’t believe every other student in the program would be adversely affected by a dog. So put the kids who can handle it with the dog, and the others in another room or building. I could sympathize if the district said moving students between rooms or buildings was a big hassle that required lot of schedule changes. But why is the district implying that wouldn’t even solve the problem?

A public school can’t serve everyone, and that’s especially apparent in the case of students with disabilities. If a child has such a severe allergy to animal hair that he can’t be in the same building as a dog, that child would still have a problem if his classmates hugged their pet dogs, then came to school with animal hair on their clothes. Is the district going to forbid pets at home? How else could they protect that child?

Very specialized schools are better able to deal with students’ severe medical problems than a public schools that has to be open to all. A broad tuition tax credit program would go a long way towards giving these kids better options.

Look Here, Please

Posted on by Audrey Spalding

Tonight at 7 p.m., at Zion Lutheran Church, developer Paul McKee and alderwoman April Ford-Griffin will make a presentation about the $8 billion proposed redevelopment of Saint Louis’ north side. Part of that redevelopment would involve the NorthSide Regeneration company acquiring more than 2,400 properties. On the list are a number of churches, as well as owner-occupied homes.

I hope that the mainstream media will cover tonight’s presentation. The development is contentious, not least because it is very large and involves an application for $410 million in tax increment financing (TIF) from the city, but also because of current residents’ worries that the company will use eminent domain to take their property (there is, in fact, mention of using eminent domain in the NorthSide Regeneration company’s TIF application).

There is also the issue of whether a city agency was somehow complicit by holding on to vacant property in the north side for more than a decade in case a developer came along, rather than putting the property up for sale.

These issues have been brought forward several times by the North Side Community Benefits Alliance (NSCBA), a group of north side residents determined to be involved in the redevelopment process. Although the group is new, it has done a lot to publicize this issue. Recently, the NSCBA held two community forums. At the first, Saint Louis TIF commissioner and Saint Louis School District Board of Education member David Jackson spoke. At the second, Christina Walsh, of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Justice spoke. Both speakers were noteworthy, yet both forums were mostly ignored by the press.

To his credit, Don Marsh, host of “St. Louis on the Air,” did have NSCBA members on his show, and when one of the banks holding more than 400 mortgages of McKee’s north Saint Louis properties was seized by the FDIC, KMOX contacted NSCBA’s vice president, Barbara Manzara, for quotes.

It is likely that a number of community residents who oppose the proposed development will attend tonight, which means that reporters could hear both their concerns and McKee’s responses without filter. I didn’t think that media needed a nudge to cover this side of the issue, but here it is: This is important, and this is newsworthy.

Can You Define “Tocologist”? How About “Polystyrene”?

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

You can learn so many new vocabulary words by tracking legislation in the Missouri General Assembly. “Tocology,” otherwise known as “midwifery,” made the news in 2007 when legislators accidentally legalized the practice because they didn’t know what the word meant.

Now, it turns out that a law intended to ban Styrofoam coolers on lakes and rivers really prohibits hard plastic containers, like Tupperware. Fortunately, the Missouri Water Patrol says it will ignore this law.

I’m confused by this statement in the Kansas City Star editorial about the mix-up:

The mistake was especially disappointing because the government was trying to tell the public how to behave, in this case to protect the environment.

Don’t all laws “try to tell the public how to behave”? I find this mistake less disappointing than others, because it was caught promptly and won’t be enforced.

Do Charter Schools Take the Joy Out of Learning?

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

This article in the Salt Lake Tribune tells the woeful tale of some overworked kindergartners. These kids spend several hours a day on academics, with little or no time left for play.

One comment blames this state of affairs on charter schools:

There’s seems to be this disturbing trend today, seen specifically in the development of the charter school program, of pushing the education system to higher standards in the name of achievement.

Are charter schools really the culprits? I don’t think so. The article describes public kindergartens run by traditional districts, and at least some of the impetus for drilling kindergartners comes from Utah’s education department:

“Doubling time in kindergarten should mean twice the time for instruction,” said Reed Spencer, a curriculum coordinator at the state office of education who is designing a uniform testing tool for Utah’s full-day kindergarten programs.

I’m guessing whoever wrote the comment would say that the traditional districts are responding to competition from charters. There’s pressure for traditional districts to win back students from charters, and the way they attract them is by ruthlessly pursuing higher test scores.

If districts are pressured to improve, that’s a good thing. However, improvement doesn’t have to mean forsaking common sense. As an illustration, look at some of the new charter elementary schools in St. Louis. There’s a Montessori school, a Spanish immersion school, and a French immersion school. None of those charters takes a drill-and-kill approach. A district that wants to compete with them would do well to avoid standardized tests for five-year-olds and instead replicate what the charters are creating.

As for charters like KIPP, that are known to focus on academic skills, they find ways to do that through age-appropriate activities. Here is a sample schedule from a KIPP elementary school in Houston. There are long hours, lots of time on reading, math, Spanish — what you would expect from a KIPP school. But interspersed throughout the day are blocks of time dedicated to “circle time,” “creative play,” “”storytelling,” and “project-based learning.” (And see this article about the creative ways KIPP is teaching reading to older children in St. Louis.)

It’s not all about textbooks and the blackboard. In fact, any charter that did torture kindergartners with uninterrupted test-prep would have trouble attracting students and would be very easy for any district to compete with. There would be no need to change the kindergarten curriculum in order to compete with such a poorly designed charter.

Local Farming I Can Support

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

I’m opposed to local-food mandates and farm subsidies, but I’m all for consumers buying local produce if that’s what they choose. So, I was happy to see this St. Louis Beacon article about a business model that gives consumers what they want and keeps farms in operation, without resorting to handouts from the state.

Here’s how it works: Consumers pay a subscription to the farm in advance, then they receive boxes of produce every week at a pick-up location in the city.

Missouri’s Health Care Disparity Problem

Posted on by Stephen Feman

Most Missouri doctors work in densely populated communities, while areas needing physicians appear unable to attract them. Although health care issues fill our headlines, the problem of distribution receives little press coverage. Our state suffers from a unique health care disparity problem, one of geographic distribution. Elsewhere in America, it has been common for people to migrate to the cities and their suburbs, while in Missouri many prefer to live in rural areas. Today, about 27 percent of our state’s residents live in rural locations.

Previously, people thought the physician distribution problem would be resolved by economic factors alone, and suggested there would be a diffusion of doctors from urban to rural communities. But that did not occur. This may be attributable to the problem that most of the Missourians without health insurance live in rural areas. A 2004 state survey found that rural regions had the largest populations without health insurance, and few doctors choose to work where most people have no health insurance.

At one time, people thought the distribution disparity arose from physicians preferring to be near other doctors, in order to benefit from professional synergism, such as sharing emergency calls. However, another factor has been found: the risk of lower earnings in rural medical practices — a disincentive that keeps physicians from choosing those locations.

In response to this problem, the federal government started the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) to establish financial incentives that would bring doctors to areas with a physician shortage. Congress then established the Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) program, designed to retain health professionals in these locations.

Neither program, however, has satisfied Missouri’s needs. In spite of these government efforts, more than 18.6 percent of Missourians live in areas that are underserved by physicians, and more than 60 Missouri counties are identified as health care professional shortage areas. Last year, Missouri became the 10th-worst state in terms of the doctor/citizen ratio.

Why does this problem continue? In 1991, there were 10,095 physicians working in our state. Since then, the number has grown, and by 2001 there were 12,565. At the same time, however, the average physician age has increased. During that 10-year interval, the number of physicians under age 45 decreased by 25 percent, and now most rural Missouri surgeons are looking to retire. As a result, many Missourians do not have access to the health care they need.

How to respond remains uncertain, although a recent innovation addresses this issue. Missouri Southern University and the Kansas City University of Medicine have united to build a medical education program in Joplin. In an example of a group of citizens responding to their own needs, that community is developing a school to supply them with doctors. With this new program, another 100 physicians will graduate each year from the Joplin location. No one knows whether those graduates will remain in the area, but after four years, some will have local ties. Others, though, will look elsewhere. To keep them, incentives will be needed.

One approach might be to underwrite medical student loans that will connect the students to a local service obligation. Vermont initiated such a practice, and it has done well. There, new physicians that accept such loans have an obligation to practice in areas where there is a physician undersupply. A similar program already exists in Missouri, but it has had such limited publicity that most medical students and physicians are not aware of it.

There may be other and/or better incentive programs. It is up to your ingenuity, and that of your community, to develop them.

St. Louis City And County: Divided With Love

Posted on by David Stokes

Today’s Post-Dispatch has the history behind the famous 1876 split between St. Louis County and city. This coincides nicely with an opinion piece that the Show-Me Institute just released, about St. Louis city rejoining the county. I discussed both this op-ed and the overall subject it addresses on the McGraw Show a few weeks ago, on The Big 550. (Scroll down to 8/3/09.) It’s always nice when things tie together so well.

I won’t add any more here, because it would just be repeating what I wrote in the op-ed and said during the radio interview, both of which you should all go read and listen to without delay.

Beer Cans and Freedom

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

It turns out I spoke too soon when I said beer companies enjoy so much freedom to advertise and market their products in the United States. The news reported in this Wall Street Journal article is appalling. All Anheuser-Busch did was change the colors of its cans to match college teams’ colors, and now everyone, from the FTC to the colleges themselves, is in an uproar.

The colleges allege trademark infringement. The beer cans don’t feature any mascots or logos, though, so I don’t see how Anheuser-Busch could be in violation of trademark. Surely, these schools don’t have a monopoly on color combinations like blue and yellow.

Regarding marketing to underage students: It’s true that most college freshman and sophomores aren’t old enough to drink, but what about the juniors, seniors, graduate students, and faculty? Are they off-limits, too?

The FTC would have a weak legal case because of a concept called “free speech.” The government can’t forbid a company to use a combination of two colors on a package. However, that doesn’t deter an FTC lawyer from harassing Anheuser-Busch:

“We would certainly hope that something like this never happens again,” she said.

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