Voice For Liberty

Tag: Education

  • Articles of Interest

    Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, Obama on education, tea parties, federal reserve

    Who investigates Carol Williams? (James Meier in Kansas Liberty, a subscription service) Does the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission benefit from a catch-22 in the law? “The moment you walk in this door and file a complaint, you are prohibited by law, a class A misdemeanor, of discussing the fact that you walked in here and gave us that complaint.” — Carol Williams, Executive Director, Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission. “But what happens when the Ethics Commission doesn’t follow the law? … Who investigates Williams for disclosing investigations to the press? By fining a private citizen for the very same actions she has taken, the Ethics Commission has shown an aptitude for determining when confidentiality has been breached. Should one file a complaint with the commission about the commission? Not if you want to talk to the press about it.”

    Obama Echoes Bush on Education Ideas (Education Week) “President Barack Obama campaigned on a message of change, but when it comes to K-12 education, he appears to be walking in the policy footsteps of his recent predecessors, including George W. Bush…. happy at the similarities. .. ‘He is operating almost in a straight line from President Bush,’ said Diane Ravitch, an education historian at New York University … Alfie Kohn… echoes that assessment. ‘This is what passes for quote-unquote reform: an intensification of the status quo that reflects the sensibility of politicians and corporate executives rather than educators.’ The article has excerpts from the last four presidents, showing that little has changed.

    Modern-Day Tea Parties Give Taxpayers Chance to Scream for Better Representation (Fox News) Nancy Armstrong, one of the organizers of the Wichita tea party on tax day, was quoted in a story on the Fox News website. “‘This is about the people. This is about what we have to say,’ said Nancy Armstrong, who’s organizing the tea party in Wichita, Kan. Armstrong, who attended one of the parties in northern Kansas in late February, said she’s expecting at least 1,000 people at the local post office in Wichita on April 15.” More coverage of the Wichita tea party is at Wichita tea party.

    How Bernanke Staged a Revolution (Washington Post) About Chairman of the Federal Reserve System Ben Bernanke: “This chairman set out to lead as a civil servant rather than a celebrity economist. Facing a thundering financial collapse, he has reinvented the Federal Reserve. Bernanke, 55, has said his academic research, especially about the Great Depression, convinced him that the Fed has no choice but to move forcefully during a financial crisis.” Bernanke is definitely in favor of intervention by the Fed to help fix the current economic crisis. Not all agree this is the right course. See The Great Depression According to Milton Friedman, which concludes: “The Fed’s performance has improved since 1980, but that does not mean it is no longer capable of mistakes that would have devastating consequences for our lives. Friedman’s work should serve as a warning of what can happen when so much power is artificially concentrated in one institution. It is for this reason that it is so vitally important that people today be taught the real story of the Great Depression. Their faith in government institutions might be considerably undermined if they understood what really happened.”

  • KNEA, the Kansas teachers union: more taxes are needed

    The public education spending lobby in Kansas is always looking for more tax dollars.

    A recent edition of the Kansas National Education Association newsletter Under the Dome for March 30, 2009 lays out the education spending lobby’s plans.

    This group is fearful that an upcoming meeting of the consensus revenue group may produce bad news for Kansas revenue. It’s thought that the state may need to reduce spending or increase taxes.

    Spending, according to this newsletter, has “already been cut to the bone.” So the KNEA proposes “adjustments to the revenue stream” as follows:

    • Reject all new tax cuts.
    • Freeze the implementation of current tax cuts that are being phased in.
    • Decouple from particular parts of the federal tax code.
    • Consider modest tax increases.

    Which of these approaches does the KNEA prefer? No single measure would be sufficient: “The best approach might be a combination of all of the above.”

    KNEA believes that Kansas has a “structural problem” in its tax system. The newsletter explains in length, but the basic problem that KNEA sees is that Kansans are not taxed enough to support all the things KNEA wants to do.

    It’s difficult to take the KNEA seriously, but it and its allied organizations such as the Kansas Association of School Boards are powerful lobbies in Topeka. But let’s look at a few things.

    Despite the KNEA’s tale of woe, the fact is that spending on public schools in Kansas has been increasing rapidly, much faster than enrollment or inflation. From 2003 to 2009, Kansas general fund spending on public schools increased by 54%. Charts below provide illustration.

    School officials don’t like to talk about this, as it is embarrassing for them to have to admit how much funding the schools really have.

    Then there’s the school lobby’s constant reminder that we need a quality educational system. We do. But there’s nothing that says these schools have to be all government schools. Private schools and charter schools do very well, usually with far less money than public schools. But the KNEA and its allied organizations do not want the state to share public funds with private schools, forcing many Kansas parents to pay for private schools and public schools.

    These non-government schools are rarely unionized. Schools without teachers who belong to unions are not in the KNEA’s interest.

    Furthermore, it’s an open question as to how good are Kansas schools. Rising test scores are claimed. But across the country, states have watered down the tests used to measure progress. Is this the case in Kansas? We don’t know, but we do know this: while measures based on the Kansas tests rise, scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test for Kansas students remain flat.

    We must also remember that the KNEA is a teachers union. Education reformers — and you can almost count President Obama among them — realize that the policies that teachers unions have put in place across the country are universally harmful to schoolchildren. A teachers union, with its narrow interests, is hardly a source we should trust for information about education policy.

    Kansas school spending per pupil outpaces inflation

    Kansas school state aid per pupil outpaces inflation

  • Articles of Interest

    Education reform, downtown Wichita arena, Kansas smoking ban, downtown developers

    Education’s Ground Zero (Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times) Describes the efforts of Washington D.C. public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee to reform the system. She’s fired one-third of the principals. Kristof reminds us of the importance of teachers: “The reform camp is driven partly by research suggesting that great teachers are far more important to student learning than class size, school resources or anything else. One study suggests that if black kids could get teachers from the profession’s most effective quartile for four years in a row, the achievement gap would disappear.” In Wichita, however, USD 259 is taking the opposite approach.

    Intrust Bank Arena management contract unusual, but not necessarily bad (Bill Wilson in the Wichita Eagle) Explores the nature of the arrangement between Sedgwick County and SMG as compared to other arenas. “The bottom line for these officials: Sedgwick County has a good deal with SMG, but has a responsibility to closely monitor the arena’s performance for taxpayers who paid for the building with a sales tax increase.” More coverage of related issues is Wichita downtown arena contract seems to require Sedgwick County approval.

    Details of Intrust Bank Arena contract with Thunder are a secret (Bill Wilson in the Wichita Eagle) This is an earlier story, interesting for the confusion it raises or exposes, I’m not sure which. Reported in the story: “The arena’s financial performance would be monitored by the county through what [Sedgwick County assistant manager Ron] Holt characterized as limited records access. But [Sedgwick County Commissioner Gwen] Welshimer said she didn’t know how the county would track the arena’s financial performance. ‘We don’t have any access to their books that I know of,’ she said.” Read the county’s contract with SMG, however, and you learn that SMG will maintain accounting records, have them audited, and give Sedgwick County access to them “upon reasonable advance notice.” Also, the county has the right to audit the records at any time.

    Why state smoking ban seems inevitable Rhonda Holman in the Wichita Eagle Editorial Blog) In this post, Wichita Eagle editorialist Rhonda Holman makes explicit the connection between state-paid health care and the state’s interest in controlling behavior: “That’s [passing the statewide smoking ban] the only responsible action the Legislature can take, given the increasing cost burden of smoking-related illnesses on the state …” If the state (that includes the U.S. Federal government) starts taking responsibility for more health care, smoking bans are just the start of state meddling in behavior.

    Minnesota Guys ready to start face-lifts of downtown Wichita buildings (Bill Wilson in Wichita Eagle) Real Development starts work on the improvement of facades of some of its buildings. In the article developer Michael Elzufon manages to use the word “iconic” twice. This article doesn’t tell how these improvements are paid for: a confusing arrangement where the city loans money and recoups it in special assessment taxes. A hefty development fee is being paid to the developers, which allows them to profit for fixing up their own buildings. But they’ll pay that back in the form of the special taxes — or will they? It’s hard to tell where the money is going in these agreements. This benefits developers like Elzufon and politicians on the Wichita city council, as if citizens knew what was really going on, they wouldn’t be happy.

  • Barb Fuller: Feds should pay, and leave us alone

    In an op-ed piece printed in the Wichita Eagle (“Barb Fuller: Feds should facilitate, not dictate, on education,” February 20, 2009 Wichita Eagle, no longer available online), Wichita school board vice president Barb Fuller makes, indirectly, the case that the U.S. Federal government should fund education, but keep its nose out of how local school boards spend the money.

    Her piece explains that USD 259, the Wichita public school district, like most school districts, are chafing under the “unfunded mandates” that the No Child Left Behind law calls for. She concludes that “Consequently, it makes sense for immediate suspension of the current NCLB sanctions.”

    The fact is that the Wichita school district has tremendous funds at its disposal, some $13,000 per pupil per year. Board members don’t like to talk about that, as evidenced by board member Lanora Nolan‘s answer to a question at a recent Wichita Pachyderm meeting. She denied the numbers and the simple arithmetic behind a question.

    Fuller writes “The federal government should be involved in helping make measures consistent throughout the states.” This is something that she may someday wish she hadn’t asked for. Here’s what education writer Diane Ravitch wrote in The Obama Education Agenda “Despite White House press claims to the contrary, NCLB has been a huge disappointment, and its failure is not due to lack of funding. Although states are reporting impressive test-score gains, most of these ‘gains’ are inflated by home-grown, low standards. The gains on the highly respected federal National Assessment of Educational Progress have been meager since 2002. In fact, the gains on the federal test have been smaller since 2002 than in the years preceding NCLB.”

    It would definitely be useful to know whether the rising test scores in Kansas are genuine. In particular, the Wichita school district claims 11 years of rising test scores. I don’t think that people who have to deal with Wichita high school graduates year after year would think these gains are reliable and valid measures of the quality of the product produced by the district.

    In her piece, Fuller also makes the case to “not deny accountability.” This is quite an irony, as Fuller’s previous role of president of the teachers union was to do just that: avoid accountability. Furthermore, the Wichita school district’s opposition to meaningful school choice means it dodges the only accountability that will really make a difference: the ability of parents, particularly poor parents, to escape the Wichita school district.

  • Articles of Interest

    Journalism, crime alerts, war on drugs, minimum wage, stimulus and education

    The State of the Fourth Estate (Jordan Ballor at the Acton Institute) What will happen to journalism in the digital age? The article describes its importance to a free society, with reflection from a Christian view.

    Alert system tells you when a crime occurs (Stan Finger in the Wichita Eagle) Receive email or text messages alerts concerning crime in your area by signing up at www.citizenobserver.com. Maybe criminals will start using Twitter to tweet about their escapes, making it easier for police to capture them. While email and text messages are fine, this is a good application for Twitter, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see this service expanded to include Twitter.

    From the Trenches of the Drug War: A Street Cop’s Perspective (The Future of Freedom Foundation) Speaking of crime … what is the true cost of the war on drugs? Lessons from the front.

    Raising BC’s minimum wage: Good intentions, bad policy (The Frazer Institute) As we in Kansas appear ready to raise our state’s minimum wage — with good intentions (I wonder about that sometimes) — consider the well-known unintended consequences: “The most damaging consequence of minimum wage increases is that employers respond by reducing the number of workers they employ and/or the number of hours their employees work. In other words, minimum wage increases result in higher unemployment for low-skilled workers and young people. This unpleasant reality is well documented in the research.”

    Spec. Ed. Stimulus Money Raising Cautions (Education Week) Managing the use of stimulus money may be tricky: “Within the next few weeks, though, the federal tap will open up, releasing an extra $6.1 billion for districts to use for special education, with another $6.1 billion to come later this year. … Though grateful for the largess, school leaders face restrictions with that money. The rules governing the use of federal special education money mean that it’s unwise for districts to use the added funding to start new programs or hire new teachers. If they were to do so, districts would have to continue to pay for those costs in two years, when the federal infusion goes away, under a provision in the IDEA that requires districts to avoid making large cuts in programs from year to year.” What should the money be spent on? Professional development is one recommendation mentioned.

  • Articles of Interest

    Electric cars, Obama and education reform, Kansas online records, Proposition K

    Could the Volt Jump-Start GM? (Washington Post) The Volt is Chevrolet’s plug-in hybrid, meaning it has no gasoline engine, running solely on electricity. The problem is that the car’s price may be $40,000. My question is where will we get the electricity to charge these cars on calm days if we don’t build more baseline electricity generation capacity?

    No Picnic for Me Either (David Brooks in the New York Times) An overview of President Obama’s attitudes towards public schools in America. Can the president successfully challenge the government school lobby and its entrenched interests, those often at odds with the interests of schoolchildren? Brooks doesn’t seem hopeful: “The problem is that as our ability to get data has improved, the education establishment’s ability to evade the consequences of data has improved, too. Most districts don’t use data to reward good teachers. States have watered down their proficiency standards so parents think their own schools are much better than they are.”

    Online records convenient, but cost more (Deb Gruver in the Wichita Eagle). Contains an overview of some of the sites in Kansas where you can look at government records. Kansas charges for many records that other states provide at no cost.

    State tax change sought (Tim Carpenter in the Topeka Capital-Journal) “It has been denounced by state and county officials and greeted with skepticism by Democratic lawmakers.” That’s Proposition K, of course. I would say that when lobbyists for local governments are worried about their sources of revenue, that’s good for everyone else.

  • Kansas school lobby: not enough spending, not enough taxation

    In Topeka, the Kansas Association of School Boards rarely misses an opportunity to complain that spending on government schools is too low. The same goes for the Kansas National Education Association, the teachers union.

    Also, taxes aren’t high enough, they say.

    A recent note from KNEA regarding a possible sales tax holiday in Kansas stated: “Our primary concerns are related to the bill’s fiscal note which indicates a loss of more than $57 million in revenue to the state should such a holiday be enacted.” The message goes on to suggest some reforms in Kansas sales tax law, as long as the inflow of dollars is not reduced.

    In another message, we see that the education lobby in Kansas doesn’t understand the fiscal climate in Kansas at all. Here’s what it said:

    Fix the state’s funding system:

    The financial crisis was NOT caused by spending too much money on education.

    The economic downturn is NOT the sole reason for the state’s budget woes.

    Legislators must refuse to give any more tax breaks, must freeze all tax cuts.

    Legislators giving more tax breaks will make our situation worse.

    In the long run, we must fix the tax structure to support needed services in our schools and communities.

    (“Fix the tax structure” is code for figuring out ways to get more tax revenue. )

    The message here is we’re not overspending. Instead, we’re not taxing enough. (You can tell they really mean this because they use all capital letters.) This is despite the fact that school spending in Kansas has been growing very rapidly the past few years. Here’s a chart of per-pupil public school spending in Kansas, along with a line showing how this growth in spending far outstrips inflation:

    Kansas school spending per pupil outpaces inflation

    Sometimes the government school lobby likes to use just the spending by the state, as these numbers are lower. Here’s a chart that shows state aid per pupil, again with a line indicating inflation:

    Kansas school state aid per pupil outpaces inflation

    Despite this growth, the public school lobby works every day in Topeka to get more spending and resists all measures that would let parents decide themselves how to spend this money.

  • Articles of Interest

    Subsidizing Bad Ideas What are some of the things wrong with the president’s plan to solve the mortgage crisis? Howie Rich of Americans For Limited Government explains: “First, the plan is emblematic of America’s new “dependence mentality,” which is advanced by politicians like Obama who rhetorically extol the virtues that once made this country great while they systematically remove brick-by-brick the incentives needed to make it great once again. Second, it’s more of the same smoke-and-mirrors Washington politicians employ to hide the true coming-and-goings of your tax dollars in our nation’s capital. Third, it rewards many of the same financial institutions whose mistakes have helped bring this nation to the brink of fiscal ruin – and incentivizes them to make those same mistakes all over again.”

    Judging Obama John Stossel explains some of the problems in judging the success of failure of President Obama’s economic interventions, and who should get the credit or blame.

    Obama Gives Failing Schools a Pass: The day of reckoning has arrived — except for teachers’ unions (Chester E. Finn Jr. & Michael J. Petrilli in National Review). “This is classic Obama, straddling the Democratic divide on education, just as he did so deftly during the campaign, striving to placate both the reformers within the party and the union bosses. … It’s no accident that our schools aren’t producing enough well-educated graduates; that’s because the system has been designed to place the needs of adults over the needs of kids. But saying any of that would put him at odds with the education establishment, which he doesn’t appear to want to cross.” More indication that President Obama will not implement any meaningful education reform.

    Zoomdweebie’s builds success on Twitter (Wichita Eagle). A Wichita business uses social media like Twitter to boost business.

    The Government’s War on Recession. Lew Rockwell explains some of the problems and dangers with the way the Obama administration is attacking the problems with the economy: “The economics of stimulus are not as complicated. They amount to taking from some and giving to others. There is no wealth creation at all. There is no magic ‘multiplier’ to turn stones into bread. The economics of stimulus is value-destroying, because property is pried loose from owners who are putting it to socially useful purposes, and given to government so it can pass it out to friends. This process is costly to overall wealth production — and most of those costs are unseen. We will never know what kind of real stimulus could have taken place had the property been left in private hands. What jobs might have been created, what investments might have been made, what kind of business expansions might have taken place? We will never know.”

  • Public education illustrates special interest politics

    One of the problems with government today is the proliferation of special interest groups, and then how issues are framed according to the needs of these special interest groups.

    You might think that public education would fall outside the wrangling of special interest groups. After all, it’s “for the kids,” as we’re reminded. But the public schools and their lobby are one of the fiercest special interest groups.

    Even conservatives fall into this trap and may ask “what’s in it for me?” or “what is my relationship to this issue?” Here’s an example.

    On a recent episode of the KPTS television public affairs program Ask Your Legislator, a Kansas Representative, a conservative Republican, introduced his answer to a question about Kansas education funding this way:

    “I share the gentleman’s concern about public education since my wife is a teacher. I have no children in public schools at this time because they have all grown and left the public schools.”

    Why did he feel it was necessary to introduce his remarks this way? Is he saying that because his wife works for the public schools, he has an interest in their funding? That’s characteristic of special interests and their supporters.

    Or, since he has no children that attend public schools, he is less interested in their funding? Again, evidence of special interests at work.

    This Kansas House Member has a very good ranking from the Kansas Taxpayers Network, so he has proven conservative fiscal credentials. So I hate to pick on him.

    But this serves to illustrate how entrenched special interest politics are. We don’t even recognize it.