More Choices 4 Parents

Posted on by Timothy B. Lee

The Post has a write up of one of the most entertaining Supreme Court cases in recent memory, which was argued on Monday. A high school kid in Alaska unfurled a banner that read “bong hits 4 Jesus” just as TV cameras covering the 2002 Olympic torch were passing by. A school administrator ripped down the banner and suspended the kid. He challenged his suspension, and won before the Ninth Circuit.

The case strikes me as a tricky one. Obviously, school officials need some ability to prohibit disruptive behavior by kids under their care. It presumably wouldn’t be constitutionally protected for a kid to run up and write “bong hits 4 Jesus” on the chalkboard in the middle of math class. But on the other hand, it is appropriate to place some restraints on school officials—who are, after all, agents of the state—to ensure that they don’t abuse their authority to quash the expression of views with which they disagree.

The fundamental problem here is that we’ve got government officials running school systems. There’s no good reason to organize our education system that way. If we had government-run grocery stores, we’d have First Amendment cases about whether grocery store employees could talk about politics in check-out lines. Luckily, we don’t do that. We give poor people food stamps and let them shop at the private grocery store of their choice.

Likewise, if we had widespread school choice, in which schools were run by private individuals and parents decided where to send their children with the help of state-funded vouchers or tax credits, the First Amendment issues in education would be far less acute. Schools would have a variety of policies with regard to political speech in school, and parents would be free to choose a school whose attitudes were in line with their own. Sure, there would still be occasional controversy within a given school about where to draw the line, but those controversies would no longer require the Supreme Court to step in and resolve them.

This is a point we’ve made before: the reason public schools invite so much controversy is that we’ve got a monolithic, one-size-fits-all education system. Decisions about how to run schools (whether the subject is evolution, sex education, prayer in schools, free speech in schools, or anything else) should be up to parents and teachers, not school district bureaucrats or the United States Supreme Court. We all have strong opinions about these subjects (personally, I wouldn’t want to send my kid to a school that taught “intelligent design” or abstinence-only education), but living in a free society means respecting the rights of parents to choose schools whose curricula are consistent with their beliefs and values, just as we allow parents to choose what their kids will eat and whether they go to church.

Mayoral Control in USA Today

Posted on by Timothy B. Lee

USA Today has a news story on mayoral control over urban schools that covers our study on mayoral control, although they unfortunately don’t mention that we commissioned the study. Still, it’s a good write-up of an important issue:

Education specialists continue to debate whether kids really get a better education under such arrangements, whether any academic gains will be permanent, and how much credit mayors should get for the successes.

Kenneth Wong, a Brown University education professor, examined test scores of the 100 largest school districts from 1999 to 2003. He found that students in mayor-controlled school systems often perform better than those in other urban systems. Test scores in mayor-run districts are rising “significantly,” he says.

However, Wong says in his study that “there is still a long way to go before (mayor-controlled) districts achieve acceptable levels of achievement.”

On the other hand, Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, says his review of previous studies finds that it’s “inconclusive” whether mayors can raise test scores more than elected school boards.

Solid data on student achievement have not been collected long enough, Hess says. And test scores also are up in Houston and other cities with elected school boards, he points out.

The story also highlights an important point about our study: some people have inaccurately described the study as a strong endorsement of mayoral control, but in fact, the study’s findings are more nuanced. Hess concludes that given the chaos now plaguing the school district, mayoral control is likely to be better than the alternatives. However, he makes it clear that how mayoral control is implemented is a lot more important than whether to implement it. Switching to mayoral control carelessly, or without the strong backing of the mayor and civic leadership, would be worse than not switching at all, as the examples of Washington DC and Los Angeles illustrate. The point of Hess’s study was not that we should switch to mayoral control at any cost, but rather that we should only switch to mayoral control if the city’s civic leadership are committed to expending the political capital required for it to be effective.

Show Me Healthy Women Needs Flexibility More Than Funds

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Governor Blunt wants to spend an additional $500,000 on the Show Me Healthy Women Program:

If approved by the General Assembly, the added funding for the Fiscal Year that begins July 1st would expand the program to an additional 1225 women next year. Women who are eligible for this program must meet specific residency, age, and income guidelines.

The current income limits by household size are here. The current limits are already very generous–women can qualify for this program even if their kids aren’t eligible for the Free and Reduced Lunch Program.

Most of the controversy over Governor Blunt’s proposal focuses on the politics of which clinics should provide the services. We should instead consider whether these services are the best target for public health spending. Mammograms are very inexpensive–usually only about $100–so they cost less than many other medical tests and treatments, such as twice-a-year dental cleaning. And mammograms are not equally important for all women, because genetic and lifestyle factors make some women more at risk for breast cancer than others.

A better way to improve the state’s health care programs would be to issue vouchers that poor families can spend on whatever services they need most. We should make state health care programs more flexible, rather than pay for a few specific services that most people can afford already.

This is one bitter commuter…

Posted on by David Stokes

Cheryl Fleming is one unhappy commuter:

Fleming said she won’t ride MetroLink partly because it consumes too much time. "I’m going to drive through other people’s neighborhoods and depreciate their roads," she said.

This quote is from a Post-Dispatch article on Rep. Scott Muschany’s town hall forum on the coming I-64/40 project.  It is always a good thing when public officials open listen to the taxpayers, so I commend Scott for holding this forum.  But Ms. Fleming’s comments jumped out at me.  As Ms. Fleming attempts to intentionally "depreciate" the roads around mid-county, she is going to quickly run into one very hard fact of transportation in St. Louis.  There are many east-west routes, but not a whole lot of north-south routes for her to choose from.  I have heard MoDOT discuss this in planning meetings.  There are enough east-west routes available that the commuter traffic during 64/40’s closure might not be as terrible as some think (no doubt it is going to be very bad.)  However, the north-south traffic situation might be far worse than people realize during construction.  Just take Downtown Clayton for instance.  There are only two ways to leave downtown Clayton going south without first traveling east or west: Hanley and Brentwood. (I am not counting I-170 as it ends just south of Clayton and will be partly closed anyway.)  Take one of these routes out for construction and the other one is going to be a nightmare.  If you move east or west to avoid it, you’ll be stuck in east-west commuter traffic before you even have the change to go south.  Ms. Fleming can drive through neighborhoods to "Depreciate" the roads all she wants, but sooner or later she is going to have to cross the closed I-64, and she can’t do that via neigborhood roads.  At that point MetroLink might look like a good option for her to get to work at her Church. 

SLPS Students Protest

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Students in the St. Louis Public Schools are protesting at Mayor Slay’s office. They’re worried that their diplomas won’t matter:

Among other items, they asked to review the mayor’s "educational plan" and wanted to know if their scholarships and admissions to colleges were in jeopardy under the cloud of the district possibly losing its accreditation. They also asked that Slay keep his promises regarding their educational futures[…]

A press release issued Thursday was rife with nebulous language. Officials "believe" students from an unaccredited district will have valid diplomas and "should" not be disqualified from admissions or financial aid. "However," the news release continued, "it is possible that students could encounter obstacles in some cases."

Whether or not the district’s unaccredited status causes bureaucratic problems for graduates, these students have been cheated out of an education. For years, the district has been unable to bring up test scores or prepare students for college.

This protest probably won’t have much effect on the district’s accreditation, just like a protest wouldn’t raise students’ reading scores or graduation rates. When a private school doesn’t meet parents’ expectations, they take their tuition dollars elsewhere. Tax credit scholarships would give St. Louis students that same level of empowerment–if the district didn’t address their concerns, they could vote with their feet.

Brokeback pensions

Posted on by David Stokes

Could this ruling be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for City of St. Louis finances?  Probably not, but having to come up with $24 million is going to be very difficult.  And from the article it sounds like even more may be due by the time this all play out.

The decision could force the city to put $23 million more toward the police pension fund for years not included in the court case, said Police Retirement System lawyer James C. Owen, and possibly millions on top of that for the firefighters’ fund.

It seems every election the City is trying to increase the sales tax here or the property tax there.  The tax increase always seems to pass, and is usually a very small one, but it does not take a genius to realize these small taxes add up.  It appears that the City is either going to have to raise $24 million or cut $24 million.  I know which one I would recommend.  I suspect the easiest way for them to raise the money would be to not roll back tax rates in response to the 2007 assessment.  I don’t know where the City stands in relation to its Hancock cap, and therefore what the forced roll back would be, but if City property vales go up substantially this assessment period, as they did in 2005, reducing the roll back would be one easy way to at least get some of the money.  I am not at all saying they should do this, I am just saying they might try to.  The City should do about 100 other things to cut $24 million first, but that is a topic for a detailed study, not a blog post.

Charter School Confusion

Posted on by Steven Bernstetter

My colleague, Sarah Brodsky, blogged the other day about the recent efforts of Mayor Slay to acquire the authority necessary to approve new charter schools in St. Louis. She correctly pointed out that Charter schools are not an education cure-all, but nonetheless a step in the right direction. Today whilst trolling the blogosphere I happened upon this. Ignore the politico for a second and scroll down to the comments section for a lively debate about the merits of charter schools and the larger issue of SLPS. Here’s some of the objections you’ll find:

1) Charter schools are just another step towards public funding of private (religious) schools

2) Charter schools are poorly run, ineffectual, and potentially corruptable.

3) Mayor Slay is part of some deeper, more devious plot to undermine SLPS and institute some undisclosed master plan of a nefarious nature.

The first two objections may very well prove to be true, but we won’t know until we try. Nonetheless, these kinds of problems are exactly what careful public policy debate is intended to overcome. So, instead of listing objections and deciding a priori that Charter schools are a dead end, perhaps we should try and find ways to preserve the positive aspects of charter schools, like the choices they create for parents and students, and mininmize these potential negative factors. As for that third objection, well, I don’t really trust politicians either…

I can understand the strong feelings people may have towards the democratic values embodied in public schooling, but any fool can see that the system is broken and that it is time for something different. Charter schools may be part of this, and Mayoral involvement, as a recent SMI Study suggested, is crucial. However, by limiting debate to charter v. SLPS schools, we’re essentially shooting ourselves in the foot. At this point, all options should be on the table, and we shouldn’t let conspiracy theories get in the way of doing what’s best for kids.

St. Louis Could Gain New Charter Schools

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Mayor Slay is trying to open more charter schools in St. Louis:

Slay said he envisioned a wide range of charter schools that would operate independently of his office but would be accountable to him for their performance. Charter schools are public schools led by their own boards, but they can be closed by the entities that authorized their formation.

Slay said his support of charters should not be interpreted as hostility to traditional public schools. Even so, he offered harsh words for the failure of city schools, which he said continued to push families out of the city.

Charter schools aren’t an educational cure-all, and the only way to solve the crisis in public schooling is to give market forces free reign. With that said, charter schools are a big step in the right direction. They provide educational options to underperforming students and allow for more specialized curricula than the traditional one-size-fits-all model. St. Louis lags behind Kansas City in charter schools–Mayor Slay could help it catch up.

Minimum Wage provides minimum advantages

Posted on by Steven Bernstetter

Governor Blunt recently changed his mind about Missouri’s new Minimum Wage laws. Initially, January’s minimum wage increase applied only to non-tipped workers. However, this week Governor Blunt changed his stance on this issue, and is now telling restraunts and other service industry businesses that hire tipped workers that their wages must also increase from the Federal minimum of $2.13/hr to $3.25/hr, or half the state’s minimum for non-tipped workers. As one might imagine, the consensus on this change is divided evenly between those who stand to benefit and those who don’t.

Way back in 2006, before the min. wage increase, SMI released a study explaining why a min. wage increase might be bad for both concerned parties. Though the study mainly focused on the non-tipped wage of $6.50/hr, the same arguments hold for tipped workers: higher min. wages means less businesses able to pay that wage, which means more people without jobs. Furthermore, as an article in the Joplin Globe explained, min. wage hikes can have other unintended affects:

Mike Wiggins, owner of Continental Catering and Granny Shaffer’s restaurants in Joplin and Webb City, said Blunt’s declaration might cost tipped employees more than it benefits them. He said a higher income bracket, for instance, might make some ineligible for state medical services and day-care assistance.

While everyone can appreciate a little extra on their paycheck, that little bit extra can have an overall negative net affect. Inevitably, some waitpersons who now have jobs will find themselves in the unemployment line along with some of their former employers who, under the new requirements, could no longer afford to compete.

Support Us

The work of the Show-Me Institute would not be possible without the generous support of people who are inspired by the vision of liberty and free enterprise. We hope you will join our efforts and become a Show-Me Institute sponsor.

Donate
Man on Horse Charging