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.

Saint Louis County Would Benefit From City’s Return

Posted on by David Stokes

In his most recent inaugural address, Mayor Francis Slay stated that it is time for the city of Saint Louis to reenter Saint Louis County, from which it separated in 1876. He’s right — it is time for the people of the Saint Louis region to once again consider repairing this split of 123 years.

First, officials should stop using the term “merger.” Slay’s website uses a much better term: “join.” There is no need for an all-encompassing merger of the city, county, every county municipality, and each fire and library district into one massive leviathan. Plenty of benefits would arise just from the city becoming the county’s 92nd municipality. It would eliminate many government redundancies and reduce the circular-firing-squad tax incentives that area cities engage in.

Conventional wisdom suggests that reentering the county would be an easy sell in the city and a hard one in the county. That assumption is questionable, however, because the primary effect of this change for county residents would be a tax cut. Saint Louis County does not break down its spending by incorporation status, but anyone familiar with county government knows it spends more money per capita on unincorporated areas. Adding 350,000 people to the county, all of whom live within an incorporated area, would vastly expand the county’s tax base without significantly expanding its government responsibilities. Result: A tax reduction for all county businesses and residents.

In 2007, Jackson County — which is dominated by Kansas City and three other large suburbs — spent $389 per person. That same year, Saint Louis County — which has a substantial unincorporated area and many smaller cities — spent $90 more per resident. There is a correlation between per-capita spending and the county’s percentage of incorporation — economies of scale and savings from consolidation of services cannot be ignored.

There are exceptions to every rule, of course. Some small suburbs in Saint Louis County with significant retail activity spend more per capita than Saint Louis city, even though they fall within a county. However, adding the city’s assessed valuation of $4,620,358,944 to the county’s $25,026,505,994, consolidating the benefits of economies of scale in tax collection, assessments, deed recording, etc, and spreading the tax rate among a wider group of taxpayers would result in a lower tax rate for the people of Saint Louis County.

This would obviously entail some expansion of county government responsibility and size, but not anywhere near the amount one might expect from increased population or assessed valuation alone. Every role the county would play within the city would result either from combining operations or replacing the city’s role as the provider of county-level services. There would be no new layer of government authority or duplication of services. Over time, it is likely that the county would take over certain positions within the city, such as maintenance of major arterial roads that serve both the city and county, like Forest Park Parkway, or management of some city parks, in the same way that the county runs Tilles Park in Ladue. These changes would stem from a drive for efficiency, however, not patronage or stimulus, and as a result would save taxpayer dollars, reduce aggregate government spending, and lower the levels of government employment in our area — three worthy goals. The separation of powers works well in the county, and would work just as well when and if the city rejoined the county.

Local governments in Missouri constantly try to use incentives to lure businesses from one city to another. Numerous examples exist of Saint Louis county municipalities using incentives to entice companies to leave the city, and vice versa. If Saint Louis city rejoined the county, however, those pressures would be lessened. And, if the city were required to become a sales tax “pool” city as a condition of reentry, those pressures would be lessened substantially. As a “pool” city, Saint Louis would have far less to gain from retail business incentives, and less to lose as well. There is a reason all of the well-known examples of eminent domain abuse in Saint Louis County have occurred in “point-of-sale” cities like Sunset Hills — those cities have financial incentives to replace homeowners with retail businesses.

The return of Saint Louis city into the county would not adversely affect the people of the county in any more significant a fashion than Florissant affects Ellisville. It would lead to lower property taxes, and reduced pressure for government to hand out development tax incentives. The people of Saint Louis County would be well-served by a return of the prodigal city.

David Stokes is a policy analyst with the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank.

 

Switching to Private Utilities Could Fund Springfield’s Pension Shortfall

Posted on by David Stokes

The city of Springfield is currently struggling to deal with a significantly underfunded public pension plan. Officials recently attempted to raise city taxes in order to increase funding levels, but voters defeated that plan. As the citizens of Springfield debate how to fix a problem that isn’t going away, they should consider that their government owns and manages an incredibly valuable asset that the private sector is fully capable of handling: City Utilities (CU).

Springfield is the largest city in Missouri, and one of the larger cities in the country, in which every utility is provided, owned, and operated by the government. CU supplies gas, electricity, water, mass transit, and even some telecommunications services to the people and businesses of Springfield. It’s worth comparing this to how Missouri’s other major cities handle their utilities. In both Saint Louis and Kansas City, private, investor-owned, regulated utilities provide natural gas and electricity. In Saint Louis County, in addition to gas and electricity, the water is also provided by a private utility.

If Springfield were to break up CU and auction its parts to private utilities, it could potentially fund the $200 million pension shortfall and still have a substantial amount of money left over to cut taxes and pay off other public debts, or whatever else the city chooses. It is difficult to estimate the windfall Springfield might receive, because public utility valuations are very complicated, but Webster Groves, which has one tenth the population of Springfield, received $9.5 million in 2002 just for its water system. Using a rough per-capita calculation and adjusting for inflation, a similar sale might bring more than $75 million for Springfield’s water division alone. The city’s gas and electricity divisions would prove similarly valuable.

Last year, after I suggested a similar course of action, a CU representative wrote me a nice letter arguing that the utility was doing a fine job for the people of Springfield. I don’t disagree with that, but he provided as his primary evidence an annual survey of utility companies that generally ranks Springfield among the lowest average winter utility bills in the nation. According to the 2009 survey, winter CU bills averaged $294 — the fourth-lowest ranking. However, Saint Louis, which is primarily served by private utilities, usually falls close behind Springfield in this survey. In 2009, combined winter utility bills in Saint Louis averaged $327, good for an eighth-place ranking. Clearly, private utilities are also providing outstanding service for the people of Saint Louis and Kansas City (the latter of which was not included in the survey). The citizens and leaders of Springfield might well choose to keep CU public because it might save them a few dollars per month, although the logistics of the utility systems in each city aren’t directly comparable. But the tax dollars to fund the pension shortfall have to come from somewhere.

Breaking up CU would be difficult and complicated, no doubt — particularly the disposition of existing bonds — but other utility privatization efforts have overcome similar hurdles. Studies have shown that private utilities are more efficient than public, especially after adjusting for government utilities’ tax advantages, such as issuing tax-exempt bonds and property tax exemptions. Breaking up and auctioning off CU in order to fund the city’s pension shortfall is a short-term solution, but in the long run, the citizens of Springfield would find themselves just as well served by private, regulated utilities. There is simply no reason for every utility service in Springfield to be provided by the government.

David Stokes is a policy analyst with the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank.

 

Test Scores and Science Mobiles

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

School districts will tell you it’s wrong to make decisions based on test scores — unless you conclude that textbooks are useless:

The district usually replaces the science textbooks every six years. This year, it would have cost the district $610,000 to buy new ones.

But district officials found they were wasting money on the books. When they looked at standardized test scores in science, they found that classrooms with the highest scores never touched the textbooks.

Districts don’t systematically use test scores to evaluate teachers, which makes the textbook evidence suspect. A correlation between textbook-free classrooms and higher scores doesn’t necessarily mean that textbooks lower scores. It might be that better teachers choose hands-on projects, but those teachers would improve achievement no matter which curriculum they used. If the textbooks used previously were inadequate, it could be that better textbooks would boost scores even more than exploratory activities. It’s also possible that the hands-on work is superior to textbooks, but that teachers who didn’t adopt the approach voluntarily won’t use it well when the district mandates it for all classrooms.

This should not be taken as a criticism of the mobile science lab described in the article, which sounds like a worthwhile addition to the curriculum. I just object to the arbitrary use of test scores to advance certain popular programs, like hands-on science, but not controversial policies like merit pay.

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