By Liam Day
August 29th, 2008
Much has been made recently that, as we slide into election season, the current session of Congress has been one of the least productive in recent memory, passing a mere 294 pieces of legislation.
That the current Congress has been ineffective is, I believe, beyond question. Nevertheless, productivity isn’t the gauge by which we should be measuring our Congresses. Passing legislation isn’t always a good thing, it certainly isn’t always necessary, and I certainly don’t want my Congress passing laws simply for the sake of appearing busy.
As voters, we should absolutely seek measures by which to judge our legislators. Unfortunately, the two which we seem to use most commonly today - how much money they earmark for our districts and how many pieces of legislation they sponsor and get passed - only lead to bloatedness and record deficits.
By Steve Poftak
August 28th, 2008
There’s a meme being propagated that Mitt Romney “owns 55 houses” (I know they’re kidding, but I’m sure its going to get picked up elsewhere, without the sarcasm). It’s based on campaign disclosure docs reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity which provides a more measured assessment: “Romney holds an interest in 51 different properties through the Whitehall Real Estate Funds.”
To translate, Romney’s investment holdings include real estate investments, pretty standard for anyone with significant assets (and there’s no argument here that they are significant.). But the tenuous link that is bound to be made is that you ‘own’ everything in your investment portfolio. Check your 401k.
By Steve Poftak
August 26th, 2008
In a follow-up piece to their series on state payroll, the Herald tucks this little nugget into today’s installment:
But yesterday, a Patrick administration source, who requested anonymity, insisted most of the growth in the payroll is in higher education, the courts and the Middlesex County Sheriff’s Department.
Hmmm, why the animus towards the good Sheriff?
By Jim Stergios
August 26th, 2008
Really. A turning point? It happened at an event held in tandem with the Democratic National Convention. Ted Kennedy showed a lot of courage appearing at the convention, but, no, he did not show up there. No, our Governor (aka, the Original Proselytizer of The New Politics of Hope, OPTNPH for short) did not show.
But Mickey Kaus of the Kaus Files on Slate was there, along with DC Mayor Fenty, DC Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, NYC School chief Joel Klein, and many more leaders who understand the need for fundamental reform in our schools. From Kaus:
Things We Thought We’d Never See: Democrats Rally Against the Teachers’ Unions! I went to the Ed Challenge for Change event mainly to schmooze. I almost didn’t stay for the panels, being in no mood for what I expected would, even among these reformers, be an hour of vague EdBlob talk about “change” and “accountability” and “resources” that would tactfully ignore the elephant in the room, namely the teachers’ unions. I was so wrong. One panelist–I think it was Peter Groff, president of the Colorado State Senate, got the ball rolling by complaining that when the children’s agenda meets the adult agenda, the “adult agenda wins too often.” Then Cory Booker of Newark attacked teachers unions specifically–and there was applause. In a room of 500 people at the Democratic convention! “The politics are so vicious,” Booker complained, remembering how he’d been told his political career would be over if he kept pushing school choice, how early on he’d gotten help from Republicans rather than from Democrats. The party would “have to admit as Democrats we have been wrong on education.” Loud applause! Mayor Adrian Fenty of D.C. joined in, describing the AFT’s attempt to block the proposed pathbreaking D.C. teacher contract. Booker denounced “insane work rules,” and Groff talked about doing the bidding of “those folks who are giving money [for campaigns], and you know who I’m talking about.” Yes, they did!
As Jon Alter, moderating the next panel, noted, it was hard to imagine this event happening at the previous Democratic conventions. (If it had there would have been maybe 15 people in the room, not 500.) Alter called it a “landmark” future historians should note. Maybe he was right.
Kaus reports that NEA head John Wilson was also there:
Afterwards, he seemed a bit stunned. He argued pols should work with unions, in pursuit of a “shared vision,” not bash them. But isn’t this a power struggle where you have to bash the other side to get leverage, I asked. “Then you have losers,” he answered.
And with the Kausian flair for hair (do a search for “Kaus” and “hair” and pull up such nuggets as this), he asks the oh-so-critical question:
Has someone done the trend piece on all these smart, young, powerful bald,** black state and local elected officials–e.g., Fenty, Booker, Groff, Nutter–who are taking on their unions? You’d need a name. Hair Club for Men is already taken. Domeboys? …
**–Nutter has a bit of hair on the sides. Maybe Groff too. Close enough for a trend.
Many of you will recall the Governor’s flirtation with the bold bald look (see pic accompanying the February 2008 article by the Globe’s Matt Viser for his domed pate). The lesson for Governor Patrick? Avoid such forays into hair fashion. After all, on education, his politics is not bold. It is decidedly old.
By Jim Stergios
August 25th, 2008
Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell argue in their WJS Op-ed (Protect Our Kids fro Preschool) from Friday (8/22) that pre-K may make sense for families with challenges or in acutely underperforming districts, but that universal pre-K makes little sense.
In the last half-century, U.S. preschool attendance has gone up to nearly 70% from 16%. But fourth-grade reading, science, and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — the nation’s report card — have remained virtually stagnant since the early 1970s.
Dalmia and Snell cite data from Education Week regarding student performance to call into question the value of pre-K programs in Georgia, Oklahoma and several other states, as well as Strategic Research Group’s review of Tennessee’s preschool program, all of which found that there was “no statistical difference in the performance of preschool versus nonpreschool kids on any subject after first grade.”
Dalmia and Snell are correct in citing no significant increases in student performance as measured by the national assessments, though, to be fair, the Oklahoma pre-K program has not been in place long enough to judge it adequately.
Their second point for me is more important. Whether after school, pre-K or other shiny new programs, we should focus on addressing the failures of the current system before we add on new programs that are based structurally on the existing system, with its labor monopoly, its lack of leadership and all the rest.
I know that is not nice. But, folks, we should get serious and not simply have more announcements.
By Jim Stergios
August 20th, 2008
No. Not. Boston. Our bars close at 2 a.m. the very, very latest. The T stops midway through the Price is Right. (Yay, Drew Carey!) And our world-class city has a decidedly less than world-class school system.
From the pen of Elissa Gootman of the NYTimes is the press conference and announcement by NYC Mayor Bloomberg that there will be a whopping 18 new charter schools in the City come the September start of school.
The new schools — the largest number to open in the city in a single year — will bring the number of charter schools in the city to 78, serving 24,000 students, up from 17 schools with 3,200 students when Mr. Bloomberg took office in 2002.
A Medford, MA, native, Bloomberg has made a point of shopping in the Bay State for key charter talent. And there are many who want out as the Patrick Administration and our Mayor do their best to suck the life out of the charter movement. As Gootman notes:
Charter schools, which receive public money but are run by independent organizations, fit neatly into Mr. Bloomberg’s private-sector sensibility, and have been a key element of his effort to overhaul the city school system. Largely freed from the bureaucratic and union regulations that apply to traditional public schools, charters can be closed if their students perform poorly. On Monday, the mayor called them “the right idea for the time.”
“You give me competition, I’ll show you progress,” he said at a news conference outside the Bronx Community Charter School, a new venture that promises two teachers in every classroom and a longer school day and year.
Makes you want to pay 15 bucks to get on the Fung Wa for NY. Could you imagine the Mayor for Life mumbling anything like that? How about this:
“It is the charter schools that will get the public to demand that the rest of them come up,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It’s the charter schools that let parents vote with their feet and tell us what the parents think about the quality of the education, of the schools. And I can tell you, one of the reasons that the public schools in the city have gotten better is because the charter schools exist and give parents an alternative and let parents see that you can do something better.”
So will the Mayor embrace charters and maybe even embrace Bloomberg’s policy of giving charter schools space in existing public school buildings? Nah. Visionaries are too busy dreaming up really really big tall buildings to think about little schools. And all that competition stuff, it is way overblown — the Mayor does not like competition. And that stuff about ensuring that all kids have an equal shot at success, well, that requires courage. The Mayor’s too much of a visionary to waste time on courage…
By Jim Stergios
August 20th, 2008
It has been over a decade since Massachusetts took advantage of a federal waiver for its welfare programs. At the time, over 240,000 individuals were recipients of the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. Today that number has been reduced to just around 100,000 individuals.
Massachusetts’ waiver allowed it flexibility to experiment with time limits, work requirements, and family cap restrictions to encourage self-sufficiency.
A decade after welfare reform, the Heartland Institute has taken a look at what worked and what didn’t across the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Heartland’s data suggests we in Massachusetts have some hard questions to answer. By the Institute’s reckoning, on the quality of its policies and the state’s implementation, Massachusetts ranks 46th out of the 51 jurisdictions analyzed. On results, though on the face of it impressive, our 60 percent reduction in the number of TANF recipients low on a relative basis. Massachusetts was dead last in percentage of TANF recipients who joined the workforce.
The Institute also is critical of the Bay State’s policies which are too rigid (drawing people unnecessarily into TANF), lack lifetime limits on benefits, and have few sanctions to enforce compliance with work and other eligibility requirements.
What I find most disturbing is probably what is least politically charged — Massachusetts is among the worst states in the nation in terms of leaving federal income tax credits for the poor unused. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is federally funded (read: “free” from the state’s perspective) and it was a critical part of the welfare reform law. EITC is a strong incentive for single mothers to seek work. In 2007, a filer with two or more qualifying children could take a credit of up to $4,716. Not bad. And it works: The EITC, according to a number of researchers, lowers dependence on welfare programs and increases the participation of single mothers in the workplace.
OK, so what gives? Reduces the dependence of single mothers on welfare; fully paid for through federal coffers… So why is it that in just a single year almost $2 billion in EITC benefits, or 80 percent of total value, went unclaimed in 2004? Why is it that state agencies do not put more emphasis on educating the poor on this opportunity?
Heartland opines:
The answer seems to be that since the tax credit flows directly to individuals and not through welfare bureaucracies, there is little incentive for state and local welfare agencies to invest in public education programs.
Smells like the agencies are focused on their navels.
By Jim Stergios
August 17th, 2008
One has to hand it to Larry Summers. Whether you agree or disagree with him, he speaks with enviable clarity. I remember a conference of political scientists that he opened with something to the effect of how he loved conferences of groups that use the word “scientists” to describe themselves. His point was sort of “methinks thou protest too much”: Scholars and researchers who have to call themselves scientists likely fear the feeble foundation of their science. Not altogether accurate, but certainly a great conference opener. Coffee — no cream and no sugar.
Guy Sorman has what is probably too much of a panegyric to economics as a science in the latest City Journal. Its point is stated with cheery clarity (though without the ol’ Summers’ slap-you-silly panache):
Though economics as a discipline arose in Great Britain and France at the end of the eighteenth century, it has taken two centuries to reach the threshold of scientific rationality. Previously, intuition, opinion, and conviction enjoyed equal status in economic thought; theories were vague, often unverifiable. Not so long ago, one could teach economics at prestigious universities without using equations and certainly without the complex algorithms, precise (though not infallible) mathematical models, and computers integral to the field today.
No wonder bad economic policies ravaged entire nations during the twentieth century, producing more victims than any epidemic did.
Sorman’s piece summarizes what a consensus of economists would agree on — and it is entirely free market.
Question that Sorman raises for me (though he never makes the connection) is about the politicization of the climate change debate. Disclaimer: Certainly (1) there is climate change; and (2) we should do our best to minimize risk to the environment and to our future as animals on this dear earth. But when you squelch debate by constant reference to the “consensus” and the hundreds of “scientists,” well, you lose me. You lose me when you avoid addressing some pretty big holes in the modeling.
So to the Sorman-Stergios question: What if you took the consensus among economists that markets work and jammed it down people’s throats as climate alarmists do? What would people on the Big Guv side of the aisle say? Would they relent, cower and bow down at the altar of markets?
You know the answer to that. And they shouldn’t. Let the debates on all issues continue unabated. It keeps Pioneer in business!
By Steve Poftak
August 15th, 2008
Remember the hullabaloo over the introduction of ‘managed competition’? I sure do (see here, here, and here). AG Martha Coakley, Senator Diane Wilkerson, and Stephen D’Amato of the Center for Insurance Research all prophesied catastrophe. As I said before, I live in one of those ‘inner city’ neighborhoods that was supposed to be whacked by reform. I haven’t seen it, I haven’t heard about it, and I haven’t read about it.
Score one for Insurance Commissioner Nonnie Burnes and the Governor.
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