Friedman Day 2011 a sold-out success

This morning the Bluegrass Institute celebrated Milton Friedman Day 2011 by presenting a series of lectures and videos honoring the dauntless defender of liberty in front of a sold-out crowd at the University of Louisville.

Jim Waters, Vice President of Policy and Communication at the Bluegrass Institute, opened the event by describing Friedman as “the great communicator.” As Waters discussed, Friedman was one of the greatest economic theoreticians of the 20^th century, but was also able to turn these complicated concepts into tangible ideas which any concerned individual could understand.

In doing so, “Milton Friedman changed the world. He’s still changing it, and I believe he’ll continue to do so for a long, long time.”

Professor Stephan Gohmann, BB&T Professor of Free Enterprise at the University of Louisville, discussed some of Friedman’s more technical contributions to economics and the liberty movement. Gohmann pointed out that countries with higher degrees of freedom significantly outperform those with less freedom, and that’s across virtually any indicator imaginable – GDP, mean income of the poorest segment of the population, life expectancy, infant mortality rates – you name it.

For Friedman, the importance of economic freedom among nations was a no-brainer.

Former Kentucky gubernatorial candidate, Phil Moffett, rose to discuss Friedman’s legacy in the school choice movement, pointing out that Milton and his wife, Rose, would have a lot to say about the disappointing state of Kentucky schools.

Moffett took a page out of one of Friedman’s many books, stating that parents, not government, are responsible for educating their children, and programs like school vouchers and charter schools put that power back into parents’ hands.

Among other notable attendees were State Rep. Tim Moore (R-Elizabethtown) and John Garen, Gatton Endowed Professor of Economics at the University of Kentucky who recently authored “An Unsustainable Path: The Past and Future of Kentucky Medicaid Spending.”

Friedman Day 2011 was another successful event presented by the Bluegrass Institute, and one that continued the legacy of free markets that Friedman did so much to promote. In the words of Milton Friedman, “You could see a remarkable revolution, if only you’d let the market go to work.”

This coming Sunday would have been Milton Friedman’s 99^th birthday.

Indiana’s frustration with slow school improvement may lead to private school vouchers

WAVE-3 reports that Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is one step closer to the enactment of the nation’s most aggressive school voucher law. This law would allow parents to use part of the public school money to send their child to a private school, instead.

Ebony James, an Indiana mom, says the change can’t come soon enough. She is frustrated by slow progress of improvement in the public school system, saying, "We've been improving for how many years now?”

James’ frustration is interesting. Whites in Indiana outscored Kentucky by a statistically significant amount in the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Grade 8 math assessments. Indiana’s poor whites also outscored our poor whites on that same math assessment.

In fourth grade reading in 2009 – one of Kentucky’s strongest areas in the NAEP – Indiana’s whites and blacks had scores that were not statistically significantly different from whites and blacks in Kentucky, respectively.

Thus, while our state wallows along, content with the slow improvement in our schools, at least one parent in Indiana and the Indiana State Senate say similar or better progress to that in Kentucky is not enough. It’s time to do something radically different.

Sadly, while Indiana moves forward to give parents more choices in schools, here in Kentucky we don’t even have public charter schools, let alone vouchers, as a parent and student school choice option. Instead, Kentucky’s public school system seems to be run more to protect the jobs of adults in it rather than to meet the needs of the students.

And, adults working in those public school adults seem to be doing everything they can to keep the system running in exactly that same old way.

Tuesday's daily links

Here are some links worth checking out on this fine Tuesday afternoon:

• EconTalk Pod Cast - This is a free pod cast by George Mason University professor Russ Roberts.  The content is economic policy from a free-market perspective from an expert in the field!  Common, everyday examples of how economics work in your life.  Check this one out!
• DC Vouchers blog at Cato - The Cato Institute takes a second to profile what is happening with the Washington D.C. school voucher situation.
• Kentucky Open Records Evaluation - The Bluegrass Institute's FreedomKentucky.org project has begun evaluating the responsiveness of performance of Kentucky's school districts regarding the open records requests that were made of them in the summer of 2009.  This blog covers the evaluation process and what the project was attempting to do.  Currently, about half of the school districts have been evaluated.

Why I am concerned about real KERA progress

White students comprise somewhere around 85 percent of Kentucky’s overall school population.

So, if we want to know how the vast majority of our kids compare to their peers in other states, one way to do that is to look at white only scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

This map shows how Kentucky’s white fourth grade students stacked up against whites in other states on the 2009 NAEP math assessment – not well at all! On this map, green is NOT GOOD for Kentucky.


In all those states shown in green – and there are a bunch of them – their white fourth graders definitely outscored ours by a statistically significant amount.

In the eight states shown in tan, their kids statistically tied us.

White fourth grade students in only in two states, West Virginia and Alabama, did more poorly than our kids did.

Even white kids in the notoriously under-performing Washington, DC schools outperformed our kids (Should I mention they have had charters and vouchers there?)!!!

And, Mississippi matched us!

That’s why, as KERA closes in on its 20th anniversary, I am concerned.

Note: Map assembled with the NAEP State Comparisons mapping tool

What a difference a (school-choice) governor can make

After the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in March that a voucher program allowing 473 foster and special-needs children to attended private school – some for two years – was unconstitutional, Gov. Jan Brewer said she was “heartbroken.”

Unlike her predecessor, former Gov. Janet Napolitano, who opposed the voucher program, Brewer called a special session in May so that a bill creating tax credits credits could be passed immediately and monies available to parents at the beginning of the 2009-10 school year.

A strong Blaine amendment affected the legal standing of vouchers but not tax credits in Arizona. Kentucky also has a restrictive Blaine amendment. Arizona’s new tax-credit law will accomplish the same thing the vouchers were, and greatly reduces – based on past court rulings – the chance that school-choice opponents could succeed in stopping alternative for children.

Perhaps this gives clues to how Kentucky should proceed with a policy to provide a private education to our state’s neediest children.

Gov. Brewer’s courage in Arizona also offers hints to Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear about the impact gubernatorial leadership can have in improving the education of special-needs and foster children.

Teachers’ union fibbing?

– Caught by Wall Street Journal

The National Education Association was caught fibbing about the performance of the Washington, DC, school voucher program.

Per the Wall Street Journal, the union seriously misrepresented performance of students in the voucher program, which gives students a publicly financed money voucher that they can use to attend any school, either public or private.

The Journal quotes the union saying, "Over its five year span, the pilot program has yielded no evidence of positive impact on student achievement."

The paper then points out that a recent study from the US Department of Education found, “Voucher students…are reading almost a half-grade level ahead of their peers,” and that the voucher program’s, “Earliest participants, … are 19 months ahead after three years.”

There seems to be a failure here, but it isn’t with vouchers, but rather with character and honesty. Either the Wall Street Journal is way out of line, or the largest teacher organization in the country is.

Do you know about school vouchers?

Jay P. Greene points out strong editorial support for the Washington D.C. school voucher program, which really is surprising.

The rest of his post is here.

At least until Kentucky taxpayers can get some evidence their tax dollars are being spent efficiently in schools, students and parents here would do well to learn more about school choice options. The success of the D.C. school voucher program -- and President Barack Obama's eagerness to shut it down -- should provide food for thought.

Pitchforks and torches for Big Ed

One of the surest ways to strike at big, wasteful state government in Kentucky is by building grass roots support for school choice.

When the local public school district isn't properly serving the needs of students and parents, the consumer is currently stuck unless he decides to home school or can afford private school. School choice would create options to empower the consumer.

The choice could be a public charter school or could involve a publicly funded voucher for a private school. Neither option is now legal in Kentucky.

Legislation to allow charter schools or special education vouchers or even non-profit scholarship programs have met with bureaucratic hostility.

A public reaction similar to that in opposition to federal spending and nationalization policies seems both in order and quite doable if we give it a little push.

At the very least, raising awareness about how expensive some of the waste has become in our schools should wake people up.

CJ attacks Bluegrass Institute, again

The editors at the Louisville Courier Journal get pretty verbose when they are upset. Friday, they got upset at the Bluegrass Institute to helping discredit the dishonest and thoroughly manipulated Commonwealth Accountability Testing System, which was repealed by the legislature today.

Here is what they said about us:

"It's understandable why the conservative, educationally revanchist Republicans and their right-wing think-tank friends want to discredit Kentucky's public education reform, as part of a long-term strategy to abase the public sector, mollycoddle middle-class striver-parents with outmoded, ineffective nationally normed testing and pave the way toward private school vouchers."

Private school vouchers wouldn't be such a strong idea if education bureaucrats did their jobs instead of focusing on wrapping themselves up in politically powerful fortresses.

Truth is, Frankfort Republicans and The Bluegrass Institute couldn't have done it without the overreaching efforts of the school bureaucracy, their friends at The Prichard Committee, and the editorial board of the Louisville Courier Journal.

Putting something together that better serves students actually won't be that difficult at all.

New Report on Vouchers – They Improve Public Schools, too

A new report from the Friedman Foundation indicates that in 16 of 17 empirical studies on vouchers, the public schools also saw improvements.

(From: “A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on How Vouchers Improve Public Schools”
(Note: A total of 17 studies are represented here; figures do not sum to 17 because some studies include findings on more than one program.)

The only study that showed no difference was for Washington, DC, where the voucher program includes rules that largely eliminate the potential competition aspects of vouchers for public schools.

Find the Friedman study here.

Student School Vouchers – Even the New US Education Secretary Gets It

In what probably come as a surprise to some, the new US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, said several days ago that he was not in favor of shutting down the Washington, DC voucher program.

Duncan is quoted as saying, "I don't think it makes sense to take kids out of a school where they're happy and safe and satisfied and learning," Duncan told said. "I think those kids need to stay in their school."

This puts Duncan at odds with Democrats in the Congress who want to kill the DC voucher program.

Meanwhile, Kentucky not only has no voucher program, but it doesn’t even have the much more popular charter school program (which is now found in 40 states). So, more than a few of our kids are trapped in public schools where they may not be happy, or safe, or satisfied or learning.

Bipartisanship on schools?

Kentucky teachers unions' stranglehold on schools has resulted in the commonwealth being one of the very worst places in the nation for those who value the competition of school choice. That may change regardless of who is elected POTUS on November 4:

"Apparently, both candidates realize the value of competition in schools:
Here are Obama’s exact words: “Charter schools, I doubled the number of charter schools in Illinois despite some reservations from teachers unions. I think it’s important to foster competition inside the public schools.”"

"Of course, Obama wants to limit choice and competition to public schools (which include charters), while McCain wants to include private schools in the mix. But they agree on the big idea: public schools are improved when they have to compete to earn students and the revenue theose students generate."

"Just think. Only twenty years ago school choice and competition was hardly a glimmer in Ronald Reagan’s eye. Now the idea is so widely accepted as reasonable that the leaders of both parties differ only on the mechanism for producing choice and competition. We’ve come a long way, baby."

There's more here. Efforts to utilize vouchers or charter schools routinely die a painful death in Kentucky's House Education Committee.

Looking forward to some change there.

The coming battle for your education dollars

Georgia is ahead of Kentucky in providing educational options to students and parents. That state's Governor signed into law last year a bill to allow special-needs students to escape public schools in which they were poorly served in order to attend private schools with the money that would have otherwise gone to the failing schools.

This has, needless to say, made a few people mad.

The Athens (Ga.) Banner Herald said today in an editorial:

"If it wasn't perfectly clear when he introduced a measure calling for vouchers for special-needs students in the 2007 state legislative session, it is now: State Sen. Eric Johnson, R-Savannah, is intent on leading the charge to dismantle Georgia's public schools."

While the 900 families that have joined the new special-needs scholarship program are glad to no longer be political footballs, the newspaper quotes an Insider Advantage/Majority Opinion Resarch poll which found that 68 percent of Georgians want the program spread to all children. There is no reason to imagine less pent-up demand exists in Kentucky.

Kentucky's House Education Committee remains the place where education innovation dies. That is where you can still find what is left of Kentucky's special-needs scholarship bill.

Scores Up in DC Public Schools

The Washington Post does not want to give vouchers or charter schools any credit for this, but public school scores in the Washington, DC area are up.

Whether this is real improvement or just test score manipulation such as we exposed in Kentucky’s CATS system remains to be seen. However, it certainly doesn’t refute the idea that charters and vouchers could create real pressure on public schools to make meaningful reform, either.

Watch Georgia end special needs student abuse

Georgia public schools have been failing to provide adequate services to special needs students, so the legislature arranged to give parents vouchers to escape poorly functioning schools.

It's going like gangbusters.

And places without private schools are (ta da!) building private schools.

Kentucky Rep. Stan Lee has tried to provide the same level of service to special needs kids here, but House Education Committee Chairman Frank Rasche would have none of it.