Show-Me Institute board member Bevis Schock has an insightful article in the St. Louis Beacon about deregulating the taxicab industry in St. Louis. I recommend it highly.
Slow News Day in Australia
The top headline on the Chronicle‘s website is that a husband had to deliver a baby at home because there wasn’t time for a midwife to come or for him to take his wife to the hospital. (The midwife was consulted over the phone.)
Although the midwife didn’t take a hands-on role, I think this news item supports the case for midwives. Like it or not, some babies are going to be born outside of hospitals. It’s futile to legislate an ideal world in which every baby is born under just the right conditions.
Since we know that births do happen in homes, it makes sense to allow midwives to charge money for their services, increasing the likelihood that someone will be on hand at a home birth. I’m glad Missouri law permits the practice of midwifery.
Wise Words on Charter Schools
When I saw this link on Edspresso, I thought, “Great. The federal government is, as usual, telling the states how to run schools — which neither state nor federal government can do very well.” Then I read Arne Duncan’s statement on charter schools:
He wants Illinois to lift its cap on charter schools. State law says there can be no more than 60 charter schools in the state, but there is demand for more than that. Why the cap? Because charter school teachers usually don’t have unions, and the teachers unions see that as a threat.
“Great charters make a huge difference in kids’ lives. What I loved about charters is they’re a school of choice,” Duncan said. “If kids stop showing up, we’ll take the school out. The money follows the kid.”
Hear, hear. I still don’t think the federal government should tell states how long their school days or years should be. Nonetheless, enthusiasm for charters and choice is welcome from all corners.
Knowledge Is Power
It’s a familiar story: a gifted public school teacher comes up with a new way to motivate or teach students, only to be quashed by administrators who say the idea can’t be expanded. Did you know that’s what happened to the first Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) class? I’m not making this up:
The first year went well. They doubled the number of students passing the state tests. But they were denied permission to expand the program at Garcia.
KIPP is now one of the most successful charters out there, and it’s coming to St. Louis this year.
If this doesn’t make people reconsider teachers’ good ideas that don’t have research (yet) behind them, I don’t know what will.
An Education Proposal That Falls Short
This is well-intentioned, but it’s not enough. The Grade reports on Rep. Ted Hoskins’ proposal to “require accredited school districts who reject a student from an unaccredited district give the parents a reason.”
I’m sure Rep. Hoskins is motivated by a true desire to help students in unaccredited districts, but this bill wouldn’t give them any new alternatives or educational options. It doesn’t reform the education system to make it easier for schools to accept out-of-district students, nor does it give schools any incentive to take students from nearby districts. It just says the districts can continue doing what they’ve always done, but now they have to give a reason.
This is like a teacher telling students they needn’t complete assignments, as long as they say “The dog ate my homework,” and put it in writing.
Concealed Carry on Campus
Katy Steinmetz responds in the comments to my post about concealed carry:
The point is that carrying guns around is not justified on the basis that it is a personal freedom; it is justified when exercising that personal freedom can help achieve the end of self-defense, which, given the lack of danger on the MU campus, is not possible (outside of truly extraordinary circumstance) there.
In my worldview, people start out with personal freedoms and have to give some up when they harm others. So I agree with Steinmetz, for example, that we shouldn’t allow people to carry hand grenades around. Hand grenades are a danger, and giving up the freedom to carry them is a small price we pay to enjoy the benefits of civil society.
But guns are a different story. It’s possible to safely carry guns without threatening anyone else’s lives or property. That’s why Missouri, like most other states, allows concealed carry.
Steinmetz says that MU should be different from the rest of the state because of its low crime rate. I don’t think it makes sense to divide up the state into little areas and allow concealed carry in some but not in others. Crime can happen anywhere. Although as Steinmetz points out, school shootings are rare, we see that they have occurred. Opponents of concealed carry at MU argue that the campus police is enough to deal with those rare events, but campus police wasn’t able to prevent the tragedies at Virginia Tech and other schools.
Suppose we were to follow Steinmetz’s reasoning to its logical conclusion and permit concealed carry only on streets with high annual crime rates. (On streets with lower crime rates, crime is a rare event that we shouldn’t legislate based on.) And suppose a murder takes place on my street this month, on a nearby street the next month, on an adjacent street the month after that, and so on. No one would be allowed to carry guns because no particular street would have a high enough crime rate. Steinmetz could argue that my street just had that one murder a while back, so concealed carry isn’t justified on that street. And the next street over also had one murder, so we shouldn’t allow concealed carry on that street either. This is not the approach Missouri law takes to the Second Amendment — it allows concealed carry throughout the state, regardless of the statistical likelihood of crime in individual counties and neighborhoods.
For more on concealed carry and self-defense, I recommend listening to Marcus Bowen’s arguments in this podcast.
Cautious Optimism on Sale of SLPS Buildings
In the past several years, St. Louis Public Schools has been forced to consider selling dozens of its former school buildings, which are no longer economically viable to maintain because of the steep drop the district has seen in the number of enrolled students. Knowing that these buildings would be very attractive to those interested in opening new charter or private schools, two years ago the district’s Special Administrative Board placed deed restrictions on the vacant buildings that would prohibit future purchasers from allowing charter or private schools to operate in those buildings. This was really just a formalization of an earlier, unwritten policy of refusing to sell empty buildings if the district suspected that they might be used for such purposes.
In the past few months, a broad coalition of legislators (led by Rep. Talib El-Amin) and education reform activists (led by the Children’s Education Alliance of Missouri) have pushed to have these deed restrictions lifted, either by action taken by the Special Administrative Board or by a vote of the General Assembly. This morning, David Hunn at the Post-Dispatch reported that the SAB has rescinded the formal deed restrictions.
Theoretically, this means that any buildings sold by SLPS will now go to the highest bidder — unless a government agency opts to bid for the property, in which case it will likely take precedence over a private purchaser. Time will tell whether the SAB (or the elected Board of Education, in the event they are ever given back control over the district) will actually put these buildings on the market for all interested parties, or whether they will implement a new plan that would selectively withhold properties that might be useful to potential charter and private schools.
Kansas City Airport Privatization Takes Small Step Forward
We may have to even call it a “very small” step, but nonetheless the idea is slowly moving forward. Prime Buzz has a post about this in the Star. Of course, big ideas like this should move slowly and carefully. I have no idea how far this will go. Obviously, I support privatization in principle, and I think it would be an excellent move for Kansas City taxpayers and travelers, but it a complicated issue and I have not yet been able to study it closely — although I certainly will. The nice thing is that, as with MoDOT and tolling, at least the issue is being talked about as a possibility, even if it does not happen. That alone is a step in the right direction. As usual, Reason has a lot of great information on this topic that I recommend to you.
St. Louisans Should Support the Zoo!
I love zoos. Some of my fondest memories of my youth are of my trips to the zoos in Knoxville, Birmingham, and Atlanta. When my wife and I lived near the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., the fact that my morning runs took me right past the elephants, cheetahs, and gibbons gave me motivation to get up and get going. Since moving to St. Louis, I have happily gone to visit our fabulous zoo with several of my nieces and nephews.
That having been said, I have to disagree with Dave’s take on proposals to expand taxation in support of St. Louis’ zoo and museums. My problem with the plan is this: Taxation forcibly strips people of hard-earned money. These are dollars that, if not for taxation, citizens could use to buy flowers for their significant other, pay down debt, improve their home, put into a college fund, or give to charity — whatever was most important to them. If the government is going to take that money away from those who earned it, it should only take as much as is necessary to provide the services and infrastructure necessary for the well-being of society — such as roads, law enforcement, education, and so forth.
No matter how much I love zoos, they are not institutions vital to the well-being of a community. They are a luxury, and not even a luxury that everyone will want to enjoy. Why should people with no interest in going to the zoo be compelled to financially support those who do? And, on the flip side, why should those who would like to go to a zoo be able to force their neighbors to subsidize their entertainment? I’m sorry, Dave, but zoos should be supported only by people who don’t have to be coerced to give them funding.
Thus, the ideal free-market solution in this case would be to replace taxation on behalf of the city’s zoos and museums with a reasonable admission fee of $20–$25, perhaps charging half price for children aged 5–13 and letting kids younger than five get in for free. The zoo’s board could even choose to adopt a policy that would offer free or reduced-price admission to people of slender economic means, if it felt strongly that no one’s ability to experience the zoo should be limited by their ability to pay. This sort of arrangement would guarantee that the zoo would continue to be supported by those who want to enjoy it, solving the “free rider” problem while lightening the tax burden for those living in the area. And, once the government quit taking that portion of their money, area taxpayers who were so inclined could then use it to, y’know, support the zoo!
