MAY 2017
OKLAHOMA COUNCIL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Three Cheers for 'Cost Avoidance' Many in Oklahoma’s political class want to raise your taxes. Fortunately, there’s a better way.
In Case You Missed It Oklahomans strongly favor K-12 spending over higher education. bit.ly/SpendingSurvey
The Oklahoma legislature is finally starting to understand that wind cronyism is a bad idea.
Any teacher shortage in Oklahoma is extremely small, a new report says, and the evidence is so sketchy that there actually could be a small surplus. bit.ly/TeacherShortageStudy
bit.ly/WindCronyism
To get to the national average (as a percentage of the privatesector workforce), Oklahoma’s higher education system needs to shed 13,680 non-instructional workers. bit.ly/HigherEdBloat
More than 46,000 Oklahomans were employed by foreign companies in 2014. bit.ly/AEIblog
bit.ly/CJreforms
bit.ly/TES-Medicaid
Taxpayers are paying $119,048 annually for a “President’s Associates Presidential Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Co-Director of the Center for Social Justice” at OU. bit.ly/OCPA-Quiz
The Reydon (Okla.) public school district spent $43,817 per student in 2016. bit.ly/EdData
Criminal justice reforms can make Oklahoma safer.
Recently on The Trent England Show, the topic was Oklahoma lawmakers who support Medicaid fraud.
Liberals still don’t want to talk about voter fraud.
On the floor of the United States Senate, James Lankford—an “avid supporter of public education”—explained why school choice is important. bit.ly/LankfordSchoolChoice
bit.ly/Voter-Fraud
PERSPECTIVE
Brandon Dutcher, Editor
OCPA Trustees
OCPA Researchers
Glenn Ashmore • Oklahoma City
Mike O’Neal • Edmond
Robert D. Avery • Pawhuska
Larry Parman • Oklahoma City
Lee J. Baxter • Lawton
Bill Price • Oklahoma City
Douglas Beall, M.D. • Oklahoma City
Patrick T. Rooney • Oklahoma City
Steve W. Beebe • Duncan
Melissa Sandefer • Norman
organization. OCPA formulates and
John A. Brock • Tulsa
Thomas Schroedter • Tulsa
promotes public policy research and
David Burrage • Atoka
Greg Slavonic • Oklahoma City
analysis consistent with the principles
Michael Carnuccio • Yukon
Charles M. Sublett • Tulsa
Tom Coburn, M.D. • Tulsa
Robert Sullivan • Tulsa
William Flanagan • Claremore
William E. Warnock, Jr. • Tulsa
Josephine Freede • Oklahoma City
Dana Weber • Tulsa
in Perspective are those of the author,
Ann Felton Gilliland • Oklahoma City
Daryl Woodard • Tulsa
and should not be construed as
John A. Henry III • Oklahoma City
Perspective is published monthly by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Inc., an independent public policy
of free enterprise and limited government. The views expressed
representing any official position of OCPA or its trustees, researchers, or employees.
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PERSPECTIVE // May 2017
Robert Kane • Tulsa Frank Keating • Oklahoma City
EMERITUS BOARD
Gene Love • Lawton
Blake Arnold • Oklahoma City
David Madigan • Lawton
David R. Brown, M.D. • Oklahoma City
Tom H. McCasland III • Duncan
Paul A. Cox • Oklahoma City
David McLaughlin • Enid
Henry F. Kane • Bartlesville
Ronald L. Mercer • Bethany
John T. Hanes • Oklahoma City
J. Larry Nichols • Oklahoma City
Lew Meibergen • Enid
Lloyd Noble II • Tulsa
Daniel J. Zaloudek • Tulsa
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 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
What EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt Will Mean for Farmers By Jayson Lusk
Data from regdata.mercatus.org
The appointment of former Oklahoma REGULATION ON AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY, FISHING, AND HUNTING Attorney General Scott Pruitt as the head BY THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, 1997-2012 of the Environmental Protection Agency 100 (EPA) was met with predictable cheers from Growth of Industry Regulation (% relative to 1997) energy entrepreneurs and jeers from some 80 environmental advocacy groups. Much less discussed are the reactions from farmers and 60 the impact Pruitt’s appointment could have on agriculture. 40 Even before his appointment to the EPA, as state attorney general Mr. Pruitt sued the EPA 20 over the agency’s controversial Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule. EPA’s jurisdiction 0 had primarily been limited to navigable waters. But WOTUS, using the Clean Water -20 Act as justification, broadened the definition of 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 navigable waters and would have massively expanded the EPA’s regulatory reach. Farmers analysis. It has been argued that prior EPA actions have been were concerned that they would face a new set based more on ideology than sound science. As a point of fact, of regulations simply for using drainage or irrigation ditches or certain EPA guidelines related to the tolerance limits for pesticide even face penalties for puddles of water standing in fields. After residues on food, for example, are based on arbitrary criteria only about a month in office, and in a move widely praised by untethered to economic benefits and costs. No one likes the idea agricultural groups, President Trump signed an executive order of potentially eating pesticides in their food. However, people giving Mr. Pruitt the power to start the process of repealing the also like to eat affordably. rule. If we want an abundant food supply, farmers need a way President Trump’s executive action and Mr. Pruitt’s to control pests and protect food from the vagaries of nature. appointment to the EPA signify a noteworthy shift in the federal The more cost effectively this can be done, the lower the price government’s approach to regulating agriculture. The Obama of food. It is true that excess consumption of the wrong kinds administration, for example, went so far as to propose that dust of pesticides can cause cancer—but so too can inadequate from farms be regulated by the EPA. As the nearby chart shows, consumption of fruits and vegetables. An economic approach data from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University to rulemaking would consider not only the toxicity of a given indicate that EPA regulation on agriculture, forestry, fishing, compound up for consideration but also what farmers will use and hunting has grown 88.81 percent since 1997. Farmers will if the compound isn’t approved and what consumers will buy be looking to Pruitt and the EPA for additional relief from instead if food prices are affected. regulatory burdens facing agriculture. In short, under new leadership there is an opportunity for EPA regulations impact agricultural production in myriad the EPA to more carefully consider not only the benefits of new ways. Cattle, hog, and poultry feeding operations, for example, regulation but also the cost to consumers and farmers. are regulated by the EPA under the auspices of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. EPA regulations affect fertilizer use, and new pesticides require approval from the EPA before farmers can put them to work in the field. New genetically engineered crops also fall under the EPA regulatory umbrella and must achieve EPA approval before being commercialized. One hope among some economists is that, under new leadership, the EPA will more heavily utilize benefit-cost
Agricultural economist Jayson Lusk is the Samuel Roberts Noble Distinguished Fellow at OCPA. The author of The Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto about the Politics of Your Plate (Crown Forum, 2013), Dr. Lusk is Regents Professor and Willard Sparks Endowed Chair at Oklahoma State University.
www.ocpathink.org
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Three Cheers for 'Cost Avoidance' By Jonathan Small
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PERSPECTIVE // May 2017
Most Oklahomans know there are really only two ways to deal with the state’s budget shortfall. We can either trim expenses—especially those that can be reduced by some real reforms—or raise taxes. Of course, every time our state raised taxes in the past, that only delayed confronting the very real issues of overspending and inefficiency. There’s been an unusual debate over that during this year’s legislative session. OCPA—and if you believe polling, a substantial majority of Oklahomans—are on one side, advocating cost savings and reforms. Preston Doerflinger, our state finance chief, has somewhat surprisingly taken the opposing view, first “applauding” OCPA’s cost-saving recommendations and then declaring them invalid
because, well, because they do not significantly raise taxes. Let’s review: Oklahoma has $878 million less to appropriate. No one disputes that. The question is how to deal with it. OCPA did some in-depth research and found ways to save at least $413 million [see facing page] by implementing a series of reforms that included ending wasteful wind cronyism, better verifying who is qualified for state-funded health insurance plans, asking higher education to trim just 10 percent from a bloated non-teaching workforce that is 70 percent above the national average, and shifting some new funds from a tobacco settlement that already contains hundreds of millions of dollars.
Those savings were obvious. For example, the study of higher education non-teaching staffing showed that if we just brought our level of administrative staffing and spending down to the national average, we’d save $328 million. That alone would fill well over a third of the budget hole. We were conservative in our recommendation, suggesting that we start with just a 10 percent reduction. Sec. Doerflinger initially said those sounded like good ideas, but then went on to downplay them for being “in the category of cost avoidance, not revenue creation.” Let that sink in a moment: Gov. Mary Fallin’s team would prefer to raise your taxes rather than make sensible reforms to save more than 400 million dollars. No one in the real world talks that way. When things are tight for a family budget, Dad doesn’t call a meeting to weigh the options between “cost avoidance” and “revenue creation.” He says we need to cut out the movies and use more grocery coupons. He might also suggest that the kids mow a few lawns to make some extra money, but he knows that ordinary citizens, unlike government, can’t just vote themselves “revenue creation.” Of course Gov. Mary Fallin has much invested in a series of proposed tax increases that would, among other things, impose sales taxes on hundreds of services, ranging from haircuts to colonoscopies— taxing us from top to bottom, so to speak. So our chief state financial guru seems to believe that saving taxpayer dollars is unworkable and bad, while extracting more dollars from those taxpayers is a wonderful thing. Perhaps he could explain why “cost avoidance” seems too futile when, in the very same week he offered his criticisms of the OCPA plan, the state’s top information technology official proudly told the House Government Modernization Committee that reforms bringing state agencies under consolidated IT plans had saved $129 million per year. You will have to excuse Oklahomans for believing that there are opportunities for savings when they witness higher education and the executive branch adding new high-paid jobs for former politicos. Sounds like it’s time for some “cost avoidance.” Jonathan Small, CPA, serves as President at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. Previously, he served as a budget analyst for the Oklahoma Office of State Finance, as a fiscal policy analyst and research analyst for the Oklahoma House of Representatives,
FIRST STEPS on the road to balancing Oklahoma’s state budget without increasing taxes on working Oklahomans Across Oklahoma, many citizens are undoubtedly grateful that numerous state lawmakers have expressed a desire for state government to become more efficient with the tax dollars already taken from Oklahomans, as opposed to further increasing their constituents’ taxes. In order to help close the budget gap for Oklahoma’s state government, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs proposes the following 13 ideas. These are the FIRST STEPS state lawmakers should consider taking before tax increases on working Oklahoma families and entrepreneurs are even considered.
RECOMMENDATION
SAVINGS
Medicaid Enrollment Audits
$85.6 million
HealthChoice Enrollment Audits
$6 million
HealthChoice Select Provider Reform
$65 million
3-Year Moratorium on Agency “Swag,” Advertising, Memberships, Sponsorships, and Transportation Project Art
$39 million
Consolidation of Administrative and Back Office Functions of Higher Education
$32.8 million
Repeal Sales Tax Exemption for Tickets to NBA and NHL Games Effective on July 1, 2017
$2.2 million
Repeal Sales Tax Exemption for Admission to Professional Sporting Events Effective July 1, 2017
$492,000
Repeal Zero Emission Tax Credit for Any New Projects or Activity Effective on July 1, 2017
$15 million
Cap Zero Emission Tax Credit Liability Payout at $15 million Annually Effective July 1, 2017
$50 million
Cap Ad Valorem Reimbursement for Wind at $15 million Effective July 1, 2017
$15 million
Repeal Sales Tax Exemption on Wind Turbine Sales Effective July 1, 2017
$40 million
Repeal the “Hollywood Subsidy” Film Incentive Effective July 1, 2017
$5 million
Tobacco Settlement Reforms
$57 million
and as director of government affairs for the Oklahoma Insurance Department. He holds a B.A. in Accounting from the University of Central Oklahoma and is a Certified Public Accountant.
$413 MILLION
www.ocpathink.org
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Hooray for the Four-Day School Week? By Trent England
What is the best way to evaluate education? While no measure is perfect, one might consider test scores, graduation rates, or success after graduation. Yet the consistently poor results of many Oklahoma students on these measures get clucks and sighs. Instead, citizens are told that the shortening of school weeks and a teacher shortage are the signs of impending educational doom. Last year, a study by the 1889 Institute found that many emergency-certified teachers had regular teaching certifications in other areas and that most “had college degrees appropriate to the subject matter they were to teach.” The study concluded that while some districts face hiring challenges, “overall, there is no teacher shortage” in Oklahoma. But what about the four-day school week? There is no question many districts have elected to drop a day from the traditional five-day school week. What does it mean? And, more importantly, what impact does it have on student learning? It turns out, some school districts in Oklahoma and around the country believe a four-day schedule is better not just for budgets, but for teachers and students as well. A story last November in The Ada News reported that Vanoss Public Schools switched to a shorter week to save money, but only after determining that the move was overwhelmingly supported by parents. The district estimates that the change has resulted in a cost savings of about five percent, but it has also seen school grades jump. After Morrison Public Schools went to a four-day week, News 9 talked to Morrison High School principal Brent Haken. Several months into the new schedule, he said teachers were “further along in their curriculum than they've ever been.” He also said students were happier, attendance was up, and the time on Friday was used by some to get jobs or tutoring. In January, many of Oklahoma’s local papers published a story
with the headline: “Four-day school weeks growing in popularity amid cuts.” That story quotes Little Axe Superintendent Jay Thomas talking about his district’s four-day schedule: “The teachers enjoy it. The kids like it. Parents are enjoying having an extra day with their children.” None of this should surprise us, because it has happened already in other states. What have they learned? Not all that much, if we insist on a one-size-fits-all answer. While any district can save money by running buses, lights, and heaters one less day, the academic results seem to range from slightly better to, in one Montana study, much worse. Two conclusions might be drawn from this uncertainty. One is that this is an area where local control— and local responsibility and accountability—makes sense. This is why school boards are elected by local people to make decisions for their own community. Oklahoma is a diverse state, where urban and rural communities face vastly different challenges. The other is that what really matters in education is … education. There are many ways to achieve that mission. Some private schools operate less than five days a week with outstanding results. The new Cristo Rey Oklahoma City Catholic High School will provide traditional instruction for four days each week and require work on the fifth day. What really matters, four days or five, is how much Oklahoma kids are learning.
“The teachers enjoy it. The kids like it. Parents are enjoying having an extra day with their children.”
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PERSPECTIVE // May 2017
Trent England serves as Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, where he also is the David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow for the Advancement of Liberty and directs the Center for the Constitution & Freedom and the Save Our States project. He also hosts a radio program, The Trent England Show, from 7 to 9 a.m. every weekday on Oklahoma’s AM 1640, “The Eagle.”
Oklahoma Politicians Shouldn’t Penalize Parents By Brandon Dutcher
Parents, not government officials, have the moral right to raise their children according to their consciences. That, in a nutshell, is why school choice is so important. Think about it. In a free society, the government rightly defers to parents when it comes to raising their children. Bottle-feed or breastfeed? Spanking or time-out? Piano lessons or karate lessons? For countless decisions every day, the government defers to parents when it comes to raising their children. And since education is simply a subset of parenting (as education professor Jay Greene sagely reminds us), the government should defer to parents when it comes to educating their children. Now obviously the government is going to spend money on education. But politicians shouldn’t play favorites, directing all the money to schools operated by the government. Let’s direct some of it to parents in the form of a voucher or a tax break. We know that Oklahoma’s political leaders respect parents. In 2014 they enacted a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” to ensure that no state government entity infringes upon parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children. But as important as that law is, it’s time to translate its principles into effective remedies, says Oklahoma City University law professor Andrew Spiropoulos. “We must guarantee all parents, no matter their income, the effective right to exit a failing school and choose one, public or private, that satisfies their needs.” Happily, we already do this for some parents. For example, Oklahoma’s private-school voucher program is helping certain bullied children, autistic students, rural students who want a faith-based education, and many more. Moreover, our state’s tax-credit scholarship program is helping hearing-impaired children, homeless students, teenage students battling addiction, and more—all while saving the state money. So private-school choice is working for those who are eligible. But we need to do more. All parents have the right to direct their child’s path.
Some parents would prefer a more rigorous curriculum for their children. Others are tired of all the bullying. Others simply don’t want their daughters sharing a locker room with boys. (In Tulsa Public Schools, for example, “gender non-conforming students” have the right to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their “gender identity.”) Whatever the reason, politicians should not penalize parents (by making them pay twice) for raising their children according to their consciences. School-choice foes say we shouldn’t “drain money from public schools.” But that assumes the public schools are entitled to the money in the first place. In truth, they have no place of privilege, says Pennsylvania state Sen. Anthony Williams, a liberal Democrat. He rejects “the antiquated belief that existing public school systems have the right of first refusal when it comes to educating our children.” Wade Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, strikes the right balance. “I am very pro public schools,” he says. But he also supports parental choice. In fulfilling their God-given duty to raise their children, he says, parents “should be able to consider the best option for their children’s whole education and formation.” Brandon Dutcher is OCPA’s senior vice president. He is editor of the book Oklahoma Policy Blueprint, which was praised by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman as “thorough, well-informed, and highly sophisticated.” His articles have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, WORLD magazine, Forbes. com, Mises.org, The Oklahoman, the Tulsa World, and 200 newspapers throughout Oklahoma and the U.S.
www.ocpathink.org
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Will the IRS Give Us Educational Freedom?
By Greg Forster
As more people in Washington, D.C. have come to see that there are good reasons not to enact a national school voucher program, attention is turning to another proposal for federal school choice. The idea is for D.C. to use an alternative kind of program, known as a tax-credit scholarship, to provide school choice nationwide. While this is less objectionable than a national voucher, it is vitally important for school choice advocates to consider the costs involved in such a scheme. Some of my friends in the school choice movement—including others at EdChoice, where I am proud to serve as a Friedman Fellow—see this as an opportunity we should support. With respect, I disagree. We have had enormous success building up school choice slowly but surely in the states, where there are now 61 private school choice programs in 30 states plus D.C., serving more than 400,000 students. Diverting our strength into a huge fight in D.C. for what would likely turn out to be a lousy program—assuming we win at all, rather than suffering a humiliating loss in the national spotlight—would probably cost us more than it would be worth. Tax-credit scholarships work differently from vouchers and from vouchers’ young cousin, Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). Both vouchers and ESAs take government funding for education and put it under the direct control of parents. Tax-credit scholarships are indirect. They provide a tax credit that reimburses individual and/or corporate donors who give money to Scholarship-Granting Organizations (SGOs). The SGOs then take the money and use it to pay private-school tuition for students. Overall, tax-credit scholarships are an inferior way to provide school choice. They put a gatekeeper—the SGO—between parents and choice. Every family should have a right to school choice. Vouchers and ESAs can provide that, while tax-credit scholarships always leave families dependent on SGO decisions.
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PERSPECTIVE // May 2017
SGOs not only decide who gets to exercise choice; since they control the amount of the scholarship each student gets, they control who gets how much choice. Tax-credit scholarships also have to place limits on how much funding is available, and therefore how many students can participate. That’s to control the amount of tax revenue diverted to the program. Vouchers and ESAs can always serve every student. When these programs are designed poorly, as is usually the case, the problems of limited funding and arbitrary SGO control over families’ access to choice become serious. Good program design can mitigate these problems, although never entirely eliminate them. However, in the sausage grinder of D.C. education politics, the smart money will be on Congress producing a poorly designed program. Just look what a lousy job they did with their initial health-care bill. So why do some prefer tax-credit scholarships? The main advantage is that the government never touches the money that pays for private-school tuition. Private donors give the money to SGOs, which use it to pay tuition bills. Government reimburses the donors by reducing their tax bills. Usually this is considered an advantage because our court system is not, in general, smart enough to understand either that school choice is constitutional or that money is fungible. There are no serious constitutional objections to school choice. If religious schools can’t participate in government programs on the same terms as secular schools, how can we provide fire protection to churches? Or police protection to synagogues? Or municipal water lines to mosques? Nonetheless, politicized judges are often looking for an excuse to strike down school choice. Keeping the government’s hands from directly touching the money does seem to help prevent them from doing so. That’s a bogus argument, because money is fungible. Treating tax credits as constitutionally different from ordinary spending is like treating the dollar bill in your left
pocket as constitutionally different from the dollar bill in your right pocket. But since the argument against school choice is transparently bogus, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that what works is a bogus argument against it. Today, though, this “Uncle Sam never touches the money” feature of tax-credit scholarships is taking on a new importance. School choice advocates, many of whom raised howls of protest against the federal push for Common Core on federalism grounds, are suddenly looking for a way to explain why D.C. can legitimately take charge of education policy. Doing it through the tax code seems to circumvent the federalism barrier. There are a number of reasons not to go down this road. Let’s start with the wisdom of the founders. There used to be an ad campaign declaring that driving at the speed limit “is not just a good idea, it’s the law.” Turning that around, I think my friends in the school choice movement need to realize that federalism is not just the law. It’s a good idea! Yes, we can probably circumvent the legal barriers to federal control of education by going through the tax code. But is it a good idea to have D.C. control education policy—even if the policy it sets is a good one? The idea behind federalism is that governance should be kept as close as possible to local communities. That is partly because big, distant legislatures and bureaucracies are not likely to serve people well if they’re not directly connected to them. And that’s still going to be a problem even if you do find a clever way to circumvent the Constitution’s legal barriers to national education policy. Will the IRS give us freedom? Let’s be clear: Any federal tax-credit scholarship program will be administered by the same IRS that illegally tried to shut down conservative activists not long ago. It will be the IRS deciding which SGOs are worthy of funding and which aren’t. It will be the IRS that audits compliance and sets the terms of participation. I never thought I’d live to see freedom-loving activists demanding to have the future of school choice put into the hands of the IRS. I feel like Rip Van Winkle. What did I miss here? Another reason to keep governance local is that imposing a policy upon a community by force if that community doesn’t regard the policy as just is, in general, a tyrannical thing to do. There are exceptions (you may recall we had a little trouble from 1861 to 1865). But usually, if you can’t persuade New York City to adopt the policies that the people in Oklahoma City want, or vice versa, then they should each be allowed to go their own way. Neither one should be enslaved to the will of the other. I sympathize with educators and activists in states that are unlikely to adopt school choice. A federal tax-credit scholarship program would deliver school choice to them. That’s not a small consideration. But it would also teach everyone around them to view them as enemies and redouble their efforts to shut them down. School-choice advocates in these states would go from being
viewed as misguided to being viewed as devious, backstabbing enemies of the public. In the long term, that wouldn’t be good for school choice. Lately I’ve heard a lot of talk from my conservative friends about how wrong it is when distant, powerful elites who are culturally alienated from the population at large shove laws down our throats that we regard as unjust. The question is, do we dislike that because we would rather it was our distant, powerful elites imposing our preferred laws upon populations from whom we are culturally alienated, and who view those laws as unjust? Or because elites shoving things down people’s throats is inherently wrong, whoever does it?
Is it a good idea to have D.C. control education policy—even if the policy it sets is a good one? Keeping school choice in the states is the wise course. If we fight in a state and lose, as we have before and will again, we can always fight on in other states. In fact, when we’re losing in one state we’re usually winning in several others! However, if we fight a big national battle and lose, which is always a serious possibility, the movement could be set back for a generation. But will it be much better if we fight a big national battle and win? We’ll get a program widely viewed as unjust and illegitimately imposed on the states, one that will be sabotaged both by its own lousy program design and by the deliberate efforts of the IRS bureaucracy to undermine it. The failure of a poorly designed voucher program in Louisiana is now causing the movement some headaches—bad headlines and talking points from opponents. That pain is mitigated by the fact that the overwhelming majority of state programs do work. How much pain would the failure of a national school choice program cause? The big national lesson would be: “See? School choice doesn’t work.” If D.C. wants to clean up the mess in education, it should clean up its own mess—the mess in D.C. The schools in our nation’s capital remain among the worst in the nation despite decades of increased spending and crusading reformers. The only serious glimmer of hope that has actually done some good has been the growth of charter schools and private school choice. Expanding the federal voucher program in D.C. to allow all students and all schools to participate would be an ideal way for D.C. to set a standard for the nation. Imposing school choice on the states, even by the back door of the tax code, is not the way to go. Greg Forster (Ph.D., Yale University) is a Friedman Fellow with EdChoice. He is the author of six books, including John Locke’s Politics of Moral Consensus (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and the co-editor of three books, including John Rawls and Christian Social Engagement: Justice as Unfairness. He has written numerous articles in peer-reviewed academic journals as well as in popular publications such as The Washington Post and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
www.ocpathink.org
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In Higher Education, Tuition Often Does More than Replace Lost Appropriations Oklahoma’s higher education system has taken in much more revenue than what was needed to backfill state cuts.
By Neal McCluskey
No one disputes that the sticker price of college—what schools charge, not necessarily what students end up paying—has for decades been rising at a very fast clip. What analysts disagree about is why. There are many possible explanations, but one that has a lot of adherents is that direct public support for colleges and universities, which is determined primarily by state, and to a lesser extent, local governments, has been in considerable decline. Schools have had to raise prices just to stay at level funding. This explanation has problems. For one, it cannot be applied to private institutions, where prices have risen precipitously over the last 25 years. That said, prices at public four-year institutions and community colleges— especially the former—have risen faster than at private schools. Can these results be explained by declining direct support? As I illustrated in a new paper—with breakdowns of appropriation and tuition-and-fee revenue for all 50 states—changes to direct subsidies are only part of the explanation, and that part varies from state to state. The nearby charts tell the story for Oklahoma. In the aggregate, state and local support for higher education has risen over the last 25 years, and “cuts” mainly appear on a per-pupil basis because enrollment has increased significantly. Even then, for the average state only around 57 percent of annual increases in per pupil tuition and fee revenue covered per student drops in state and local appropriations—a far cry from the notion that colleges have had to raise prices just to keep their heads above water. And a potentially crucial underlying factor may help to explain the per pupil cuts: state policymakers may constrain appropriation increases because they know that aid to students, primarily through the federal government, allows students to pay more.
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PERSPECTIVE // May 2017
Neal McCluskey (Ph.D., George Mason University) is the director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute. McCluskey is the author of the book Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education, and his writings have appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Forbes.
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@OCPAthink
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OCPA trustee Dr. Tom Coburn expresses his appreciation for OCPA chairman emeritus Dr. David Brown at OCPA’s Citizenship Award Dinner on April 4, 2017. Dr. David and Ann Brown were this year’s Citizenship Award recipients.
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State Rep. Jon Echols (R-Oklahoma City) receives the Shear Vision Award from OCPA president Jonathan Small. OCPA presents this award to a government official who demonstrates leadership in restraining the growth of government and making meaningful cuts where needed.
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OCPA chairman Larry Parman (left) shares a lighthearted moment with Dr. David Brown prior to the Citizenship Award Dinner.
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OCPA president Jonathan Small (center) is shown here with 2017 Citizenship Award recipients Dr. David and Ann Brown.
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Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, delivers the keynote address at the 2017 Citizenship Award Dinner.
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State Sen. Greg Treat (R-Edmond) receives the Shear Vision Award from OCPA president Jonathan Small.
www.ocpathink.org
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QUOTE UNQUOTE “In the state's most recently concluded fiscal year, state government revenues declined by approximately 2.5 percent from $18.727 billion to $18.239 billion. ... Despite the 2.5 percent drop in revenue, the state technically spent more money than before. Overall state government spending increased to a record high.” State Rep. Jason Murphey (R-Guthrie), chairman of the Government Modernization Committee in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. “Simply put, the sky is not falling,” he says.
“32 percent.”
“Universities are like riverboat gamblers
The percentage of Americans saying they have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly,” according to the latest Gallup poll. This is the lowest level in Gallup polling history.
and exiled royalty: their desires are never satisfied.” Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University
“Respect for cultural diversity.” Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman, giving one reason why school choice is a good idea. He says early-childhood education programs can and should accommodate the interests of “Orthodox Jews, Mormons, Southern Baptists, you name it.”
“In shelving a modest school choice bill because some Republicans capitulated to education establishment lobbyists, the Republican majority undermined their campaign vows to advance conservative policy and ignored the needs of some of Oklahoma’s neediest children.” The Oklahoman editorial board, commenting March 3 on the demise of ESA legislation this year