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Fri, 25 Jul 2008
Charter Schools again: A report from the kingdom of data
A column about Mayoral academies a few weeks back sparked more than average response. Reviewing some of the letters I received, it seemed worthwhile to write a bit about what we know about school "reform."
The deafening clamor of energetic academic controversies attracts funding, and researchers fly to that honey. So one upside of the arguments over public education is there are swarms of economists and psychologists and other education researchers out there examining educational policies and social influences to try to figure out what works and what doesn't. They publish articles for curious people to read and evaluate. So I did. (And you can, too. Find the citations below.) Here's a little of what I learned while browsing academic literature about charter schools and school choice.
16:50 - 25 Jul 2008 [/y8/cols] link
Lobbying success costs industry money
A good AP article points out that had the food industry not successfully lobbied the Bush administration to relieve them of "burdensome" paperwork requirements, they might not have lost $250 million over the tomatoes/jalapenos/salmonella crisis.
09:27 - 25 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy] link
Wed, 23 Jul 2008
A subscriber wrote in to point out that I'd forgotten an important point in my article inspired by this deeply uninformed blog post (caution: fancy graphics, crashes my browser sometimes).
My only quibble is about responding to the assumption there was little population growth in RI. 1950 population of RI was about 792,000 but in 2000 it was about 1,067,000 an increase of 275,000 people, almost 35%, not an inconsiderable number (but pop. growth often ignored by both right and left).
Well, add that to the other points in the article. (It's in issue 32, just out.)
16:08 - 23 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy] link
Mon, 21 Jul 2008
For those interested in further reading about the studies I mentioned in this week's column (coming Wednesday and Thursday), read here:
- Christopher and Sarah Lubienski's research comparing public and private schools using the NAEP math tests can be found here.
- Courtney Bell's paper on school choice. Describes how different parents choose rationally among the choices they perceive, but points out that the choices they perceive aren't necessarily the choices education reformers think they have.
- The data about school choice in Chicago were presented in the book Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The relevant chapters aren't available on line, though google is your friend here. But the book is a best-seller, so it won't be hard to come by a copy.
22:49 - 21 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy] link
Thu, 17 Jul 2008
How's that deregulation working out for you?
Last week the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) approved a record increase in electric and gas utility rates. The commission chair was apologetic, but said the law was clear that National Grid is owed this rate increase because the rates they pay for electricity and gas have gone up.
So it's time to back up a little and ask about that law, isn't it?
22:35 - 17 Jul 2008 [/y8/cols] link
Mon, 14 Jul 2008
After a long wait, for which I apologize profusely.
- Where has the money gone? If it's not welfare or medicaid, then why is government so much more expensive than it was 50 years ago? You probably won't like the answer.
- Book review: Bad Money by Kevin Phillips
- Press follies: Can we have good politics with a bad press?
Didn't you mean to subscribe?
10:11 - 14 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy] link
So we're going to bail out Fannie and Freddie, the mortgage giants. But why? Maybe we need them, but do we need them to be private, for-profit entitities? Why, exactly? From here:
The government uses conditions all the time when it offers help to low and moderate income people. Unemployment insurance, TANF, food stamps, and even student loans come with all sorts of conditions.
It is only when it comes to giving money to extremely rich people that we find it impossible to impose conditions. Again, we could have told Fannie and Freddie that no executives will get more than $2 million a year in total compensation. We could have told their shareholders that they are out of luck, because that is what is supposed to happen when you invest in a bankrupt company.
Instead, we told the people who work as truck drivers, school teachers, and fire fighters that they will have to pay more in taxes to help some of the richest people in the country escape the consequences of their own stupidity. While kicking the poor is always fun for politicians, neither the Bush administration nor Congress are prepared to tell the very rich that they are on their own.
In 1991, RI suffered a banking disaster of our own. We had an opportunity then to turn that sow's ear into a silk purse, but passed on it because it would have meant government getting into the banking business, and that's anathema to people who are hide-bound by ideology. So because of ideology, we overlooked a practical solution that would have gotten everyone their money back without spending a dime of taxpayer money. Ideology is expensive.
10:08 - 14 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy] link
Sat, 12 Jul 2008
11:22 - 12 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy] link
Fri, 11 Jul 2008
Swirling down the drain on the bus
Last week, I was a little startled to get a phone call from my daughter, who is 14. She plays the viola, you see, and is traveling with her high-school orchestra in Europe for ten days this summer, and I'm the kind of 20th-century guy who is surprised by phone calls from Germany.
But it was a happy call, and she reported to me that they were in Berlin, and told me about the Checkpoint Charlie museum (giving me the opportunity to reflect that the Berlin wall, which seemed eternal to me once, came down three years before she was born), and the Fernsehturm, a giant TV tower with a rotating platform from which to view the city. But she also reported that the trains and buses were cool, too. She was thrilled that she and her friends could get wherever they wanted to go -- by themselves. We had a 3-minute call, and probably half of it was about the feeling of independence and how much fun the trains were to use.
Now I'm relieved she's well and enjoying herself, even if I'm not perfectly sure I'm ready for her to be all that independent quite yet, thank you very much. But there you have her take on sensible public transit: fun and liberating.
Meanwhile, back home, the Governor vetoed a bill that would allow RIPTA buses to carry a radio beacon to delay the change of some traffic lights as they approach. (Many police and fire vehicles carry these beacons now.) According to his veto message it's an "increased danger to all motorists" to wait a bit longer at a traffic light, so hooray for the Governor for saving us from the scourge of better public transit.
21:52 - 11 Jul 2008 [/y8/cols] link
Annual report. See p.2 (profits up 27.9%).
11:16 - 11 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy] link
Fri, 04 Jul 2008
In 1981, Ronald Reagan proposed cutting Medicaid by making it a "block grant" program instead of an "entitlement." Instead of giving each state however much they need to pay for care to the poor and disabled, the federal government would limit the amount spent on Medicaid each year by giving a set amount to each state and letting the state decide how to split it up. Understanding that the nice words about states' rights and independence were only a cover for cutting the program, this was roundly rejected by the Democratic Congress. Newt Gingrich proposed the same thing in the newly Republican Congress of 1995, and it was roundly rejected by the Democratic President. In 2003, George W. Bush proposed it yet again, but couldn't get it through even that Republican Congress.
But in 2008, Governor Donald Carcieri, House Speaker William Murphy and House Finance Chair Steven Costantino cooperated to give Bush exactly what he'd asked for, at least for Rhode Island. And if it goes through, we'll be the precedent for everyone else.
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