This morning Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke to the NAACP — not a group traditionally friendly to GOP pols — and made school choice a focus of his address. It was a politically smart message to deliver (though, importantly, federal vouchers outside of DC would be unconstitutional). School choice is very popular with African-Americans, who are often saddled with the worst public schools. Indeed, according to a 2011 Education Next poll, 50 percent or more of African-Americans either “completely” or “somewhat” favor vouchers for students to attend private schools, versus just 23 percent or fewer who oppose the idea. (The results depend a bit on question wording). When presented with tax credits for individual and corporate donations for private school scholarships, “somewhat” or “complete” support hits 57 percent.

It’s a not-so-well-kept secret that the strongest opposition to school choice comes not from the people it would most directly benefit, but the wealthier “soccer mom” demographic that doesn’t seem to realize that though they may like their public schools, not everyone can afford to choose a school by buying a house. Of course that’s an incredibly inefficient way for anyone to choose a school, but it goes from an efficiency afterthought to a life-altering problem when you can’t get your child into a place that is safe and able to maximize his or her potential.

Many Americans don’t grasp that. Most African-Americans do.

Just as some public schooling defenders like to caricature their opponents as self-important, money-grubbing “corporate reformers” or malevolent destroyers of “public education,” there is a tendency on the other side to attack teachers unions as the root of all evil. They aren’t. They are a natural symptom of a government monopoly that, because it is a monopoly, strongly favors the monopolization of labor. One employer, one employee representative.

Unless someone has compelling evidence to the contrary—I’ve never seen any—teacher union officials and members are no different than anyone else: they are simply trying to get the best deals for themselves. What separates them from non-unionized workers—and unionized workers in the private sector—is not their desires, but that their employment comes from a system into which “customers” must pay, and which is controlled completely by politics. Public-sector unions have big advantages in politics, where organization, numbers, and motivation—millions of people advocating for their very livelihoods—translate into power.

That brings us to today’s Wall Street Journal piece on union political spending. That spending is huge, and manifested in far more ways than contributions to candidates. Between 2005 and 2011 the Journal estimates unions spent $3.3 billion on political activities, which beyond candidate donations included everything from trying to persuade members to vote a certain way, to supplying bratwursts to demonstrators in Wisconsin.

There would be no major freedom issue if all of this were spending by unions with completely voluntary membership, and which operated in truly free markets. There would, then, be no compelled support of politicking. But this is absolutely not the case when it comes to teachers unions and other public sector unions.

For one thing, teachers often are, for all intents and purposes, forced to join unions as a condition of employment, even when they are required to “just” pay big “agency fees” to cover collective bargaining. Moreover, the ultimately taxpayer-supplied dues money is used to get more dough out of taxpayers who have no choice but to be schools’ “customers.” And we’re not talking pocket change here: according to the Journal’s numbers, between 2005 and 2011 the National Education Association spent $239 million on politics and lobbying, and the American Federation of Teachers spent $138 million. And that doesn’t include the outlays of all their state and local affiliates.

Despite those power-wielding expenditures, the members and leaders of teachers unions still aren’t evil. They are normal, self-interested folks. The effects of their actions, however, are to compel people to fund political speech and activities against their will, and often against their personal interests. But we shouldn’t attack unions for that. We must attack the government schooling monopoly.

There’s an interesting convergence in the news this morning, with Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal and an article in the New York Times tackling President Obama’s trampling of the separation of powers. Strassel is dubbing Obama’s an “imperial presidency,” and while the Times offers a straight news piece about No Child Left Behind waivers, it too features a strong whiff of presidential imperialism:

Congress has tried and failed repeatedly to reauthorize the education law over the past five years because Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on an appropriate role for the federal government in education. And so, in the heat of an election year, the Obama administration has maneuvered around Congress, using the waivers to advance its own education agenda.

It’s easy and fun, of course, to cry imperialism when it’s the other guy’s party in power, and as Strassel points out many on the left employed such condemnation—not without cause—against George W. Bush. But that’s precisely the problem: Liberals and conservatives both shunt aside the Constitution when it serves their purposes, but act shocked—shocked!—when the feds or the president employ unconstitutional power to do things they don’t like.

Well guess what, fickle friends of the Constitution: You all righteously shut down the containment unit. You’re all at fault for the demons running rampant.

There’s no better example of this than education, an area over which no federal authority exists yet politicians of both parties have “helped the children” whenever they’ve felt they could get what they wanted. A heavily Democratic Congress and White House gave us the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act—liberals love spending money on schools—and conservatives decried the wasting of taxpayer dough. With NCLB, a largely Republican Congress and White House escalated federal control—conservatives love being seen as tough guys who impose “accountability”—and many on the left became apoplectic. Now President Obama is handing out NCLB waivers contingent on states adopting his favored reforms, and many on the right are rhetorical constitutionalists again.

Here’s the lesson: The next time the guy you despise does something you don’t like, remember when you’ve looked the other way as the Constitution was shoved in a drawer, or torn up, in pursuit of what you wanted. Remember, and heap blame on yourself, because it is your fault.

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After having my brain twisted into a pretzel reading yesterday’s ObamaCare decision, I was as disturbed as anyone. I mean, I had spent most of my life thinking I knew the difference between a “penalty” and a “tax,” and it turns out I was just fooling myself. Not to get too existentialist about this, but it has really made me question whether anything I think is real truly is.

Anyway, I eventually discovered what might be a small silver lining in the ruling, at least for education: the Medicaid section might have begun to place some, very nebulous, boundary on the ability of the federal government to bribe states into adopting federal rules. That has been the primary mode by which Washington has taken over elementary and secondary education—think No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind waivers—and this ruling says there is a constitutional limit to what the federal government can do to coerce state action though spending.

Essentially, whether or not Spending Clause coercion is unconstitutional depends on whether it constitutes “undue influence” on states. For Chief Justice Roberts, that line was crossed when the Feds changed the rules for Medicaid and threatened states with the loss of all their funding if they didn’t follow the new strictures.

Obviously this doesn’t give us anything approaching a bright line on the limits to Spending Clause use. Such a limit surely can be found—no spending is allowed not connected to one of the specific, enumerated powers given to Washington by the Constitution—but Roberts writes that “Congress can use [Spending Clause] power to implement federal policy it could not impose directly under the enumerated powers.”

So why bother with enumerated powers? Got me…

Addressing education directly, the conservative justices noted that compared to Medicaid, federal education funding is a relatively small share of total spending, casting doubt on how applicable the ruling might be. In contrast, it was very gratifying to see those justices make a point I’ve made repeatedly, especially when discussing the absurd assertion that adopting national curriculum standards has been voluntary. Even if adoption were technically voluntary for states, taxpayers in those states have had no choice about paying the taxes that fund multi-billion-dollar carrots such as Race to the Top. Indeed, the conservatives write, were a state to fail to meet conditions attached to Spending Clause bucks, not only would it lose access to federal funds, it would likely have to raise its own taxes to make up for the shortfall, taxes that “would come on top of federal taxes already paid by the State’s citizens” for the spurned federal program.

The teensy bit of good news out of this ruling is that there is some limit to how coercive Washington can be under the Spending Clause, the clause that has been the linchpin of federal education policy. Unfortunately, the new problem is that were the Spending Clause avenue eventually cut off, Congress could probably just threaten the residents of recalcitrant states with some sort of financial penalty…er…tax. I mean, penalty…

Oh, my existentialist crisis!

Today, the New Hampshire House and Senate took a stand for choice and freedom in education. Both bodies mustered an overwhelming 69-percent super-majority in favor of the School Choice Scholarship Act, over-riding the Governor’s veto.

This is by far the largest margin of victory ever secured for a new private school choice program.

The law is path-breaking, supporting for the first time in the nation a family’s choice to home school their child.

The law protects independence and innovation in private education, imposing no new restrictions on private or home schools, because the lawmakers understand that direct accountability to parents and taxpayers is the most effective kind of accountability.

The program allows up to 30 percent of the credit funds in the first year (more in subsequent years) to support children who are already in private school, but need assistance in order to remain there.

And after the first two years, the program can expand by 25 percent each year.

I provided analysis and advice on education tax credit policy structure to individuals in New Hampshire over the past year, but a policy analyst can only explain why certain structures are better or worse for accomplishing particular goals.

The New Hampshire legislators and others who pushed this education tax credit with perseverance, principle and thoughtfulness deserve the highest praise …it is not often that we are fortunate enough to see a critical mass of true leadership in politics.

Legislators in other states should take note of what can be accomplished when lawmakers take principles and policy seriously.

Much is being made by school choice opponents of a report that a Christian school in Louisiana eligible to receive students in the state’s new voucher program uses a textbook that asserts the Loch Ness Monster is real and a dinosaur. Writes Washington Post education columnist Valerie Strauss:

This is where support of vouchers is leading us — to the public paying for a child to learn that the Loch Ness Monster was a dinosaur and co-existed with humans. This is important to Young Earth Creationists, who believe that Earth was created no longer than 10,000 years ago, not the 4.5 billion years estimated by science. They also believe that dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark.

If people want to believe this and they want their children to learn it in school, that’s fine. The public shouldn’t have to pay for it.

I can certainly see why paying for this sort of thing would disturb a lot of people — it’s a major reason tax-credit programs, which let individuals and corporations choose to whom they will donate, are preferable to vouchers. Let’s, however, use this to confront another, extremely dubious belief that many would never challenge: Government schooling leads to good science instruction.

First, no matter how loudly government-failure deniers might protest — the government is omnipotent, dammit! — government schooling does not overcome religious belief. The latest Gallup poll assessing views on human origins came out a few weeks ago, and found as it has since 1982: The vast majority of Americans believe that God created human beings, and a plurality believes that God created us in our “present form.” Only 15 percent hold that human beings evolved without any divine involvement. And this is with roughly 85 percent of students attending public schools.

Next, take a look at overall science achievement. According to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress results, only 32 percent of U.S. eighth graders are “proficient” in science. And private versus public schools? 43 percent of private school students are proficient, versus 31 percent for public schools. A significant part of the difference is likely that private schools tend to serve better prepared kids, but the data certainly doesn’t suggest that public schooling beats private when it comes to science instruction.

Finally, there’s the reason government schools are so inept at teaching science: All people, no matter what their beliefs, are forced to support public schools — a perfect recipe for wrenching conflict. To avoid war without end, some 60 percent of high school biology teachers gloss over the mega flash-point that is evolution. The result is that no one, no matter what their beliefs, gets coherent biology instruction.

The solution to this is obvious: Let the people go! Let them freely choose what their children will learn, eliminating the need to fight. No longer force them to pay for “free” government schools, then pay again for education they like.

Unfortunately, all too often the self-proclaimed logic-driven defenders of science reject this argument. In part this is because of their heart-felt conviction that all children must learn proper science. That, however, has shackled them to the utterly illogical belief that some way, somehow, human and government reality will be magically overcome.

That’s more than just a little ironic.

Four years ago, I wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post revealing that DC spent nearly $25,000 per pupil during the 2007-08 school year. I calculated this figure from the public budget documents of the District of Columbia, which I subsequently summarized and linked on this blog.

No education reporter followed up on my findings, and much lower per pupil figures continue to be reported to this day. My $25,000 figure was even greeted with skepticism by analysts at free market think tanks. One state education policy analyst wrote to say that my figure was “out of line with credible information,” and that I gave my critics “too much ammunition with this clearly questionable set of statistics.”

Indeed, the Census Bureau figures for DC’s total K‑12 expenditures were substantially lower than mine. I made a note to track down the discrepancy, but other projects intervened. When I updated my calculation to use DC budget estimates for the 2008-09 school year, I found that District spending had risen to over $28,000 / pupil. The comparable number for that year reported by the Bureau of the Census was just $18,181 (which you get by dividing the total expenditure figure in Table 1 by the enrollment figure in Table 15).

So you can see why most folks were skeptical. Skeptical, but wrong.

Back in March of this year I asked my then research intern to contact the Census Bureau and ask where they got their total spending data. It turns out, they got them from a DCPS official. We presented evidence to the Bureau that that DCPS official had missed a few line items when completing the Census Bureau’s forms—to the tune of about $400 million. The Census Bureau agreed and is in the process of obtaining corrected data for the 2008-09 year. In the meantime, they made sure to ask DC officials to include all relevant items when filling out their forms for the 2009-10 school year. The result: Census Bureau data now show DC spent a total of $29,409 per pupil (obtained by dividing total expenditures in Table 1 by enrollment in Table 15). This is just a bit higher than my calculation for the preceding year.

Kudos to the Census Bureau for taking the initiative and getting DC to accurately report its public school expenditures. Now that education reporters can simply open a Census Bureau .pdf file and divide one number by another, I wonder if any will report what DC really spends per pupil? I suspect that they still will not, continuing to mislead the general public, but I would be delighted to be proven wrong.

Oh, and, BTW, this spending figure is about triple what the DC voucher program spends per pupil—and the voucher students have a much higher graduation rate and perform as well or better academically.