Bacon's Rebellion

Gov. Bob McDonnell has the right idea with a new pay-for-performance system the state will be piloting in 25 schools across the commonwealth in the next school year. It would be foolhardy to expect miraculous results, but if the results are even mildly encouraging, Virginia public schools will have a new tool for recruiting and retaining the best teachers.

Participating schools must implement performance standards and a teacher-evaluation system that bases 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation on student academic growth. The General Assembly set aside $3 million for the program, which will provide bonuses of up to $5,000 for teachers who win exemplary ratings.

“There is a growing consensus,” said McDonnell in a prepared statement, “that public schools must move beyond a compensation model that equally rewards mediocrity and excellence and is rooted in a past when our young people did not face fierce global competition. Bipartisan support – at both the state and federal levels – is allowing Virginia to implement performance pay in some of the Commonwealth’s most hard-to-staff rural and urban schools. I look forward to this program getting underway. It will benefit our students, parents and teachers.”

It’s a good idea in theory. Teacher quality is the single-most important in-school factor influencing student achievement. Research consistently shows that students learn more from the best teachers. It especially makes sense  for schools in the inner city and the countryside to reward their best teachers. As Roanoke Superintendent Rita D. Bishop said in the press release, “We have had some success with signing bonuses but still lose too many teachers to surrounding divisions. By participating in the performance-pay pilot, we are able to provide additional incentives for talented teachers to remain in four of our schools where they can make a real difference in the lives of students.”

If designed properly, the pilot programs should answer some important questions. Is the uncertain prospect of a $3,000 to $5,000 bonus enough to motivate teachers to do better? Will teachers buy in to the validity of the methodology for calculating gains of their students’ educational achievement? Should teachers even be rated on individual performance when teaching is increasingly team driven? New York City has just announced that it was dropping its three-year performance-bonus program, noting that it had no discernible effect on student achievement.

Virginia’s program is designed very differently than New York’s, which was geared to rewarding the collective performance of teachers and staff. Still, it would be remarkable if Virginia got all the details right on the first try. Before rolling it out statewide, the McDonnell administration should be prepared to tinker with the program for three or four years in order to get it right.

One last point: Ideally, the pilot project would follow the social-science protocol described in “Evidence-Based Social Policy” to ensure that the findings, whatever they are, leave no ambiguity. Otherwise, the politicians and educrats evaluating the results will revert to their default positions and little useful knowledge will be gained.

Out-of-Wedlock Births and the Culture of Despair
National Bureau of Economic Research
Out-of-wedlock births among women in low-income households arise from a culture of hoplessness and despair that is more likely to take hold in communities marked by inequalities in wealth.

Oregon Boosts Health Coverage Despite Recession
Oregon Center for Public Policy
Despite adverse fiscal conditions, Oregon has been able to expand its health care coverage for children and low-income households.

The Changing Demographics of Head Start Kids
Urban Institute
Head Start programs are comprised of increasing numbers of Hispanic and Asian kids. Time for Head Start professionals to start brushing up on their Spanish and Cantonese.

Neighborhood Early Warning Systems
Urban Institute
Neighborhood Early Warning Systems (NEWS) are valuable statistical and analytical tools for groups working to revitalize neighborhoods.

The people can’t afford to buy cars? Let them drive limousines?

— James A. Bacon

Succumbing to public pressure, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) has back-peddled on its plan to build an underground rail station as part of the Rail-to-Dulles Metro rail extension. That will chop about $300 million off the $3.8 million price tag for Phase 2 of the project. But negotiations continue between federal, state and local authorities on what still needs cutting and how to pay for what remains. (See the WaPo account here.)

The MWAA board endorsed the framework of a deal brokered by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. It’s not clear from any of the reporting that I’ve seen whether that includes pushing for maximum competition in the construction bids by eliminating the requirement for a union-shop Project Labor Agreement. That move could potentially save another $300 million.

— James A. Bacon

Maine Leads the Way in Market-Driven Health Care
Heritage Foundation
Maine tried Obama-styled health insurance reforms and found they didn’t work. Now the Pine Tree State is trying market-based reforms.

Time for Progressives to Think Natural Gas
Progressive Policy Institute
Want to get a fast, cheap, 10-20% reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions? Back out oil- and coal-fueled electricity by fully utilizing existing natural gas power plants with excess capacity.

States Fail to Report Many Clean Water Violations
Government Accountability Office
States can do a better job of reporting clean drinking water violations.

Public Sector Unions Influence Wages More than Pensions
Center for Retirement Research
Pension benefits are legislated, not bargained, putting a premium on lobbying influence, not union membership numbers. But union clout does seem to influence bargaining outcomes for wages.

By Peter Galuszka

Moody’s Rating Service is about to pull the rug from under U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor and Gov. Bob McDonnell. It’s about time they had a reality check but too bad it will be so expensive.

Moody’s says that Virginia is one of five states whose credit it might downgrade if the federal government misses its deadline to raise the debt ceiling and go into default. A primary reason is that Virginia depends very much on federal jobs given its proximity to Washington and its many military bases.

This may be news to Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, who is pushing a childish campaign to demolish any negotiated deal for raising the debt ceiling while addressing federal spending.

After voting for just about every budget hike George W. Bush presented, Eric the Boor, is now playing Tea Party by insisting on huge federal cuts while playing chicken with our future.

He seems to think that it is good politics to run head of the Tea Party parade while also servicing his biggest campaign donors, namely Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Capital One Financial, and others. They all stand to pay more if some of Grand Bargains go through. Managers of billion dollar and largely unregulated hedge funds might have to (sniff, sniff) pay 15 percent extra in fees. The ultra-rich might have to pay more taxes. Imagine!

Bob McDonnell is trying hard to be our Jobs Governor. He says he’s created thousands of private sector jobs while balancing the budget.

He seems to forget just how dependent Virginia is on the evil federal government which might not be able to write checks after Aug. 3.

Both Cantor and McDonnell have made careers playing the anti-tax, anti-spending, anti-Washington game. It is make believe given the reality of the state’s true employment picture and who pays the bills.

Want to see how it affects you and me? If Moody’s takes us down a peg, then we’ll all be paying more for Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton’s billions in bonds for questionable roads. Virginia’s years-old reputation will be squandered.

And who will have done it? The very people who claim to be the most fiscally responsible.

But “poverty” as usually discussed in the United States does not describe peoples’ actual living conditions, it describes their taxable income. People below a certain “poverty threshhold” are declared to be poor. But that definition is meaningless as a characterization of how people actually live because it excludes massive transfer payments and social services programs designed to cushion “the poor” from deprivation. Thus, Medicaid will spend $276 billion in federal dollars this year to provide health care services to the poor. Other mandatory programs (not including Social Security and Medicare), most of which are means tested, are budgeted for $713 billion. Transfer payments to the poor amount to $1 trillion in a $15.2 trillion economy. (Please note: Those numbers do not include Social Security, Medicare, discretionary federal funding for the poor, state Medicaid matching funds, state funding for the poor, or private charity.)

So, how do “poor” people live? What is their material standard of living? It varies, of course. Some truly are destitute, though that condition is usually the result of temporary misfortune, thus transitory, or the consequence of substance abuse. For the most part, the poor enjoy many of the same material amenities that middle-class Americans enjoyed a generation or two ago. That’s the message of a new Heritage Foundation report, “Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?” Write Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield:

In 2005, the typical household defined as poor by the government had a car and air conditioning. For entertainment, the household had two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR. If there were children, especially boys, in the home, the family had a game system, such as an Xbox or a PlayStation. In the kitchen, the household had a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave. Other household conveniences included a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, and a coffee maker.

The home of the typical poor family was not overcrowded and was in good repair. In fact, the typical poor American had more living space than the average European. The typical poor American family was also able to obtain medical care when needed. By its own report, the typical family was not hungry and had sufficient funds during the past year to meet all essential needs.

Poor families certainly struggle to make ends meet, but in most cases, they are struggling to pay for air conditioning and the cable TV bill as well as to put food on the table. Their living standards are far different from the images of dire deprivation promoted by activists and the mainstream media.

Destitution does exist. But it’s usually the result of substance abuse. I’ve visited the houses of poor people that are spare but livable. And I’ve seen crack houses where every stick of furniture, indeed every belonging but a mattress, has been hawked or pawned for cash. The latter is a tragedy for those involved, especially innocent children, but it does not represent a failure of American society, nor should it justify increased entitlements during a period of fiscal austerity.

More common, I would wager, are instances in which people game the system. They get themselves declared disabled, then earn cash on the side as carpenters, hair dressers, landscapers or whatever — never reporting their income. But the poverty lobby isn’t the slightest bit interested in these cases. For those who make a living in the compassion industry, the more poor people the better.

by James A. Bacon

In the 1980s, two University of Pennsylvania criminologists published a research study on the impact of mandatory arrests in cases of domestic violence in Minneapolis, Minn. They found that the arrests led to lower rates of domestic violence. Based on that one study, police departments across the country began instituting mandatory arrests. But experiments conducted in other cities found mixed results. In Omaha and Charlotte, violence increased.

Therein lies a cautionary tale. The logic is slowly sinking in among legislators that it’s a good idea to base public policy on the evidence. It’s good to ask the question, “Does this policy do what it’s supposed to do?” But not all systems for measuring results are created equal.

A new paper by David D. Muhlhausen with the Heritage Foundation argues that Congress should invest a bit more not only to measure results of its programs but to measure them according to the precepts of methodologically sound social science. His logic applies equally to the General Assembly.

Mulhausen advocates the “gold standard” of evaluation designs: Setting up control groups, randomizing the assignation of individuals to those groups, and conducting experiments in multiple locations. To do otherwise, is to risk reporting ambiguous results and nullify the whole purpose of conducting the experiment. He recommends the following: (1) New or reauthorized programs should specifically mandate experimental evaluation of the program; (2) the experimental evaluations should be large-scale, multi-site studies; (3) legislators  should specify the types of outcome measures to be used to assess effectiveness.

To do otherwise is to base public policy on anecdotal evidence — typically in a political context in which self-interested parties are usually the ones generating the anecdotes. Testimony orchestrated by special interests simply cannot be trusted to provide an accurate depiction of reality.

by James A. Bacon

File this under the heading of Fundamental Governance Reform. In a recent edition of the “Utne Reader,” Kirkpatrick Sales makes the case that the optimal size of a successful independent state is somewhere between 3 million and 5 million.  By his logic, the United States is massively dysfunctional. Even Virginia is too big for its own good. (Maybe we’d all be better off in Northern Virginia did secede from the commonwealth!)

Were it not for the problem of national defense, I’d be all in favor of breaking up the country into smaller pieces. Fifty independent states would not do a very good job of keeping world sea lanes open for global trade. Otherwise, Sales’ argument reminds me of one that the urbanist Jane Jacobs once made (as I best recollect it), that maintaining a unitary currency, fiscal policy and monetary policy for a nation as diverse as the United States cannot possibly benefit all regions equally. Each region would be better off, she contended, it if could optimize its own mix of economic policies. Inspired by fiscal crises in the PIIGS countries, much the same debate is taking place in Europe today.

(Hat tip to EMR, who is too engaged in his “Enough?” project to do much blogging himself.)