New Bridge to Madison County

Posted on by David Stokes

Well, we have a new winner in the "Most obvious reference for a blog post title, ever" contest. Even if it is really a rehabbed old bridge, the point still stands. KWMU has a story (link via Combest) on the reopening of the McKinley Bridge, connecting St. Louis City to Venice, Ill. 

For better or worse, the newly reopened bridge will no longer have tolls, like it used to. Because the fine people of Illinois paid for this project with their tax dollars, I really don’t care. I never minded paying the toll when I used the bridge before it closed in 2001, which I am sure was was no more than twice in my life.

That is not intended to discount the impact of the reopend bridge:

By contrast, when the McKinley Bridge opens next month, about 10,000 cars and trucks will cross daily. As proud as I-DOT officials are of the two-lane structure, district engineer Mary Lamie says another span is needed.

Ten thousand vehicles sounds to me like a lot of cars and trucks off of the Poplar Bridge. The article has a great nugget that effectively explains why mobility is so important:

The reopening is a big deal to people in the Metro East like Kenneth Wilkinson who crosses the river each day from Granite City to work in St. Louis. "This should knock off about 15 minutes each way a day," Wilkinson said at a ceremony last weekend on the McKinley Bridge. "If I can save that kind of time and money each day."

An additional half hour each day, either to spend with family or work to make money, rather than wasting it on gas while sitting in traffic. That is what mobility means to people.

Combine this with the repairs on 802 bridges that MoDOT will begin soon, along with the project moving ahead on the Paseo bridge in Kansas City, and it looks like Missouri and MoDOT — as well as IDOT — are seriously addressing the transpotation needs of Missouri, to the best of their abilities. But I have said that before. 

Education Reform in the Private Sector

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Faithful readers of this blog might be under the impression that St. Louis is always missing the boat on education reform. Beside the lack of private school choice, there’s the controversial state takeover, disputes between districts about student transfers, and the fact that St. Louis’ charter school system is still behind Kansas City’s. But in the private sector, St. Louis leads the way. This is from www.sciencedaily.com:

Dan Kimura, Ph.D., a senior professor of computer science and engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, opened St. Louis’ first Kumon center in 1984, in large part because of his disappointment in the math education that his sons were getting. Mathematics is a major foundation of computer science, and Kimura, whose specialty is software programming, took action.

The article describes Kumon’s growing popularity and reports that 180,000 students are now enrolled throughout the United States. Kumon Math has been here in St. Louis for over 20 years. However, private tutoring through Kumon costs more than many parents in the city can afford. It would be smart policy to involve Kumon and other private learning companies in school reform. We could have vouchers for after-school tutoring — or maybe Kumon could start a charter school.

Truthiness and School Choice

Posted on by Dave Roland

On Sunday, the Columbia Daily Tribune juxtaposed two columns on school choice: one by David Webber (which Sarah Brodsky already touched on here), and one by yours truly. I’d like to use this post to follow up on some of the arguments made by Prof. Webber, and reiterate some of what I said in my own column.

Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central‘s immensely popular faux-conservative talk-show host and sometime presidential candidate, coined the term "truthiness" to describe things that people "know" intuitively without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. The idea would be funnier if not for the real-world consequences of allowing prevailing opinions to overwhelm evidence to the contrary.

On Nov. 6, voters in Utah decided to stay the course with the state’s underachieving educational status quo, voting down a program that would have granted need-based scholarships (valued between $500 and $3,000) for any student whose parents chose to send them to a school other than their government-assigned public school. Professor David Webber took the vote as an occasion to argue that states should abandon education reforms that would provide immediate solutions for parents through the use of public funds that would help them send their children to the schools best suited to address their families’ needs. His rationale? A perceived lack of public support for "vouchers" — a term that studies show people
disfavor, even when they support the underlying idea of school choice.

Webber’s arguments, however, are the same "truthiness" that the National Education Association, the NAACP, and the ACLU have trotted out prior to the adoption of each of the 19 K-12 school choice programs that remain active throughout the nation. As those programs have progressed, it has become increasingly clear that the doom-and-gloom predictions made by school choice opponents are utterly divorced from reality. Fourteen states (including Utah and the District of Columbia) currently maintain at least one school choice program, each of which is steadily growing and proving its value to the communities supporting them. These programs almost invariably attract more applicants than they are allowed
to serve, and no legislative or electoral vote has ever discontinued a school choice program once voters have been allowed to test it for themselves.

Consider Milwaukee, home of the nation’s first modern parental choice program. During the past 18 years, multiple studies of that program have shown performance improvements in Milwaukee public schools. Low-income parents have been so pleased with their newfound educational freedom that the program had to be expanded to accommodate the overwhelming demand for scholarships. Schools have sprouted in disadvantaged neighborhoods to serve parents who otherwise would have seen their children bused to public schools that were not meeting their needs. Graduation rates at scholarship schools are nearly double the graduation rates at traditional public schools. And contrary to preliminary concerns about the expense of non-public education and the threat of bankrupting public schools, Milwaukee public schools currently spend $12,000 per public school student while the government spends only $6,500 to educate each scholarship student. The city is saving $5,500 per scholarship student (each of whom would otherwise require the full $12,000), while also allowing thousands of families to enjoy schools of their choice. Milwaukee’s experience proves that choice can and does work to improve the lives of families.

Webber’s objection to school choice is especially perplexing, because he agrees that "parents should be able to select a particular local school that fits their transportation and teaching needs [… and] parents should have wider choices of education services." Indeed, many studies of the nation’s choice programs confirm that education improves when parents and children have the freedom to choose their schools. Alas, Webber insists — without citing any facts or studies to support his position — that choice should be limited to public schools. These things happen when "truthiness" takes hold.

Missourians — especially those living with the consequences of failing public schools — should pay careful attention to the success of choice in other cities and states. Talk to families participating in the programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Florida, Arizona, and Washington, D.C., and you will hear parents tell amazing stories about the improvement in student achievement levels, and voice their markedly increased satisfaction with their children’s schools. Equipped with the evidence that school choice is succeeding elsewhere, we can move beyond "truthiness" and develop a plan to offer Missouri’s families the kind of educational freedom that has already helped so many students realize their potential.

“Throw Your Hands Up in the Air, and Wave ‘Em Like You Just Don’t Care”

Posted on by Justin Hauke
  1. Dave is right, crime is a fact. But how it’s measured is a statistic. If an incident involves a burglary, which then leads to a rape/murder, do you measure that as three separate crimes or one? The FBI has classification suggestions, but there is no consensus on how to report it.
  2. There are most definitely dangerous parts of St. Louis and the city does have a crime problem. No doubt about it. But determining whether it’s the most dangerous or the 15th most dangerous city is going to be somewhat of a subjective process. Honest researchers will admit that you can get statistics to say pretty much anything you want, depending on how you treat the data. So when I see arbitrary rankings from a dataset that is known to have problems, I have to wonder how accurate the rankings can possibly be. And at least with estimates, you get standard errors. But with rankings, the researchers make it seem like this is gospel truth.
  3. I agree that the solution to St. Louis’ crime problem is economic growth and better education. That’s why removing governmental red tape and improving education are two of the Show-Me Institute’s most important goals.
  4. Comparing me to Joseph Stalin is a little harsh, don’t you think? And referring to me as "young" and "impressionable?" Can we say ad hominem?
  5. And lastly, responding to Dave’s comment:

    But trying to deny that the city has a crime problem, and a serious one at that, doesn’t do anyone any good.

    I agree. And neither does it do any good to go out of your way to single out a single city as the MOST dangerous or the second most dangerous or the 32nd most dangerous. All that does is cheapen the problem, and allows policymakers to ignore crime in their own cities. (“Hey, we’re not in the top 10, so we must be doing something right!”)

Justin Channels Stalin

Posted on by David Stokes

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." — Joseph Stalin, aka Koba the Dread

"No, crime statistics are statistics, not facts" — Justin Hauke, aka impressionable young NWA fan

The funny thing about inter-office blog fights is that you argue with coworkers online instead of walking six feet to talk to them. Ain’t technology great? Seriously, I wonder whether Justin would like to tell the family of a murder victim that the crime was just a statistic, not a fact.

Near the beginning of his post, Justin writes:

Dave has probably never been to Compton, Calif. Neither have I, for that matter, and I believe most sensible people haven’t. You can not honestly tell me that St. Louis is a more dangerous place to live, I’m sorry.

Well, Justin, it is true that I have never been to Compton, although I did once go to an NWA concert at the old Arena. As a quick aside, I went to the show back in high school with my buddy Dave G., and everyone before us in line got a full body search and everybody after us in line got a full body search, but we were just waved on through by security. True story, as Krusty would say, although to this day I still can’t figure out what was different about Dave and I in comparison to the rest of the crowd.

But back to Justin’s post. I am not the one substituting my personal impressions gleaned from the entertainment world for crime statistics compiled by law enforcement. One of us is trusting the statistics (which, while some would argue are skewed, nobody is saying they are false) and one of us is writing a blog post while envisioning himself doing an 8-ball with Eazy-E while pumping the radio front and back and side to side, and jockin’ some bit’ young ladies in suburban Cali.

Justin next writes:

The first problem I have with the data is that St. Louis’ bizarre municipal boundaries make the per-capita crime statistics appear much higher than they otherwise would be.

St. Louis is by no means the only city that can not expand its boundaries. In fact, the majority of cities either can not or do not do that. Some, such as the ones he mentioned in his post, certainly do. But there is a long list of Midwestern and Eastern cities that have not expanded their boundaries in decades. And St. Louis has a higher crime rate than all of them, except Detroit, which sort of plays the role of Mississippi in always placing last (or first) in these types of rankings. As I said in my own post, as long as the crime stats are comparing St. Louis to Kansas City rather than Jackson County, or Atlanta rather than Fulton County — and they are — then our apples are being fairly compared to other, less violent apples.

I have to reprint the next paragraph in full, as Justin truly enters bizarro world:

My second point of contention, though, is that crime at the national level is grossly underreported, particularly within low-income and minority neighborhoods. I imagine that Compton, Calif., gets a much better rating because most of the crime that occurs within its borders never gets reported to the police. I mean, it’s not like the Crips go to the police station every time a Blood robs one of their fellow gang members. In contrast, I imagine that a significant portion of the crime being reported in St. Louis comes from those trepid suburbanites that make the five-mile trek into the city and become easy prey.

Where to begin? I guess at the beginning…

  • IF crime at the national level is underreported in low-income and minority areas, then that happens in all of those areas, not just cities like ours trying to spin their crime stats.
  • Gang members are not just confined to Compton, you know — there are plenty of them in St. Louis, too. And they are not more or less likely to report their activities depending on what the RCGA would have them do.
  • As for "significant" crime reporting in St. Louis coming from suburbanites who become crime victims when they visit the city, at least Justin began that statement with "I imagine," because that idea is just a fairly tale. And even if it were somehow true, does that make the crime less important? Or less reportable?

Justin returns to reality with his summary: "I believe it is unfair to single out the city for idiosyncratic features that should be washed out of any truly unbiased statistical study." As is clear from my own posts, I am far from convinced that the city’s features are indeed idiosyncratic — and a crime is a crime, no matter who reports it or where it comes from. If St. Louis wants a lower crime rate, there are a number of things officials can do — economic growth and education being the only real answers that would be effective in the long run, and putting people in prison being the only real answer in the short run.

But trying to deny that the city has a crime problem, and a serious one at that, doesn’t do anyone any good. And trying to convince people that it’s safe to come downtown, and to the West End and Soulard — while completely true — does not do any good for the citizens who still live in the other parts of the city where violent crime is a normal fact of life.

Learn From Others’ Experience With School Choice

Posted on by Dave Roland

On Nov. 6, voters in Utah decided to stay the course with the state’s underachieving educational status quo, voting down a program that would have granted need-based scholarships (valued between $500 and $3,000) for any student whose parents choose to send them to a school other than their government-assigned public school.

The defeat of Utah’s universal choice program was, in essence, a triumph of misinformation. The most commonly voiced concern about the program was that it would destroy public schools, abandoning thousands of poor and minority kids to educational oblivion and forcing the public to subsidize private-school educations for wealthy white families. The National Education Association, the NAACP, and the ACLU sounded that alarm again and again in millions of dollars’ worth of advertisements preceding the election, and that message ended up resonating with Utah’s voters.

Unfortunately, the message was patently false. You see, those organizations have trotted out the same stale arguments for nearly 20 years, ever since Milwaukee began considering what would become the first modern school choice program. Choice opponents repeated them ad nauseam prior to the adoption of each of the 19 programs that remain active throughout the nation. In practice, however, not one of their doom-and-gloom predictions has come to pass.

Multiple studies of school choice programs have shown no decline in the academic performance of impacted public schools, and a recent study published by the anti-choice Economic Policy Institute even acknowledges that Milwaukee public schools’ performance improved when that city’s program expanded to accommodate parents’ overwhelming demand for scholarships. And, contrary to all the concerns raised about bankrupting public schools, Milwaukee public schools currently spend $12,000 per public school student while the government spends only $6,500 to educate each scholarship student. By saving $5,500 per scholarship student (each of whom would otherwise require the full $12,000), the city is actually saving a great deal of money while also allowing thousands of families to enjoy schools of their choice.

It is tragic that choice opponents’ misinformation successfully persuaded Utahns to deny thousands of low-income children their first chance to attend the best schools available. A $3,000 scholarship might not have allowed every low-income family to afford a private school education (the average private school in Utah costs between $3,500 and $4,000 a year), but it would have at least put that opportunity in reach for parents desperate to help their children achieve a better, more prosperous life, and it would have done so without harming public schools. The vote against this scholarship program ensures that those children will continue to have only two choices: remain in the public schools that are failing them, or drop out altogether.

Fortunately, choice programs nationwide are steadily growing and proving that educational freedom helps children succeed. Despite the vote, Utah remains one of 14 states (including the District of Columbia) with an active school choice program. These programs almost invariably attract more applicants than they are allowed to serve, and no legislative or electoral vote has ever discontinued a school choice program once voters have been allowed to test it for themselves.

Missourians — especially those living with the consequences of failing public schools — should pay careful attention to the success of choice in other cities and states. Talk to people who live in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Florida, Arizona, Washington, D.C., and other places where school choice has been active for years. Rather than the dire consequences predicted by choice opponents, observers will find improved levels of overall student achievement and markedly increased satisfaction for hundreds of thousands of parents. Equipped with evidence that school choice is succeeding elsewhere, hopefully we will not succumb to the fears that have cost so many children their best chance for a high-quality education.

Dave Roland has litigated school choice issues in state and federal courts and has offered expert testimony on school choice programs before several state legislatures. He is an education policy analyst with the Show-Me Institute.

Webber on Public Schools

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

David Webber, a professor at the University of Missouri, makes some good points in an op-ed about school choice in the Columbia Daily Tribune:

Properly administered and supervised, charter schools show promise for expanding specialized education program alternatives. Home schooling is a rapidly growing practice, and those children should be allowed to easily take advantage of public school extracurricular and supplemental activities.

Public schools should adopt more "alternative teacher certification" programs, work to retain teachers (requiring higher pay) and treat them as professionals.

However, I can’t say I share his dismissive attitude toward vouchers and tuition tax credits. He writes:

Public schools do more than teach math and reading, skills that can be purchased at a for-profit learning center at a strip mall.

Since he admits that private organizations can teach those skills successfully, why not involve them more in our education system? The argument seems to be that although public schools often lag behind private schools in teaching academics, public schools also build community pride and bring people together.

That may be true of some places, especially some rural communities where there aren’t many alternatives to the local public school. But in cities like St. Louis, where a few wealthy professionals can afford private schools while most people are stuck in the failing district, public schools can foster more frustration and resentment than community. 

No, Crime Statistics Are Statistics, Not Facts

Posted on by Justin Hauke

Not to beat a dead horse here, but I disagree with Dave’s impression of the crime statistics in St. Louis.

Dave has probably never been to Compton, Calif. Neither have I, for that matter, and I believe most sensible people haven’t. You can not honestly tell me that St. Louis is a more dangerous place to live, I’m sorry.

I believe that the St. Louis data might be skewed and there are a couple of reasons why. For example, Dave might remember a few weeks ago when the Post-Dispatch reported that the Illinois side of the river is more dangerous than the Missouri side (according to Illinois data, which the FBI rejects). In fact, Metro East is apparently safer even than the national average.

Really?

The first problem I have with the data is that St. Louis’ bizarre municipal boundaries make the per-capita crime statistics appear much higher than they otherwise would be. Crime is a problem in areas of most U.S. cities, but the difference is that it is generally spread out over a larger population. But when St. Louis unincorporated itself from St. Louis County more than a century ago, it effectively land-locked itself. So, unlike metro areas such as Phoenix or Houston (which continue to incorporate “safe” suburban satellites within their municipal boundaries), St. Louis is stuck with inner city crime with nowhere to run. And that is an idiosyncratic feature of the data that should have been accounted for.

My second point of contention, though, is that crime at the national level is grossly underreported, particularly within low-income and minority neighborhoods. I imagine that Compton, Calif., gets a much better rating because most of the crime that occurs within its borders never gets reported to the police. I mean, it’s not like the Crips go to the police station every time a Blood robs one of their fellow gang members. In contrast, I imagine that a significant portion of the crime being reported in St. Louis comes from those trepid suburbanites that make the five-mile trek into the city and become easy prey.

The point of my post was that while I agree that the city has crime problems (I thought I stressed that point when I mentioned that I was mugged outside of my apartment), I believe it is unfair to single out the city for idiosyncratic features that should be washed out of any truly unbiased statistical study. Maybe the data is right, but even then, I don’t see how reporting these statistics does anything but blur the issue.

In closing, I want to add Mark Twain’s famous quip about statistics: “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." As a native Missourian, he might have had a problem with the St. Louis crime data, too.

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