More SLPS Drama

Posted on by Steven Bernstetter

Over at PubDef, you can find a fairly comprehensive list of exactly what’s going on now with the SLPS and the impending state takeover. Much of the debate now swirling about in the blogosphere centers around the possibility of students in the city transfering out of the district and into an accepting district of their choice. The controversy, so far as I can parse it, centers not so much around the potential of the kids stuck in the underperforming schools to leave, but rather the potential for city students, not enrolled in the city district, to use city funds to attend a county district.

The issue here, like in so many of our debates about education, is one of choice. Those living in the city, but paying to attend a private or parochial school, or educating their children at home, or who have, like so many have done already, simply moved out of the city, already have the luxury of school choice. It is an unfortunate reality that school choice is, as of now, directly related to the income of the parents.  While I’m all about expanding choice to those who don’t have it, expanding choice for those who already have it seems a little egregious, and more the product of greed or selfishness than any particular concern for those unfortunate souls stuck in the failed district.

Those who can afford to opt out of the city schools don’t need any more help from the city or state. If they are so concerned about their tax money going to fund somebody else’s kid’s education, then they should excercise their school choice privelege and move to a county with a public school they approve of. Meanwhile, those without such luxury should be given the opportunity to leave the district, via state or city funding. Choice works, and we should strive to provide it for those who can’t afford it independantly.

How free are we?

Posted on by David Stokes

At Combest this morning, we see reports of two bills being considered by the state legislature that go directly to how free we are, could be, should be or should not be?  Are we free enough to make our own desisions as to the safety of our own bodies?  Must we wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle?  May we drive a car, or ride in one, without a seat belt on?  Far too many legislators think it is their job to keep us safe from ourselves, and far too many citizens are happy to let others dictate those issues for us. 

The seat belt issues is moot for those of us in St. Louis County, as the County Council has already passed an ordinance mandating use of seat belts by everyone and giving authority for Police to pull you over and cite you for not wearing one.  I commend some legislators in the state house for resisting giving police the authority to pull you over for not wearing a seat belt.  I also commend those legislators who are moving forward with repealing the helmet law, although again local ordinances would still enforce that imposition here in St. Louis County.

Part of freedom is the freedom to make mistakes and poor choices.  I think not wearing a seat belt is a poor choice, but I don’t want to force that view on others.  Supporters often pose these safety laws as economically necessary, because taxpayers pay for the medical expenses of those hurt without wearing helmets or seat belts.  As the very same people who argue that are often the ones who support more socialism in medicine and higher taxes in general, I applaud their impressive synergy in advancing their goal of more state control of every aspect of our lives, while I abhore those beliefs. 

People should be as free to do what they wish as long as they do not harm someone else.  That sounds easy enough, and most people would agree with that statement in simple form, but the catch is in how you determine ‘harming’ someone else.  Are you harming someone if their taxes go to pay to fix their mistakes?  Why not change the laws regarding others paying for your medical care if you get hurt without wearing a seat belt?  I would prefer that to imposing another mandate on everyone.  The list of issues that these questions apply to is a long one, and will likely be the subject of another post in the near future.         

SLPS in The Economist

Posted on by Steven Bernstetter

The SLPS have again broken through to the international media. The Economist has featured an article about the ongoing troubles with SLPS, and, not surprisingly, the diagnosis isn’t good. The most salient point in the article is this:

St Louis has made huge progress in attracting a new generation of young professionals to its downtown area, building new business developments and installing new infrastructure. The fiasco in its schools puts all that in jeopardy.

Attracting young professionals is hard enough for any city; I know because I am such a young professional (I use that term quite loosely), and am constantly encouraged by friends living elsewhere to leave this humble midwestern town for some place, well, a little more hip. But regardless of how "hip" St. Louis may be, whatever young professionals it does manage to attract won’t stick around if they can’t get a decent education for their children. Instead, those young professionals will do what generations of young Saint Louis professionals have done before them: LEAVE. Go to the suburbs, or the exurbs, or some other state. Convincing those young professionals to stay in St. Louis and invest in its education infrastructure could help bring SLPS out of purgatory. Unfortunately, no sane person will invest in a poorly managed and possibly corrupt system. As the Economist notes:

The district, which in the past five years has turned a $52m surplus into a $24.5m deficit, has already closed schools, cut services and squeezed spending hard. But as its critics point out, the elected school board still found plenty of money for junkets and public relations.

Hopefully the state takeover will lead to some positive change, and produce a school district that those young professionals will at least be willing to take a chance on. Nothing less than the future prosperity of this once world class city depends on it.

Legislation We Don’t Need

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Here’s an idea for a really bad law:

JEFFERSON CITY — First, the state said you must make a special trip to the pharmacy counter to buy certain cold medicines. That was to curb production of methamphetamine.

Now, a St. Louis legislator wants you to do the same thing to buy an even more common household item — baking soda — because it’s used to make crack cocaine.

The sponsor of the baking soda bill, Rep. Talibdin El-Amin, D-St. Louis, said the same approach was needed for baking soda because crack cocaine is often produced by dissolving powdered cocaine in a mixture of water and baking soda.

I guess we should be happy he wants to make it harder to get baking soda, not the other ingredient in that mixture–water.

Regulating baking soda will inconvience customers and waste drug store owners’ time. And since everybody buys baking soda, the bill won’t single out those who are buying it to produce crack cocaine. They might have to buy it in smaller quantities, that’s all.

RCGA Touts Cards in Study; Sun Rises in East

Posted on by David Stokes

Just in time for opening day, the Saint Louis Regional Commerce and Growth Association released a study that concluded that the Cardinals generate approximately $294 million in economic activity for the Saint Louis region.  The most obvious crticism of the study is that they don’t actually release the study – they just put out a press release talking about the study.  This is 2007, and linking from the press release to the study is not difficult.  I question the 40% figure used for out of town visitors attending games.  That is 17,778 out of town visitors per game, and I think we would notice it if downtown Saint Louis had that many people walking around each day trying to decide what to do with their hard-earned money.  I know that there are dozens of busses each game for groups taking trips to see our beloved Redbirds, but how much money can they generate outside of Busch Stadium?  They are not staying in hotels – that’s why they came via bus.

Of a more detailed nature, Dr. Joe Haslag seriously questions the validity of multiplier effects when used in these type of studies.  The $12.4 trillon Gross Domestic Product of the United States is not calculated with a multiplier effect, so why do the Saint Louis Cardinals get to use one?

I had the plesure of meeting the author of the study, Mr. Bezold, while we were both on a panel once at UMSL.  He was very nice and I am sure he is a very able economist.  But I would take his study more seriously if they actually gave us the full study and if they didn’t end an economic study (or at least its release) with a typical, PR-type comment from Mr. Fleming. 

Data Mining: Security Measure or Privacy Invasion?

Posted on by Steven Bernstetter

There’s an interesting article over on the Columbia Missourian website regarding an ongoing court battle between MO, the federal Justice Department, and local phone companies over the release of private records of Missourians to the NSA by the phone companies. The pretext for the alleged privacy violations is, of course, national security, the “war on terror,” and a process known as “data mining.”

The NSA, President Bush, and the other intel agencies argue that attaining this private communications information is crucial to preventing another terrorist attack, and that the process of “data mining” has worked to catch terrorists and prevent such an attack by finding terrorist cells based on their communication patterns. They further assert that such “wiretapping” actions are justified under the Patriot Act and the broad authority granted the president as commander-in-chief to prosecute the ongoing “war on terror” in whatever manor he finds most suitable.

The issue here is efficacy. If the procedure of “data mining” works, and the associated right to privacy being surrendered is made up for with real added security and effectiveness against terrorists, and the information being gathered is being used solely for that purpose, then it’s reasonable to surrender some privacy right in exchange for that security. Commissioner Steve Gaw sums it up nicely:

“We have tried to be sensitive on not delving into issues that could cause a security issue,” Gaw said. “At the same time, if we give up rights and freedom in order to be secure, what have we gained? And what have we lost?”

Our friends over that the Cato Institute have published an interesting paper calling into question the very efficacy of “data mining,” or the systematic combing through of billions of bits of information for communications patterns likely to be attributable to terrorist activities. They essentially argue that the process is flawed, largely ineffective, and that the benefits it conveys are not worth the tradeoff in security gains. I am no expert on anything, much less computer science or national security, but I do know that I’m not a terrorist,  nor is there any reason for the gov’t to assume that I am. Until they have probable cause to believe otherwise, my phone records should remain nobody’s business but my own. If my telephone company has circumvented that right to privacy I deserve to know, and will most assuredly switch to another provider more respectful of my civil liberties.

Merger mania

Posted on by David Stokes

Just as Richmond Heights and Clayton near the end of their joint study on merging the cities, legislation has been introduced in Jeff City allowing for the consideration of merging the governments of the City of St. Joseph and Buchanan County.  Kudos to the local officials Buchanan County and St. Joseph for their desire to at least consider the idea.  I was in St. Joe once, about seven years ago, for the wedding of a close friend, and I recall thinking at the time about what a wonderful place it was but that it could use some local government consolidation.  This government consolidation idea could be a great example to the rest of Missouri if it goes forward, which the optimist in me hopes it does and the realist in me doubts it will.  Lord knows we have way too many counties in Missouri, with 114 (+ 1) we have the 4th most counties of any state.  As at least 100 of those counties have small populations by any normal standard, we could certainly use some tax-saving consolidation at the county level. 

Rethinking Public Education, One Measure at a Time

Posted on by Steve Bernstetter

Public education, particularly in Saint Louis, is in a state of distress. Ineffectual leadership, failed reform initiatives, and declining student performance are just some of the symptoms of a much larger disease that could seriously cripple the future of this country. Recent attempts at reform can be divided into two categories: reshuffling the administrative deck and throwing more money at the problem. Clearly, neither of these solutions has succeeded. It is time for a more fundamental change.

Recently, two state legislators from Saint Louis, Sen. Jeff Smith and Rep. T.D. El-Amin, offered some suggestions for such reform. They rest firmly on the notion that teachers must be treated more like private employees, with all the associated privileges and responsibilities. Their proposals include new pay structures for teachers, mandatory testing of teachers, tax credits to private citizens for donations to after-school enrichment programs, lengthening the school day and school year, and mandatory state-funded early childhood education.

The proposal would offer incentives for teachers to specialize in the most needed areas, particularly science, math, special education, and English as a Second Language.  It would also offer bonuses to teachers for student performance. By the same token, those teachers that do not meet performance standards would receive professional development training; those failing more than once would be fired. Setting benchmarks that reflect a teacher’s performance and are not tied solely to the performance of each individual student is the key to making this system of compensation work.  Such a rubric would reflect the unfortunate reality that some students simply don’t want to learn, and avoid blaming the teachers for those student’s failures. This will create a pay structure that acknowledges the reality faced by teachers in the public system; a structure that encourages innovation and emphasizes performance. 

The plan also calls for state-funded pre-kindergarten education for all children between the ages of three and five, as well as tax credits to private donors who fund after-school enrichment programs. Both of these ideas are good on the surface, but the devil is in the details. A robust pre-school market already exists, and any attempt to require such additional schooling should take advantage of that market. It would be highly inefficient to build separate infrastructure for a network of new, state-funded, state-administered preschools. Rather, a practical approach would be to give every child a voucher to attend the existing preschool of their parents’ choosing. This method would place responsibility for kids’ educations squarely on the shoulders of parents, getting them involved in the education process early and hopefully keeping them involved throughout. If necessary, minimum performance standards could insure that preschools are optimally preparing student to enter kindergarten in the public system.

Similarly, private donations bolstered with tax credits for after-school programs should be distributed to schools chosen by that private donor, and students interested in those programs should have the option of attending the schools offering them. Injecting this small amount of competition into the system will encourage schools to seek this unique brand of public-private funding, fostering diversity between and within schools and districts. This choice-created diversity will more efficiently meet individual student needs than the current system that requires every school to be all things to all students.

Changing the way teachers are compensated and giving individual students and parents greater choice, and therefore a greater stake, in their education will serve the goal of creating a more effective and efficient system.  The possibility of real failure or real success created by competition will embolden schools and districts to strive for real excellence, rather than simply maintaining the defective status quo.

Steve Bernstetter is an intern at the Show-Me Institute and a graduate student in Public Policy Administration at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

 

Bernstetter on Education Reform

Posted on by Timothy B. Lee

We’ve got a new article up by Steve Bernstetter about a promising bill by two Saint Louis-area Democrats to implement some common-sense education reform ideas:

The proposal would offer incentives for teachers to specialize in the most needed areas, particularly science, math, special education, and English as a Second Language. It would also offer bonuses to teachers for student performance. By the same token, those teachers that do not meet performance standards would receive professional development training; those failing more than once would be fired. Setting benchmarks that reflect a teacher’s performance and are not tied solely to the performance of each individual student is the key to making this system of compensation work. Such a rubric would reflect the unfortunate reality that some students simply don’t want to learn, and avoid blaming the teachers for those student’s failures. This will create a pay structure that acknowledges the reality faced by teachers in the public system; a structure that encourages innovation and emphasizes performance.

The plan also calls for state-funded pre-kindergarten education for all children between the ages of three and five, as well as tax credits to private donors who fund after-school enrichment programs. Both of these ideas are good on the surface, but the devil is in the details. A robust pre-school market already exists, and any attempt to require such additional schooling should take advantage of that market. It would be highly inefficient to build separate infrastructure for a network of new, state-funded, state-administered preschools. Rather, a practical approach would be to give every child a voucher to attend the existing preschool of their parents’ choosing. This method would place responsibility for kids’ educations squarely on the shoulders of parents, getting them involved in the education process early and hopefully keeping them involved throughout. If necessary, minimum performance standards could insure that preschools are optimally preparing student to enter kindergarten in the public system.

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