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151

A Challenge to School Choice from the Right

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Michael McShane points out a challenge coming from the political right that advocates for school choice will have to address:

…when I moved back to America’s heartland and traveled a bit more off the beaten path, I encountered a new argument that might be more threatening to the spread of school choice than anything the AFT’s Randi Weingarten or the NEA’s Lily Eskelsen Garcia can throw at it. It is the fear that by accepting government dollars, private schools — particularly private religious schools — are opening themselves to a government takeover. “With shekels come shackles” is how a man in Michigan put it to me. A brilliant op-ed in the Wall Street Journal called it the “Pharaoh Effect.”

This is not an entirely unwarranted concern. For decades, private and religious schools have been able to coexist peaceably with American public schools. But Obamacare’s contraception mandate has increased government’s attempted influence on the inner workings of religious organizations. And if the Little Sisters of the Poor aren’t safe in America, who’s to say a school will be?

Some of the most vocal opposition that the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity faced to its Bright Today proposal, last legislative session, came from home schoolers who fear that opening this door will let the government into their homes.  Frankly, I’ve been making a variation of this argument when it comes to charter schools.  My initial suspicions blossomed into concern when I read McShane’s report for the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice detailing how some Catholic schools were closing their doors and reopening as non-religious charter schools.

This area definitely merits careful policy decisions as school choice expands (which it will).  That’s life, though.  The enemy is always lurking in the woods along the path.  We can’t just stay home in fear that we’ll lose what we have.  That strategy will only empower the enemy to come and take it.

152

In Education, Government Wants to Promote Government Services

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Be sure to read Julie Negri’s recent op-ed in the Providence Journal.  I suspect it’s one of those topics on which the majority of people giving it a cursory read might side against her, but then reconsider were they to give it more thought:

… Under a program called Prepare RI, high school students are now able to take college credit courses at the state colleges and university with the state picking up the tab for tuition, fees and books. They are able to earn college credits, while at the same time fulfilling high school requirements. …

The initiative “would enable high-performing high school students to take college classes at no cost to them.” Unless you’re home-schooled or privately schooled. Then you’re on your own, kid — good luck with that. Your parents still get to pay the same taxes, though.

Unfortunately, we’ve developed a a mentality that the purpose of public spending on education is not, first and foremost, the education of all of the children who will one day constitute our electorate.  Rather, the purpose of public spending on education is to use government to provide educational services.  So, things like taking college courses at a completely separate institution is just a perk that the public schools provide.  (Attempts to charge charter and private school students for sports falls in a similar line of thinking.)

Such a view serves the government much more than it serves the people.  Using money confiscated from the people, the government provides services with which the private sector cannot compete — at least at a price that most people would be able to pay, while still paying taxes.  A large majority of children are therefore educated in a government-approved setting, now with subject-matter standards making their way down from the federal government.  (This extreme lopsidedness of the education marketplace, by the way, also makes it impossible for competitors to arise in other areas that influence content, notably the College Board and its advanced placement offerings.)

153

Cranston City Council Planning Coup with Help of State Police?

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This report from NBC 10 reporter Parker Gavigan suggests that one of the bigger worries expressed in my analysis of the state police report about the Cranston Police Department might actually have been understated:

City Council President John Lanni told the NBC 10 I-Team that he expects the council will introduce two resolutions at next Monday’s meeting that deal directly with the scathing state police report on Mayor Allan Fung’s leadership over the police department.

Lanni said the council will vote on a resolution of no confidence against Fung. …

Lanni also said he expects the council to “right a wrong” in the case of Patrolman Matthew Josefson.

As I mentioned in my analysis, Lanni appears to have become a political friend of Police Chief Michael Winquist, as well as the new prime beneficiary of donations from the the International Brotherhood of Police Officers Local 301.  The core criticism of the state police report about Cranston is that there was too much alignment between the union, the chief, and the mayor.  With their extremely biased report, the state police officers appear to have facilitated a switch to an equally unhealthy (or worse) alignment between the union, the chief, and the city council, which may be preparing to overstep its own bounds, to boot.

A quick look at the city’s charter suggests that a “no confidence” resolution would be purely political and that the council has no authority to dip into the minute details of city employment.  They are well situated, however, to undermine the mayor and disrupt the operation of the city until the next election, at which point, they can complete their coup.

Depending how this goes, I may have to upgrade my criticism of the report from “extremely biased” to “recklessly and dangerously political.”  If Chief Winquist and State Police Superintendent Steven O’Donnell don’t do what they can to stop the train that their report started rolling, they risk long-term damage to the credibility of the state police.

154

Advocacy for Children Not Allowed

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While we accept that teacher unions advocate to extremes for their members and that school committee’s strive to balance interests, parents or others who try to push just a little bit harder in the children’s direction are quickly denounced.

155

Tiverton School Committee Nixes Full-Day Kindergarten

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With the victory of the petitioner’s budget that I submitted for the town of Tiverton, the most significant question facing the School Committee was whether to go forward with plans to implement full-day kindergarten or to deprive another 120 Tiverton children of that service, which the school department has declared to be critically important.  The five members — all of them endorsed by the local political action committee Tiverton 1st and (I believe) the Tiverton Democratic Town Committee — chose student deprivation.

From a budgetary standpoint, I find the move inexplicable, for reasons I describe over on Tiverton Fact Check.  Even folks in other cities and towns may find the situation telling of the ridiculous way in which Rhode Island law splits local government into the school department and the municipal government.

Because the town is legally bound to whatever number it estimated for state aid, and because the estimate included a $63,000 bump in state aid based on kindergarten’s going to full day (which effectively doubles the number of children for that grade for the purposes of the funding formula), the town must now come up with that money.

As a separate matter, for its proposed budget, the school department underestimated its expenses by around $423,000.  That would have been the case no matter which budget won the vote at the financial town referendum.  By cancelling full-day kindergarten, the school committee effectively transfers $63,000 from the state (for full-day K only) to the town (for any purpose), helping it to close its own estimating gap.

Not counting a somewhat-protected reserve required in the town’s home rule charter, the municipal government already has a much lower unassigned fund balance than does the school department, and the Town Council and administrator are already in a quest for any dollar they can find in order to accommodate the budget vote of the people.  Yet, nobody on the municipal side has commented on the school department’s decision, whether because they don’t understand the budget implications or just don’t care.

Returning to the School Committee, while it may be difficult to explain its decision from a budgetary standpoint, it isn’t at all difficult to understand from a political standpoint.  From the members’ comments at their last meeting (video linked in my Fact Check post), it’s obvious that they just don’t want to prove the supporters of the petitioner’s budget right.  They don’t want to admit that their scare tactics are scare tactics, so they followed through on the threat.

These are the people whom Tiverton has chosen to oversee the education of its children.

156

Coming up in Committee: Seventeen Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, Today, May 27

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1. H5790: From the official description: “This act would provide parents of K-12 students in Rhode Island with an opportunity to enroll their child in an educational program of their choosing, either via open enrollment in a traditional public school in their own district or any other public school district, or by receiving a scholarship, with designated public monies to follow the student to a participating private school or private curriculum program selected by the parent”. Scholarships can be up to $6000 and are income adjusted. (H Finance; Wed, May 27)

2A. H5795: Permanent moratorium on establishing or expanding charter schools in Rhode Island. (H Finance; Wed, May 27)

2B. H5794: From the official description: “This act would remove a city or town’s financial obligation to contribute to their resident students who enroll in charter schools, William M. Davies, Jr. Career and Technical High School or the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center”. (H Finance; Wed, May 27)

2C. H5834: Change in the formula for capital aid for charter public school building construction, in particular, capping aid at the same percentage of the municipality where the school is located, even if the average based on all sending communities would result in a higher amount. (H Finance; Wed, May 27)

3. S0194: A minimum wage bill is scheduled to get a vote today. The bill officially in committee raises it to $10.10 per hour starting in 2016, though Jennifer Bogdan of the Projo is reporting a deal has been agreed to by leadership for $9.60 per hour. (S Labor; Wed, May 27)

4. H5083: Relief for municipalities from unfunded mandates, i.e. “If during any fiscal year the state reimbursement to cities and towns and school districts is insufficient to cover the costs of state mandates as reported by the department of revenue, the affected cities, towns and school districts may cease implementation of the state mandates at their discretion up to 50% of the value of the reimbursement shortfall, provided that: (1) Existing personnel contracts are honored in their entirety or renegotiated to the 1 satisfaction of both parties; and (2) Implementation of state mandates is restored upon the full restoration of state reimbursements”. (H Finance; Wed, May 27)

157

Children as Political Hostages in an Empty Room in Cumberland

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Marcia Green’s Valley Breeze article on the Cumberland School Department’s threatened cuts if its budget isn’t increased by more than the mayor has proposed caught my attention when Monique tweeted it thus: “Cumberland School Committee issues list of (budget) hostages; threatens to start shooting.”

This sort of thing takes place all over the state — probably the country — and it’s a good example of why it’s dangerous to attempt to do things through government.  Everything’s a battle.

For contrast, try to imagine a similar situation for a private school.  It’s actually not that difficult, with so many smaller schools that serve working-class populations closing.  They don’t berate the parents with threatened cuts.  Instead, they very often try to increase programming, asking faculty and staff to pitch in to move a plan forward, and then asking parents to volunteer in order to minimize tuition increases and ensure the best educational experience for the students.

If faculty, staff, and parents don’t step up, it’s on them.  Note this, for example, from Green’s article:

Monday’s subcommittee meeting drew a half-dozen parents, including Laura Sheehan and Linda Haviland, who were not only speaking against the proposed cuts, but beginning to prepare for Town Council hearings.

Cumberland has nearly 5,000 students, and about six parents showed up at a meeting discussing supposedly dire cuts in programming.

Perhaps one of those parents should research the budget of Cumberland’s schools.  As it happens, I’ve been doing just that, looking into comments made by Sen. Ryan Pearson (D, Cumberland, Lincoln) about the cost of charter schools during the hearing the other day on the Bright Today legislation.

In the five years ending with the current one, Cumberland Schools’ revenue and expenditure increases have averaged a little more than 4%.  Meanwhile, its October enrollment has dropped an average of 2% per year over those five years.  That has led to average per-student expenditure growth of 6.21% — or 5.34% if we take out the tuition paid to charter schools.  Inflation, by contrast, has averaged around 1.7% per year.

Discussions about schools should be sensitive.  Maybe one of the reasons parents and other members of the community are checking out is that they aren’t being offered decisions; they’re being whipped into inexplicable frenzy.  The first approach is empowering; the second is enervating.

The tone should not be “give us more money or else.”  It should be, “here’s where we are, here’s why these are the best steps to take, and here’s what we can do to live within the means that the people paying the bills are willing to provide.”

Of course, a calm recitation of reasonable options might lead people to choose them.  Where would that leave the folks with very healthy salaries and unparalleled benefits working for the system?

159

When the Students’ and the Teachers’ Interests Differ

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This paragraph out of a 2010 Julia Steiny column has come to mind periodically ever since, but I somehow never got around to posting about it.  It makes an important point that is too easily forgotten as the state argues over standardized testing, teacher evaluations, charter schools, school choice, and even property taxes:

When Marcia [Reback, President of the RI Federation of Teachers] had had enough, she outted the elephant in the room. The interests of the teachers and kids are not the same, but were sometimes in direct conflict with one another. And when their interests diverge, she said, “I represent the teachers.” And shrugged. Who could argue with that?

Think about that.  Here we have a wealthy and powerful union organization, funded with money forcibly taken from taxpayers and frequently used to help elect politicians and modify laws in order to tilt negotiations and the entire educational landscape in its favor, whose mission is, at least in part, to advocate in opposition to the needs of school children.

Reback’s statement has come to mind for two reasons, this week.  The first is that the school choice legislation on which I’ve been working is being heard by the RI Senate Education Committee, today.  The second is that the 0.9% budget that I put in for Tiverton won, and the local school department has been threatening not to go forward with all-day kindergarten in the upcoming school year if it didn’t get its full budget request (even though doing so is a no-brainer).

In both cases, we’ll get some indication whose interests elected officials put first.

That’s a critical question at the local level.  Sure, most cities and towns probably have it written down, somewhere, that school committees are supposed to put the children first, but the incentives undermine that mandate.  Many school committees are stacked with teachers, whether retired or active in other communities, and many others were elected with the help of teachers unions and their activist allies.  Even if they weren’t, the nature of their position creates incentive to balance the demands of the teachers with the needs of the students and their families, not to advocate for the latter.

It’s an imbalanced system that can’t do otherwise than harm children.

 

160

Coming up in Committee: Twenty-Eight Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, May 5 – May 7

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1. H5819: 1) Outlaws stop-and-frisk police procedures by extending the current requirement that motor vehicle stops be predicated on “reasonable suspicion or probable cause of criminal activity” to pedestrians, 2) requires that, whenever possible, motor vehicle stops be recorded (but not making the recordings part of the public record), and 3) mandates that the department of transportation gather data on whether “racial disparities in traffic stops exist”. (H Judiciary; Tue, May 5)

2A. S0739: 1) Requires that the local share of funding for school districts and charter schools (i.e. the non-state aid share) of be provided by the “the local district from local resources”, 2) freezes the number of students used for the state education “funding formula” calculation for public charter schools at their 2015 values and 3) requires the town/city council or school committee of every community to be served by a mayoral academy to give its approval before a charter school can increase its enrollment. (S Education; Wed, May 6) This looks to be the major anti-education-reform bill for this session, but also pay attention to some of the “smaller” ones in section 2B of the main post.

3. S0210: Exempts “any income from social security benefits” and “up to twenty-five thousand dollars of income received from public and private pensions, interest income, 401K plans and individual retirement accounts” from the state income tax. (S Finance; Tue, May 5)

4A. S0541: Authorizes the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority to issue $65M in bonds, without voter approval, resulting in $152M in debt to paid out over 30 years, “for the purpose of providing funds to finance the renovation, renewal, repair, rehabilitation, retrofitting, upgrading and improvement of the Pell Bridge, the Jamestown Verrazzano Bridge, the Sakonnet River Bridge, Mount Hope Bridge, and other projects authorized under the Act, replacement of the components thereof, working capital, capitalized interest, a debt service reserve and the costs of issuing and insuring the Bonds”. The bonds don’t need voter approval, because the resolution says “that the Bonds will not constitute indebtedness of the State or any of its subdivisions or a debt for which the full faith and credit of the State or any of its subdivisions is pledged”. (S Finance; Tue, May 5)

5. S0433: Prohibits non-compete agreements for licensed physicians. (S Judiciary; Tue, May 5)

161

Coming up in Committee: Twenty-Nine Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, February 24 – February 26

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1A. S0134: Creates a crime of “unlawful interference with traffic” with reference to “any federal or state highway”, with a minimum prison sentence of one year for a first offense, 60 days of which cannot be suspended or deferred. (At present, the definition of disorderly conduct includes obstructing a “highway…to which the public or a substantial group 12 of the public has access”, punishable by imprisonment of up to 6 months, and a fine up to $500) (S Judiciary; Tue, Feb 24)

1B. H5417: Eliminates the up-to six month prison sentence for most instances of disorderly conduct — including for “obstruct[ing] a highway…to which the public or a substantial group of the public has access or any other place ordinarily used for the passage of persons, vehicles, or conveyances” — except in cases involving domestic violence. (H Judiciary; Wed, Feb 25)

2. S0314: Extends the state’s “facilities support” funding to all charter schools (currently, it is only available to “district sponsored charter public schools”). (S Finance; Tue, Feb 24)

3. S0305 / H5228: Writes into law in-state tuition at RI public colleges and universities for students who graduated from a Rhode Island high school that they spent three years at, including illegal aliens (but not non-immigrant aliens) who have applied for “lawful immigration status” or who promise to when a process is made available under a Federal amnesty law. (S Finance; Tue, Feb 24 &; H Finance, Thu Feb 26)

4. S0122: Tax credits for Rhode Island residents who are college graduates “in an amount equal to the payments made in a given tax year…toward undergraduate or graduate student loan debt, up to a maximum amount for single tax year of one thousand dollars for an associate’s degree holder, five thousand dollars for a bachelor’s degree holder, and six thousand dollars for a graduate degree holder”. (S Finance; Tue, Feb 24)

162

School choice sentiments simmer in Rhode Island as politicians go about business as usual

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In Rhode Island, the school choice issue is emblematic of the insider nature of politics and the mounting public frustration with it.

Look in any direction, and the demand for school choice is clear:

  • Asked in a survey how they would educate their children if given the option, 68% would choose something other than district public schools.
  • In College Board data, Rhode Island is second in the nation in the percentage of private school students, and first, by a long shot, in religiously affiliated private schools, which tend to be less expensive.
  • Every year, the applicants for charter schools exceed the available seats by many times, and only a fraction of businesses that would like to provide tax credit scholarships are able to do so.

Yet, asked about school choice on Thursday, the day of a School Choice Week rally at the State House, the Speaker of the House, Nicholas Mattiello (D, Cranston) told a political reporter from the Providence Journal, “Even though [school] choice sounds like a good idea, it’s very impractical and something I am not going to be looking at very favorably.”

Continue reading on Watchdog.org.

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163

Involved Parents and School Choice

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One of the myths thrown about to push back on calls for school choice is that parents won’t make good decisions for their children.  It’s not true.  Relatedly, excuse-makers for the government school system periodically claim that the teachers and other professionals can’t be blamed for student performance because it’s the parents’ fault (or that of the students themselves).

That one probably has a little more truth to it.  Involved parents ensure that learning never stops, and involved parents who are also reasonable hold their children accountable to the authority of the teachers, and involved, reasonable parents who are also assertive demand accountability from the schools.  It may be the case, therefore, that such parents find ways to send their children to private schools, with which they’ll have more leverage, at a higher rate.

Into the mix, throw this tidbit of research:

A new piece of research, which was conducted by Bristol University, has refuted the idea that parents from a poor background are less involved in their children than those from a wealthier background.

The findings revealed that poorer parents are as likely to help with homework, play and read with their children, as those who are better-off financially.

Next week, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity will release a brief study of mine suggesting that Rhode Island parents are using lower-cost religiously affiliated schools as a means of school choice.  The number of families vying for charter-school slots, as well as survey results, reinforces the point, as illustrated in this graphic:

A strong school choice policy would merely empower parents to make the decisions that they already know are best for their children.  That’s what scares the special interests vested in a near government monopoly in education.

164

Fix-the-System Education Reform Hits a Ceiling in Rhode Island

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Although the division between them has not yet hardened into antagonism, there are two branches of the education reform movement.

One seeks to fix the system that is currently in place, with minimally disruptive reforms to make government-run schools more accountable and responsive, prodded through competition from charter schools, over which government maintains a strong hand.  The other favors stronger competition through school choice, with the funds allocated for students’ education being directed by their parents to any schools that they choose.

For the better part of the last decade, Rhode Island has pursued reforms of the fix-the-system variety.  In both its politics and its test results, however, the Ocean State may now be proving that such reforms have a ceiling.

Continue reading on Watchdog.org.

165

Municipal Bonds, Another Phony Sword of Damocles

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The great government machine has all sorts of ways that officials can shift blame off themselves and ensure that everything is always the responsibility of voters and taxpayers.  If there are budgetary problems, it’s because you haven’t contributed enough.  If more money is needed, it’s more often than not up to you to give more money (even if it’s confiscated in an indirect way), rather than for government to pare down its activities or run with much less waste.

That observation has had a very clear illustration, recently, in Tiverton.

In short, last May, taxpayers voted themselves a 0% tax increase by using about $600,000 of the slush fund above the reserves that are required (and protected from abuse) by the town’s Home Rule Charter.  In setting a bond rating for the town, this November, Standard & Poor’s mentioned that action as a factor in their analysis.

Now, local politicians are priming the rhetoric to use that fact as a political weapon and to justify a bigger tax increase in the next budget.  Taxpayers shouldn’t listen.  Most of what the politicians are saying just isn’t true and is ultimately a decoy away from their bad management… things like letting the firefighters’ union set up a scenario in which a couple of employees out on disability leave can cost the town around a half-million dollars in additional overtime.

For a deep-dive analysis on Tiverton Fact Check, I took the seemingly unprecedented steps of actually communicating with the S&P analysts, figuring out their rating method enough to calculate multiple scenarios, and researching the impact of bond ratings on the actual rates that municipalities pay.  The upshot?

Most of the [officals’] comments are misleading or downright incorrect.  Tiverton was not “downgraded” because voters used some of the town’s unassigned funds at last year’s financial town referendum for a 0% tax increase; money in the town’s reserve fund was not the most significant factor in Tiverton’s bond rating; and failing to achieve a higher bond rating will not cost the town a significant money, if it cost the town anything at all.

166

Keep the Education Scandal on Your Radar

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As we pay justified attention to attempts to infringe on our property rights and to take our money to pay for a government healthcare system, let’s not lose track of the travesty that is our education system.

Specifically, I have in mind Linda Borg’s recent Providence Journal article:

About 98 percent of Rhode Island’s teachers in their latest evaluation were rated as effective or highly effective by their principals, a number at odds with student performance in a number of districts. …

“If everyone here was at 98 percent, Rhode Island would be leading the nation” in student achievement, “not Massachusetts,” said Tim Duffy, executive director of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees.

Let’s put it plainly: The evaluations are a fraud designed to ensure that government schools and their employees have no real accountability. A few data points in the article reinforce this aggressive conclusion:

“Central Falls and West Warwick have high percentages of teacher effectiveness but student performances that lag behind state averages.”
“The Blackstone Valley Prep charter schools in northern Rhode Island report less than a third of their teachers are highly effective yet they show the most growth in student achievement.”
In last year’s edition of the review, a survey reported the embarrassing findings that fewer than half of teachers thought the evaluations were measuring anything, and two-thirds of principals admitted rating teachers too high.
So according to the evaluations, schools that are performing poorly (or even more poorly than the rest of Rhode Island’s government schools) ought to be doing well, and schools that are performing relatively well ought to be doing poorly. And if evidence emerges that the evaluation system is being gamed, well, they just stop asking the questions that had the embarrassing results.

The conclusion, here, is that government cannot evaluate itself, mostly because it doesn’t have any make-or-break incentive to improve. In education, it’s a veritable monopoly that has a huge amount of emotional leverage and political power to continue taking more and more resources on the premise of solving problems that are never fundamentally addressed.

167

SNAP Data Sings the Rhode Island Tune

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Month-to-month trends of SNAP beneficiaries in Rhode Island and across the country show another way that Rhode Island is unique and reinforces a theory of decline that seems to fit every picture in the Ocean State.

168

Education Rhetoric from the Unions’ Candidate

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It’s disappointing that — at least in Linda Borg’s Providence Journal presentation — none of the candidates for Rhode Island governor even mentioned support for school choice beyond the entirely intra-government variety, charter schools.  A silver lining, though, is that the teacher unions’ hand-picked candidate, Clay Pell, offered a perfect example of what he means when he rebuffs attack ads by claiming the campaign should be about ideas.

Borg places this after a question about teacher evaluations, which means either Pell skirted a direct answer or she wanted to make sure he got an irrelevant talking point toward the front of her article:

“As governor, I will provide strategic direction and strong leadership to ensure a world-class education for all Rhode Islanders. I will support our classroom educators and make sure they have the flexibility to innovate and embrace students’ creativity. I do not support a charter school system that erodes the quality and sustainability of public schools. I believe it is critical that we invest in our public schools to ensure equity and high-quality education for all students; no matter their ZIP code.”

That’s by far the longest quotation in the article, so Borg must think it’s important, yet it appears to be nearly substance-free, with respect to the policies that the candidate supports.

  • It’s nice that Pell would have a “strategic direction,” but what would it be?
  • What will he do to provide “strong leadership”?
  • How will he measure a “world-class education”?
  • What sort of “flexibility” will he ensure for teachers, and how will he make sure they aren’t abusing it?  (It was a question about evaluations, after all.)
  • Is “students’ creativity” really the singular trait of children on which schools teaching basics should focus?  What about the varying degree of creativity found among a diverse student body?
  • Does he support a charter school system that does not “[erode] the quality and sustainability of public schools”?
  • Does an “investment” that “ensure[s] equity… no matter their ZIP code” mean anything other than redistributing wealth to the union-operated schools in urban areas?

One gets the impression that Pell has memorized — like prayers — some of the meaningless, sound-good phrases that the people who’ve brought us a failing state drape over the rot of their ideas.

170

Many Threads Together in D.C. Schools

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It’s not often that so many threads of topics about which one has been writing come together in a single story as in James Richardson’s USA Today essay about government schools in Washington, D.C., trying to salvage their client base:

Here, where traditional public school enrollment has dipped by 30,000 students in just the last 18 years, administrators believe the key to stemming the exodus of public school refugees lies in diverting precious resources from improving instruction to marketing.

To augment the hard sell being made door-to-door by principals, the school system even retained the pricey data miners who twice won the White House for President Barack Obama.

As noted in this space, recently, Rhode Island schools are starting to worry about competing with alternatives like charters and private schools, and our local and state governments are taking steps to change the competitive environment.  The experience of St. Jude Home Care at least hints at the risk of government’s abusing its hydra heads to give itself an advantage.  Meanwhile, D.C.’s use of Obama’s team for manipulating the public with intricate data and big money raises the same questions about whether it’s appropriate for government to be operating this way.

In plain terms, the government is taking money from taxpayers to pay for expensive tools for manipulating the public in order to make up for the competitive disadvantage that comes with prioritizing labor unions (whose mission is ultimately progressive activism).

171

Observations of Needed Change in Education

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Like it or not, the notion of competition is creeping in on Rhode Island public schools. Rhode Islanders should be wary of approaches that drive alternatives out of business without securing real improvements.

173

A Declaration, Softly, Under the Rain

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There was something fitting about reading the Declaration of Independence in the rain, this year, at the Doughboy statue in Tiverton.  A smaller crowd of about twenty joined organizer Susan Anderson to keep up the tradition of taking turns reading from the document on this day each year.

At times, the rain was so loud on the umbrellas that the voices were as whispers — wisps of freedom’s memory in the gathering din of tyranny.  From time to time the stream of words was punctuated with exclamations about the relevance of the Founders’ protests to our government today.

Analysis of the founding documents of the United States of America tends to present the Declaration as the expression of the positive spirit of the nation, with the Constitution providing the structure in which those principles might be maintained.  As raindrops smeared the ink, it emerged that the Declaration does its own work to buttress its principles by describing exactly what the revolutionaries opposed.  Specifics might require translation over time, but in the list of complaints, the signers painted for their progeny a picture of the actions of which to beware.

A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.

Through the sunny days of long-established democracy and liberty, a people can forget what the clouds portend, if not for whispers and wisps among friends.

174

Coming up in Committee: Twenty-Three Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, Today, June 18

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1. H8343: Amends the budget, to create some kind of carve-out for a particular “healthcare corporation” or set of corporations in this year’s budget. (H Finance; Wed, Jun 18) Initially submitted yesterday, this is the same process that was used to renege on the original language concerning bridge tolls in last year’s budget.

2. S2565: Imposes an additional $46 fee for a marriage license, $44 of which is to be provided to the Rhode Island Coalition against Domestic Violence to fund domestic violence prevention programs. (S Judiciary; Wed, Jun 18) The Department of Justice reports that “intimate partner violence” rates for married women are significantly lower than are the rates for never married or divorced/widowed women, yet a bunch of RI legislators think it’s a good idea to make couples who are taking basic steps towards responsible commitment pay for the bad acts of everyone. This bill really creates the impression that our state’s dour progressives don’t like marriage very much.

3. S2014: Requires teachers to be notified of layoffs due to “fiscal exigency or program reorganization” by June 1. (Currently, layoff notices of any kind must be sent by March 1). (S Labor; Wed, Jun 18)

4. H7819: Creates a panel operated under the leadership of the healthcare commissioner (“referred to herein this chapter as ‘the authority’”) charged with creating a plan for making “HealthSourceRI the sole hub for securing insurance or health services coverage for all Rhode Island residents”, aggregating all medical funding for health insurance and/or health care services through HealthSourceRI, establishing “global spending targets” for the provision of healthcare, and developing a plan to pay for it all that includes a payroll tax. (H Finance; Wed, Jun 18)

175

Coming up in Committee: Thirty-Four Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, Today, June 16

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1. H8326/S2824: Sort of restores the jurisdiction of the Ethics commission over state legislators, but allows a trial in the regular courts for “any person against whom the commission finds a violation of the code of ethics” (in all cases, not just legislators). (H Judiciary; Mon, Jun, 16)

2. S3103: “In the general election to be held on November 4, 2014, in order to avoid a multiple page statewide ballot, given the number of public questions to be submitted to the electors at such general election, the secretary of state may prepare the ballot in such manner that the statewide public questions involving the issuance of bonds or other evidence of indebtedness, or other long-term financial obligation shall appear on the ballot with only a caption and the amount of financial obligation to be incurred, but without the clear and concise statement of each question, as otherwise required”. (S Judiciary; Mon, Jun, 16)

3. H8006: The annual extension of eligibility of anyone already named by the judicial nominating commission for appointment to a judgeship for another year. (H Judiciary; Mon, Jun, 16)

4. H7194 sets the minimum wage at $9 per hour for 2015, $10 per hour for 2016 and automatically adjusts it upward for inflation after that; S2249 provides a one-time raise in the minimum wage to $9 per-hour. (H Labor; Mon, Jun, 16)

5. S2853: Eliminates the the tax on ride-sharing services (such as Uber) by exempting rides that are “prearranged, and for which the rate is disclosed to the passenger in advance through a software application” from the public motor-vehicle tax. (S Commerce; Mon, Jun, 16)

176

Coming up in Committee: Twenty-Eight Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, May 27 – May 29

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1. H7817: Eliminates the Rhode Island Health Benefits Exchange and transfers its responsibilities to the Federal Government. (H Finance; Wed, May 28)

2. S2988: Reduces the corporate tax rate in Rhode Island from 9% to 7%, while implementing “combined reporting”. (S Finance; Tue, May 27)

3. S2143: Increases the estate tax threshold from $850K to $1.5M, but continues the practice of taxing the entire amount of an estate with a value greater than the threshold, and not just the amount above the threshold. (S Finance; Tue, May 27)

4. H7433: “The percentage of a charter public school’s housing costs reimbursed with state aid shall be equal to the percentage of school housing costs reimbursed with state aid for the municipality where a charter public school is located”. (H Finance; Tue, May 27)

5. S2976: The Comprehensive Community-Police Relationship Act of 2014 which, among other things, outlaws stop-and-frisk procedures, requires specific, detailed information to be logged about motor vehicle or pedestrian stops, requires many motor vehicle stops to be directly recorded, and extends warrant requirements to searches involving juveniles (S Judiciary; Tue, May 27)

6. H7983: Allows the division of taxation to enter into contracts with private organizations (or individual people), providing them with tax-credits in return “for engaging in certified rehabilitation of a manufacturing facility”. (H Finance; Tue, May 27) Implementing a system where people can change their tax liability by dealing directly with a government bureaucracy seems like an odd way to approach the problem of tax-incentives, and one that has substantial potential for unintended consequences. Is this kind of system used anywhere else?

Can’t Rank This One Until It’s Known What Projects It’s Targeted At: S2989: Substantial package of tax-incentives for the “substantial rehabilitation” of buildings in an economic micro-zone. Micro-zones would be designated by town/city governments within their borders, and the RI Commerce Corporation would approve projects for incentives, according to criteria laid out in the law, within a designated micro-zone. (S Finance; Thu, May 29)

177

Coming up in Committee: Seventeen Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, May 20 – May 22

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3. S2657: “The information contained in a portable electronic device shall not be subject to search by a law enforcement officer incident to a lawful custodial arrest except pursuant to a warrant”. (S Judiciary; Tue, May 20) The same bill was vetoed by Governor Chafee two years ago and, according to the Wall Street Journal, Governor Jerry Brown recently vetoed a similar bill in California, telling “the legislature not to require warrants for cellphone searches, saying the issue belongs in the courts”. We’ll see what happens in RI this session.

4. S2985: Allows “a health care facility licensed as an organized ambulatory care facility” to operate at multiple locations without having to seek an individual license for each site. (S Health and Human Services; Tue, May 20)

5. S2208: Extends full state school-housing facilities support (which I believe means state aid to assist with capital construction costs) from district-sponsored charter schools to any Rhode Island charter school, e.g. Mayoral academies. (S Finance; Thu, May 22)

6. S3014: Adds “the real property of any person having debts secured by casino-issued lines of credit” to the list of property “exempt from attachment on any warrant of distress or on any other writ”. (S Finance; Thu, May 22)

7. S2072: If the annual gross receipts of a Rhode Island C-Corp or LLC are less than $500, the corporation gets an automatic tax-refund in the amount of the difference between its gross receipts and the $500 corporate minimum tax it would have to pay… (S Finance; Tue, May 20) …i.e. changes the corporate minimum tax from a tax that certain corporations owe to the government just for existing, to requirement that certain corporations pay the government the first $500 they make each year in the form of corporate income tax.

178

Coming up in Committee: Twenty-Seven Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, May 13 – May 15

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1A. On Tuesday, May 13, SJ Advisors presents their report on payment of the 38 Studios moral obligation bonds to the House Finance Committee.

1B. S2694: “…neither the general assembly nor any governmental or quasi-governmental entity created by it shall issue any bonds, commonly called ‘moral obligation’ bonds in excess of fifty thousand dollars…” (S Finance; Tue, May 13) While the purpose of this bill makes sense, “moral obligation” bonds were themselves created to make a practice clearly prohibited (issuing bonds without voter approval) appear to be legal by renaming it. How would a law like this guarantee that a future legislature wouldn’t get around it, simply by coming up with yet another name for issuing debt without voter consent?

2. S2345: Writes into law in-state tuition at RI public colleges and universities for students, including illegal aliens (but not non-immigrant aliens) who graduated from a Rhode Island high school that they spent three years at, including illegal aliens who have applied for citizenship, provided that the Federal government has provides a pathway to citizenship as part of an amnesty law. (S Finance; Tue, May 13)

3. S2332: Establishes a floor for the Central Falls pension settlement such that, for 2016, “no retiree shall receive less than” 75.6% of their pre-bankruptcy pension amount, and raising that floor to 100% over the following 20 years. (The bankruptcy settlement initially cut a number of pensions to 55% of their original amount, though the state authorized “transition” funds to raise that to 75% for five years). Unlike the version submitted to the House, this bill does not expressly make the state responsible for the pension. (S Finance; Thu, May 15) So where will the difference between the 55% and the rising scale that starts at 75% come from? The bill doesn’t say.

4. S2074: Sets the threshold for the RI estate tax at $2M (annually adjusting it upwards for inflation) and assesses the tax only on the amount over the threshold. (S Finance; Tue, May 13)

5. S2077/S2148: Bases car-tax assessments on trade-in instead of retail value. (S Finance; Tue, May 13)

179

Coming up in Committee: Twenty-Six Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, May 6 – May 8

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1. H2059: Prohibits standardized testing from being used as a graduation requirement from Rhode Island high schools until after July 1, 2017. (S Education; Wed, May 7) What’s going on inside the Rhode Island’s Senate backrooms, with regards to education testing? (More detail after the jump).

2. S2030: Requires employers with 200 or more employees to apply to participate in E-verify by January 1, 2015, and all employers to apply to participate in E-verify by January 1, 2016. Employers are required to keep applying every 60 days, until they are accepted. (S Judiciary; Tue, May 6)

3. Gary Sasse and John Simmons will appear before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday, May 8, to give testimony under the heading of “Analysis and discussion of determining the payment or non-repayment of moral obligation bonds relating to 38 Studios and the consequences of such choices”.

4. H7437: Writes into law in-state tuition at RI public colleges and universities for students, including illegal aliens (but not non-immigrant aliens) who graduated from a Rhode Island high school that they spent three years at, including illegal aliens who have applied for citizenship, provided that the Federal government has provides a pathway to citizenship as part of an amnesty law. (H Judiciary; Tue, May 6)

5. S2335: Eliminates tolls on the Sakonnet River Bridge, replacing the anticipated revenue with a multi-part formula requiring that fixed percentages of the total state budget be annually appropriated to a “transportation infrastructure fund” and adding a temporary 5% surcharge to motor vehicle fees to help initially seed the infrastructure fund. Also, if a Federal internet sales tax is adopted, instead of the RI sales tax dropping from 7% to 6.5%, as is specified in current law, the sales tax would only drop to 6.625%, with the 0.125% difference going to the infrastructure fund. Also, creates a study commission to look at eliminating the gas tax. (S Finance; Tue, May 6)

6. H7776: State bailout of the Central Falls pension system. According to this bill…

The state is liable to the retirement system for the cost of funding a retirement system for the existing retirees of the city of Central Falls who are members of the system under this section and chapter. (H Finance; Wed, May 7)

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Big Government Is a Business Model, Not a Political Philosophy

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The other day, I suggested to somebody that, from a certain perspective, charter schools (and mayoral academies) are like the government’s way of cutting into the private school market.  Funded like public schools, charters are an alternative for which parents don’t have to pay if they’re lucky enough to make it through the lottery. It’s likely, therefore, that they don’t poach students just from regular district public schools, but also from local private schools, particularly the lower-cost parochial schools.

So, it was utterly without surprise that I noted this passage in a Providence Journal article today about a hard-squeezed middle-class Rhode Island family:

Danielle herself is tiring. Awake at 6:30 a.m., an hour after Josh left for work, she managed the boys’ morning routine and drove Cade at 7:30 a.m. to Blackstone Valley Prep, with his brothers riding along. Ditto the return trip, when Blackstone Valley let out at 4:15 p.m.

Of course, given that the thrust of the article is how little financial space a working family in Rhode Island has, the Maziarzes are fortunate that taxpayers are funding schools to compete in the alternative space.  They mightn’t be able to afford even low-cost private schools, or they might have to find even more ways to squeeze their budget.

This is the circumstance of young families in Rhode Island, and it’s a good indication of why they’re leaving.  In another state, with lower costs and more opportunities, the family might have no trouble covering private school tuition… or even trusting their local public schools for their educational needs.

Instead, we patch a broken system with some schools that evade some of the more egregious of the government-imposed burdens.  The danger is that the tear will spread.  One conceivable future may find all private schools that aren’t targeted at the most elite of families going out of business because fewer families have enough disposable income and because the government is aggressively moving into their market space.

Then the interests that have shown such dedication to destroying Rhode Island will move in to kill or undermine the charters, leaving us back where we started, but without even an option for which a hard-working family can scrimp and save for an alternative.

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