PA: The Property Tax Problem

AP's Marc Levy reports this week that Pennsylvania's legislature (one of the largest and most expensive ones in the country) is expected this year to once again tackle one of the great third rails of Pennsylvania politics-- property taxes.

This system is part of the mechanism that gives Pennsylvania one of the country's largest funding gaps between rich and poor districts. The state provides around 36.1% of public school funding, putting it around 45th in the nation. That means that local districts depend heavily upon local funding, and that's where the huge inequality slinks in. On the bottom end of the scale we find districts collecting $3,100 in local property tax dollars per student, while on the top end, the figure is around $13,000. Attempts were made in 2016 to fix things, a bit, but Democratic Governor Tom Wolf and the hugely GOP legislature have, well, some issues to sort out.

Levy writes that sponsors are expected to once again introduce House and Senate Bills 76, a bill that died a narrow death in the State Senate back in 2015 (a not-along-party-lines tie was broken by Democratic Lt. Governor Mike Stack), but the GOP thinks the math has changed and this year will be different (that's just the Senate, though-- this could all still tank in the House).

The goal, as usual, is to get rid of property taxes entirely. In this case, the plan is to replace them with increased sales tax and income tax revenue. Income tax would climb from 3.07% up to 4.95 %, while sales tax would jump from the already-hefty 6% to 7%-- and extended to more types of items and services that are not currently taxed at all.

The Property Tax Independence Act has plenty of fans and detractors, because it creates a whole new batch of winners and losers. If the act is going to be revenue neutral (more about this in a second), and property owners are going to pay less, then somebody has to pay more.

Renters, for instance, lose immediately, because their income and sales tax expenses go up immediately. Yes, theoretically, the landlord could reduce the rent costs by subtracting the amount that previously went to pay property taxes, but nothing says he has to.

The proverbial Little Old Lady On a Fixed Income, a person who is invoked with great dismay and concern every time any school district wants to raise taxes, would be a winner. She's retired and has no real taxable income, so the income tax hike means nothing to her. She'll just pay a little bit more at the store.

Rich folks with expensive homes win big. The pro-bill forces actually make this part of their pitch; in their example, a person who used to pay $3,500 a year in property taxes would need "to spend $50,000 annually on newly-taxed products and services" to end up spending that same $3,500, but it's better/worse than that because many of the products and services they buy would be previously-taxed, so cost only increase by 1%. In other words, the bigger and fancier your retirement home, the more unlikely it is that you will ever pay the same amount of tax under the new system.

The act shifts the tax burden for financing schools, shifts it from people who own things to people who work for a living, from the rich to the poor, from the old to the young, from homeowners to everyone else, from corporate property owners to private citizens.

Does it at least improve funding equity in Pennsylvania? Wellll.........

Remember when I said it was supposed to be revenue neutral? If that's the case, then we have a problem. Because the only way the state can distribute the exact same pot of money that was previously collected by the state and local property taxes (about $5.8 billion state dollars plus about $13.7 billion local property tax dollars) is to either

* keep funding for each district exactly as before, split up the $20 billion exactly as we would have, leaving the rich districts rich and the poor districts poor or

* giving more money to the poor districts by reducing the funding to rich districts.

Neither solution is much of a solution. We could get greater equity between districts by NOT being revenue neutral, but gathering a ton more money (estimates run in the billions of dollars)  needed to bring all districts up to the funding level of the best-funded districts, but that would require taxing enough to raise those additional billions of dollars.

Do any of these sound like they'll be terribly popular? They're a hit with some people in some districts, which is why the bill repeatedly draws both bi-partisan support and bi-partisan opposition. Oh, well-- if my local district doesn't like the funding sent out by the state can't they just make up the difference somehow, like raising property-- oh, yeah. The local school board will lose all control over its incoming revenue stream.

That's because all school money would now flow from Harrisburg, which means the distribution of funds will become hugely political, and it will be critical for districts to have Good Friends in the Capital.

Meanwhile, the sales pitch continues to focus on how everybody will pay less, or at least so little more that they'll never know the difference. Which is a pretty thought, but even in post-fact America, you can't have everyone pay less and still end up with the same sized pile of money as before.

As is often the case these days, the problem is real. But the solution will be hard, which means we'll spend a lot of hot air and hard times in Harrisburg before we get anywhere at all. Stay tuned.

A Lesson from China

We're witnessing another lesson in how free market forces work, and how business interests often run contrary to the public interest. And the lesson is coming from China, of all places.

This is a lesson that started with Google, way back in 2006. That was the year that Google set aside the motto "don't be evil" for the more pragmatic "don't be shut out of the enormous Chinese market," and willingly provided the Chinese with a censored version of Google. The official rationale was something along the lines of "they're censoring us anyway," but it seemed more likely that the rationale was "do you have any idea how much money there is to be made, because, damn, it's a lot."

Google pulled out in 2010, over a Chinese attempt to hack gmail and other pieces of Google. That response (Google actually called it "retaliation") was remarkable, and it didn't last. Google is set to re-enter the Chinese market.

Businesses looking to operate in countries with repressive, censorship-prone laws face a question-- do they change their basic mission to follow the repressive local laws, or do they pass up the giant piles of money as a matter of principle?

Google, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the tech giants are dealing with that question and while they consider the moral and ethical considerations of modifying their basic mission so-- look, do you have any idea of how much money there is to be made??

The modifications and concessions come in bits and pieces. What attracted my attention today was Apple's decision to remove the New York Times app from the Chinese Apple store. Because the Chinese don't like the NYT, believe it's violating some local law, and Apple wants to stay in China. So the principle of transparency or free speech or access to the press or just the supposedly bedrock internet principle that information should be spread far and wide-- all of that can go out the window if the corporate access to the highly lucrative Chinese market is threatened.

I have said it repeatedly: the business mindset, the profit motive-- these are not inherently evil things. But the business approach has priorities that are not always in tune with larger social principles. And if a business entity is run by people with no scruples or ethical standards of their own, the problem is even worse.

Businesses will put business first, even ahead of supposedly bedrock social and moral principles. That does not make them evil, but it makes them very bad stewards of the public interest. If we turn schools into businesses, business interests will come ahead of student interests, parent interests, and community interests.

And if you imagine that a business approach somehow frees folks from government control-- well, look back at China. There is no such thing as a free market; all markets operate under whatever rules the government sets for them.

If you believe that allowing a bunch of business-run charter schools to open up and compete will somehow give students a more excellent education, you are kidding yourself (and, perhaps, others). The education-flavored businesses will compete to make money under whatever rules the government subjects them to, and actually educating students will be far, far down on their list of priorities.

Supremes May Decide How Much Education Is Enough

The case of Endrew F. vs. Douglas County School District has finally wended its way to the Supreme Court, and it could have some serious implications for school districts across the country.

Endrew F. is a studentwith autism and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). With the help of an IEP, he attended pre-K through 4th grade in Douglas County Schools out in Colorado (if that sounds familiar, it's because they have been ground zero for some reformy shenanigans, as chronicled in the film Education, Inc.-- but that's unrelated to our story today other than it takes a real bunch of stubborn leaders to get a school district dragged into the highest court in the land like this). Going into fifth grade, Endrew's parents deemed his IEP Not Good Enough, and they placed him in a private school.

Now, the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA-- no, I've never known where the damn E comes from--Correction-- it stands for Education, a word often dropped from some namings, which I should have known) says that if a district can't handle the education of a student with special needs, they have to foot the bill to send the student to some school that can deal. The child has to receive a "free appropriate public education."

The F's, however, apparently chose a Lexus for the child when the district only wanted to pay for a Kia, or maybe a Chevy Cruze. And it is over that business of exactly who is going to pay how much of which bill for Endrew's education that puts the matter in court.

This has, as you might imagine, come up before, and various lower courts have applied a some standards that are both inconsistent and vague. For instance, a couple of years ago, courts in Michigan declared that the state didn't have to get students an education-- just spend money on something called education, whether it worked or not. Here Joseph R. Smith explains the central issue of Endrew in a Denver Post op-ed:

The lower federal courts basically agree that the test should turn on how much the student benefits.  But the agreement ends there. Some federal courts, including those in Colorado, hold that any benefit whatsoever — anything “more than de minimis” — is enough to make an education appropriate.  Other federal courts hold that an education must be “meaningful” in order to be appropriate.

Endrew's private school reportedly helped him across the board with learning both how to do math and how to manage himself for better socialization. Douglas County Schools said, "That was all luxury gravy. He was getting de minimis here, so no extra help was necessary." "De minimis" is of course Latin for "the least we can get away with" (e.g. my students would like to know de minimis number of pages required for their paper). As long as Endrew was making any gains at all, no matter how unspeakably tiny, Douglas argues they were meeting their obligation under the law and any additional gains that Endrew or his parents aspired to are a luxury for which the taxpayers of Douglass should not have to foot the bill.

So now we have a court case that will decide what "the least we can get away with" means for schools charged with providing education for students with special needs. And the Supremes are going to hear it.

The case has attracted some attention. Check out the list of "amici curiae" briefs (Latin for "I think this case might end up affecting me or my clients, so I'd like the chance to shoot off my mouth too, just in case the court decides to make its decision based on a semi-public vote") and you can see how many folks are concerned. The National Association of State Directors of Special Education. Former USED Officials. Advocates for Children of New York. Coalition of Texans with Disabilities. Delaware. The NEA. National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools. Many, many people have opinions about this case.

The case made its way to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, where the court found that Douglas County's idea of the bare minimum was appropriate. (You can find a more thorough and legally run-down here.) The F's swung for the fences and appealed to the Supremes in December of 2015 (I don't know who the F's are, but they clearly have some rich and/or connected friends). After a few delays, it looks like the court might hear arguments on January 11, 2017 (presumably before Herr Trump can install Brittney Spears or David Duke as the ninth justice).

It will be interesting to see how this lands. On the one hand, school districts don't want to have to shell out boatloads of money for fancy frills for students with special needs. On the other hand, when school districts are defining "actual education" as fancy frills, we have a problem. As Smith notes, this is a case that can unite leftie and righties behind the same outcome even if for different reasons-- lefties want to see the education rights of the most vulnerable students protected, and righties want to see parental options protected.

Arguably any decision will let a whole lot of school districts know what, exactly, the law expects of them (at least until our Blessed Leaders decide to "improve" it. Remember that our outgoing administration believed that de minimus was basically to take students with special needs and just, you know, expect real hard.

No matter what side you're on, we're looking at the prospect of the Supreme Court, such as it is at the moment, making a decision about just how much education students with special needs are entitled to-- and from there, it's just a short hop to ruling how much education any student is entitled to. And that is a prospect about which I am exceedingly unexcited, though I suppose, since the Executive and Legislative branches have both tried to micro-manage US education-- why shouldn't the Judicial branch take a shot at it. It's de minimis they can do.

Six Reasons To Oppose Betsy DeVos

Senate hearings on Herr Trump's cabinet picks are coming up soon, and you should be calling your Senator. There are many good reasons for opposing Betsy DeVos as a Secretary of Education.

1) No experience with public education.

This is not like appointing someone to the post of Attorney General who is not a lawyer-- this is like appointing someone Attorney General who has never been to court. DeVos grew up in private school, sent her kids to private school, and has spent her adult life advocating for private schools. She has literally no first hand knowledge of how the public education system works, for better or worse.


2) No organizational experience.

DeVos's experience is strictly in philanthropic advocacy, a sort of checkbook lobbying that has never required her to work with people with whom she disagrees. As Secretary of Education, she will need to work with governors, congresspersons, and the sprawling USED staff, many of whom are going to disagree with her in matters of policy and philosophy. As a philanthropic advocate, she has been able to surround herself with people who are like-minded and/or beholden to her. That would not be her situation as Secretary; she would have to build coalitions, reach compromise, earne trust and cooperation, and all without the use of her checkbook. One of the great criticisms of Arne Duncan was that he could not play well with Congress, instead insisting on dictating as if he were The Boss. Everything in DeVos's background, including her dismissal of both political parties as failures, suggests that she would be even worse.

3) No administrative experience.

DeVos has never run an organization or corporation close to the size of the Department of Education. The department has 5,000 employees and oversees a budget of around $73 billion. Windquest, the energy investment she runs with her husband, has ten employees with revenue around $15 million.Her husband helped fund the 2012 Broadway production Scandalous: The Life and Trials of Aimee Semple McPherson, which closed after twenty-nine days. She was chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party for four years, and she has been a successful fund-raiser for many GOP candidates, as witnessed by her group American Federation for Children, a group that exists primarily as a funnel for dark money.  But she has never run a company and never managed a business. Given her belief that "government sucks," it seems unlikely that she will be a quick study in how to manage a sprawling government department-- particularly if she has manage some combination of holdovers from previous administrations and newbies just learning the ropes.

4) Vouchers are bad news for everybody.

Whether we are talking about the traditional school vouchers that DeVos has long advocated for, or newer Education Savings Accounts, there is much for both the left and the right to fear. For the left, vouchers represent a financial attack on public schools. The first moment vouchers go into effect, before a single child leaves a public school, millions of tax dollars will go out of the public system and into private schools. For the right, vouchers are a trojan horse. Where government money goes, government regulations follow. Maybe not today-- but some day, inevitably, every school that accepts federal education money will feel the hand of federal regulation.

5) Nobody voted for Jeb Bush or the Common Core

DeVos is a long-time supporter of Jeb Bush and a partner in his Foundation for Excellence in Education, one of the leading think tanks for Common Core promotion. Nobody was fooled when Candidate Jeb tried to disown the Core, and nobody on either the left or the right should be fooled when DeVos does the same. She would have made a great Bush USED pick, but as you may recall, Jeb Bush didn't win much of anything or anyone in his sad Presidential campaign. We didn't elect Bush or his failed education policies-- why should we get a cabinet pick that is just what he would have wanted?

6) Her track record is terrible.

DeVos has used her family's financial muscle to push Detroit schools to try most of her favorite, favored reform ideas, and the result has been a disaster. The big-money reformers have abandoned it, and Doug Harris, who has done extensive research in New Orleans (the other haven for educational disaster capitalism)  where he finds the results of a total charter conversion "impressive"-- that Doug Harris declares DeVosified Detroit an educational disaster area.  DeVos's educational ideas have been field-tested, and they have failed.

Contact your Senator-- by email, letter, or (best of all) phone. Make sure they understand that this is a mistake.

Yes, a candidate who had positives in place of DeVos's negatives could still be a terrible Secretary of Education. There is no guarantee that another candidate with better qualifications would not be terrible; however, someone whose qualification deficit is this large certainly will be terrible.

It is hard to imagine a worse choice than Betsy DeVos. Make sure your Senator hears that, many times.

Test Prep Abroad

Because I search for a wide assortment of education-related stuff on line, the cookie-bot dance often brings me strange, new advertisements. Like a link to Scoregetter.com, an test prep outfit in Nungambakka, Chennai, which is on the southwest side of India. Just up the street from Pizza Hut.

Right there in the world.

Just up the street from Pizza Hut

I wish I had saved their ad, but some copy from their website gives you a taste of Scoregetter's almost-but-not-quite-there appeal:

A student, for us, is not a client, but a chance to showcase our proven ability all over again. We have, over the years, understood what it takes for students to achieve a good score.

Scoregetters will help you prep for any of the major standardized tests in Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, and the USA. Germany's appeal is "zero tuition fees" while New Zealand "has a global recognition as a contributor of excellent education. It has a progressive education system with many state of the art conveniences." So there's that. The USA is, of course, the "dream destination for higher studies."

And if that sounds appealing, you can see about opening a ScoreGetter franchise of your own.

Of course, there are many folks working the same industry. In fact, Chennai also hosts the unfortunately named CrackSAT. There is no indication on their website, where, exactly, the crack is involved, not even on their FAQ page where we learn that the SAT "is a test that has to be taken for admission into any undergraduate degree Program in America. SAT is an aptitude test administered by The College Board in order to have a standardized format that measures the skill sets required for entering a college."

Also, if you're wondering about taking the ACT, CrackSAT says "The basic premise on which the test must be chosen is the requirement of the college that the student plans to apply to."

None of this is "All your base are belong to us," and my point here is not to pick on non-native English speakers. It's just one more kind of sad face of the test prep industry.

That industry goes back away, with Stanley Kaplan founding his test tutoring company in 1938 (in his parents' basement in Brooklyn), when he was nineteen years old. Kaplan was rejected by medical schools because he was Jewish; he never forgot. Kaplan was an outsider beating on the SAT door for decades until the 1980s when the Federal Trade Commission itself established that Kaplan really could raise scores; soon after, the SAT folks invited him to come speak. Why the change of heart? Perhaps they realized that SAT test prep was hope, and the more people had hope, the more people would take the test. Fun fact: Kaplan was more recently been bought by Washington Post, Inc, for whom they were a huge money maker.

Reuters has covered at considerable length how China's massive test prep industry has pushed the SAT folks hard with security assaults. New Orient is just one of the huge companies making a bundle by cracking the SAT code and leaking test materials and just generally committing fraud.

None of this should be a surprise. When you reduce the process of determining whether or not someone has a future as a college student and has the potential to grow and develop in an environment of higher learning while maturing as both a person and a scholar-- when you reduce all that to a single score churned out by a mass-produced test, it seems inevitable that people will crop up who are more focused on gaming that single score. No test prep-- domestic or foreign-- offers to make okay students into better students, to make them wiser, smarter, or more packed with potential. They all just promise to get a better score. It's just a little more obvious when the company can't come up with the smooth native-English polish and spin of American marketing.

That is changing. One of the big dogs (if not the biggest) in international US test prep is Veritas Prep, a company founded in 2002 by two Yale grads who hatched the plan in their enterpreneurial planning class. Veritas is now in twenty-two countries, prepping for every under grad and grad school test an aspiring US-bound student could need to pass. Their SAT prep is aimed at students who want to be in the top 10%, and their selling point is a raft of tutors who are almost all members of the SAT perfect score club. For just $5,400, you can have 36 hours of their time and attention.

You may be reading this and thinking, "Yeah. So?" And I get that-- we have become so fully adjusted to the notion that a single standardized test should somehow be the arbiter of a student's future worth, to the point that we have made the SAT one of the gatekeepers to entering this country. How did we become so resolutely focused on the wrong thing that we have managed to export our twisted vision across the globe, like bad, mass-produced pizza.

The Conservative Argument Against DeVos

It's not just progressives who have been up in arms about the nomination of Betsy DeVos to the post of Secretary of Education. The same network of conservative parent activists that raised an effective fuss over Common Core are exceedingly unpleased about the big-money donor and lobbyist being given the reins for education. The pressure to reject DeVos won't be coming just from the left and it won't be landing on Democratic senators.

The calls started with petitions like this one, calling for Bill Evers or Larry Arnn or Sandra Stotsky as Secretary of Education. And demanding that the new USED Secretary be a warrior against Common Core.

That promised warrior is not, of course, what folks got.

Here's Joy Pullman (The Federalist) at Conservative Review hitting the ground running with the reasons that DeVos is a bad pick.

First and repeatedly foremost in conservative circles is DeVos' deep love of the Common Core. Plenty of people remain unfooled by DeVos' attempted backtrack. DeVos would have been a perfect Secretary of Education pick for Jeb Bush, with whom she has a long history of partnering and contributing to his favorite policies. And as Pullman indicates, the anti-Common-Core parent network could react to DeVos quickly because they already knew her name, having come up against her money and her astro-turfed groups and her political connections in many of the states where the standards battle raged.

Christian conservative mom Jenni White (Reclaim Oklahoma Parent Empowerment) parses this quote form the DeVos website:

I do support high standards, strong accountability, and local control. When Governors such as John Engler, Mike Huckabee, and Mike Pence were driving the conversation on voluntary high standards driven by local voices, it all made sense.

White replies:

The first sentence contains the insidious, using-buzzwords-to-make-sure-I-get-everyone-from-every-ed-camp-into-mine, rhetorical nonsense. You simply can't have "high standards" and "strong accountability" at the federal level and get LOCAL CONTROL. You just can't. That sentence alone should be deadly in the confirmation hearings for Mrs. DeVos.

That and guys like Mike Huckabee are not exactly hard critics of the Core.

White's raising of the local control issue is also a repeated conservative theme. I have waited for decades to see more conservatives get this-- you cannot have government money without government strings, and vouchers stand to be the gold-covered trojan horse that brings government regulation to private and religious schools across this country. Here's how White puts it:

The term "school choice" - like the term "education reform" - means something different to everyone, but usually encompasses the idea that a benevolent federal dictatorship should 'allow' parents to move from one education facility to another (charter schools), hopefully dragging along public money (vouchers), in order to provide their children with a better education than that offered by their failing district school.

The local control issue goes hand in hand with the issue of purchased policy. DeVos is right in there with guys like Bill Gates and Jeb Bush in using her personal fortune to do an end run around the democratic process-- in particular to turn education into a worker training program for their particular private concerns.

Then there is the whole attitude issue. Sandra Stotsky herself bemoans the lack of parent voices in the ongoing discussions about education. And here's Pullman again:

The DeVos family are part of the new-money ruling elite who look down their noses at “rubes” like Heather Crossin [Hoosiers Against Common Core], who do things like oppose Common Core and vote for Donald Trump. These are not the kind of people to whom Trump promised Americans he’d delegate our power.

Indeed, conservatives, like progressives, can recognize the problem with DeVos's utter lack of public school experience.

Bottom line: Senators should be hearing objections to DeVos from across the perspective, and when you are calling your senator (there is no if-- you should be doing it, and soon, and often), you can take into account what sort of Senator you are calling. Your GOP senator needs to hear that DeVos's nomination breaks Trump's promise to attack Common Core and to get local control back to school districts. Your GOP senator needs to hear that you are not fooled by DeVos's attempt to pretend she's not a long-time Common Core supporter.

As was the case back in the days when Common Core was being shoved down our collective throats, the DeVos nomination can bring together folks with different agendas (Pullman, for instance, would like the Department of Education to go away entirely). It's rare that Presidential cabinet picks are axed, but we've been saying lots of "it's rare..." sentences lately, and with the Democrats planning to make hearings challenging for DeVos and seven other proposed Trumpistan mini-czars, at a very minimum, the new administration could be forced to burn some political capital to get their choice in office. Who knows-- conservative anti-Common Core moms were under-estimated before.

ICYMI: Kicking Off the Year

Let's get ready for another round. Remember to share the pieces that speak to you-- amplifying voices is the very least we can do.

The Great Unwinding of Public Education

One of the better explanations of what has happened in Detroit and how Betsy DeVos shares blame for it.

Carolina Coup and the Fight for Public Education

Jeff Bryant does a great job of connecting the dots between North Carolina's history with education and Jim Crow and the current GOP attempt at a coup.

The Attacks on Teacher Tenure Still Don't Make Sense

Mark Weber (Jersey Jazzman) has been on a roll lately. Here's the news on campbell Brown's most recent attack on teacher tenure, and why it's just as senseless as the last.

Teacher in a Strange Land 2016 Retrospective

There are plenty of "best blogs of the year" lists out there, and they are all a great chance to get a quick feel for that blogger's work. But this recap of the year from Nancy Flanagan might be my favorite.

3 Simple Ideas Every Educator Should Work on in 2017

Okay, so Peter DeWitt cheats a bit here (with sub-divisions there are more than three ideas) but it's a good list to check out and consider as we renew for the new year.

The Whole Child

Jamaal Bowman with an impassioned, articulate call to educate the whole child, even in these trying times. This is the piece to read to get yourself ready to leap back into it.