United Liberty

If you were a policymaker tasked with running a school system with one of the lowest achievement rates in the country, and someone came along and offered an idea with proven results that costs less, would you give that person the time of day? (We can only hope.)

In their second installment of Reason Saves Cleveland, Nick Gillespie examines Cleveland’s dysfunctional school system, and show methods around the country that actually work.

As Reason explains, “Cleveland’s public schools are failing to prepare students for their futures and as a result, all parents who can afford to have been fleeing to the suburbs for decades. Within Cleveland’s own boundaries, charter schools are booming and delivering quality education at a fraction of the cost of traditional public schools. Does Cleveland have what it takes to fundamentally reform its K-12 education system and become a leader in 21st-century education?”

For the sake of all those children who did not choose to be born into poverty, let us hope it does. Watch:

For those who went to public school, did you ever wonder what that 13 years of education cost the people who were shelling the dough? (By that I mean your parents, your neighbors, and anyone paying taxes.) For those who didn’t go to public school, this still applies to you. Because you subsidized my education. Thanks! (Suckers…)

Anyway, this so-called free schooling actually did cost something. But how much? Well it turns out it probably cost more than the administrators were letting on. My Cato colleague Adam Schaeffer, an education policy expert, examined some of the largest school districts and found that they have been underreporting the actual costs.

And as the title of his new study (“They Spend WHAT?”) lets on, we’re not just talking a few nickels and dimes on pencil expenses. This is some serious taxpayer cash. Before I let him explain it all in the video below, here’s the money quote:

It is impossible to have a public debate about education policy if public schools can’t be straight forward about their spending.

Exactly. Watch:

The National Center for Policy Analysis explains the results of a recent Ball State University study into the effects of the recent minimum wage increase, which the authors say cost 550,000 jobs:

A study of part-time workers monitored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 1999 to 2009 found that raising the minimum wage to its current level of $7.25 during the recent recession caused some businesses to scale back on filling vacant positions or eliminate jobs altogether, says Michael J. Hicks, director of Ball State’s Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER).

Other findings:

• About 67 percent of teenagers and young adult minimum wage workers live in households with incomes at least twice the poverty level (for example $44,000 for a family of four).
• Adult workers toiling at minimum wage have limited skill.
• About two-thirds of all adult minimum wage workers have a high school degree or less.
• One benefit of the minimum wage keeping some of these workers out the labor market is that it forces them to obtain additional education and training in the workforce development network.

According to the study, mostly teenage workers were affected by the hike. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that almost 49% of minimum wage workers were between the ages of 18 and 25.

Minimum wage laws keep new workers from gaining skills in entry level jobs needed to be successful. Lawmakers may mean well when they pass minimum wage laws, but they hurt the very people they intend to “help.”

A heartbreaking story is told over at CNN, where a twelve year old girl found herself in handcuffs and in a police station after showing her affection for her friends:

There was no profanity, no hate. Just the words, “I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 :)” scrawled on the classroom desk with a green marker.

Alexa Gonzalez, an outgoing 12-year-old who likes to dance and draw, expected a lecture or maybe detention for her doodles earlier this month. Instead, the principal of the Junior High School in Forest Hills, New York, called police, and the seventh-grader was taken across the street to the police precinct.

Alexa’s hands were cuffed behind her back, and tears gushed as she was escorted from school in front of teachers and — the worst audience of all for a preadolescent girl — her classmates.

If you’ve noticed more and more cases like this, you’re not hallucinating:

We are arresting them at younger and younger ages [in cases] that used to be covered with a trip to the principal’s office, not sending children to jail,” said Emma Jordan-Simpson, executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund, a national children’s advocacy group.

This all comes as a result of post-Columbine school policies, in which zero tolerance has been placed on disciplinary acts in school. This policy is extremely short-sighted, as it creates a traumatic episode in a very vulnerable period of a child’s life - puberty. I’m not a child psychologist, but I strongly doubt that that sort of trauma is going to make anyone less inclined to violence or aggression in the future.

From Politico comes an overview of First Lady Michelle Obama’s counter-obesity plan:

The first lady is undeterred and describes childhood obesity as an “imminently solvable” problem. Her ambitious plan is designed to improve the nutritional quality of school meals, get children to exercise more, provide healthier, affordable food to rural areas and the inner city and help people make healthier choices.

While there’s alot of good-intention government intervention going on here, of the sort that creates new problems for each one it “solves,” there’s one aspect here that is a common sense proposal.

I went to public schools for the duration of my upbringing. I can say from personal experience that the choice of food is deplorable. It never made any sense why the Seattle Public School District’s exclusive contract with Coca-Cola Corp. resulted in an abundance of soda machines with the closest “healthy” option being the sport drink Powerade. Pressure on companies to put healthier options (which a trip to their corporate website will show are available) in public schools is not unreasonable intrusion. After all, those companies are there with the consent of a public institution.

“As one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, accurately observed more than two centuries ago, ‘[i]f a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.’ This vital link between freedom and education is fast fading in the public consciousness of 21st Century America. A nation uneducated is not and cannot be free, nor will its people know the happiness that comes from liberty.” - Bob Barr

John Nolte at Big Hollywood has a whole new collection of videos of schoolchildren singing the praises of a politician.

Here are two that stand out as particularly egregious to me:

We believe in Barack Obama
He loves you and he loves your mama
We believe in Barack Obama, yeah
With all the change he’s building
Gonna bring hope to the children
We believe in Barack Obama, yeah

Change
That we can believe in
Change
That we can believe in
Change
That we can believe in

We believe in Barack Obama
He loves you and he loves your mama
We believe in Barack Obama, yeah
With all the change he’s building
Gonna bring hope to the children
We believe in Barack Obama, yeah

Change
That we can believe in
Change
That we can believe in
Change
That we can believe in