Perspective - April 2106 by OCPA

APRIL 2016

OKLAHOMA COUNCIL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

YOU GOT A LICENSE FOR THAT? How professional licensing is killing opportunity in Oklahoma

In Case You Missed It Writing in the Enid News & Eagle, Dave Bond of OCPA Impact says income-tax cuts have helped strengthen our state’s private-sector economy, improving our odds for weathering energy-industry downturns.

On the CBS affiliate in Oklahoma City, journalist Pat McGuigan discusses the strange-bedfellows coalition supporting prison reform.

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OSU entrepreneurship professor Vance Fried says that, since 1972, Oklahoma’s “per-pupil spending has almost doubled in real terms with no improvement in academic outcomes.”

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Gov. Mary Fallin appointed OCPA research fellow Adam Luck to the state Board of Corrections.

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OCPA president Jonathan Small tells the NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City that state government should be ashamed of itself for preying on the most vulnerable among us.

With parents, students, and even the public schools themselves benefiting, OCPA president Jonathan Small writes in the Enid News & Eagle, ESAs are truly a win-win-win.

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PERSPECTIVE

OCPA president Jonathan Small tells The New York Times that Oklahoma can’t afford the Medicaid program it has now—much less the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.

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Wasteful spending is marbled throughout state government, OCPA research fellow Steve Anderson writes in the Tulsa World. Fortunately, Oklahoma state employees can help find it—and earn hefty pay raises in the process.

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Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul S. Coakley and Tulsa Bishop Edward J. Slattery are calling for Education Savings Accounts.

Brandon Dutcher, Editor Alex Jones , Art Director

OCPA Trustees

OCPA Researchers

Perspective is published monthly by the

Blake Arnold • Oklahoma City

David McLaughlin • Enid

Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs,

Glenn Ashmore • Oklahoma City

Lew Meibergen • Enid

Inc., an independent public policy

Robert D. Avery • Pawhuska

Ronald L. Mercer • Bethany

Lee J. Baxter • Lawton

Lloyd Noble II • Tulsa

Steve W. Beebe • Duncan

Mike O’Neal • Edmond

John A. Brock • Tulsa

Larry Parman • Oklahoma City

David R. Brown, M.D. • Oklahoma City

Bill Price • Oklahoma City

of free enterprise and limited

David Burrage • Atoka

Patrick T. Rooney • Oklahoma City

government. The views expressed

Michael Carnuccio • Yukon

Melissa Sandefer • Norman

in Perspective are those of the author,

Paul A. Cox • Oklahoma City

Thomas Schroedter • Tulsa

and should not be construed as

William Flanagan • Claremore

Greg Slavonic • Oklahoma City

representing any official position of

Josephine Freede • Oklahoma City

Charles M. Sublett • Tulsa

Ann Felton Gilliland • Oklahoma City

Robert Sullivan • Tulsa

John T. Hanes • Oklahoma City

Lew Ward • Enid

John A. Henry III • Oklahoma City

William E. Warnock, Jr. • Tulsa

Henry F. Kane • Bartlesville

Dana Weber • Tulsa

Robert Kane • Tulsa

Daryl Woodard • Tulsa

Gene Love • Lawton

Daniel J. Zaloudek • Tulsa

organization. OCPA formulates and promotes public policy research and analysis consistent with the principles

OCPA or its trustees, researchers, or employees.

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Tom H. McCasland III • Duncan

Steven J. Anderson, MBA, CPA Research Fellow Tina Dzurisin Research Associate Trent England, J.D. Dr. David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow for the Advancement of Liberty Adam Luck, MPP Research Fellow Jayson Lusk, Ph.D. Samuel Roberts Noble Distinguished Fellow J. Scott Moody, M.A. Research Fellow Andrew C. Spiropoulos, J.D. Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow Wendy P. Warcholik, Ph.D. Research Fellow

EDUCATION

My wife and I send our daughter to public school, and that’s working out well. But we live in a smaller community with a solid public culture. If children are to be raised with any kind of solid virtues, it’s essential for families to be able to choose a school that shares their moral worldview.

ne of the oldest puzzles in the school choice movement is why religious communities and leaders aren’t more interested in school choice. The government school monopoly promotes a stereotype that school choice is promoted by religious fanatics, but in fact religious leaders have been underrepresented in the school choice coalition. The most likely reason is a fear of compromising the independence of religious schools— but experience doesn’t support those fears, and I hope the time has come to get past them. Recently, the American Center for Transforming Education announced a school-choice partnership with OCPA. The partnership will include building “a faith-based coalition” for choice in Oklahoma. I hope they’re successful; the national movement could use a model to build on nationwide. I don’t want to overstate the case. It’s not like religious leaders are totally absent. In some cities, Roman Catholic leaders in particular have been important supporters, as have some Jewish leaders. Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley and Tulsa Bishop Edward Slattery have just issued a public call to expand school

choice in Oklahoma. Support from religious leaders was especially crucial in the early days of the movement, when school choice had not yet attracted the attention of many of the secular progressives who lead the movement today. In general, though, the school choice movement has been led by a fractious coalition of secularists. For a long time it has been dominated by mostly-secular progressives, who provide the bulk of the money and staffing. The movement is also spiced up by a small and feisty population of mostly-secular free marketers. The parents who use school choice programs, who show up to rallies at state capitals and courthouses, do reflect the general American population in being mostly religious. But they are not the movement. Their main interest, God bless them, is in protecting their children from having their educational opportunity taken away—which is not the same as being part of a movement to expand it to others. We know this about them because they don’t start showing up to rallies until after the choice programs are created. Both of the major groups in the movement also have largely secular

UNCORRECTED PROOF - NOT FOR

EDUCATION

motives and justifications for supporting school choice. The progressives are interested in justice and equality, while the free marketers are interested in freedom and in eliminating bureaucratic waste. Interestingly, Milton Friedman’s original 1955 article proposing the first modern school voucher idea made the case entirely on grounds of “efficiency.” He showed, correctly, that choice would deliver better results for less cost. Concerns about freedom, pluralism, and rescuing children whose lives were being destroyed by the monopoly would emerge later. The big missing link here, the dog that isn’t barking, is evangelicals. The general scope of their political beliefs— from religious freedom to concern for the poor—points to school choice. And they would benefit from school choice programs. Yet they’ve been mostly absent from the fight. This ought to be a time of increased concern about religious education. The culture is more and more fragmented; it’s more difficult than ever for people to form and maintain stable identities or bond with communities. That’s why affiliation with mainline and liberal Catholic churches is declining. People whose parents were easygoing Episcopalians or cafeteria Catholics now tell polltakers their religious affiliation is “None.” While the data do not suggest declines in evangelical affiliation, all parents should make sure their children are launching into this chaotic world from a steady starting point. You can’t decide for them what they will believe when they’re old enough to examine things for themselves, but you can raise them with a stable identity and a faith community of love, holiness, and support. Religious education at home and in church is not always enough. It can be. My wife and I send our daughter to public school, and that’s working out well. But we have advantages not

PERSPECTIVE // April 2016

everyone has. Most importantly, we live in a smaller, Midwestern community with a solid public culture. Our daughter may not study the Bible in school, but she’s not seeing one set of values in her teachers and another set of values at home. Discordance between authority figures (parents and teachers) hinders moral formation in children. They tend not to internalize moral commitments in a deep way unless they see those same commitments consistently in multiple types of authorities. If children are to be raised with any kind of solid virtues—including the virtues of respecting religious differences!—it’s essential for families to be able to choose a school that shares their moral worldview. Where the moral universe at home and in the local public school don’t align tolerably well, as they do for us, having a choice is not just a way of respecting parental authority. It’s critical to the well-being of the child. As I said, the most likely reason evangelicals—and, to a lesser extent, leaders in other religions—haven’t been more active supporters of school choice is a fear of losing the independence of their schools. They think if tuition at a religious school is paid by a school choice program, government will gain some level of control over the school’s curriculum. The government school monopoly and its supporters have been eager to stoke these fears. The evangelical tradition of skepticism toward involvement with the state is generally a healthy one, but these particular fears are unfounded. Parents, not government, have the power in school choice programs. Schools are not getting entangled with the state, but with parents. We have 59 private school choice programs serving about 393,000 students in 28 states. The first modern school choice program was enacted in Milwaukee in 1990, so school choice

has had 26 years to reveal any nefarious tendencies toward state encroachment. So far, there is no sign of significant encroachment on the curricula of private schools—at least, no more encroachment than the schools were already dealing with before the choice programs were created, since many states exercise inappropriate control over private schools’ curricula whether they participate in school choice or not! The reason for this track record is worth noting. On those rare occasions when

BUT WHAT ABOUT JIHAD SCHOOLS? “For decades,” Greg Forster writes at Choice Remarks, “we’ve heard opponents of school choice claim that the government school monopoly is our only protection against ‘jihad schools’ that will teach children to hate and kill. In all that time, you know what we haven’t seen? Jihad schools, operating in any of the nation’s 59 private school choice programs across 28 states.” To read more, visit bit.ly/1LD1g1w. —Editor

SCHOOL CHOICE

the cronies of the school monopoly have attempted to modify choice programs in order to invade the curricula of private schools, the parents sending their children to those schools rally in protest. The measures get stopped. In other words, school choice actually creates a strong public constituency for protecting the autonomy of private schools! And the larger the school choice program is, the stronger that constituency is. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, school choice may actually be the most promising strategy we have for fighting off the threat of government control of religious institutions—a threat that is currently growing for reasons that have nothing to do with school choice. Evangelicals have a long history of social activism—dating all the way

back to the national controversy over mail delivery on Sunday in 1811, and their widespread opposition to Andrew Jackson’s genocidal “Indian Removal” in 1830. From the abolition of slavery to the Populist movement (“You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!”) to almost all the controversies of the 20th century, evangelicals have fought for justice as they saw it. Sometimes they were on the right side (slavery) and sometimes the wrong (Populism), but they rarely sat on the sidelines. They felt responsible for the well-being of their communities. There have been two glaring exceptions. White evangelicals mostly missed the boat on the civil rights movement; fifty years later, they regretted

it. Today they’re missing the boat on a movement that many of us think will be looked back on fifty or a hundred years from now the same way people now look back on the civil rights movement. It would be a shame to miss the boat again. Today is the day of salvation; the night is coming when no man can work. Greg Forster (Ph.D., Yale University) is a senior fellow with the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. He is the author of six books, including John Locke’s Politics of Moral Consensus (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Joy for the World: How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It (Crossway Books, 2014). He has written numerous articles in peerreviewed academic journals, as well as in popular publications such as the Washington Post and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

BY THE NUMBERS: ESAs A recent SoonerPoll Survey found Oklahomans support school choice and education savings accounts. Read more of the survey results at www.soonerpoll.com/

"School choice gives parents the right to use tax dollars associated with their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school which better serves their needs. Generally speaking, do you favor or oppose the concept of school choice?"

Strongly Favor

Somewhat Favor

Neutral Don't Know Refused

Somewhat Oppose

Strongly Oppose

"Education Savings Accounts—often called ESAs—would allow parents to take a portion of the yearly state funding which is currently used to educate their child in a traditional public school and create a personalized account to fund their child’s education expenses. These expenses could be customized to include private or parochial school tuition, online education programs, tutoring, books, and future college expenses. These Education Savings Accounts would be administered and overseen by the state and would contain taxpayer protections against fraudulent activity or misuse of funds. Would you say that you support or oppose the creation of Education Savings Accounts?"

Strongly Favor

Somewhat Favor

Neutral Don't Know Refused

Somewhat Oppose

Strongly Oppose

POLLI NG DATA

Higher Ed Waste: The People Have Their Say By Mike Brake

A recent SoonerPoll survey asked three interesting questions about higher education in Oklahoma (see sidebar). The Chancellor of Higher Ed makes more than $411,000 a year. Is this too much? Eighty percent said it was. Could our public colleges and universities be run more efficiently? Eighty-two percent said they either strongly or somewhat agree they could. Should professors be paid by how much they teach, or how many hours they dedicate to non-teaching activities? Seventy nine percent said teachers should earn their pay by teaching. Contrast those public views with the whining and poormouthing that flows from higher education leaders every year. In 2014, University of Oklahoma President David Boren complained that “I just don’t know how our schools and universities will survive.” He should read OCPA’s 2014 report on how money is spent at our two flagship universities, the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University. Across the nation, higher education staffing per student declined by 10 percent between 1999 and 2011. In Oklahoma, staffing per student rose by five percent. Clearly we have not been spending our higher education dollars efficiently. Worst of all, that study found that large numbers of well-paid

PERSPECTIVE // April 2016

faculty members at both universities were spending little or no time in the classroom. So great is this disparity that at first glance most observers would say, “That can’t be true!” But it is. At OSU, the busiest 20 percent of faculty members were teaching 54.49 percent of credit hours. Simply put, the busiest one-fifth of the faculty teaches more credit hours than the other four-fifths combined. At OU, the average student credit hour teaching load for a faculty member is 143. That’s less than 50 students being taught by a typical faculty member per year, or 24 per semester. The busiest 20 percent of faculty members teach 60 percent of total enrollment. About 500 of OU’s 2,018 faculty members teach more than half of all classes. If those other 1,500 teachers actually taught as much as their busier counterparts, the cost of instruction at OU alone would be cut by $100 million per year. A similar savings strategy at OSU would yield an additional $82 million in savings. One hundred eighty-two million dollars! And we haven’t even started assessing spending priorities at the other four- and two-year colleges and universities scattered across the state. This is astonishing news to those who labor in the classrooms of state-funded schools. I was an adjunct instructor at OSU-OKC

BY THE NUMBERS: HIGHER EDUCATION A recent SoonerPoll Survey asked Oklahomans their thoughts on state higher education. Read more of the survey results at www.soonerpoll.com/

"In Oklahoma state government, the chancellor of higher education is paid more than $411,000 per year, which is more than the governor is paid. Do you think this amount is:

Too High

Too Low

About Right

Don't Know/Refused

"Public colleges and universities in Oklahoma could be run more efficiently."

Strongly Agree

Somewhat Agree

Neutral Don't Know Refused

Somewhat Disagree

Strongly Disagree

“In public colleges and universities, professors should be paid based on how much they teach and not based on writing articles and other non-teaching activities.”

Strongly Agree

Somewhat Agree

for 22 years, and I seldom faced a classroom with fewer than 27 students. With two or three classes per semester, I was teaching as many as 162 students, or nearly 500 credit hours, each year, not counting summer sessions, where I often logged two sections with another 54 students. And adjunct pay in Oklahoma’s higher education system is notoriously paltry, a mere fraction of the $250,000 annual salaries of some senior professors. Not only is the teaching load heavily skewed, Oklahoma higher education wastes uncounted millions more through duplication and redundancy. The OCPA report noted that both OU and OSU each have doctoral programs in finance, with faculty and administrative positions to support those programs. The two programs combined had just 19 students enrolled in 2014. If just four faculty members earning an average of $100,000 annually were occupied teaching and advising those 19 students we were spending more than $21,000 per student. It’s not hard to find other such redundancies throughout the higher education system. Stand in downtown Oklahoma City and you are less than a 30-minute drive from seven public colleges or universities with nursing programs (OU, UCO, OSU-OKC, OCCC, Redlands, Rose State, and Langston) and five more operated by private institutions. Setting those aside, the

Neutral Don't Know Refused

Somewhat Disagree

Strongly Disagree

taxpayers of Oklahoma are funding full administrative, clerical, and faculty staffs for seven different programs teaching the same courses and curriculum within a few miles of each other. Imagine the savings if those seven colleges and universities joined forces via online classrooms and other examples of modern technology to teach the same number of students. And that’s just for one degree program in one section of the state. Public institutions have an obligation to spend tax dollars as efficiently as possible, and with the delivery of adequate services to the people as their first priority. It is clear that higher education in Oklahoma is doing a poor job of managing and deploying the dollars we give them in state appropriations and tuition. Those surveyed Oklahomans know there’s something wrong with this picture. Mike Brake is a journalist and writer who has recently authored a centennial history of Putnam City Schools. He served as chief writer for Gov. Frank Keating and for then-Lt. Gov. and Congresswoman Mary Fallin, and has also served as an adjunct instructor at OSU-OKC.

Professional Licensing Is Killing Opportunity By Byron Schlomach

I recently sat with my son to watch a television program he had accessed through Netflix about the sport of boxing. A significant portion of the program was devoted to the sociology of the sport. It was pointed out that as you look at the best fighters over the decades, their backgrounds tell a story of which ethnicities were struggling in America at the time. Although it was not at all a focus of the program, an interesting and tragic insight into the impact of professional licensing struck me as I watched. The show partly explored why so many boxers have prison records. One explanation is that there are few professional options open to felons. One of the most popular skills training programs in prison is barbering. However, while these skills are useful in prison, where licensing is not required, they are useless outside of prison for an individual with a felony conviction on his record. Barbers are licensed by every state in the Union. Felons are almost universally blocked from being licensed. This is one reason some felons turn to boxing. Some, maybe most, are likely to say it’s a good thing that felons are not allowed to practice licensed professions. Licensing—a system whereby government regulates who can practice a profession through educational and experience requirements—is, after all, supposed to be a guarantee of high quality. Except it’s not. America’s hospitals have had a veritable epidemic of hospital-caused infections in patients. The number

PERSPECTIVE // April 2016

one cause of this epidemic is the failure on the part of doctors and nurses to wash their hands. A study was once conducted of hospital greens—the loose-fitting green clothing many doctors and nurses wear on a daily basis as they go about their duties. These clothes were swabbed and they were found to be veritable petri dishes of microscopic vermin. Their wearers often went a week or more at a time without washing their greens. Obviously, not all doctors and nurses are so careless in their personal hygiene. But it is obvious too that licensing, despite its educational requirements, was not enough to ensure that licensed professionals would all use soap and water on their hands and clothing with the regularity required for hospital work. Economist Morris Kleiner, the nation’s foremost authority on licensing and its effects, has pointed out that liability insurance premiums in states for unlicensed professions are no higher than in states that license the very same professions. If licensing truly reduced danger for the public through its requirements on those holding a license, the first to notice would be insurance companies, since you would expect fewer liability claims against licensed professionals. However, this is evidently not the case. The history of licensing, even in the medical and legal professions, is not particularly reassuring, either. There is no evidence of widespread mayhem in the absence of licensing, in any profession. Abraham Lincoln could not have practiced law under today’s licensing requirements. Most studies of licensing

Though licensing does little to nothing to protect the general public, it does accomplish one thing very well: it enriches and protects those who practice licensed professions. discern little or no qualitative benefit for consumers. While licensing does little to nothing to protect the general public, it does accomplish one thing very well; it enriches and protects those who practice licensed professions. Licensing serves as a gatekeeping mechanism, creating a series of often onerous hoops for potential professionals to jump through, weeding out many who could otherwise do an excellent job within the profession. Cosmetology licenses commonly require more training hours than are required of Emergency Medical Technicians. This time and money commitment prevents many from getting the training and entering the profession. By effectively regulating the supply of new entrants into a profession, licensing keeps the fees of the practitioners of that profession higher than they could otherwise be. The result is an artificial transfer of income from consumers to licensed producers. Professional licensing also blocks opportunity. African hair braiders have been forced out of business for lack of a cosmetology license—even though most cosmetology programs teach nothing about braiding. Horses’ teeth must be filed (floated) since their teeth constantly grow. Veterinarians have forced people who only float teeth out of business for practicing veterinary medicine without a license despite the fact that veterinarians are taught little about the art of floating horses’ teeth and generally do a much worse job of it. And the floaters were only floating teeth, not performing other services. So not only does professional licensing create artificial scarcity, it enriches those who are licensed, potentially impoverishes those who could provide many of the services licensed professions provide, and often denies consumers higher-quality, specialized services. While advocates of professional licensing claim it is for the public’s safety, it is evident that it is not. Nearly every new licensing law grandfathers in people who are already in the profession, presumably including those very individuals who previously presented a danger to the public for the lack of licensing. Due to the expense of hiring licensed professionals, some might attempt dangerous do-it-yourself alternatives to professionally provided services. In some states, when midwifery was effectively made illegal by medical licensing, women resorted to having babies with only amateur assistance. Arguably, many would have been better off with

an unlicensed but experienced midwife. Oklahoma law requires a licensed electrician to install new wiring and outlet boxes. But Oklahomans wire their houses and other structures themselves all the time. No doubt, some Oklahomans would benefit from some advice from permit officials, but they dare not get a permit for fear of the expense of hiring an electrician. And licensing only begets more licensing. The most effective way for floaters of horse teeth and animal massagers to protect themselves from harassment by veterinarians is to get their own licensing laws. This is why there are separate licensing laws for osteopaths, podiatrists, chiropractors, and naturopaths. Physical therapists are often licensed, and so are massage therapists. In Arizona, some physical therapists began to practice “dry needling,” but this is a lot like acupuncture and the licensed acupuncturists were up in arms. Legislators— amateurs in both professions—had to arbitrate the dispute. In Oklahoma, a higher percentage of the workforce is licensed than in 40 other states. The state licenses more professions than most other states as well. Licensing laws prevent the strengths of free enterprise from showing themselves. People with the discipline to develop a craft are prevented from profiting from that discipline. Those who could provide a service at a lower cost and at higher quality than those who are licensed are blocked from doing so. Prices stay too high. Social classes and positions of privilege develop. Even the Obama administration has recognized what free enterprise advocates have for years. Licensing is detrimental to our economy and our society. One solution is private certification, whereby potentially competing private associations facing minimal disclosure requirements certify individuals to practice professions and no one is precluded from practicing a profession by licensing law. We already have this in medicine, whereby hospitals certify physicians to do surgery and specialties are privately certified. This is an approach to public safety for a society that cares about freedom and opportunity. Licensing is not. Byron Schlomach (Ph.D. in economics, Texas A&M University) is state policy director for the 1889 Institute, an independent research organization. He is a scholar in residence at the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. He previously served as director of the Center for Economic Prosperity at the Goldwater Institute, and prior to that was chief economist for the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

QUICK HITS

Oklahoma Supreme Court Upholds Henry Scholarship The Supreme Court ruled that the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Program for Children with Disabilities was constitutional. This program provides publicly funded scholarships to families who find their children’s public school cannot meet their needs and that a private school is a more promising fit. The program has helped hundreds of children, many of whom were bullied and neglected in their previous schools, transform their lives for the better. Unfortunately, since the program’s enactment in 2010, a good portion of the education establishment has sought to destroy it. The program’s enemies knew that, as the accounts of saved lives and minds multiplied, repeal was politically impossible. So they picked up the favored weapon of the political loser—the lawsuit. Because some families chose religious schools, the opponents alleged that the program violated the provision of the state constitution that forbids the government from appropriating or using any money for the use, benefit, or support of any religious institution. It was clear from the beginning that these lawsuits had no legal merit. The text of the constitution is clear—the money must be appropriated for the benefit or support of the religious institution. Anyone not blinded by hatred for school choice programs can see that the Henry scholarship program was enacted for the benefit of the disabled children, not the schools. — Andrew Spiropoulos, OCPA’s Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow, writing February 25 in The Journal Record. To read the entire article, go to ocpa.us/LindseyNicoleHenryScholarship.

Oklahoma’s Per-Pupil Spending Has Nearly Doubled Martin Luther King III recently marched with more than 10,000 people at a rally calling for more educational choices for families and students. I agree with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s son that expanding school choice is an imperative for helping the most vulnerable. … A recent policy analysis by Oklahoma State University entrepreneurship professor Vance Fried details how to modernize K-12 education funding. Fried’s “Blueprint for Education Reform: Educational Choice and Empowered Public Schools” is a clear road map to building an education system that meets modern needs. For context, Fried presents one startling graph that tracks two key indicators over time. The first is Oklahoma’s total per-pupil spending, adjusted for inflation, and tracked from 1972 through 2012. As you might expect, it trends almost constantly upward. Spending nearly doubled over that period. The second line charts Oklahoma’s average SAT scores (adjusted for participation rate and student demographics) and validates the results against Oklahoma’s NAEP scores. The line is flat. Actually, it dips down a little near the end. How? Well for starters, while school enrollment grew by about 9 percent in those decades, school staffing (especially for non-teaching positions) soared by 83 percent. — OCPA president Jonathan Small, writing January 29 in The Journal Record. To read the entire article, go to http://ocpa.us/per-pupil-spending.

PERSPECTIVE // April 2016

Fallin Leads on Education, Corrections Gov. Mary Fallin deserves high praise for the vision she demonstrated in this week’s State of the State address. … [People] need to know that their leaders have a policy agenda that will address the fundamental challenges facing their state. What are these challenges? The first is an ineffective education system that, despite extraordinary spending increases in the last three decades, has produced no discernible improvement in student achievement. The second is a correctional system that, despite sky-high incarceration rates and spiraling costs, has left nothing but a chain of broken lives and unacceptably high urban crime rates. In education, the governor calls for the single reform that has the greatest chance of sparking systemic change—the establishment of education savings accounts. ESAs, by providing families with a significant portion of the state funds allocated for their children’s education, will empower parents to choose the educational services that will most benefit their children. … As for corrections, the governor’s proposal correctly identifies our principal problem—we excessively punish nonviolent offenders. To help break our addiction to self-defeating harshness, she proposes we lower the mandatory sentences for drug possession offenses and empower prosecutors to treat first drug possession offenses as misdemeanors, not felonies. She also suggests raising the dollar value threshold distinguishing misdemeanor from felony property crimes. These reforms will result in fewer offenders being branded as felons, a stigma that too often cannot be overcome. — Andrew Spiropoulos, OCPA’s Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow, writing February 4 in The Journal Record. To read the entire article, go to ocpa.us/fallinleads.

State Bureaucrats Aren’t Responsible for Education

Boren Tax Hike Will Harm Cities

The truth is that our state’s education establishment, from the state superintendent of education on down, is not committed to writing and implementing world-class standards that will distinguish us from other states. I’ll take their word that they want to do better than we have in the past, but there is nothing about these people that inspires one to believe they seek to engage in bold, creative reform. We should give up on the idea that the state education establishment will force excellence on local schools. Instead, we must encourage districts, schools, and families to mount their own efforts to foster excellence. ... If the state wants to help, it can free local districts from disabling mandates and regulations, authorize a variety of institutions, including cities, to create new charter schools, and truly empower families by establishing education savings accounts. State bureaucrats aren’t responsible for the education of our children—parents are.

[B]old and effective local efforts depend upon limiting state government’s claim on our people’s income. If you don’t knock the state’s hand out of the till, there won’t be any money left for cities to preserve their downtowns, for counties to revamp their criminal justice systems, or for school districts to fund promising initiatives. Why? Because the people of any state only have so much money they can spend on government before the rising tax burden begins to harm the economy and destroy jobs. When the state, for example, raises the already-high sales tax and absconds with the revenue, it cripples the ability of cities (which, in Oklahoma, are almost exclusively funded by the sales tax) to finance any public improvements or even maintain the level of services. For years, many of us have argued that our state would be best served by amending our constitution to make it harder for the state to spend money and easier for local government, particularly school districts and cities, to raise it. When school superintendents and university presidents demand a sales tax increase, they haven’t learned from MAPS. They’re killing it.

— Andrew Spiropoulos writing February 11 in The Journal Record. To read the entire article, go to ocpa.us/responsibleparents.

— Andrew Spiropoulos writing January 28 in The Journal Record. To read the entire article, go to ocpa.us/borentax.

QUICK HITS

Taxpayers Twisting in the Wind

School Choice Boosts Integration

State policymakers must end the state’s wind subsidies and other detrimental policies regarding wind energy production. Oklahoma personal income taxpayers are footing the bill and supplying loans to make payments for wind energy production. President Barack Obama failed to win majority support in all 77 counties in Oklahoma, yet Oklahoma’s tax policy is helping him implement his damaging alternative energy scheme designed to make utility costs “necessarily skyrocket.” Thanks to the far larger federal wind subsidy scheme and also Oklahoma’s subsidy, which is based off wind energy generation, a lot more wind turbines will be built. This will balloon state zero-emission tax credit liabilities to approximately $88 million next year. Our current policy toward wind generation unfairly picks winners and losers, artificially driving up use of wind production, all on the backs of Oklahomans. Given the insaneness of the zero-emission tax credit, especially now, it’s an understatement that state policymakers should end the tax credit for new projects. It’s time for policymakers to prevent Oklahomans and our economy from being further winded by subsidies and other damaging related policies related to wind energy production.

Efforts to help the most vulnerable through school choice have received quite the boost. In January, Martin Luther King III marched for school choice. In February, Grammy award winning musician Christopher Brian "Chris" Bridges, a.k.a. Ludacris, endorsed Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). Unsurprisingly, some are peddling the myth that school choice will exacerbate racial segregation. ... “Of the eight studies that have examined racial segregation in private choice programs, seven found that choice moved students from more segregated classrooms and schools into less segregated classrooms and schools; one found no visible difference,” writes education researcher Greg Forster, author of a 2013 meta-analysis of the private school choice literature. “No empirical study has ever found that private school choice increased racial segregation.” … Having worked in Oklahoma City public schools, I’ve personally witnessed widespread segregation. In the suburban school district where I live now, my four daughters would be among the few of African-American descent at their local public school. To empower the most vulnerable and increase racial integration, expansion of school choice is a must.

— OCPA president Jonathan Small, writing February 19 in The Journal Record. To read the entire article, go to ocpa.us/windsubsidies.

— OCPA president Jonathan Small, writing February 26 in The Journal Record. To read the entire article, go to ocpa.us/desegregation.

Listen each Friday afternoon during legislative session

PERSPECTIVE // April 2016

@OCPAthink 1. Oklahoma City University law professor Andrew Spiropoulos makes the case for educational choice in a February 4 lecture titled â&#x20AC;&#x153;A Mosaic of Options: The Ten Commandments and Educational Choice.â&#x20AC;? Spiropoulos serves as the Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow at OCPA. 2. Panelists discuss civil asset forfeiture at a February 10 forum cosponsored by OCPA and the Charles Koch Institute. 3. OCPA vice president of engagement Estela Hernandez speaks at an Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform rally in Oklahoma City. The rally kicked off the group's collection of petition signatures to ensure State Questions 780 and 781 are on the ballot in November. 4. At a February 24 forum organized by the Urban League of Greater Oklahoma City, OCPA president Jonathan Small discusses the importance of providing educational options to minority students.

School Choice and 'Accountability' Private-school choice programs should not be subject to the same “accountability” requirements as public schools. Here are eight reasons why.

1. Public schools are not as “accountable” as we’re led to believe. Public schools are heavily regulated, to be sure — but “rules” and “regulations” are not synonymous with “accountability.” If government officials could simply regulate schools to success, then “our public school system would be wonderful,” education professor Jay Greene points out. After all, “they have no shortage of regulations and prohibitions, all designed by well-meaning people to make those schools perform well.”1 Regrettably, they don’t perform well.2 As one Oklahoma educator with a doctorate in education has noted, “more than 20 percent of our state’s population, or nearly 400,000 people, can’t read.”3 Oklahomans instinctively understand the meaning of the word “accountability.” If the food is terrible, the waiter brings us another meal or we don’t have to pay. If it happens time and time again, the cook gets fired. In short, someone is accountable. But do ineffective administrators or teachers get fired? Do ineffective schools close? Do taxpayers get their money back? In short, economist John Merrifield writes, “we have decades of evidence for 50 U.S. school systems of what politically accountable collective decisionmaking by overwhelmingly well-educated, well-intentioned public officials yields: persistent ‘Nation at Risk’ schooling outcomes in every state.”4 2. Accountability to government officials is a pale imitation of true accountability. Accountability to government officials is actually the weakest kind of accountability, Merrifield says.5 Moreover, as scholar Jason Bedrick explains, “It is inappropriate to impose an accountability system designed to regulate a monopoly on a market. Private schools are directly accountable to parents, who have the ability to vote with their feet if the school fails to meet their needs. By contrast, public schools are accountable to politicians and bureaucrats, not parents. Indeed, many low-income families have no financially viable options besides their assigned district school. Without the crucial feedback loop that direct accountability to parents provides, states and localities (and even the feds) have imposed numerous regulations to improve quality, generally with little success. Unfortunately, these top-down regulations have become synonymous with ‘accountability’ when they are but a pale imitation of direct accountability to parents.”6 Indeed, as other scholars have noted, “true accountability comes not from top-down regulations but from parents financially empowered to exit schools that fail to meet their child’s needs. Parental choice, coupled with freedom for educators, creates the incentives and opportunities that spur quality. The compelled conformity fostered by centralized standards and tests stifles the very diversity that gives consumer choice its value.”7 3. Light regulation doesn’t mean no regulation. In addition to being accountable to families, private schools are already “accountable to the general public and government authorities,” the Friedman Foundation reminds us. “Private schools in every state comply with a vast array of health and safety regulations, anti-discrimination and civil rights laws, and even rules covering the minimum number of school days.”8 Oklahoma schools participating in the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship program9 and the Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship program10 must comply with numerous requirements. Indeed, the latter program “ensures academic accountability to parents and guardians of students through regular progress reports.”11 4. State funds need not require accountability to the state. “The oft-repeated claim that state funding requires accountability to the state is an obviously shallow and false political slogan rather than a well-considered policy view,” education professor Jay Greene writes. “Most state-funded programs require no formal accountability to the state and instead rely primarily on the self-interest of the recipients to use the funds wisely. For example, the largest domestic program, Social Security, is designed to prevent seniors from lacking basic resources for housing, food, or clothing. But we don’t demand that seniors account for the use of their Social Security checks. They could blow it at the casino if they want. We’re just counting on the fact that most would have the good sense to make sure that their basic needs are covered first. Even in the area of education, most government programs require no formal accountability. Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, and the Daycare Tuition Tax Credit do not require state testing for people using those funds. We just trust that the public purpose of subsidizing education will be served by people pursuing their own interests.”12 5. Heavy regulation brings unintended consequences. As Greene noted at a recent presentation in Oklahoma City, a heavy regulatory hand

can shrink the supply of quality private schools and can undermine schools’ mission, autonomy, and effectiveness.13 “Whereas school choice programs with a lighter regulatory burden yielded positive results,” Jason Bedrick adds, “the technocratic attempt to ensure quality through regulation [recently] yielded the first negative results of any school choice program ever studied. The large body of positive findings should continue to give us confidence in the market approach to education reform, but the latest NBER study should serve as a sobering reminder of the limits of our ability to engineer outcomes from above.”14

PERSPECTIVE // April 2016

6. It’s important to level the playing field. Many in the education community complain that public schools don’t compete on a level playing field, Jason Bedrick writes.15 “Sure, they’re fully subsidized while private schools are not, but the district schools have to comply with more burdensome regulations than the private schools. … The reason district schools are so heavily regulated is because, unlike private schools, they are not directly accountable to parents. If a private school isn’t meeting the needs of students or their parents, they can take their children and their money elsewhere. By contrast, low-income students are often a captive audience at their assigned district school, so the school does not have to be as responsive to their needs. Instead, districts and states impose numerous regulations in an attempt to approximate the real accountability that comes when parents can choose." Republicans control Oklahoma’s executive and legislative branches of government. If the goal is to make all schools “play by the same rules,” wouldn’t the conservative instinct be to eliminate the heavy-handed rules for public schools rather than to add rules for private schools? 7. Parental choice is accountability. “The vast majority of Republicans assert belief in limited government, and belief in markets as

bastions of rock-solid accountability to actual and potential clientele,” economist John Merrifield reminds us.16 “We’re familiar enough with this principle of accountability in other contexts,” Greg Forster adds.17 “If a doctor or grocery store or restaurant gives you bad service, you hold it accountable by taking your business elsewhere. We do this because it respects the freedom and dignity of the customer — and also because it works. Schools are almost the only type of organization we don’t hold accountable in this way. The fact that school choice involves public dollars is no reason to shun this morally right and highly effective approach to accountability. We give people food stamps and then let them choose where to buy their food instead of running state-owned grocery stores and creating a federal grocery regulator. One of the best policy improvements in recent history was the change in housing subsidies from government-owned ‘housing projects,’ which were consistently horrific, to what are called ‘Section 8 vouchers,’ which subsidize housing but let people choose where to rent.” As several scholars pointed out in this magazine: “There is no compelling body of evidence that top-down regulation improves student outcomes in schools that are already directly accountable to parents. By contrast, there is much evidence that direct accountability to parents yields results superior to those that are defined by bureaucratic red tape.”18

8. Be humble about the ability and benevolence of regulators. In The Fatal Conceit, F.A. Hayek observed, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” As education professor Jay Greene says, heavy regulation is simply central planning built around test scores. It is wise to “be humble about the ability and benevolence of regulators and their tools.”¹9 1 Jay P. Greene, “Ed Reformers are Not a Smarter Version of the Government,” January 21, 2016, http://jaypgreene.com/2015/01/21/ed-reformers-are-not-asmarter-version-of-the-government/ 2 “Oklahoma ranked 46th in the nation with a grade of ‘D+’ in an annual national report released today that measures states on academic performance and outcomes across a detailed range of criteria.” Oklahoma State Department of Education, “Supt. Hofmeister comments on Oklahoma’s performance in ‘Quality Counts’ report,” January 7, 2016, http://sde.ok.gov/sde/newsblog/2016-01-07/supt-hofmeister-comments-oklahomas-performance-quality-counts-report 3 State Sen. Earl Garrison, “Illiteracy has solution with Oklahomans’ help,” Muskogee Phoenix, September 23, 2008, http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/ opinion/columns/illiteracy-has-solution-with-oklahomans-help/article_fd3260e6-f829-5af3-b73e-5fee9551f7fa.html 4 John Merrifield, “Political Accountability Failure vs. Market Accountability Failure,” October 14, 2014, http://educationblog.ncpa.org/political-accountabilityfailure-vs-market-accountability-failure/ 5 John Merrifield, “Mindless Fallacies about Accountability,” April 28, 2015, http://educationblog.ncpa.org/mindless-fallacies-about-accountability/ 6 Jason Bedrick, “Leave School Choice to the States,” April 16, 2015, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/leave-school-choice-states 7 Joseph Bast, Jason Bedrick, Lindsey M. Burke, Andrew J. Coulson, Robert Enlow, Kara Kerwin, Herbert J. Walberg, et al., “Parental Choice Is Accountability,” April 9, 2014, http://www.ocpathink.org/article/parental-choice-is-accountability#sthash.DNXKILPd.dpuf 8 Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, “School Choice FAQs,” http://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/school-choice-faqs/ 9 American Federation for Children, “Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship for Students with Disabilities Program,” http://www.federationforchildren.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/05/Oklahoma.pdf 10 American Federation for Children, “Equal Opportunity Education Scholarships,” http://www.federationforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ Oklahoma.pdf 11 Enrolled House Bill No. 1693, http://webserver1.lsb.state.ok.us/cf_pdf/2015-16%20ENR/hB/HB1693%20ENR.PDF 12 Jay P. Greene, “Stop Requiring Choice Programs to Take State Test,” Education Next, November 20, 2013, http://educationnext.org/stop-requiring-choiceprograms-to-take-state-test/ 13 Jay P. Greene, “The Dangers of a High-Regulation Approach to School Choice,” presentation at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, December 3, 2015, http://www.ocpathink.org/post/jay-greene-the-dangers-of-a-high-regulation-approach-to-school-choice 14 Jason Bedrick, “The Folly of Overregulating School Choice,” Education Next, January 5, 2016, http://educationnext.org/the-folly-of-overregulating-schoolchoice/#.VowMrLYQLu5.twitter 15 Jason Bedrick, “Who’s Afraid of School Choice?” March 17, 2015, http://www.ocpathink.org/post/you-guest-it-whos-afraid-of-school-choice#sthash. jQHNfZSx.dpuf 16 John Merrifield, “Mindless Fallacies about Accountability,” April 28, 2015, http://educationblog.ncpa.org/mindless-fallacies-about-accountability/ 17 Greg Forster, “Choice Is the Real Accountability,” June 29, 2015, http://www.ocpathink.org/article/choice-is-the-real--accountability 18 Bast, et al., “Parental Choice Is Accountability,” April 9, 2014, http://www.ocpathink.org/article/parental-choice-is-accountability#sthash.DNXKILPd.dpuf 19 Jay P. Greene, “The Dangers of a High-Regulation Approach to School Choice,” presentation at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, December 3, 2015, http://www.ocpathink.org/post/jay-greene-the-dangers-of-a-high-regulation-approach-to-school-choice

Advancing Liberty

QUOTE UNQUOTE “These colleges are like poor little rich kids fixated upon their wealth. Although rich, they constantly complain about not having enough money to cover their needs. Although rich, they constantly try to get more money out of their students and society at large. They continue to build their endowments even though each dollar added to endowment represents a dollar that could have gone to providing an education to current students, researching today’s great problems, or to reducing tuition.” Oklahoma State University entrepreneurship professor Vance Fried

“My suggestion is to design our school operations around

“Steve Jobs’s aim in life was to make things of incredible quality, power,

the principle of universal school choice. Completely remove

and usefulness accessible to everyday people, and I don’t know many folks

the power of government to dictate where a child attends

who think he fell short. It’s no surprise he thought unleashing the same

school.”

forces could do wonders for public education, too.” Former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige

“It’s not your fault if you experience privilege; it’s your fault if you deny it.” Message on a series of “footprints” placed around various engineering buildings on campus by the OU College of Engineering, attempting to shame its customers over the fact that not enough blacks are earning Ph.D. degrees in engineering

Ron Matus, in a blog post discussing school-choice supporter Steve Jobs

“... [T]he same education folks screaming the loudest against the creation of Education Savings Accounts, I would imagine, find it perfectly acceptable for taxpayer money to be used to pay their membership dues to school board associations, principal associations, superintendent associations, rural school associations, etc.” Ray Dyer, co-publisher of the El Reno Tribune