NEA spending not successful everywhere

"The National Education Association just filed its 2016-2017 financial disclosure with the U.S. Department of Labor—and it is clear that the nation’s largest teachers’ union is spending even more to maintain its influence in education policy," RiShawn Biddle writes ("NEA's $151 Million Influence Spree").

But the union’s efforts didn’t succeed everywhere. ... NEA also failed in Oklahoma, where it gave $750,000 to Oklahoma’s Children Our Future, which unsuccessfully pushed Question 779, which would have levied a one percent sales tax for additional school funding.

‘Dark’ money duplicity

"The teachers unions decry dark money," Peter Cook writes, "but spend plenty of it." Oklahomans know this all too well.

Goliath whines

"When you've outspent your opponents by a margin of almost 8-to-1, it's hard to portray yourself as a victim," The Oklahoman points out today. "But that hasn't stopped some supporters of the failed State Question 779."

Educator blissfully untroubled by mass educational failure

After SQ 779 went down in flames Tuesday night, a teacher at Ada High School tweeted the following:

If you voted no on SQ 779 don't forget to thank a teacher for the fact you could read the ballot in the first place.

— Terry Swopes (@tswopes1218) November 9, 2016

Well, yes. However, an obvious question presents itself:

But what about Oklahoma's 400,000 school-produced illiterates? https://t.co/UlGlBrVlhJ Whom should they thank? https://t.co/4an7IiFL0J

— Choice Remarks (@SchoolChoiceOK) November 9, 2016

I'm not sure what sort of reply I was then expecting from this teacher. Perhaps it was unrealistic to expect something along the lines of: "Good point. We have spent untold millions of dollars yet too often have failed at our most basic task—teaching a child to read. We have damaged countless lives, many of them unalterably. I hope parents and taxpayers can forgive us and give us another chance."

Alas, that's not what he said. Incredibly, this was his reply:

@SchoolChoiceOK I would be willing to bet they still had teachers that cared for and about them.

— Terry Swopes (@tswopes1218) November 9, 2016

Where are the journalistic watchdogs?

When it comes to the Boren tax increase and the slate of legislative "education candidates," OCPA president Jonathan Small wants to know why reporters aren't asking tougher questions.

David Boren, the ‘teacher caucus,’ and naked self-interest

"Oklahoma’s education blob—school unions, education schools, and their allies—is becoming unusually shameless in its determination to vote itself another taxpayer bailout," Greg Forster writes in the July issue of Perspective. And he thinks journalists should exhibit a tad more of the skepticism they pride themselves on.

A press corps with any self-respect or sense of professional responsibility would ask the blob questions like these: Why have previous increases in school budgets and teacher salaries failed to produce educational improvements? Why shouldn’t the new spending you demand be targeted to more specific, publicly identified needs instead of being allocated indiscriminately? How much spending—give us a dollar amount—would be enough to make you say spending is sufficient and any problems that persist are the responsibility of the schools? ...

Those who demand that government spend more money on themselves should be examined with heightened skepticism. The public interest (in this case, the education of children) should be clearly distinguished from private interests (budgets, salaries, and home prices). And policy should be designed, broadly and in the details, to serve the public interest only. None of that is being advanced by the blob’s campaign in Oklahoma or the press response to it. 

Read the whole thing here.

Boren tax-hike supporter laments inability to afford private school

Jay Chilton has the story.

Lamb opposes Boren tax hike, supports school choice

The Edmond Sun has the story.

Fire! Get the money!

[Guest post by Greg Forster]

University of Oklahoma President David Boren wants voters to hike the state sales tax to fund a slate of goodies for educators, with the bulk of the proceeds going to an across-the-board $5,000 raise for all teachers. Such a measure is extremely unlikely to have a positive effect on school outcomes. Even the smaller portion of boodle that will supposedly go to “incentive pay” schemes is an almost certain loser.

The whole boondoggle reminds me of a 30-second video, entitled “Get the Money!”, produced by entrepreneur Jean-Marc Le Doux during the 2008 crisis to satirize equally loopy bailout schemes. In the video, the tranquility of a placid suburban home is shattered when the occupants discover that an electrical outlet is on fire. “Fire! Get the money!” shrieks the wife. The couple barrels into the room clutching two big buckets full of money, which they proceed to throw at the fire in a futile effort to extinguish it.

Educational mediocrity is indeed as urgent as an electrical fire in our national living room, so a sense of urgency is appreciated. But throwing even more money at the same old broken system is no more likely to improve its outcomes than throwing money at an outlet is likely to put out the fire. Indeed, after two or three generations of Boren’s “Get the Money!” solution, we have now wasted so much precious time that the educational fire has already burned down the living room and spread to the kitchen (economic stagnation), the bedroom (breakdown of the family), and the guest room (intergenerational poverty).

Boren’s scheme would raise $615 million a year, of which $378 million would fund a $5,000 raise for all teachers. By comparison, a piddling $50 million would go to “locally controlled reforms like incentive pay,” in the words of The Oklahoman. “Another $125 million would go to higher education to keep down tuition and fees,” because throwing more subsidies at colleges has such a great track record of lowering tuition and fees (in fact, colleges always respond by raising tuition and fees, for reasons that are obvious to anyone with either a working knowledge of economics or an ounce of common sense). Boodle would also be doled out to early childhood programs, which consistently fail to improve later educational outcomes, and vocational education.

The $5,000 teacher raise would be indiscriminate, offered to all teachers—effective and ineffective alike. There is therefore no particular reason to expect it will improve educational results. It will help attract and retain good teachers, and also bad ones. Boren is putting no more thought into his solution than those shrieking homeowners in the video.

If it were true, as is so often claimed, that teachers in general are severely "underpaid," there might be some grounds to expect that this “underpayment” was driving better teachers away from the profession, and a raise would restore balance. But even if this were true, it would still be wiser to concentrate the money on reforms that target higher performance. Why not a $10,000 bonus for all teachers at the 50 percent of schools that improve their graduation rate most in the coming year? Even better, why not start by identifying the 50 percent of schools with the lowest graduation rates and then offer a $20,000 bonus to all teachers at the 50 percent of those schools that improve graduation rates the most? Or use the money to strike a bargain with the education establishment—bribe them to accept a universal ESA program?

In fact, however, teachers are not underpaid. Few of the people making this claim have even thought about what “underpaid” means. Teachers make less than brain surgeons, yet no one thinks this makes teachers underpaid; ditch diggers make less than teachers, yet no one thinks this makes ditch diggers underpaid. Professions make different amounts based largely on the entry requirements of the profession, and U.S. Department of Labor data have consistently shown—for years!—that teachers make about the same as other professions with similar entry requirements. If you consider that their benefits packages tend to be more generous than average, while they make comparable pay, they are if anything overpaid (as a result of their past political strength, which allowed the unions to manipulate the market in their favor).

How about those “locally controlled reforms like incentive pay”? It’s not clear what “incentive pay” means, but one thing is clear. If the reforms really are locally controlled, the chances that they will include meaningful merit pay are approximately zero. One of the most severe systemic problems in our education system is the colonization of local school boards and other school governance structures by the school unions. The inmates run the local asylum. (This problem is one reason some education reformers have foolishly turned to increased state and federal power over schools, in a vain attempt to strongarm school districts into reforming.)

Even if the reforms did include merit pay, they’d be unlikely to work. Merit pay programs for teachers have a dismal record. The measurements of teacher “merit” never seem to align with actual teacher merit. (Hence in my example above I used graduation rates as the measurement we could reward teachers for improving, if we must choose some measurement—we do know how to calculate that reasonably well, and it’s not even all that tough to catch schools when they lie about their graduation rates.) Even more discouragingly, the teachers themselves generally have no confidence in the measurements even when they’re good ones; the teachers ignore the merit pay programs because they don’t expect the programs to reward merit.

All this is a distraction from the real issue, and in two senses. On the one hand, Boren is offering to throw more money at our educational house fire primarily because the scheme includes money for him (“to keep down tuition and fees”) and to his school-union allies (OU has a college of education, which makes OU part of the K-12 education blob). All his rhetoric is meant to misdirect us from what is, at bottom, a cynical power play to grab cash. On the other hand, talking about funding levels is a distraction in a more substantive sense. The more money we throw at the house fire, the longer it takes us to come to our senses and pick up the bucket of water labeled “school choice.” 

[Greg Forster (Ph.D., Yale University) is a senior fellow with the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. He is the author of six books, including John Locke’s Politics of Moral Consensus (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Joy for the World: How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It (Crossway Books, 2014). He has written numerous articles in peer-reviewed academic journals as well as in popular publications such as the Washington Post and the Chronicle of Higher Education.]

Let's enact school choice, not another tax increase

University of Oklahoma president David Boren—who in 2008 endorsed Barack Obama for president, assuring us that Obama was nonpartisan and was committed to ending the divisions in our country—has floated a plan to raise the state sales tax by 22 percent in order to increase government spending on common education and higher education.

Some of us have seen it all before (see chart below) and are in no mood to be fooled by Lucy holding the football again. A better idea is to increase competition in our educational system by creating Education Savings Accounts, as former Oklahoma secretary of commerce Larry Parman writes in an article opposing the Boren tax increase. "Let parents decide how well their child's school is doing and give them the ability to vote with their feet." 

UPDATE: Below is more helpful information on the Boren tax increase, including observations on why it failed.

• Mr. Parman methodically dissects the Boren plan in this video.
• Former Gov. Frank Keating, discussing "the Boren proposal making our sales tax the most expensive in the country," asks the question: "For what? Nothing. Nothing. No reform. No private school choice. No rigor. No accountability. Nothing. Just add more money, as if more money will solve a problem. More money doesn’t solve a problem.” 
• Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb opposes the tax hike and supports school choice.
• Gov. Mary Fallin voices concerns that a 22 percent tax increase "may cause more people to shop online."
• OCPA economists Scott Moody and Wendy Warcholik give four reasons the sales tax hike is a bad idea.
• OCPA distinguished fellow Andrew Spiropoulos says it "poses a serious threat to both conservative governance and the best interests of the state." He says it makes no sense "to force a poor single mom buying groceries to feed her children to pay more in sales tax" so we can further subsidize tuition for the children of millionaires.
• OCPA trustee John Brock (writing in the Tulsa World and in The Oklahoman) says the proposed sales tax increase “will produce a crop of unattractive economic and political consequences.”
• OCPA economists Scott Moody and Wendy Warcholik explain how the tax increase would be bad for Oklahoma businesses: 
• OCPA president Michael Carnuccio says it's incumbent upon school bureaucrats to get rid of bloat before asking taxpayers for more money.
• An Arkansas economist says Hillary Clinton's penny sales tax for education provides a cautionary tale for Oklahomans.
• Oklahoma City University officials Steven Agee and Russell Evans say the penny sales tax is not a good solution.
• When the state "raises the already-high sales tax and absconds with the revenue,” writes OCPA distinguished fellow Andrew Spiropoulos, “it cripples the ability of cities … to finance any public improvements or even maintain the level of services.”
• Though not writing about the Boren tax increase itself, former OU education professor Gary Greene points up all manner of inefficient education spending. 
• Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett opposes the Boren tax hike. Gov. Mary Fallin is expressing concerns. Even state Superintendent Joy Hofmeister is withholding judgment for now.
• Oklahoma City Councilman Pete White says of the Boren tax hike, "I don't see how we can tolerate it." He says it "would be devastating to cities and towns throughout Oklahoma." 
• "Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett, in his individual capacity, and the Oklahoma Municipal League filed a brief with the Supreme Court saying the proposal would pose a threat to the public because it would cause the state to have one of the highest sales tax rates in the country," the Tulsa World reports. "'As a result, citizens will be economically burdened and will spend less,' the brief states. 'Oklahoma businesses will see revenues decline and will struggle to survive, as citizens spend less or turn to the Internet for their purchases. New businesses will pause when considering Oklahoma as a business-friendly place to invest.' Cities and towns would see a decline in sales tax revenue, which is their lifeblood, the brief states. The decline would affect the ability to provide services for police, fire, roads and bridges, the brief states."
• Oklahoma County assessor Leonard Sullivan reminds us that Oklahoma County "would be crippled by a 2 1/2-cent sales tax increase."
• "Given the onerous requirements the proposal imposes on future legislative appropriations," writes OCPA's Michael Carnuccio, "other core areas of government would be cut significantly to fund the additional spending increases mandated by the proposal."
• OCPA's Jonathan Small tells Oklahoma Watch and the Associated Press that Oklahoma can increase teacher pay without having to adopt the Boren tax increase.
• The estimable Tax Foundation says the Boren tax hike would make Oklahoma's combined state and average local sales tax the highest in the country.
• "We are already being hurt tremendously by Internet sales," says Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett. "This will exacerbate the problem. That is without question."
• The Oklahoma Municipal League points out that the Boren tax increase could hurt Oklahoma police and firefighters.
• OCPA president Michael Carnuccio says that with Oklahoma's per-pupil available revenues at an all-time high, it's possible to raise teacher pay without resorting to a 22 percent hike in the state sales tax rate.
• The Sand Springs City Council has approved a resolution opposing the Boren tax increase.
• Oklahoma GOP national committeeman Steve Fair says the Boren tax increase is a bad idea.  
• Is this expenditure more important than teacher pay?
• At least one Tulsa City Councilor doesn't care for Mr. Boren's "ridiculous, half-cocked solution."
• Instead of a tax hike, asks state Rep. David Brumbaugh (R-Tulsa), "how about some financial transparency and oversight? How about family Education Savings Accounts? Let’s push school choice so children can attend the public or nonprivate school of their choice." 
• "An initiative petition effort in Oklahoma that would raise the state sales tax to fund various education initiatives also includes language that would strip state legislators of appropriation power, preventing any adjustment to spending for education in down years," The Oklahoman notes. "This means other areas—such as public safety, health and road funding—would face huge budget cuts in times of shortfall. In Mississippi, voters apparently trusted elected lawmakers to handle this job. It will be interesting to see if Oklahoma voters take a similar course, or if they choose to handcuff state policymakers." Looks like it's time for the Takings Coalition to get the band back together.
• Democratic state Rep. Ben Loring has concerns about the tax. "A sales tax is a regressive tax, in other words, a poor person pays a far higher percentage of their income under a sales tax than anyone else does," he says. Moreover, he says, "if this is passed, I don't foresee the legislature giving any additional moneys to education than what this tax will generate."
• "I would like to see The Oklahoman ask the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University for a breakdown of their administrative positions with accompanying salaries listed," writes Gary H. Chaffin of Oklahoma City. "I see reports quite frequently of a new position of vice president of this or chancellor of that being created to address some supposed problem. I never see any reports of either school, or any other school for that matter, trying to find ways to save on administration costs. All they ever want is more money! I venture to say the public would be shocked at the number of such positions and the amount of taxpayer money being spent on these salaries. The public should demand this information before even considering another tax." 
• Dick Soergel of Oklahoma City believes "higher education should present the public with more information," such as "breakdowns of total annual revenue for each of the past 10 years; the student/teacher ratio (including graduate assistants who are teaching many classes); the average salaries of our college professors compared with surrounding states; the average salaries and growth in administrators at our colleges; an analysis of funding the number of colleges and universities versus our tax base, and plans for addressing the liberal bias that is prevalent in our colleges and universities."
• "OU President David Boren wants a sales tax increase to fund education while loaning a bankrupt technology company over $500,000," writes Dub Whalen of Oklahoma City. "This company was started by an OU professor who holds many valuable patents and works for OU. It's not bad enough that taxpayer money is used to fund private companies under the guise of job creation, but we have state universities in the loan business while continually raising tuition."
• Tom O'Neill of Edmond says Mr. Boren's "newest request for yet more money for the education empire is an insult to taxpayers.
• John Harris of Oklahoma City says "when the state gets the number of school districts to a reasonable level and pares the administrators," among other things, "then I will vote more money. Until then, I will reluctantly vote no."
• The Boren tax increase was defeated by a margin of 59.4 percent to 40.6 percent.
• "Yet those close to him say—and Boren, himself, acknowledges—that this campaign is about how history will remember him,"
• Janelle Stecklein had reported seven months earlier.
• A perceptive public school teacher realizes that Higher Ed sunk her pay raise.
• "It was Boren's effort to mislead voters that ultimately led to the defeat of this state question," Steven C. Agree writes. "Once voters were educated about the issue, and the fact that essentially $400 million of the estimated $615 million in tax revenue would not be going to teacher pay raises, there was an obvious revolt at the ballot box." Agee believes we should be wary of people "who seek to feather their own nest by riding the coattails of our public school teachers."