School Choice--On the Front Lines

What do you think about this 16 year old kid, Rontrell Matthews, in Johns Island, South Carolina?  He turned up last summer at the doors of Capers Preparatory Christian Academy with $32.86 earned from his job at Subway.  He wanted to buy his way out of his failing public school, as Brendan Miniter reports.

Founded in 2003 by Faye Brown, a 55-year-old retired public school teacher, Capers is one of a handful of "independent schools" that serve the state’s rural poor. It operates out of rented office space, has a total of 42 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, and makes do on an annual budget of about $160,000 a year. Nearly all of its equipment—desks, books and the eight iMacs in its computer lab—were donated to the school.

Now let’s see.  What are we talking about in the cost per student department? With 42 students and $160,000 budget, that makes $3,809 per student.

Yes, but what about the results?  Surely you must be joking, Mr. Feynman.  Nobody talks about outcomes in the education arena.  Do you imagine that education is like a business, where people insist: “Does it pay?”

Yes, but we are talking about private education, not sacramental public education.  Although nobody would think of raising the question of outcomes and profit in a church of public education, Capers is different.  It is a private academy.  So outcomes do matter.  After all, the people sending students to Capers—and in the case of Rontrell Matthews, sending themselves—are spending their own money.  They expect results.

The school places a heavy emphasis on reading, writing and math. As a result the school’s average SAT score, 1150, is 164 points above the state average, and this year the school expects every one of its graduates to go on to college. St. Johns High School, the public school these students would be attending if not for Capers, has an average SAT score of 788.

So that would make the state’s SAT average a rather dismal 986.

It seems that things never change.  It was about 140 years ago that the young Booker T. Washington traveled half way across the Old South in search of an education.  And you know what happened to him.

In those days it was white conservative racists that were preventing young black men from getting an education.  Today it is white liberal racists that are standing in the school house door.  What’s the difference?

Bush: Chavez's Economic Model Leads to Poverty

It shouldn’t need to be said, of course.  It ought to be the common knowledge of every street urchin in the Third World.  Government control of the economy leads to poverty.

Here’s what Bush actually said on his Latin American tour, according to AFP:

"I strongly believe that government-run industry is inefficient and will lead to more poverty," Bush replied to a question on Chavez’s economic model, which includes nationalizations and muscular state intervention.

"So the United States brings a message of open markets and open government to the region," he said.

The question is: Why would anyone ask such a question?  It’s a matter of the science.  We know that politically-run enterprise doesn’t work.  It’s been tried again and again, and it never works.  In fact it was tried repeatedly in scientifically-designed nation-state experiments, a privilege rarely extended to social scientists.  The results were repeatable.  And government-run industry failed, every time it was tried.

The answer is: Power.  People who seek political power are people who are practitioners of power.  Power is what they understand; power is what they do; power is what they are good at.  And, whatever else he may be, President Chavez of Venezuela is certainly good at a crude, thug-dictator kind of power.

Of course, it is not just general economic policy where the inefficiency of government-run industry appears.  As Arnold Kling writes in “The Political Economy of Alternative Energy,” if you take a look at the proposals of the global warming crowd, it is all about privilege, subsidy, and rent-seeking, with Al Gore as chief rent-seeker with his peculiar carbon-offset company. If the global-warming enthusiasts succeed in implementing their agenda, Al Gore will make a lot of money with his Generation Investment Management LLP.

The most important, inconvenient truth about energy policy is that there is no justification for a subsidy for good energy. Subsidies for wind farms, solar energy, ethanol, and so forth, whether they come from government "energy policy" or personal carbon offsets, are pure pork.

“Pork,” of course, is a polite term for “rent-seeking,” itself a polite term for political power.  And political power is a polite term for force.

How About An Apology For "Fraudulent Education?"

The two legislative chambers of the Commonwealth of Virginia have recently passed an apology for slavery, “after 400 years,”writes the British Guardian.

“Isn’t that nice,”writes Walter Williams, a descendant of slaves.  Now that we are in the apology business how about apologies for the millions killed by the Soviet Union, by Mao’s China, and so on?

And more to the point, how about getting a bit closer to home, apologizing for the mess in Virginia?

Did you know, for instance, that Richmond, Virginia, is “the city with the third-highest murder rate in the nation, according to a 2005 FBI report?”

Did you know that in Virginia:

black education is a disgrace. In 2003, 51 percent of black eighth-graders scored below basic; 49 percent at or above basic; of these, only 11 percent scored proficient.

“Below basic” means what it seems to mean.  Illiterate.

As a descendant of slaves, Williams reckons that the apology for slavery is a “cheap insult.”

The next time the Virginia General Assembly gets into an apologetic mood and wants to pass another resolution aimed at its black citizens, here are my suggestions: The Commonwealth of Virginia apologizes to its black citizens for not protecting them from criminals who prey upon them and make their lives a daily nightmare. The Commonwealth also apologizes for our government-sanctioned school system that delivers fraudulent education, thereby consigning many of its black citizens to the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

Now we’re talking. 

Newt's Ideas at Cooper Union

Years ago in the 1990s a political cartoonist drew a memorable line of filing cabinets, each drawer marked "Newt’s Ideas."  Way out on the end was a drawer marked "Newt’s Good Ideas."  At least the good ideas were on the right end of the filing cabinets.

But of course, anyone with good ideas will be found to have generated plenty of ordinary ideas.  It’s like the salespeople say: Each No is one step closer to Yes.

Former House Speker Newt Gingrich’s latest idea is one-on-one debates between presidential candidates: half hour speeches from each candidate and 30 minutes for questions.  No journalists, just a time keeper.  He tried out the format in a debate with former NY Governor Cuomo on February 27, 2007 at the Cooper Union in New York City, as reported in the New York Times by Eleanor Stables.

It’s obvious why Newt likes the idea.  It’s a good format for a candidate with a lot of serious ideas. Like Newt.  If you watch the Cooper Union event here you see Newt in complete command.  He hits his marks; he gets the ideas out that he wants; he illustrates his points with interesting anecdotes; he worries for his grandchildren; and he finishes on time.  Newt was all about the problems of today and a vision of hope for the future.

In comparison Mario Cuomo spent a lot of time talking about the perfidy of Republican tax cuts of twenty years ago, and more money for health, education, and welfare.  He ran over his time, and didn’t have any compelling prescription for the future.

The debate showed indirectly that politicians don’t just come up with political ideas out of thin air.  It takes a lot of work to assemble and shape up a set of ten point plans.  Without the spur of an election campaign, politicians just sit around rehashing the past.  Newt’s running, so he’s got ideas.  Cuomo isn’t, so he’s just dusting off old ideas and current partisan talking points.

What about Newt’s ideas?  He is right down the middle on the current conservative agenda. 

• He wants reform of health care so that people can shop for prices. He talks of the difference between a colonoscopy for $5,700 in the Northeast and $3,300 in Salt Lake City. 
• He wants reform of Social Security so that we can do something about the main difference between the rich and the poor.  The rich have investments and the magic of compound interest.  So let’s have a Social Security that puts real investments and real compound interest to work for poor people. 
• On the War on Terror Newt favors creating trouble for Iran and North Korea.  It is passing strange, he seems to think, that the one refinery in Iran that supplies gasoline hasn’t yet been sabotaged.  And it would be a good idea to fund smugglers to make things difficult for the government of North Korea instead of giving food to the government of that nation.

Michael Novak on the Recent Atheist Books

What are we to think about the recent apologia for atheism?  We mean Richard Dawkins’  The God Delusion, Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation, and Daniel C. Dennett’s Breaking the Spell.  How does a believer deal with these withering critiques of religion? Michael Novak, RMC Chappie, has crack at answering them in National Review. 

He uses his daughter to make his strongest argument.  She went off to university at Duke as an atheist, but the professors there cured her of it. 

What got to her most was the affectation of professors pretending that everything is ultimately absurd, while in more proximate matters putting all their trust in science, rationality, and mathematical calculation.

 It’s an interesting paradox, isn’t it?  You do your research and your science with an admirable faith in reason.  But you believe the world is ultimately absurd.  What do you call that?  Religion?

Anyway, Novak’s daughter now calls herself an  “agno-theist.”

There’s a lot more, including a quick Apology for Christianity in four parts:

1. A Theology of the Absurd (to counter the Duke professors)
2. The Burden of Sin (you know, the things you know you shouldn’t do)
3. The Bright Golden Thread of Human History
4. The Point of the Cosmos is Friendship

Atheists like Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett are all very well, and they are excellent fellows, writes Novak.

To be sure, some individual atheists “of a peculiar character” and academic distinction, brought up in habits inculcated by the religious cultures of the past, can go on for two or three generations living in ways hard to distinguish from those of unassuming Christians and Jews. These individuals continue to be honest, compassionate, committed to the equality of all, and firm believers in “progress” and “brotherhood,” long after they repudiate the original religious justification for this particular list of virtues. But sooner or later a generation may come along that takes the metaphysics of atheism with deadly seriousness. This was the fate of a highly cultivated nation in the Europe of our time.

He means Germany, for those of you who are historically challenged. 

And in Britain, close by the spires of Oxford where Professor Dawkins lives and works, there are plenty of people taking the metaphysics of atheism seriously.

It’s all very well for the academic elite to be pleasantly aware of the absurdity of life.  But for most of us, the strain is intolerable.  We must know that our life on earth has a purpose.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

Democrats and Social Security -- And Americans

Speaker Pelosi made much of her grandchildren at the opening of the new Congress: “We’re here for the children,” she said.

That is appropriate, for as Carrie Lukas writes, the big government programs are a kind of compact between Americans and their grandchildren.  “Policymakers should evaluate policies based on how they affect future generations.”

Yet politicians — Pelosi herself chief among them — have viewed Social Security as a convenient political weapon, not a problem to be solved. In 2005, when the president launched his effort to place Social Security on firmer financial footing, then Minority Leader Pelosi... sought to squelch debate and use the issue for political leverage... So much for thinking about the children.

Social Security is based on the same premise as the defined-benefit pensions at big corporations.   These programs are based on the idea that there will always be money somewhere out there in the future to pay the pensions.

The corporate defined-benefit programs are now about defunct.  Because it turned out that although General Motors looked as though it would rule the world forever back in 1950 it turned out that it didn’t.

The same thing is going to happen to Social Security.  The only question is: How is it going to play out?  Will the senior citizens grind their grandchildren into the dirt forcing them to pay taxes to support them?  Or will the grandchildren rebel?

And of course, the Social Security problem is minor compared to the Medicare problem.

The interesting thing about this developing train-wreck is that the folks who have represented themselves to the world for over a century as the very incarnation of care and compassion are the very people who are proposing to turn the screws on the grandchildren.

It is cruel and heartless to force young couples struggling to start families to support an older, richer generation, to keep them in their empty homes, to supply them with heroic medical care, while young families go without.

As a 60-year-old, I regard this coming injustice with outrage.  We baby-boomers should not be a dead weight upon the youngsters coming up.  If there is help to be given it should be to the young strugglers, not to the old reprobates.

Someday soon, we conservatives will be called upon to clean up this mess.  We will have to make a decent provision for the older people who listened to the Democrats and believed that they could live a bump-on-a-log life and expect the government to take care of them.  Yet we must also right the injustice and render justice to the young people and their young families. 

It won’t be fun. 

“”

MSM Soft-pedals ACLU Child Porn Suspect

Child porn is a pretty disgusting subject.  It involves the depiction of the rape of children.  But the American Civil Liberties Union has been active in opposing the installation of porn filters in public library filters.  Good for them.

So much for the First Amendment.  But Bill O’Reilly asks:

How many of you have heard of Charles Rust-Tierney?

 You haven’t?  Well maybe you remember this, as quoted by O’Reilly:

On Dec. 1, 1998, Tierney issued this statement: "Recognizing that individuals will continue to behave responsibly and appropriately while in the library, the default should be maximum, unrestricted access to the valuable resources of the Internet."

Charles Rust-Tierney is a former ACLU chapter president.

On February 24, 2007 the Washington Post published this teensy-weensy Virginia Roundup, headlined “Ex-ACLU Head Seized in Porn Case.”

An Arlington County youth sports coach and former ACLU chapter president was arrested on child pornography charges by federal agents who accused him of viewing Web sites filled with explicit images of pre-pubescent girls.

Charles Rust-Tierney, 51, of Arlington was charged with receipt and possession of child pornography. He was ordered detained pending a preliminary hearing Wednesday. Prosecutors said Rust-Tierney coaches various youth sports teams in and around Arlington. A 2002 Virginia ACLU newsletter identified him as the group’s president.

So far, none of the MSM has picked up the story.  Conservatives, of course, are all over it now that O’Reilly has broken it wide open.

Now imagine that this youth sports coach was not a “former ACLU chapter president” but a “fundamentalist” Christian minister.

Exactly.  The arrest report would not be buried on page B05.

Here’s an idea.  We ought to hold our own guys to a higher standard than the other guys.  Just an idea.