Pat Allen: The View from Right Field

Elizabeth Warren Doesn’t Want to Be a Native American – Except When She Does

There has been a big brouhaha in the Massachusetts Senate race recently involving Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate.  Ms. Warren is a law school professor, and at various times in the past either she or the schools that she worked for claimed that she was a Native American, in other words, a minority hire.  This is a little tricky because the best Ms. Warren, or her supporters, have been able to come up with to support a claim that she is Native American is that her great-great-great-grandmother may have been Cherokee, which would make her 1/32nd Native American.

But it’s not whether Ms. Warren is Native American, or should be able to claim Native American status, if she is just 1/32nd Native American that is interesting.  What is interesting is how adamant Ms. Warren is that her Native American status had nothing to do with her getting various jobs:

"[According to a spokesperson,] Elizabeth has been clear that she is proud of her Native American heritage and everyone who hired Elizabeth has been clear that she was hired because she was a great teacher, not because of that heritage."

But what’s wrong with being hired because of one’s heritage?  Liberals are always defending affirmative action on the grounds that it gives a chance to minorities who would be otherwise overlooked or not properly considered.  It forces employers to really look at candidates and not just hire someone like themselves.  Also, minority hires in a university can provide the kind of diversity in a faculty which will encourage minority students to do better.

So why shouldn’t Ms. Warren be proud of being hired because she was Native American?  A liberal should be glad to be looked at as an affirmative action hire who has proved herself to be a success as a great teacher.  Because promoting minorities is what affirmative action is all about.  So why is Ms. Warren protesting so hard that she has not been an affirmative action hire?  Does she think there is something wrong with it?

The High Cost of College Tuition - and Student Debt – Part 3

One trillion dollars.  No, that is not the cost of four years at an Ivy League college, though it may be pretty soon.  Rather, it is the total amount of student debt outstanding.  It has become a big deal in the last few weeks because, well, one trillion dollars is a lot of money, as well as being sort of a milestone or marker.  Also, when Congress cut the interest rate on student loans temporarily back in 2007, they had to put an end date on the temporary cut.  2012 is it.  If Congress doesn’t do something, the rate will go back up to 6.8% shortly.

Back in November I wrote two posts on “The High Cost of College Tuition”.  In one of the posts, I talked about the dramatic increase in college tuition over the last forty years, an increase that was way more than the increase in the Consumer Price Index.  In the other I talked about the fact that other costs have gone up more quickly than the CPI, too.  For example, medical costs.  But at least with medical costs, the quality of medical care has gone up, too.  I don’t think one can say that for college education. 

One of the concerns about the amount of student debt we have is the effect it could be having on the economy:

“Graduates lugging huge debt loads with few job opportunities to pay them off are reluctant to buy cars, purchase homes, or start families. Family formations, a key bulwark to home prices, have been in a seemingly inexplicable funk over the past five years or so.”

In November I left the question of what we can do about the cost of college tuition (and, tied in with it, student deft) to this post.  How can we make college more affordable?  The traditional answer, at least from politicians, has been to increase student loans and grants.  But the problem has been, when more loans or grants become available, tuition seems to go up, too.  Many colleges are already taking all of the money that students (and their parents) are willing to spend on college (plus a little, in some cases).  If students (and their parents) have more money available to spend on college tuition (because, for example, more federal loans are available or there are higher Pell grants), at least some colleges will increase tuition to get that money, too.*

This is why I was pleased to hear President Obama say this in his State of the Union address:

“Of course, it's not enough for us to increase student aid. We can't just keep subsidizing skyrocketing tuition; we'll run out of money. … [C]olleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down. … [L]et me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can't stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down.”

The President said a little bit more in a speech he gave at the University of Michigan on January 27, 2012:

“But it’s not just enough to increase student aid, and you can imagine why. Look, we can’t just keep on subsidizing skyrocketing tuition. If tuition is going up faster than inflation, faster than even health care is going up, no matter how much we subsidize it, sooner or later, we’re going to run out of money. And that means that others have to do their part. Colleges and universities need to do their part to keep costs down as well.

Recently, I spoke with a group of college presidents who’ve done just that. Here at Michigan, you’ve done a lot to find savings in your budget. We know this is possible. So from now on, I’m telling Congress we should steer federal campus-based aid to those colleges that keep tuition affordable, provide good value, and serve their students well. We are putting colleges on notice – you can’t keep – you can't assume that you’ll just jack up tuition every single year. If you can’t stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down.”

Obviously, the President’s comments were pretty general.  The key will be what the Administration does to follow up on them, but it was good to at least hear him say this much.

After the President’s speech, college spokespeople were defensive.  At Northern Illinois University, officials claimed that they had been working hard to find financial aid for students and that “you have to be able to pay for the education that you’re delivering.  You do pay for quality.”  Christopher Kennedy, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, said: “For a big research institution, we need to concentrate on affordability and greatness.”**

Others, including President Obama, have complained that tuition at public universities is going up because states have been cutting back on spending for state schools.  That is true in many cases.  But it really doesn’t address the underlying problem, which is that public colleges, like all colleges, do a lousy job of keeping their costs under control.

This also ties in with the student debt problem.  Making more loans available for students going to college really doesn’t make college more affordable.  It just increases debt students will have when they graduate from college.

And in its own way, increased state funding for public colleges doesn’t really solve the problem, either.  College is still too expensive.  It’s just being paid for by the public instead of the students.  At a time of growing demands on public funding for all kinds of things, I have to wonder if spending more money on colleges is really the answer.

The real question is not who pays college tuition.  The real question is does college need to be as expensive as it is.  All kinds of products and services are getting relatively less expensive, either because they cost less or because the quality is up – or both.  Colleges are neither.  They cost more and it is hard to see the quality being better.  Except maybe in one way.

The physical facilities are nicer.  Housing is nicer.  Food services are nicer.  There are health clubs.  It is almost as if colleges are competing on the fanciness of their facilities instead of the value of the education they provide.

The problem is that there is no (more accurately, not enough) pressure trying to keep tuition down.  And that ultimately is what we need to do, keep college tuition down.  Now, here comes the hard part:  To keep tuition down, you have keep costs down.  But keeping costs down can’t just mean keeping costs from increasing as quickly  To keep tuition down, i.e., to make college affordable, you have to actually cut costs.  Costs have to go down.  

There are plenty of good ideas about how to cut costs.  One is to get professors teach more – and research less, at least on students’ money.  If research by college professors is that important, maybe the state (or federal) government ought to pay for it directly, instead of making students pay for it. 

Administrative spending is a prime area for cost cutting.  Some reports indicate that administrative spending in colleges and universities has gone up even faster than tuition, which is pretty amazing considering how fast tuition has gone up.  According to one report, from 1993 to 2007 administrative costs per student went up 61% in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) terms.***  Another report noted that, in the California State University system, from 1975 to 2008, the number of teaching faculty went up 3%, while the number of administrators went up 221%.  The California State University System now has more administrators than teachers. 

Here is another idea: Companies that provide prep courses for college entrance exams or grad school exams have all kinds of different options.  Different courses (more intense or less intense).  Different ways to take the courses (in person, live lectures on the computer, taped lectures on the computer, etc.).  All with different price points.  Because there is competition and people can choose.

A lot could be done to keep costs and tuition down.  But how do we get the colleges and universities to do these things?

For public universities, I suppose that state legislatures could knock heads together.  State legislatures aren’t good at micro-managing (and some state legislators, often those with state schools in their districts, seem to be in the back pocket of the universities).  On the other hand, it is unclear how good the current administrations of a lot of our public universities are at managing, either.  Maybe states have to tell their colleges: Here is the amount of money we can afford to give you.  Here is the amount of tuition your students can afford to pay you.  And here are the number of students you have to admit.  If you can’t run the school on this basis, we’ll find somebody else who can.

President Obama has a good idea, too.  Maybe the key is simply for government, both federal and state, to stop subsidizing excessive tuition bills.  President Obama talked in general terms when he said to colleges and universities: “If you can’t stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down.” 

Let me suggest something more specific.  Set a formula:  If tuition increases more than X% – or, even better, if tuition is more than $YY per year, then the maximum amount of loans and grants that a student can get to go to that college goes down.  In other words, the more you charge in tuition, the less the government will give a student to go there.  The less a college charges, the bigger the loan and/or grants available to students going there.  And if a school’s tuition gets too high, maybe we need to say that the government won’t help pay any of it.  After all, the federal government has a limited amount of money available to help students go to college.  Maybe the federal government should spend its money where it can do the most good for the most students – by helping as many students as possible go to schools that do the best job in keeping costs down.

I realize the problem with this last idea is that it might mean poor and middle class students would not be able to go to certain expensive schools – those schools whose annual tuition is more than a high-end luxury car.  I understand that may not seem fair.  These are supposedly the schools where the best and brightest go.  These are the schools that turn out leaders of our country.  I understand that it somehow doesn’t seem fair that some students can’t go there because their parents don’t have enough money.

On the other hand, how fair is it for students to have to mortgage their futures with loans to go to schools that seem to wear their high tuition as a badge of honor?  Or for middle class taxpayers to give grants and loans that, in effect, wind up supporting the upper middle class lifestyle of college academics?  Also, if poor and middle class students can’t afford to attend those schools, maybe we can shame those schools into either cutting their costs or at least figuring out a way to use some of their own money to help poor and middle class students go there.

The fact is:  College tuition can be lower.  Colleges can cut costs.  American businesses were forced to cut costs and get more efficient by foreign competition.  Businesses had to learn to get the job done with less money.  And they did.  Now colleges have to learn the same thing. 

But, just as businesses only cut costs because they were forced to, colleges will only cut costs if they are forced to.  So far, the best idea I have seen for forcing colleges to cut their costs is to reduce the amount of grants and loans that are available for students going to schools with the highest tuition.  As I said above, we need to tell schools: the more you charge in tuition, the less the government will give to students (either through grants or loans) to go to your school.  And the less you charge, the more that will be available to students who go to your school.  Obviously, this won’t be easy.  It won’t be fun, and it’s going to be really hard on the students who are in the middle.  But something has to be done to get college tuition down.  This seems like the best idea to me.  But if somebody has another one, I’m all ears. 

And that is where our federal system can help.  While some states and the federal government might try the idea I mentioned above, other states could try something else.  We could see what works and what doesn’t work.  Just like competition helps businesses figure out what is best, federalism and different states trying different ways to control college costs, can help us figure out the best way to control college costs. 

The bottom line is:  College costs have to come down.  It doesn’t matter how we do it.  Just so the job gets done.

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* This is not a point that people have only started making recently.  In going through my files on college costs, I found an article by Joan Beck making this very point over 15 years ago: Joan Beck, “Proposed tax break for college only of temporary help,” Chicago Tribune, September 15, 1996.

** Christi Parsons and Kathleen Hennessey, “Obama targets college costs,” Chicago Tribune, January 28, 2012.

*** Schumpeter: “How to make college cheaper,” The Economist, July 9, 2011.

Has American Society Become “Mobility Impaired”?

Scott Winship at National Review is very concerned about research indicating that economic mobility is down (“Mobility Impaired”).  People born at the bottom don’t seem to have the same chance to move up the ladder that they used to have.  Here are some excerpts from his article:

“If being raised in the bottom fifth were not a disadvantage and socioeconomic outcomes were random, we would expect to see 20 percent of Americans who started in the bottom fifth remain there as adults, while 20 percent would end up in each of the other fifths. Instead, about 40 percent are unable to escape the bottom fifth. This trend holds true for other measures of mobility: About 40 percent of men will end up in low-skill work if their fathers had similar jobs, and about 40 percent will end up in the bottom fifth of family wealth (as opposed to income) if that’s where their parents were.

Is 40 percent a good or a bad number? On first reflection, it may seem impressive that 60 percent of those starting out in the bottom make it out. But most of them do not make it far out. Only a third make it to the top three fifths. …

How would you feel about your child’s having only a 17 percent chance of achieving the equivalent status as an adult? That’s how many kids with parents in the bottom fifth around 1970 made it to the top two-fifths by the early 2000s. In fact, if the last generation is any guide, your child growing up in the top two-fifths today will have a 60 percent chance of being in the top two fifths as an adult. …

What is clear is that in at least one regard American mobility is exceptional: not in terms of downward mobility from the middle or from the top, and not in terms of upward mobility from the middle — rather, where we stand out is in our limited upward mobility from the bottom. And in particular, it’s American men who fare worse than their counterparts in other countries. One study compared the United States with Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the United Kingdom. It found that in each country, whether looking at sons or at daughters, 23 to 30 percent of children whose fathers were in the bottom fifth of earnings remained in the bottom fifth themselves as adults — except in the United States, where 42 percent of sons remained there.”

When Mr. Winship shifts over to what to do about the situation, he mentions the need for “policies that promote strong economic growth”.  He also talks about how college and divorce (more college for students and less divorce for their parents) seem to correlate with upward mobility.

Megan McArdle talks about the article and the apparent decrease in mobility in a post entitled “The Tyranny of Meritocracy”:

“The ability of one's parents to confer such enduring advantages is obviously unfair. … It is hard to get civic engagement, or respect for the law, when the bottom 40% or so feels that the game is rigged.

The new meritocracy doesn't seem to be much better, on any dimension, than the old aristocracy. It's just more persistent, in every sense of the word.”

While it is not as obvious from reading just these excerpts, when you read the articles themselves (especially Mr. Winship’s) and what Mr. Winship in particular says about possible solutions, you want to scream:  No, the solution is not getting more kids from the bottom fifth into college or reducing unplanned pregnancies or getting rid of legacy admissions to elite private colleges – or anything else like that

The solution is better schools.  The solution is improving the elementary schools and high schools that the bottom fifth attend.  The upper fifth attend really good, if not great, schools.  Most of the second fifth and even the middle attend schools that are good or at least adequate.  But the bottom of the ladder gets the worst schools.  And if we don’t do something about the schools they attend, a much bigger percentage of the bottom fifth, and the one above it, are going to continue stay there instead of moving up.

When it comes to economic mobility, it’s schools.  They’re the problem.  And more importantly, they’re the solution.

The High Cost of College Tuition – Part 2*

In Part 1 of my posts on “The High Cost of College Tuition,” I concluded that the increase in tuition at Yale Law School, which has more than tripled in “real,” i.e., inflation-adjusted, terms over the last 40 years, was ridiculous.  (Actually, there may be other terms that are more appropriate, but I did not want to use them.)  And Yale Law School is not unique or unusual, as this chart, which compares college tuition versus the Consumer Price Index from 1978 to 2011, shows.

In my mind there is no justification for this kind of increase – other than enough students (or their parents) will pay it, and colleges and universities will find a way to spend it once they get it.  One of the reasons tuition has gotten so high is that there are a lot people out there who will spend absurd amounts of money to get their children into the “best” schools.  I have often thought, somewhat facetiously (though perhaps not entirely), that the two areas where people will spend money without really looking at the price tag are medical care (you don’t negotiate in the emergency room**) and college tuition.**

More seriously, it has been suggested that one of the reasons for the large increases in both college costs and medical costs is the lack of productivity increases in medicine and education.  In much of American manufacturing, productivity has dramatically increased over the last 40 years, which has limited increases.  When people complain about the decline in manufacturing jobs in the United States, what they don’t realize is that we make the same amount of manufactured products (actually, more).  It’s just that, because of the increases in productivity, it takes fewer people to make the same amount of “stuff.”  We manufacture as much; we just don’t need as many people to do it.  Because we don’t have such productivity increases in education or medicine, the argument goes, the cost has increased. 

The problem with that argument is that, while there may not have been big per-worker productivity increases in medical care (I don’t know), medical care is much, much better than it was 40 years ago.  New drugs, new equipment, new techniques, etc., have dramatically improved the quality, and results, of medical care over the last 40 years.  But higher education?  I don’t think so.  In no way have the quality and results of higher education gone up over the last 40 years in any way comparable to the cost increases.

So what do we do?  I am going to look at that in Part 3 of these posts.

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* Part 1 is this series of posts is here.

** Especially when, for  a lot of people, somebody else is paying.

*** Obviously, some people do base their college decisions on cost, but enough of them don’t that those who do consider the cost don’t drive the market.

The High Cost of College Tuition – Part 1*

Last summer, even though limits were put on government spending as part of the agreement to increase the national debt limit (and there may have even been some cuts in spending), one thing that did not get cut or limited was spending on Pell grants.**  In fact, it is my understanding that spending for Pell grants was even increased.  And recently, President Obama announced changes in federal college loan programs that are supposed to make college loans a little cheaper for some students.

All of this is in the name of making college “more affordable”.  Which got me to thinking about what I paid for tuition to Yale Law School 40 years ago (ouch, I’m old) and wondering what the tuition there is now.  I remember that, at the time, I thought the tuition was pretty high – and it was given the money we had and the value of money back then.  For the three years I went to Yale, from 1971 to 1974, the annual tuition was $2800, $3100 and $3300, respectively.  It was a total of $9200 for three years, which was a lot of money.

Then I checked to see what Yale’s tuition is now.  The tuition for the 2011-12 school year is $50,275.***  In other words, what I paid for three years would cover 37% of just one semester now.  But that’s unfair.  There has been a lot of inflation since 1971-74.  You can’t compare prices now with prices then without factoring in inflation.

So I went to the U.S. Department of Labor records to see how much inflation there has been since the early 1970s.  I used the Consumer Price Index-All Urban Consumers because the DOL has numbers for this index all the way back to 1913.  For ease of calculation I decided to compare the CPI number for January 1973 (midway through my time in law school) with the CPI number for September 2011, the start of the school year.  The January 1973 number was 42.6.  The number for September 2011 was 226.889.  Doing a quick calculation tells us that $9200 in January 1973 is equal to $49,000 in today’s money.  (See, algebra does come in handy in the real world.)

My first reaction was that $49,000 is about the same as today’s tuition of $50,275 – until I remembered that $49,000 represented three years of tuition, not just one.  In other words, while the cost of living went up 430% from January 1973 to today, Yale Law School tuition went up over 1500%.  In “real” terms, tuition more than tripled.  The tuition I paid for three years wouldn’t cover even one year of tuition today.  Which is, of course, ridiculous.

[ End of Part 1]

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* I have been wanting to write about increases in college tuition for quite a while.  I have come to the realization that I am not going to be able to do one long post, which is what I wanted to do.  So, I have decided to write several shorter posts that will hopefully tie together.  This is the first.

**  Laura Meckler, "College Grants Spared From Spending Cuts," The Wall Street Journal, August 4, 2011. Pell grants are grants (not loans) given by the federal government to college students, mostly to undergraduates, with financial need.  For the 2011-2012 school year, the maximum Pell grant is $5,550 per year.

*** For 2011-2012 there are also administrative and activities fees of an additional $2,250, but I don’t know what those were back when I was there, so I will just look at “tuition”.

A New Crime: Stealing an Education

Last summer I wrote a post on what I think is the best argument for voucher, charter schools, basically any kind of choice when it comes to where kids go to school:  Parents like it.  I am not going to repeat what I said then.  I just want to mention one more point in support of the argument I made then.  Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has an article on a new crime:  Trying to sneak your child into a better school than the one whose district you actually live in.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

“An African-American mother of two, Ms. [Kelley] Williams-Bolar last year used her father's address to enroll her two daughters in a better public school outside of their neighborhood. After spending nine days behind bars charged with grand theft, the single mother was convicted of two felony counts. Not only did this stain her spotless record, but it threatened her ability to earn the teacher's license she had been working on.

Ms. Williams-Bolar caught a break last month when Ohio Gov. John Kasich granted her clemency, reducing her charges to misdemeanors from felonies….

Kevin Chavous, the board chairman for both the Black Alliance for Educational Options and Democrats for Education Reform, senses that these recent events herald a new age for fed-up parents. Like Martin Luther King Jr. before them, they understand ‘the fierce urgency of now’ involving their children's education. Hence some parents' decisions to break the law – or practice civil disobedience.

This life-changing decision is portrayed in Betty Smith's 1943 novel, ‘A Tree Grows In Brooklyn,’ also adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. In the novel, Francie Nolan is the bright young daughter of Irish immigrants living in Brooklyn's Williamsburg immigrant ghetto in the early 20th century. An avid reader, Francie is crushed when she attends her local public school and discovers that opportunity is nonexistent for girls of her ilk.

So Francie and her father Johnny claim the address of a house next to a good public school. Francie enrolls at the school and her life is transformed. A teacher nurtures her love for writing, and she goes on to thrive at the school. Francie eventually becomes an accomplished writer who tells the story of her transformation through education.”

I understand why good school districts do what they can to keep out kids who don’t live in the district.  Budgets are tight, space is limited, and the school districts have an obligation to the people who live in the district and pay the bills.

I also understand that some people think that the solution is to make poor schools better.  I have no problem with trying to do that.  But while we are waiting for schools to get better (and in some cases, we have been waiting a long time), let’s let parents choose.  Let’s give all parents the same right that rich and upper middle class parents already have: the right to choose a school for their kids.

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* Michael Flaherty, “The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School,” The Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2011.

Update (10/2/11 11:55 am):  Corrected a typo in the first paragraph after the quotation.

Slashing Head Start Harms “Mothers, Children and the Country.” Who’s Missing?

In an article on what he sees as the House Republicans’ strategy for budget cuts, E.J. Dionne lambasts the Republicans for a proposed $1.1 billion reduction in funding for Head Start:

“That, to upend the president's favorite slogan, is an excellent way to lose the future.  What could be a better use of public money than helping our poorest children early in life so they might achieve more in school, and later? …

Given what science has shown about the importance of a child's first years, we need better and broader early childhood programs.  Slashing them can only cause harm – to mothers, to children, and to the country.”

Wait a second.  Run that last sentence by me again.  “Slashing them can only cause harm – to mothers, to children, and to the country.”  Mothers, children, country?  I think he forgot somebody.  What about fathers?  Are mothers the only ones who care about their children?  Don’t fathers care?

Helping raise children, not just fathering them, is one of the most important things a man can do – and one of the most rewarding and fun.  I don’t appreciate Mr. Dionne’s disregard for fathers’ role – and interest – in the education of their children.*

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* For a few thoughts on early childhood, see this post from June 24, 2006.  I still recommend the Joan Beck book wholeheartedly.

Update (3/8/11 12:30 am): Fixed a typo in the last sentence.

School Choice: Father Knows Best – And Mother, Too

Choosing schools. Students and parents do it all the time when it comes to college. They also do it for pre-school for three- and four- and sometimes five-year olds. But for first grade through 12, there is no choice – unless you are rich. If you are rich, you get to choose, either by paying private/parochial school tuition or by buying an expensive house and paying high property taxes in places with good schools. For most people, however, there is no choice. Your kids go where they are told to go.

Because some of the schools where children are forced to go are not good, some people support vouchers or charter schools as a way to enable those children to go to better schools. The theory is that the charter schools will be better or that vouchers will enable parents to choose a better school for their children.

And there are many stories of charter school successes and of vouchers enabling children to get out of bad schools and go to better ones. The problem is that opponents of charter schools and vouchers can find stories that say charter schools aren’t any better or students with vouchers don’t do better. A recent review of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, for example, "found that pupils in the choice program generally had ‘achievement growth rates that are comparable’ to similar Milwaukee public-school students."*

The problem is, as these arguments continue, children keep going to bad schools. And these arguments will never end. People on each side of the debate will always be able to find success stories or problems to talk about. The student who does great. The charter school that fails. And when it comes to studies of how well charter schools or vouchers do, there will be arguments about whether the results are statistically significant or whether the situations are really comparable.

There is, however, one test that does prove the value of vouchers and charter schools. And that test has nothing to do with how well students do on standardized tests or any of those other numbers that people use to support their side when the numbers are with them and that they disregard when the numbers go against them. The test is simple: What do parents think of charter schools and vouchers. Look at public opinion polls. More importantly, look at the waiting lists to get into charter schools. The results are clear: Parents want a choice; they want to be able to choose where their children go to school.** And the beauty of this kind of choice is that parents who like the school their child is going to now, don’t have to change. They can keep sending them there.***

But the opponents of charters schools/vouchers argue that parents don’t really know what schools are best for their children. We need to leave these decisions to professionals, they say. We need to defer to people who have been trained to know what is best for the children. Parents don’t know enough to make these decisions.

I respectfully disagree with this argument. Teachers, principals and educators may know the most about education, and they may know the most about how to teach students in general, but when it comes to individual children and what is best for them, the children’s parents know best. The reason is simple. Parents know the most about their own children. They may not know about children as a whole, but they know more about their own children than anybody else in the world, and that knowledge is what enables them to make the best choice for their children.****

Obviously, there will be cases where parents will make the wrong choice. People aren’t perfect; they make mistakes. But on the whole, parents will make the best choices for their children because they know the most about their children.

Charter schools and vouchers let parents use the knowledge they have about their own children to pick the best schools for their children. And parents like that choice. The polls show it. The satisfaction that parents have when they get to make that choice shows it.***** These are the numbers that prove vouchers and charter schools are a good idea and are working – for children and parents.

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* While this is not the point of this post, I note that one of the secondary arguments for charter schools/vouchers is that the competition will force the public schools to do better. Therefore, the fact that charter schools are not doing better than the public schools may not mean that the charter schools are failing. It may be that they are, in effect, forcing the public schools to do a better job than they otherwise would; i.e., as charter schools raise the scores of children who go there, they are, by the competition they create, causing an increase in the scores of children in the public schools, too.

** See, for example: Bari Weiss, "Storming the School Barricades: Weekend Interview with Madeleine Sackler," The Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2010; Clarence Page, "Obama’s Private School Shopping Goes Public," November 12, 2008; "Reading Aloud," The Washington Post, June 17, 2008.

*** I am sure some people will argue that the choice to stay in the public school isn’t real if other students leave. The school won’t have enough students to survive; the good students will go, leaving just the bad/problem students. The school won’t be the same. Of course, if you look at that argument closely, what it is saying is that parent A gets to force parent B to send their kids to a particular school because that will make parent A feel better about the school – and it is too bad about what parent B wants for their children.

**** There is a hint of condescension in this argument. The argument is not made as often that parents in the rich suburbs aren’t smart enough to decide what school their children should attend. They are already deciding that question by where they live. Rather, the unspoken argument is that poor people, minority parents living in poor neighborhoods, don’t know enough or don’t care enough to pick the right schools for their children. They aren’t smart enough to decide; they need to let experts decide for them.

***** The house prices and property tax bills in places with good public schools show how important that choice is to parents who have enough money to pay for it.

Are Lawsuits the Way To Improve Public Education?

Back when Ernie Banks was still playing first base for the Cubs and they actually did "play two" every once in a while, I decided to go to Yale Law School. I decided to go to Yale because I had heard they did not just teach law; they taught law from a public policy point of view. That seemed a lot more interesting and fun. So, it was off to New Haven (and the chance to see Bob Cox before he was Bobby).

While I was at Yale and, more so, after I left, I began to question some of what they taught, especially their belief in the use of the court system to solve society’s problems. Before I went to law school, I spent a year as a legislative staff intern in Springfield, working in the Illinois legislature. It was very enjoyable, and I was impressed with many of the legislators I met. In fact, if there was any problem with the legislature, it was that its set up was not conducive to bringing out the best in the legislators. It seemed to me that the quality of the legislature as a whole was, at that time, much lower than the sum of its individual parts. And from what I read about Springfield today, the problem seems to have gotten worse in the last 40 years.

In any case, unlike many of my fellow students at Yale, and unlike most of the professors, I sort of felt then, and definitely feel now, that it is not the job of the judiciary to solve society’s problems (except, of course, for things like protecting real constitutional rights, like the First Amendment). The Yale approach, however, was that, if the political branches couldn’t, or wouldn’t, solve a problem, then the courts should do it. And our job as lawyers was to help the courts solve problems, by bringing lawsuits, etc.

There are, in my opinion, several problems with such a theory. First, are courts and lawsuits, the best way to solve a problem? With courts, things are black and white, yes and no, win and lose. You can’t compromise among groups or balance competing interests in a lawsuit.

Also, do courts really have available to them, in a lawsuit, all of the information they need to make the best decision. Courts know what the parties tell them. Other than that, they don’t know anything. Making decisions with blinders on, which is, to a large extent, what courts do, is not, in my opinion, the best way to come up with the right answer for policy questions.

But mostly, when people say that the courts have to deal with a problem because the legislature can’t or won’t, what they are really saying is that they don’t like what the legislature decided to do (or not do). Maybe the legislature isn’t ignoring the problem. Maybe the legislature decided that the best thing to do is nothing. But part of the Yale approach is that, if the legislature doesn’t do what we think is right, then we need to get the courts to do it.

And so, I recently received an e-mail about a recent "success" at Yale Law School:

"The Education Adequacy Project at Yale Law School won a major victory in the Connecticut Supreme Court on March 22 when the Court ruled in favor of the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding in the case, CCJEF v. Rell.

CCJEF, represented by Yale Law students in the EAP clinic, asserted in a complaint back in 2005 that the state’s failure to adequately and equitably fund public schools had irreparably harmed thousands of schoolchildren. In oral arguments before the Court almost two years ago, clinic members, including YLS students David Noah '09 and Neil Weare '08, said Connecticut students had the right to, not just an education, but an adequate one.

In its 4-3 decision, the Court agreed, saying ‘the fundamental right to an education is not an empty linguistic shell’ and that it must meet ‘modern educational standards.’ The Court declared that state education must prepare students to ‘participate in democratic institutions,’ ‘attain productive employment,’ and ‘progress on to higher education.’

‘This is a landmark victory for all schoolchildren in Connecticut and the culmination of years of effort from Yale law students in the Education Adequacy Project,’ said Lindsey Luebchow ’11, co-director of the EAP. ‘From the filing of the complaint, to the oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court, more than 50 law students have worked tirelessly to establish every Connecticut child’s right to a suitable education.’

The clinic will now prepare to go to trial to protect the rights articulated by the Supreme Court in its decision and prove that the State is not meeting its constitutional burden to provide a minimally adequate education.

‘This decision is a significant step in the right direction, and we will keep working tirelessly to ensure that the state provides schoolchildren with the education they deserve,’ said clinic member Sam Berger ’10."

I certainly agree that school children need a quality education, and I think it is great Yale Law School students are concerned about the quality of the education system in Connecticut. I am just not sure that lawsuits like this one are the best way to improve the quality of public education in Connecticut.

First, state governments have incredible financial problems. They have many needs to meet and a limited amount of money to spend. Why should a court be telling the legislature which need or needs are more important than others? What expertise do the Connecticut courts have on the proper balancing of state spending priorities that the legislature doesn’t? Or is the Connecticut Supreme Court going to raise the Connecticut income tax so that it can give more money to the public schools?

Second, I really wonder if the solution to the problems of the Connecticut public schools is more money. I am sure the teachers in Connecticut would be happy if the schools get more money; they will be able to get raises. But is that really the most important problem in the Connecticut schools? Many schools districts with lots of money are doing lousy jobs. Other school districts with less money are doing great.

Before they brought the lawsuit, did the students at Yale Law investigate to figure out how to really improve public schools in Connecticut? Or did they just assume, in that typical knee-jerk way, that more money is the solution to the problems of Connecticut schools? What if the bigger problem in Connecticut are contracts with teachers unions that prevent school districts from firing the bad teachers and force them to lay teachers off based on seniority instead of ability?* Are the Yale Law students going to ask the Connecticut courts to change the contracts with the teachers unions? Of course, not. The courts can’t get involved in things like that. But if they can’t do that, why should they get involved in questions of funding?

The students who have been involved in this project so far have spent an enormous amount of time on it, and the students who will be involved in the future, as the lawsuit continues, will spend more. One cannot help but wonder if they might have helped public education in Connecticut more by spending this time tutoring and mentoring students in the public schools of the greater New Haven area.

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* I know of one example personally: An Illinois school district was compelled, by Its contract with the teachers union, to lay off a young teacher – even though he had won a "teacher of the year" award the year before – because he didn’t have as much seniority as other teachers.

"We are the gatekeepers of our own health" – And of Our Children's Education

Not surprisingly, the decision by Danny Williams, the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, to have his heart surgery done in the United States, instead of Canada, has been a big deal in certain parts of the blogosphere (mostly the right side).*

His deputy premier said that the treatment Mr. Williams is seeking is not available in Newfoundland and Labrador, which is not surprising since the province only has 500,000 people. But what I found most interesting was this comment by Kathy Dunderdale, the deputy premier: "Ultimately we have to be the gatekeepers of our own health and he has taken medical advice from a number of different sources."

Does that sound familiar? It should because it is basically the same thing we heard when President Obama enrolled his children in a private school in the District of Columbia, instead of the District’s public schools (i.e., the "public option") and when President Clinton did the same thing back in 1993. Parents need to decide what is best for their children, and people shouldn’t criticize politicians when they decide what is best for their children. I agree, and I really agree that Presidential children must not become campaign issues.

But I do get a little irritated when those same Democratic politicians who exercise their right to send their children to private schools, because they think that is what is best for their children, and who can exercise this right because they are rich enough to afford private school tuition, then turn around and oppose programs, whether they be vouchers or whatever, that would give the financial wherewithal to poor parents so that they can have the same choice that the rich politicians have. And this is what the Democrats in Washington are doing as they end the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which has provided vouchers to poorer parents so they, like rich people, could have a chance to send their children to the school that they think is best for their children.

One final note. At least Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, is not sending his kids to a private school in the District of Columbia at the same time the Democrats are ending the Scholarship Opportunity Program. No, Secretary Duncan isn’t doing that. He lives in Virginia.

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* The story at this link now focuses on the reaction to Premier Williams’ decision, as opposed to discussing his decision. The quotation I used above was from a copy of the original story that I printed on Tuesday.