Ever Get The Feeling You’ve Been Cheated?

Posted on by David Stokes

Maurice posted yesterday on this infuriating story from the AP about the decision by state government five years ago to stop notifying businesses when they overpaid sales taxes. Befitting the fact that Maurice is a very nice young man, his post politely criticized this desision. I, on the other hand, would like someone to explain to me why this decision by the Holden administration is anything short of stealing. If somebody owes me $10, and they mistakenly give me a $20 bill, I have a moral obligation to return them the extra $10. Doesn’t the state have the same responsibility? The answer is obviously yes, and I commend the Blunt administration for changing this awful decision.

By the way, in order to get the full effect of this post’s title, you must say it with an Engllish accent and imagine looking over a crowd in San Francisco while uttering this famously appropriate summation to the end of one of the most awsome bands of all time.

No Child Left Behind, Take 2

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Here‘s another article in the Post-Dispatch about No Child Left Behind. This one quotes Show-Me Institute board member Mike Podgursky:

"You’re not gonna hit 100 percent here," said Michael Podgursky, an economics professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. The only way to make it would be to keep lowering the definition of proficient, he said.

The most important thing is that the scores show improvement, Podgursky said.

I may have been overly optimistic in my previous post on NCLB. As Tim pointed out to me, the requirement for adequate yearly progress encourages districts to focus resources on the students who score just below the desired level and to write everyone else off.

I Know Some People Can’t Fathom This, But …

Posted on by David Stokes

There are actually some people left in America who don’t want government assistance! Per this Columbia Daily Tribune article (via Combest), Missouri has the number one participation rate in the country among those eligible for food stamps. I guess we should be proud of that. The social workers in the article sure are:

"We credit a lot of our success to our frontline workers. They’re the ones out there meeting with the public," she said. "They give 110 percent effort day in and day out, and, you know, we have an office in every county and more than one in some places."

Hey — as social programs go, the food stamp program might be the best. So don’t take this as a knock on food stamps, or social workers. It’s just the tone of the article — and I have read others like it, although I searched and failed to find them (one was from the LA Times in Kausfiles last year, If I recall).

Some types, generally of the left-leaning persuasion, just can not understand that people eligible for government aid might still prefer to make it by on their own. That just goes against their entire worldview. So instead of writing that 29 percent of Missourians take a pass on government aid, we get articles that say more needs to be done to ensure that every person eligible is in the system, ’cause it is not possible that they don’t wish to be. That’s it. Rant’s over.

Missouri Kept Extra Sales Tax Revenues

Posted on by Maurice Harris

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for the past five years the state of Missouri has quietly kept extra funds that it netted from overpaid sales taxes. During that time, many consumers — and the businesses they patronized — did not know they were paying more than required:

[A]fter the AP’s inquiry, the Revenue Department also acknowledged
that it had stopped notifying businesses in 2002 that they had overpaid
state sales and use taxes.

"Those funds were simply kept by the state, and a taxpayer may not have known that he or she had overpaid," Browning said.

This ostensible oversight probably stemmed from the fact that Missouri was in the midst of a fiscal crisis, using every revenue stream it could find to balance the budget.

But "with the downturn in revenue, and how desperately the Holden
administration was trying to hold things together, I can see how that
could have happened and probably did," said [former state Senator Wayne] Goode, who now is on the
board of directors for the Consumer Council of Missouri.

Even though the state was facing a tough financial situation, which it could have prevented if the previous administration had spent wisely, officials should have reported overcharging and refunded overpayments immediately. Now, consumers have no way to get their money back, because state law does not require businesses to refund money for sales tax overcharging. Hopefully, legislators will learn from this and change state law to protect taxpayers from future instances in which Missouri government officials decide they don’t want to follow the rules.

Trash Talkin’ 2: Think Tank-Style

Posted on by David Stokes

I must admit, this is one issue I am really torn on — the St. Louis County plan to divide the unincorporated parts of the county into trash districts and award one hauler the rights to do the job for that area. There is a great deal of opposition to this in South County. People like having the freedom to contract with whomever they choose to pick up their trash. Who can blame them for that? On the other hand, there would be undeniable cost and efficiency benefits to the trash districts.

I wrote about this a few months ago. The Mayor of Affton has also chimed in with his always enjoyable opinions. The argument for freedom in choosing your hauler carries great weight with me, although — let’s be honest — we are just talking about trash removal here. In the end, it’s just garbage, not freedom of speech, or religion, or beer. Most citizens in the county are probably having trouble understanding what the fuss is about, considering that most people live in municipalities that have long done with trash service exactly what the county is planning to do — bid the contract out to a hauler that comes into your neighborhood once a week to pick up the trash.

So, what should trump here? The right of the people to keep the system as it is, in which they contract with their own hauler and pay all the costs? If they want to have trash trucks come onto their street multiple days each week, that is up to them. On the other hand, having multiple trucks come on multiple days is obviously bad for the street itself, which everone in the county pays for with our tax dollars. (You may not be aware of this, but if you live in a municipality you pay the same county tax dollars as you do if you live in the unincorporated parts.) So, lower costs versus economic freedom of choice? Usually, these two things go hand in hand. This is a rare case where they seem to be opposed. I say, always err on the side of more freedom. Scrap the trash plan for areas that clearly do not want it, and keep it for areas that do.

Parental Choice Within Schools

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

When I was a little kid in a public elementary school, my parents would ask around about which teachers were the best. They got to request that I be assigned to a classroom — but more often than not, the school didn’t pay any attention to those requests. When I was in first grade, I didn’t like my teacher and my parents asked that I be allowed to switch. The school would only do that on the condition that I, the six-year-old, present my grievances to the teacher in person at a formal meeting. (Needless to say, I stayed in that classroom and learned to deal with it.)

I’m happy to see that there’s more choice than that at Carmen Trails Elementary School. A Post-Dispatch article about single-sex education reports that parents can choose between single-sex and coed classes for their first-grade kids. The school might expand the program to other grades, as well.

I’m guessing the impetus for this program was competition from the Catholic schools in the area, many of which are single-sex. If public schools want to retain students whose parents prefer single-sex classrooms, they need to offer it as an option.

If there were more parental choice in education, I predict we would see more examples of public schools giving parents different options. For example, instead of forcing a phonics (or more likely, whole language) curriculum down everyone’s throats, a school might allow parents to choose which method will be used to teach their child reading. Disputes about "new math" could be resolved in a peaceful way too.

I do have a concern about one thing in the article:

Boys engaged in a math contest meandered around the room Tuesday, scampered on the floor and fidgeted at tables.

Gleeful taunts shot up each time a high card trumped a low one. It was boys being boys.

And where were the girls?

They were next door, in Alicia Wall’s class, sitting quietly as Wall asked them to talk about colors clipped from magazines.

Olivia Rosewell raised her hand and politely observed of a classmate’s project, "You sure found a lot of pink."

It’s not often that I agree with anyone from the National Organization for Women, but if I ever have daughters I would not want them to be finding colors in magazines while their male peers learn math. However, that’s a decision parents should make for themselves.

We Need More Lawmakers Like Belinda Harris

Posted on by Maurice Harris

State Rep. Belinda Harris wrote an op-ed that appears In today’s Southeast Missourian, challenging the merits of the Quality Jobs Act (H.B. 327). She argues that cherry-picking industries to receive tax credits does not help the economy at all, but puts unfavored businesses at a disadvantage. Also, allowing legislators to decide who receives benefits can politicize the process altogether:

When legislators pick and choose which businesses get tax credits or
subsidies, the process becomes politicized. They will be influenced by
personal interest and political contributors. Government should not be
the one to decide what businesses get subsidies and tax credits, thus
putting competing businesses at a disadvantage.

She argues correctly that market forces and a low-tax environment for all businesses should be the mechanism that gives people incentives to start businesses. We have stated at the Show-Me Institute that the Quality Jobs Act is a bad idea overall, even in its scaled-down form, and that the state should instead lower tax rates across the board, and reduce regulatory red tape that discourages job creation. Rep. Harris has the right idea, and hopefully she can spread her message to her fellow legislators during the special session.

No Child Left Behind

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

It’s hard to determine what combination of goals, evaluations, and consequences will get public school districts to improve. But No Child Left Behind seems to have changed Parkway’s attitude for the better:

"This is indicative of the bigger picture and demonstrates why everyone in public education has to drill deeper to find students who are not successful and to find out why they are not successful," Parkway district spokesman Paul Tandy told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

My observation as a student in Parkway was that the district threw around labels like "disabled," "gifted," and "English second language" in order to avoid teaching everyone. I’m glad they now have an incentive to pay attention to each individual student.

At the same time, we don’t want a system in which districts follow directives from the top against the wishes of district residents. To see what could happen if we go too far, here’s an article in the New York Times extolling the virtues of Britain’s top-down education establishment, which imposes all kinds of rigid requirements on schools. As noted in the article, that wouldn’t work in the U.S. for political reasons — we wouldn’t agree on one comprehensive national education program. (Although some people are trying.)

Is the St. Louis Public School District Ready?

Posted on by Maurice Harris

In today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, an article discusses preparations for opening the city’s schools soon, and the new unity that is growing between the Special Administrative Board and the district:

The Special Administrative Board now running the St. Louis Public Schools joined the district superintendent and the presidents of the teachers and principals unions in a show of unity on Tuesday to declare a "fresh start" for the troubled district.

Schools open on Monday for the district, and its goal is to have full attendance on the first day. The new board and district officials, in their new display of unity, plan to make appearances across the city to encourage parents to send their kids to school on that first day. It will be crucial that attendance is high if the new board wants to show that it has legitimacy. Hopefully, their efforts — which range from church appearances to back-to-school festivals — will bring the high-percentage turnout they hope to instigate.

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