Voice For Liberty

Tag: Education

  • Wichita School Bond Issue: The Election That Wasn’t, and Maybe Shouldn’t Be

    Wichitans for Effective Education wish to remind the residents of USD 259 (the Wichita, Kansas public school district) that on February 11, 2008, the board of USD 259 passed a resolution declaring that a special election was to be held today, May 6. That resolution asked the citizens of this community to approve a $350 million school bond proposal. On April 7, on the advice of an allied citizens group, the board decided the election should be delayed until some yet-to-be-known date.

    The board originally argued that it was imperative to vote as soon as possible instead of waiting for the August primary or November general elections, even though the special election would cost $75,000. As evidence, Chief Operations Officer (now interim superintendent) Martin Libhart delivered to the board on January 28 a presentation titled “Time Is Money” which explained that if the bond issue election were delayed until November, the cost of building just one high school would increase by $360,000 -– far more than the cost of the special election.

    The district also argued that if the election were delayed until August or later, the opening of the new high school would be delayed by one full school year.

    Nevertheless, on April 7, the board abandoned these arguments.

    Much effort went into preparation for the May special election. News outlets devoted extensive coverage. Three citizens groups formed to campaign for and against the bond issue. Expenses were incurred.

    Opposition groups have had to deal with a shifting landscape of facts emerging from USD 259. We relied on figures supplied by USD 259 regarding the costs of building safe rooms, only to be told we didn’t understand the true situation. We relied on figures published by USD 259 in its most recent Comprehensive Annual Financial Report reporting school capacity and enrollment, only to be told those numbers are out-of-date.

    Sometimes getting any information from USD 259 is difficult. We asked for a count of classrooms and portables for the last two school years and were told that information is available at a cost of $860, with most of that cost paying for 40 hours of staff time. Since school overcrowding is one of the reasons given by USD 259 as the need for this bond issue, we wonder why these figures are not readily available.

    The changing schedule of the bond issue election as well as the unreliable facts provided by USD 259 make it difficult to thoughtfully consider the merits of any proposal at this time. With the possibility of looming economic recession and the lack of a permanent superintendent in place to lead the Wichita schools, perhaps the best idea yet is to pull the question altogether. This would give the district time to research and locate all significant data, and then both opposing and supporting groups could base their decisions on accurate and timely information.

  • Universal Preschool Wastes Money, Imperils the Good Society

    From our friends at the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy in Wichita, Kansas.

    Universal Preschool Wastes Money, Imperils the Good Society
    Short-term benefits, politicization of childhood await public funding

    (WICHITA) – If K-12 schools fail to graduate one in four students on time, does it make much sense to enroll children in public programs at an even younger age? That’s one problem with proposals for universal, taxpayer-funded preschool, as outlined by a new report issued by the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy. Read “Plato’s Republic on the Plains: Should Kansas Really Embrace State-Financed Early Childhood Education?” at www.flinthills.org.

    “On the one hand, you’ve got to applaud the desire to ‘do something’ to improve education,” says John R. LaPlante, Education Policy Fellow of the Kansas-based think tank. “But what we see is that the longer children stay in school, the worse off they do. We should fix the K-12 system through competition and expanded school choice rather than enroll infants and toddlers in public programs that are often run through those same schools.”

    The study reviews the weaknesses of reports used to justify universal preschool programs, including methodological shortcomings. The benefits seen in preschool programs tend to be focused in lower-income children and fade out in a short time-hardly a prescription for a universal program.

    In addition to experimental and economic problems, universal preschool poses a moral question: Do children belong to parents or do they belong to society and the state? Plato called for some children to be reared not by parents but by the collective. The impulse to use government to fix children’s lives for the societal good may have at first a moral foundation, but it violates foundational truths about American society and the meaning of limited government.

  • Martin Libhart is qualified in what way?

    When Bob Corkins, a lawyer with no classroom experience, was named Kansas Commissioner of Education in 2005, newspaper editorialists and education bureaucrats throughout Kansas condemned the action. How could a person with no classroom experience and no traditional education credentials possibly manage the state’s schools?

    “Bob’s in way over his head,” said Winston Brooks, superintendent of USD 259, the Wichita public school district.

    But what about Martin Libhart, the man who succeeds Winston Brooks, if only as the interim superintendent? According to a news release on the USD 259 website: “Because Libhart does not currently possess a district level leadership certificate, the district is working with the Kansas State Department of Education for a restricted certificate as permitted by the department.” (emphasis added)

    It seems that lack of formal credentials was not an obstacle to the promotion of Mr. Libhart. But Mr. Libhart has worked for the Wichita public school district for 20 years, and it seems that loyalty is now paying dividends. Evidently it is enough to overcome his lack of classroom experience and traditional education credentials — the same inexperience that made Bob Corkins, in the minds of Kansas education bureaucrats, unfit to serve.

    What exactly did Mr. Libhart do for the Wichita school district? Again, from the USD 259 news release: “During his 20-year career in the Wichita Public Schools, Libhart served for 13 years as director of the Facilities Division prior to being appointed chief operations officer.”

    It seems, however, that the facilities and operations of the Wichita school district are managed somewhat less than efficiently. I say this because if you submit a records request asking the district how many classrooms and portables the district owned for the previous two years, you may get this answer, as did one citizens group:

    The information is available. In order to prepare the information, it will require 40 hours of staff time @ $20.00 and 300 copies @ $.20, for a total cost of $860.00.

    The Wichita public school district is telling us that in order to count the number of classrooms it possesses, it will take someone an entire workweek to produce this number. Does it seem like the district is effectively managing its resources when it will take one week to simply count the number of classrooms?

  • The arithmetic of school choice in Wichita

    As the residents of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, consider a bond issue whose purpose, partly, is to reduce overcrowding, we should consider a way to reduce overcrowding in schools that would be much less expensive.

    The district is not likely to consider this method. Whenever school choice implemented through vouchers or tax credits is mentioned, district officials and the teachers union immediately claim that school choice will drain money from public schools and lead to their ruin. But is the claim that school choice drains money from public schools true? Let’s sharpen the pencil and do some arithmetic and see what happens.

    USD 259 receives funding from three sources: the federal government, the state of Kansas, and the tax levied on property within the boundaries of USD 259. These funding sources react differently to changes in enrollment.

    According to information on the Kansas State Department of Education website, state funding for education is based on this formula: “Base state aid per pupil (BSAPP) times adjusted enrollment equals state financial aid (SFA).”

    There may be subtleties in the way that state funding is calculated, but let’s assume the worst case for local school districts that the formula implies: that when a student leaves a school district for any reason the district loses the entire amount of state aid per student. Similarly, let’s assume the district loses the entire amount of federal funding per student.

    The local district, however, won’t lose the local funding. That’s because the source of local funding is the property tax. The amount raised depends solely on the assessed value of the property in USD 259 and the mill levy (the rate at which property is taxed). The number of students enrolled in USD 259 schools has no effect on the amount raised locally.

    The following table illustrates what happens to school funding as enrollment changes. The row “2006 – 2007 figures” shows figures obtained from the Kansas State Department of Education, and the row below that calculates the funding per student from the three sources of funding.

    Now suppose that some students leave USD 259. The row “Reduction in funding” shows how much money USD 259 would lose, based on the number of students that leave. Note that the funding from federal and state sources decreases, but local funding, because it is based on property tax, does not change. The row “Remaining funding” shows how much USD 259 will receive, and the next row calculates the funding per student.

    Note that as the number of students in USD 259 declines, the funding per student increases. The following chart shows what happens to available funding per student as increasing numbers of students leave USD 259. Again, it doesn’t matter why the students leave USD 259. The effect on funding is the same. There is no “draining” of money. The total amount the district has available to spend will decrease, but their costs do, too.

    Opponents of school choice have many arguments to refute the simple arithmetic of the financial impacts of school choice on local school districts. One important consideration is that schools, like most businesses or institutions, have both fixed costs and variable costs. Opponents of school choice often claim that the costs schools face are mostly fixed costs, so reducing enrollment leads to little cost savings.

    Research, however, shows otherwise. A 2006 study in South Carolina found that fixed costs were 20 to 25 percent of per pupil costs. A study using data from New Hampshire for the 2001-2002 school year found that 73 to 87 percent of total costs of schools are variable, meaning that 13 to 27 percent of costs are fixed. So fixed costs are a relatively small part of a school district’s total costs, meaning that schools can adjust their costs quickly when faced with changes in enrollment.

    Furthermore, fixed costs become variable over longer periods of time. School districts can adjust their level of fixed costs as they adjust to changing enrollment levels over time.

    Is the analysis really this simple? Fundamentally, it is. School districts, however, may face numerous constraints on the way they may spend the funds they receive from various sources. There may be all sorts of strings attached. That is a problem itself, as it prevents public schools from allocating their resources flexibly and effectively.

    In summary, school choice does not drain money from local school districts. Yes, total funding and spending declines as students leave to attend other schools, but costs decline too. School overcrowding –- a major reason given for the need of the bond issue in the Wichita public school district — is reduced or eliminated.

    If the administration of USD 259 has information or reasoning to the contrary, let them make their case. Until then, the citizens of the Wichita public school district must wonder why the district is unwilling to consider this method of reducing school overcrowding without an expensive bond issue.

    Note: Implementing school choice in Wichita funded through vouchers or tax credits would require a change in Kansas state law. If the board and superintendent of the Wichita school district were to ask the Kansas legislature for such a law, it would probably happen. Especially because one important Kansas lawmaker is a resident of the Wichita public school district. That’s Jean Schodorf, Kansas state senator and chair of the senate education committee. We could hardly have a more powerful ally to help us effect meaningful reform in USD 259.

    Download a printable pdf version of this article here.

  • Private salary supplements to public officials is a problem

    USD 259, the Wichita public school district, outgoing superintendent Winston Brooks has been receiving a supplemental salary paid for by private interests. This salary supplement, supporters say, was necessary to prevent Mr. Brooks from leaving Wichita for somewhere else where he would be paid more.

    One way to look at this salary supplement is that USD 259 received the services of someone whose salary they couldn’t afford. And since the salary supplement was funded by the voluntary action of citizens, how can we object? But there are problems with this type of arrangement.

    If a superintendent of schools depends on the owner of, say, a car dealership to lead a group that pays a significant share of his salary, and then it comes time for the school district to purchase cars, how can we be sure there is no conflict of interest?

    When it comes time for the school district to purchase cars or anything else, do we check to make sure that the selected vendor isn’t a member of, or have a friend on, the committee that provides the superintendent’s supplemental salary? And if so, is the district getting a good deal? Or would too many restrictions prevent the district from getting the best deal on their purchases?

    Another problem is that it may be the case that the superintendent of schools is worthy of a large salary, perhaps much larger than the current salary and supplement. Someone who can effectively manage an organization with thousands of employees and an annual budget of over half a billion dollars is worth a great deal. Someone who can make a positive difference in how well Wichita’s schoolchildren are educated is invaluable.

    This illustrates a problem with government institutions. They do not have the flexibility to respond to events and circumstances in the way private enterprise can. If it was the case that the new incoming superintendent could save tens of millions of dollars while greatly improving student outcomes, that person would be worth a salary of, say, one million dollars or more. But as a practical matter, USD 259 could not pay anyone a salary that large. There would be too much resentment.

    The main problem is that USD 259, like all government school districts, is funded not through voluntary transactions, but through taxation backed up by coercion. When taxpayers are forced to pay for things they don’t agree with, resentment builds.

    Further, because the Wichita public schools raise funds through taxation instead of voluntary transactions taking place in markets, we do not know, and the board of USD 259 certainly does not know, if their expenditures are wise and efficient. This applies to a superintendent’s salary and every other expenditure the school district makes. Absent the test of profitability, or even the test of having to attract customers and revenue through voluntary decisions on the part of consumers, we do not know how efficiently USD 259 manages the resources they have.

  • What passes for reform in Wichita public schools

    Two middle schools in USD 259, the Wichita public school district, have performed so poorly for the past six years that they must be restructured, as required by the No Child Left Behind Act. (“2 Wichita middle schools must start over,” Wichita Eagle, February 29, 2008) Four other Wichita middle schools are within one year of suffering this sanction, and another is two years away. So before long, seven of the 18 middle schools in the Wichita school district could be in the most severe category of remediation as defined by NCLB.

    NCLB sanctions are progressive, meaning that these troubled schools have been receiving special attention and remedial measures for several years already. These measures have, evidently, failed to produce positive results.

    What does the restructuring of these schools mean? Everyone, including the principals, must reapply for their jobs. That sounds severe, but in practice, it may not mean much at all. The superintendent of the Wichita schools says “… he expects leadership teams at both schools to remain.” The teachers, being members of a union, are guaranteed a job somewhere in the Wichita public schools.

    Are these tough sanctions? When people fail this spectacularly in private enterprise, they usually are fired. That’s not happening here. Still, the sanctions are, somehow, painful. Wichita board of education member Barbara Fuller, herself the former president of the teachers union, “is most concerned about the restructuring plan’s emotional impact. ‘It’s going to hurt, and it’s going to hurt deep,’ Fuller said.” I wonder how hurt the parents of children who attend these failing schools feel.

    The Wichita school district, I have been told, wants to be held accountable for results. This “restructuring” of these middle schools, while perhaps an abrupt change compared to what school reform measures usually call for, will probably not produce the desired results. The system will still be the same. The same bureaucracy — from the superintendent to the school principals — is in place. There is still the same lack of meaningful competition, the same insulation from market accountability, and the same lack of entrepreneurial discovery process.

    Market accountability is what the Wichita public schools need most. It is one thing for the school superintendent and the board of education to say they want to be held accountable. They appear noble and courageous for saying so. But if they truly want to held accountable they would allow competition through school choice funded by vouchers or tax credits.

    In Kansas, most parents don’t have a credible threat of sending their children to a non-public school. School choice implemented through vouchers or tax credits would give parents the ability to send their children to almost any school they want. This is accountability. Losing your customers is a sanction that really hurts.

    It’s easy to say you want to be held accountable when the penalty for failure is that described above. It is an entirely different matter to actually be held accountable by parents who have the credible threat of taking their children somewhere else — the same market accountability that private enterprise is subject to. This is the accountability that the Wichita school district will not submit to.

  • Wichita school bond issue: solve overcrowding this way

    According to USD 259 (Wichita public school district) officials, one of the prime reasons a bond issue is needed in 2008 is that schools are overcrowded. New classrooms and new schools must be built, according to district officials, to solve this overcrowding problem.

    This is another way to reduce overcrowding, and it won’t require spending any new money. In fact, the Wichita school district might even save money, and satisfaction with schools in Wichita will increase.

    How can we do this? The State of Kansas and USD 259 can implement wide-spread school choice funded by vouchers and/or tax credits.

    This may seem contrary to common sense at first. After all, one of the primary criticisms of school choice is that it “transfers precious tax dollars from public schools,” according to a national teachers union.

    But facts don’t back up this claim. In 2007, The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation published a study titled “School Choice by the Numbers: The Fiscal Effect of School Choice Programs, 1990-2006.” According to the executive summary: “Every existing school choice program is at least fiscally neutral, and most produce a substantial savings.” How can this be? The teachers union and education bureaucrats would have us believe that vouchers would kill public education.

    Here’s the answer, from the same study: “In nearly every school choice program, the dollar value of the voucher or scholarship is less than or equal to the state’s formula spending per student. This means states are spending the same amount or less on students in school choice programs than they would have spent on the same students if they had attended public schools, producing a fiscal savings.”

    In Wichita, if the school district would loosen its monopolistic grip on the use of public tax dollars for schools, some students would take advantage of a voucher or tax credit program and go to school somewhere else. These students that left the Wichita public schools would reduce or eliminate the overcrowding problem.

    Yes, the Friedman Foundation advocates for school choice. It was Milton Friedman himself who promoted school choice as a way to solve problems with public schools. It’s an idea that is very popular with parents in the several places in America where school choice is in place. This is especially true with poor and minority families, as they have the most to gain from expanded choices in education.

    Expanding school choice in Wichita through vouchers or tax credits would give parents greater control over their children’s education, and it would solve the overcrowding problem without spending many millions on new classrooms and schools.

  • Wichita School Bond Issue: It’s not the $40, it’s the $1,749

    Editor’s note. This article has been updated with new figures. See Wichita School Bond Issue: It’s not the $42.55, it’s the $1,927.

    Listen to this article in audio form by clicking here.

    The proposed USD 259 (Wichita public school district) school bond issue in 2008 is estimated to cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $40 per year in additional taxes. Proponents divide that into a monthly cost of about $3.33 per month, or sometimes a daily cost of $.11, to dramatize how little this bond issue actually costs.

    Eleven cents per day per household! Who could oppose such a paltry amount? Especially when bond issue supporters make it seem as though that’s all we spend on schools. But we do, in fact, spend a great deal more on our public schools.

    How much more? There’s another number that bond issue proponents don’t publicize. In fact, I’m sure that many of them don’t have an idea of the magnitude of this number. But this number gives us insight into the size and impact of the Wichita school district, and helps us view the district’s spending in context.

    What is that number? It’s $1,749. That’s what you get when you take the annual spending of USD 259 ($544,384,275) and divide it by the number of people living within the district’s boundaries (311,228).

    That’s how much the Wichita public school district spends each year, per person living in the district. It’s not the same as saying each person is taxed that amount each year by USD 259, as only 31% of district spending is paid for from local sources. The rest came from the State of Kansas (58%) and the federal government (11%). USD 259 residents, of course, pay a good share of those state and federal taxes.

    That number — $1,749 in spending by USD 259 per year for each person living in the district — gives us an idea of the huge volume of resources that the district has at its command. It is a tremendous amount of money. Think of all the people you see each day. For each of those people, $1,749 has to be raised each year to pay for Wichita public school spending.

    For a household of two adults and two children, $6,996 per year, or $19.17 per day, must be raised through a variety of taxes to support USD 259 spending. Keep this in mind as bond issue supporters ask for another increase in taxes.

    Sources of data: Spending figures are for the 2006-2007 school year, from The Kansas Department of Education at http://www.ksde.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1810. The population of USD 259 is from the National Center for Education Statistics at http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sdds/acs05/index.aspx, from the 2005 American Community Survey data.

  • Voucher opponents: uninformed or untruthful?

    Writing from New Orleans, Louisiana

    “The AFT supports parents’ right to send their children to private or religious schools but opposes the use of public funds to do so. The main reason for this opposition is because public funding of private or religious education transfers precious tax dollars from public schools …”

    This is a typical criticism of school vouchers, here expressed by one of the nation’s teachers unions. But what about the reasoning behind this claim?

    A common plan for vouchers calls for the school that loses a student to a voucher school to also lose the funding that accompanied that child. So it appears that the voucher critics may be correct — if the amount lost due to the voucher was equal to per-pupil spending.

    But most voucher plans call for the voucher to be just a small fraction of per-pupil spending. Most vouchers are for less than $5,000. With USD 259, the Wichita public school district, spending some $12,000 per student per year, a $5,000 voucher is only 42% of per-pupil spending.

    Because the voucher is for less than per-pupil spending, the school that loses the student is actually better off, financially, than before. As long as the amount the school loses to a voucher is less than per-pupil spending, the school has more money to spend, on a per-pupil basis.

    We have to wonder why the public school bureaucracy and newspaper editorial writers do not realize this. Perhaps their opposition to vouchers isn’t solely financial. There is evidence from Utah is that this is true. This has been reported in the Deseret Morning News: “When a student leaves a public school [in Utah], the legislation requires the state to continue to supply that public school’s district the portion of the per-pupil funding that is over and above the state-wide average voucher amount, and to continue doing so for a period of five years following the transfer or until the student was scheduled to graduate.”

    Even this provision does not satisfy the opponents of vouchers. It also doesn’t do much to provide competition to the public schools, which is one of the positive things vouchers will do. The article realized this: “Unfortunately, this will minimize the voucher program’s competitive effect that might otherwise spur innovation in the public school system.”

    The advocates of the public school monopoly say that education isn’t about money, that it’s all about the children. But when it comes time to oppose vouchers (even though the argument is false), or to sue the legislature for more funding, or to raise property taxes, or to float the idea of a bond issue, well, it turns out that it is all about money.

    In a recent Wichita Eagle article, Wichita school superintendent Winston Brooks promoted accountability. But if he truly believes in being held accountable, he would advocate allowing competition through school choice funded by vouchers and/or tax credits. It’s one thing to say you want to be held accountable. But it is another thing to actually be held accountable by parents who would have the credible threat of taking their children somewhere else.

    In Kansas, most parents don’t have a credible threat of sending their children to a non-public school. Incremental reforms have been tried for years, and more such proposals appear every year. It is time, however, for radical change. School choice implemented through vouchers or tax credits (a better idea) would allow the magic of entrepreneurial competition — instead of the present amalgam of education bureaucrats, self-serving politicians, paid lobbyists, and teachers unions — to supply schools that parents really want.