Regulations Threaten to Limit Best Schooling Options for Children

Lindsey Burke  The Daily Signal

 

What is the measure of a good school? And who is best positioned to decide what works?

For decades, policymakers and education officials have attempted to bolster school “accountability” by increasing regulations on schools across the board—public, charter, and private. They have tried to do so at the federal level for half a century, with federal intervention in K-12 education hitting a high-water mark under the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind policy and the Obama administration’s attempts to pressure states into adopting Common Core.

Yet ever-increasing government intervention in schooling has had little positive impact on education outcomes writ large. Math and reading achievement outcomes have been largely stagnant since the 1970s for high school seniors, while graduation rates have seen only modest improvements (and even those figures may be artificially inflated).

About one-third of high school graduates have to take remedial courses in college, one-third of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, and 20 percent of high school graduates who want to join the Army cannot do so because they cannot pass the Armed Forces Qualification Test.

It’s no surprise, then, that families have been looking for alternatives to geographically-assigned district schools. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have begun to offer alternatives, enacting private school choice options such as vouchers, tax credit scholarships, and education savings accounts.

Although the education choice landscape is growing, government officials who take a heavy-handed approach to regulation threaten its long-term success. Instead of freeing traditional public schools from bureaucratic red tape that has tied the hands of educators and stifled innovation, some policymakers want to expand that top-down regulatory approach to the growing private school choice sector.

Take, for example, the Louisiana Scholarship Program, which provides vouchers to eligible families to enroll their child in a private school of their choice. In order for private schools to participate, they must adhere to a host of government regulations, including the requirement that all students on a scholarship take the same standardized test administered to public schools in the state.

Some private school principals have been concerned that regulations like this would drive school curriculum, thereby discouraging schools from participating. Indeed, just one-third of private schools in Louisiana participate in the program, and an experimental evaluation found that participation in the program had a negative effect on student academic achievement.

We are now beginning to better understand the way regulations affect private schools’ willingness to participate in private school choice programs. We are also seeing that Louisiana’s “accountability” measures had unintended consequences, and that could happen elsewhere.

Along with Corey DeAngelis of the Cato Institute and Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas, we recently released the first experimental evaluation of the effects of various regulations on the willingness of private school principals to have their school participate in a hypothetical voucher program. We randomly assigned one of three different regulations—or no government regulation—as part of school participation in a hypothetical voucher program.

We found that an open enrollment requirement (mandating that private schools take all students who apply as a condition for participating in a voucher program) decreased the likelihood that private school leaders in Florida were “certain to participate” in the voucher program by around 17 percentage points.

At the same time, requiring participating private schools to administer a standardized test to their students decreased the likelihood that private school leaders were “certain to participate” by around 11 percentage points.

Standardized testing requirements appear to depress private school participation in school choice programs, which could partly explain what has transpired in the Louisiana Scholarship Program. High-quality private schools, as measured by tuition and enrollment growth, may have decided that the regulatory burden exceeded the benefits of participating in the program, and as a result, remained on the sidelines of the Louisiana Scholarship Program.

Although a growing body of literature is demonstrating that regulations on school choice programs generally correlate with lower rates of program participation, testing mandates—which in the hypothetical Florida experiment reduced school participation by 44 percent—are particularly notable for what little value parents place in them.

EdChoice recently released the results of the largest survey ever conducted of participants in a private school choice program. Parents participating in Florida’s tax credit scholarship program were asked to list the top three factors that influenced their decision to have their child attend their chosen private school. Only two factors—religious environment and instruction (66 percent) and morals/character/values-based instruction (52 percent)—were selected by a majority of scholarship parents.

Thirty-six percent of respondents listed a safe environment among their top three priorities when selecting a school for their child. The least important factor was standardized test scores. Just 4 percent of respondents listed standardized test scores as one of their top three factors.

Not only were families overwhelmingly satisfied with the tax credit scholarship program—92 percent of scholarship families reported being satisfied—but it is clear that Florida parents are choosing their child’s private school because those schools offered what their public schools either could not or would not.

So what do all of these findings mean?

At the very least, they suggest policymakers must be humble in their assumptions about what parents want in their children’s schools, and about their ability to drive quality through regulations.

A growing body of evidence suggests regulations, including standardized testing mandates, can depress school participation in private school choice programs. At the same time, while such regulations can discourage school participation (limiting the options available to families), they do not rise anywhere near the top of the factors parents value when choosing a school.

Parents are much more interested in those intangibles that standardized tests cannot capture, but that are more important to the long-term flourishing of their children, such as religious and values-based instruction. And for good reason: As Jay Greene has identified, we do not regularly see a relationship between changing test scores and later life outcomes.

Indeed, what parents are looking for is something apart from what their child’s traditional district school offered. To condition private school participation in a school choice program on adherence to the public school formula—as the Louisiana Scholarship Program does—renders school choice less meaningful by reducing the number of substantially different options available to families.

Policymakers should avoid being like the proverbial drunk looking for his lost keys under the lamppost because “that’s where the light is.” Standardized tests shine a light on an important aspect of school performance, but sometimes the keys are not under the light.

Families prioritize aspects of schooling that are less measurable, but equally or more important. Families want schools that will form children of good moral character. They want schools that will prepare their children to pursue their life and career goals. They want meaningful instruction in a safe school setting.

Choice is providing them access to just that.

What’s Behind College-Educated, Suburban Women Flipping To Democrats

• 2018

What’s Behind College-Educated, Suburban Women Flipping To Democrats

These women who reside in wealthy suburbs are an odd group. Sometimes they vote on the economy, but their loyalty to the pocketbook only goes so far.

NOVEMBER 7, 2018 By D.C. McAllister

Suburbs in Northern Virginia, New York, and New Jersey, among others across the nation, swung for the Democrats in the midterms, securing their control of the House. College-educated white women in these areas are being credited for the win, giving credence to the women’s movements that have dominated the headlines for the past two years. But this is only part of the story.

These women who reside in wealthy suburbs are an odd group. Sometimes they vote on the economy, but their loyalty to the pocketbook only goes so far. If they think their equality is threatened or health care won’t be available to everyone, they’ll abandon the economy in a heartbeat.

In the 2018 midterms, exit polling showed that voters’ main concern was health care—a whopping 40 percent. Immigration came in second at 23 percent, followed by the economy at 21 percent. Given the Republicans’ goal to whittle away at Obamacare and the notion that this will leave people without coverage or access to health care, it’s not surprising that these women weren’t inspired by the economy to keep the Republican agenda going.

Another issue that affects how many women vote is fear of inequality. For two years, activist groups and politicians beat the drum that the Republicans are threatening women’s rights. New Supreme Court justices could mean overturning Roe v. Wade. Free birth control might end with changes in health care. The Me Too movement created an environment of fear that men are predators, especially those in the Republican Party.

The rhetoric of Trump as sexual deviant in chief filled the pages of women’s magazines. Protests, pussy hats, celebrities wailing about the dehumanization of women even as they objectified themselves rained down on female voters, enlivening their allegiance to equality, even when it’s not actually being threatened.

These two issues, along with hatred of Trump, drove these women to vote blue. They despise Trump, and they always have. They voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, 51 percent to Trump’s 45 percent. Some were Never-Trumper Republicans going for other candidates. They are, at the core, elitist. They didn’t like him then, and they don’t like him now.

Their feelings about Trump negated any objective judgment of his job performance or recognition that his policies and programs have benefited them greatly, including a strong economy and greater security for our nation. Emotionalism won the day.

In 2012, Mitt Romney won this group over Obama by six points because they had catapulted the economy to the top of their concerns. Many college-educated wealthy white women weren’t swayed by the war on women narrative at that time, nor were they concerned about health care as much, although it was still high on the list. They weren’t too worried; after all, Romney had instituted government health subsidies in Massachusetts.

Romney also soothed their elitist sensibilities. He was dignified. Their feelings could take a back seat to objective concerns because those fires weren’t stoked effectively enough to deter them. This wasn’t true for all women at that time. Some were swayed by the “binders full of women” attack, but not all.

This changed both in 2016 when they supported Clinton and even more significantly in 2018 when they flooded the polls to usher in a Democratic House majority. As reported by Ronald Brownstein just before the midterms, “Over two-thirds of college-educated white women, an unprecedented number, said they planned to vote Democratic for Congress, according to figures provided by CNN polling director Jennifer Agiesta.”

But they weren’t the only ones. College-educated suburban white men who were also offended by Trump’s behavior showed up to kick out Republicans. “Just over half of college-educated white men preferred Democrats in the survey,” Brownstein wrote. “That represents a sharp swing from their usual congressional voting behavior: Democrats haven’t won even 40% percent of college-educated white men in any congressional election since 2008, according to exit polls.”

This combination of elitist voters who can go Republican under some circumstances but will vote Democratic if they’re offended or worried about inequities made a difference in key suburbs.

Additionally, some of the congressional districts that had previously been favorable to Republicans because they were mostly rural—a stronghold for Trump—were redrawn to include wealthy suburbs, shifting the vote Democratic. As reported by USA Today, a fifth of the districts now under control of the Democrats had been redrawn in Pennsylvania.

The changes weren’t trivial: Democrats increased their share of the vote by an average of 20 percent in the districts they flipped in the Keystone State. The biggest change came in the 5th congressional district, a sprawling, mostly rural district in central Pennsylvania. Democrats won an anemic 33 percent there in 2016. In 2018, with the new boundaries in place, they won over 65 percent of the vote.

The suburban slaughter in the midterms, therefore, can be attributed to three things: motivated college-educated white women who put their fears about women’s issues and health care over economic and national security; both college-educated white women and men who are personally offended by Trump’s personality and rhetoric; and redrawing of district lines to include these groups to curb Republican advantages.

It’s uncertain if Trump can do anything to attract these voters. Probably not. That ship has likely sailed. The best he can do is shore up his base for the next election. The rest of us—conservative women in particular, who don’t vote by feelings and unfounded fears—need to step up. It falls on our shoulders to educate our suburban sisters about the role of government in their lives, the dangers of government-run health care, and the lies of feminism regarding “inequalities” in America.

Denise C. McAllister is a journalist based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter @McAllisterDen.

Photo Pxhere.com / CC0

2018 2018 Midterms feminism Midterms suburban women womenwomen voters

Democrats Aren’t Losing Faith In Our Constitutional System. They Just Don’t Like It

Democrats Aren’t Losing Faith In Our Constitutional System. They Just Don’t Like It

Many liberals see 'the system' as a way to achieve partisan goals, not as a set of idealistic values.

By David Harsanyi

In the liberal imagination there are only four ways to lose elections — and none have to do with their increasingly leftist turn, their hysterics, or their one-dimensional identity politics. Democrats lose because of “gerrymandering,” “voter suppression” (sometimes known as “asking for ID”), Russian mind-control rays deployed by social media, and our antiquated and unfair Constitution.

The final one of these excuses is becoming increasingly popular among liberal pundits who continue to invent new crises to freak out about.

Take Vox’s Ezra Klein, a longtime champion of direct democracy: “I don’t think people are ready for the crisis that will follow if Democrats win the House popular vote but not the majority,” he tweeted before the midterms. “After Kavanaugh, Trump, Garland, Citizens United, Bush v. Gore, etc, the party is on the edge of losing faith in the system (and reasonably so).”

The “House popular vote” now joins the “national popular vote” and “Senate popular vote” (a particularly dishonest one considering California didn’t have a Republican on the ballot) as fictional gauges of governance used by Democrats who aren’t brave enough to say they oppose the fundamental anti-majoritarianism that girds the Constitution.

Otherwise, why would Democrats lose faith in a “system” that is doing exactly what was intended? The Constitution explicitly protects small states (and individuals) from national majorities. The argument for diffusing democracy and checking a strong federal government is laid out in The Federalist Papers and codified on an array of levels. This was done on purpose. It is the system.

I mean, do Democrats really believe the Electoral College was constructed to always correspond with the national vote? Do they believe that the signers of the Constitution were unaware that some states would be far bigger than others in the future? If the Founders didn’t want Virginia to dictate how people in Delaware lived in 1787, why would they want California to dictate how people in Wyoming live in 2018? If you don’t believe this kind of proportionality is a vital part of American governance, you don’t believe in American governance.

You can despise Brett Kavanaugh all you like, but why would Democrats lose faith in “the system” that saw Republicans follow directions laid out in the Constitution for confirming a Supreme Court nominee? Why would Democrats lose faith in “the system” that elected Donald Trump using the same Electoral College that every other president used? Why would they lose faith in a system that houses a Supreme Court that stops the other branches from banning political speech? When the Supreme Court affirmed the election of George W. Bush, it turned out to be the right call.

It’s because they see the system as a way to achieve partisan goals, not as a set of politically neutral idealistic values.

It’s not a civics problem, either. One hopes liberal activists like Ken Dilanian, who wonders “how much longer the American majority will tolerate being pushed around by a rural minority,” understand sixth-grade civics. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman surely knows that the Constitution doesn’t give “disproportionate weight” to smaller states. It intentionally gives all states the same weight in the Senate. Krugman only finds this idea “disproportionate” because it protects millions of Americans from the centralized coercive state that he envisions for them. The disproportionality he sees merely reflects his own concerns. It has nothing to do with the system.

Also, rural America doesn’t “bully” people like Dilanian. The federal government was never supposed to be this powerful. The non-“forward moving” America—those dummies Krugman would like to nanny from Washington—doesn’t very much care how Dilanian lives. He, on the other hand, has big plans for them.

It should be noted that these majoritarians throw millions Americans aside to make this argument. We don’t know how a national majority would vote. There are many millions of Republicans in New York and California who don’t involve themselves in the futility of state politics. There are more Republicans in California than there are in Wyoming.

But as you can see on Election Day, liberals have made “democracy”— a word mentioned zero times in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence—into a sacramental rite. Getting more votes in an election outweighs the inherent rights of liberty that are laid out in the document. Unless, of course, that right happens to incidentally intersect with some advantageous partisan idea, like birthright citizenship; then Democrats become strict originalists. Everything else is up for discussion. Well, up for discussion now. It wasn’t a big topic for the hundred or so years Democrats were vastly overrepresented in the House.

The only reason these folks, who claim to want to save Constitution from Trump, see crisis in the “system” is that it fails to deliver for them politically. They’re not losing faith in the system. They just don’t like the system.

David Harsanyi is a Senior Editor at The Federalist. He is the author of the new book, First Freedom: A Ride Through America's Enduring History with the Gun, From the Revolution to Today. Follow him on Twitter.

Constitution democracy Democrats Electoral College institutionsmajoritarianism partisan hacks partisanship Senate the left

Planned Parenthood Says It Puts Women First. This Missouri Clinic Proves Otherwise.

Monica Burke   The Daily Signal

Planned Parenthood claims to put women first, yet the atrocious health code violations found at a Missouri clinic earlier this month suggest otherwise.

The abortion giant was campaigning against newly proposed regulations on Missouri abortion clinics when state inspectors discovered a clinic in Columbia, Missouri, was already in violation of existing state regulations.

The clinic’s license was due to expire in October, so in anticipation, the state health department made its routine inspection of the facility in August. In that inspection, the department discovered disgusting and dangerous health violations such as moldy equipment and bodily fluid on recently used equipment.

The state informed Planned Parenthood of these health violations and expected the organization to correct them immediately.

Not only did the clinic fail to do so, it continued operating for over a month without correcting the violations.

When the state visited the clinic again on Sept. 26, 2018, they discoveredadditional violations. They found “bloody single-use plastic tubing attached to the machine’s glass suction canister that was never disposed of after the last abortion procedure on Sept. 21,” along with machines covered in mold and bodily fluid. The department also found rusty machines and exam room tables with chipped paint, making them impossible to sanitize.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time state officials have discovered intolerable conditions inside an abortion facility.

In 2013, Kermit Gosnell was found guilty of multiple counts of murder and involuntary manslaughter after authorities uncovered the disgusting conditions of his Philadelphia abortion facility in 2010. The gruesome detailsare the subject of a new film, “Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer.”

>>> Podcast: ‘Gosnell’ Filmmaker Shares Why This Story Had to Be Told

After the unsanitary conditions of Gosnell’s clinic became public knowledge, abortion advocates claimed that he was a perfect example of why “women should have easier access to abortion so that they don’t have to seek care from an unqualified provider.”

It appears that Planned Parenthood never got the memo.

The Columbia Planned Parenthood was found operating under filthy conditions a mere eight years after the FBI discovered the harrowing conditions of Gosnell’s clinic. An dunfortunately, this is not an isolated incident.

Planned Parenthood found itself in hot water after authorities discovered similar conditions at its St. Louis location. This clinic was cited in 2009, 2013, 2015, and 2016 for highly unsanitary conditions and unsafe practices, totaling 210 health code violations in 39 different classes.

The violations included allowing two untrained employees to assist with surgical procedures, reusing single-dose medication vials for multiple patients, and failing to provide infection control training to staff.

Even where Planned Parenthood meets basic state-mandated requirements, they are providing fewer and fewer services to fewer and fewer women.

From 2015 to 2016, they provided fewer cancer screenings, breast examinations, HPV vaccinations, and prevention services to 100,000 fewer women at fewer locations than they did the year prior. From 2016 to 2017, prenatal services dipped too, down to 7,762 from 9,419 in 2015-2016.

By contrast, community health centers, which provide health care to women without entangling themselves in the abortion industry, outnumber Planned Parenthood locations 20 to 1. They also serve eight times more individuals that Planned Parenthood

However, one procedure for Planned Parenthood is on the rise: They performed several thousand more abortions in 2015-2016 than in the previous year: an uptick from 323,999 to 328,348. And the subsequent year they performed another 321,384 abortions, while only providing 3,889 adoption referrals, according to their own report.

That’s 83 abortions for every one adoption referral.

Despite plenty of rhetoric to the contrary, Planned Parenthood does not put the needs of women first, as their declining outreach and continued health care violations attest. Abortion remains Planned Parenthood’s bottom line.

These most recent health violations at Planned Parenthood in Columbia remind us that if we want quality health care for women, we must look at the abortion industry in the hard light of day.

Giving Away Money Won’t End Poverty, but It Will Destroy Something Special About America

COMMENTARY BY

Jarrett Stepman

One of the left’s hot new policy ideas is simply to give money to everyone to end poverty.

And of course, California is leading the charge.

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., proposed a national plan last week that would give families making under $100,000 a tax credit of $500 per month, which adds up to $6,000 a year.

Harris’ plan, though vague on details, is quite similar to a policy idea that’s becoming increasingly popular.

Universal basic income, or UBI, has a wide variety of supporters from radical leftists to tech CEOs. It’s essentially a no-strings attached money giveaway to ensure that nobody falls below the poverty line.

Even a few conservative and libertarian-leaning thinkers, like Charles Murray, argue that the universal basic income could be an improvement over the current welfare system. Their reasoning is that it essentially does a better job of cutting out bureaucratic middlemen—though that rests on the unlikely assumption that all other welfare programs would get eliminated.

Proponents of UBI argue that it will stave off the effects of automation and provide an efficient way to prevent poverty in the turbulent, globalized economy of the future. The idea is that middle and working-class jobs will simply disappear, leaving wide swaths of society unable to make ends meet.

It has certainly been gaining steam as a serious policy proposal.

Stockton, California, is set to roll out a UBI program in November, though it will generally be limited to a few families. Other cities might experiment with it too. Chicago aims to be the largest city to try such a program.

Even former President Barack Obama jumped in on the idea and voiced support for a basic income in a July lecture in South Africa.

But the concept of the universal basic income isn’t a new one. It has been tried already and hasn’t exactly met the grand expectations of its advocates.

Finland launched a basic income program in 2017, which was set to run for two years. It gave 2,000 unemployed people a monthly income equivalent to $678 with no strings attached.

The program was ditched before it was ever completed.

One of the primary reasons Finland pulled the plug is that taxpayers simply became fed up with paying people not to work—especially with the looming threat of huge tax increases to enlarge the program.

As The New York Times noted: “Many people in Finland—and in other lands—chafe at the idea of handing out cash without requiring that people work.”

In addition, taxpayers balked at a 30 percent tax increase that was suggested to make the program universal.

A study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development suggested that the program would require a 30 percent tax increase to be made universal, and that it would actually raise Finland’s poverty rate from 11.4 percent to 14.1 percent.

Unsurprisingly, people love giving away money until they realize they are the ones footing the bill.

After just a year, the Finnish government put a halt to the program and added basic work requirements to unemployment benefits to encourage recipients to find a job.

But one op-ed in The New York Times denied that UBI was the problem, arguing instead that Finland simply failed to implement it correctly. The authors wrote that if the government had just expanded the program, it all would have succeeded.

This is a pretty common fallback for all of those who prefer big-government solutions to solve all of our problems.

But, as President Ronald Reagan once said, “the more the planners plan, the more the plans fail.”

Given the bad early warning signs from the program, it makes sense to pull the plug and not risk a catastrophic and incredibly costly failure.

The U.S. has also experimented with basic income policies. The federal government created a test program used across many states in the 1970s. The result was that they created a disincentive to work, and wages dropped.

A study of the results found: “For each $1,000 in added benefits, there was an average $660 reduction in earnings, meaning that $3,000 in government benefits was required for a net increase of $1,000 in family income.”

Currently, most basic income proposals are at the local level, but some argue that it would be a good idea on a national scale.

Of course, creating such a program would be astronomically expensive.

One estimate by the investment management firm, Bridgewater Associates, put the cost at $3.8 trillion per year if each citizen is to get a basic income of $12,000, according to the New York Post. The entire current federal budget is just over $4 trillion.

The largest problem with the basic income is ultimately not the cost, but its potential impact on American culture. What happens after we’ve had a generation, or multiple generations, being rewarded for not working?

Certainly, we’ve seen this problem with welfare in general, which is why we’ve seen a continual push for work requirements which have successfully moved able-bodied adults off the public dole and back into the workforce.

Giving a check to every American, regardless of need or situation, risks creating a kind of warehoused society whereby one class of people works while the other skates by mostly on public money, seeing no incentive to work and better their condition and status.

The Wall Street Journal’s Andy Kessler said it best, calling UBI essentially the gateway drug to socialism.

“Progress is about incentives,” Kessler wrote. “The reason UBI will fail is the cycle of dependency built into it. It is a gateway drug to collectivism. Turning the U.S. into Venezuela is a universally bad idea.”

If something like this were implemented on a national scale, it would pull us far away from the culture of hard work and the self-made man that has defined the best in American civilization.