In his new book Enlightenment Now and in his McLaughlin Lecture at the Cato Institute this week, Steven Pinker made the point that we may fail to appreciate how much progress the world has made because the news is usually about bad and unusual things. For instance, he said, quoting Max Roser, if the media truly reported the important changes in the world, “they could have run the headline NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN EXTREME POVERTY FELL BY 137,000 SINCE YESTERDAY every day for the last twenty-five years.”
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Um, You Missed Some Evidence: A “Thought Experiment” Fails Private Schooling
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To paraphrase John Lennon, imagine there are no public schools, or private ones, too. That is what writer Julie Halpert ostensibly does in a new Atlantic article in which she purports to conduct a “thought experiment,” first imagining a world of all private schools, then one of all public. But rather than coming off as a true, objective experiment, the piece reads more like a dystopian novel depicting the horrors of an imagined all-private system, while comparatively glancing past the many real, actually experienced stains and injustices of public schooling.
It’s not auspicious that the article, before the “experiment” is even proposed, begins with a description of the posh Detroit Country Day School, which likely reinforces the impression that many people seem to have that private schools are snooty preserves of the uber-rich. Halpert notes that the price of Detroit Country Day for high school is about $30,000 per year, but doesn’t mention that the average tuition at a private high school, according to the most recent federal data, is only about $13,000. That average price is high when you’re comparing it to “free” public schools for which you’ve already paid taxes, but not Detroit Country Day high.
With commencement of the experiment we are given a little history…very little. Halpert completely bypasses American educational history prior to Horace Mann’s crusade for common schools starting in the 1830s, noting only that some of our oldest high schools, specifically tony West Nottingham Academy and Phillips Academy, date back to the 18th Century. Halpert also writes that Mann was largely responsible for “the perception of education as a public good.” She ignores the evidence the education was delivered in myriad ways and was very widespread prior to the common schooling crusade—about 90 percent of white adults were literate by 1840—or that it often had a heavily moral character geared at both the private and public good. This is a huge omission, leaving out evidence that largely private provision of education, though sometimes with a modicum of government funding, worked, at least for those who weren’t subjugated by law. Law which was, of course, promulgated by government, the entity that would supply public schools.
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Another BRAC Now
Last month, Congress authorized a massive increase in defense spending as part of a two-year budget deal. In 2018 alone, the Pentagon will receive an additional $80 billion, increasing the topline number to $629 billion. War spending will push the total over $700 billion. Though such a windfall might prompt Defense Department to ignore cost-saving measures, the White House pledged that “DOD will also pursue an aggressive reform agenda to achieve savings that it will reinvest in higher priority needs.” Noticeably absent, however, was another Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), even though Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and at least four of his predecessors, have called for such authority in order to reduce the military’s excess overhead, most recently estimated at 19 percent.
Congress’ unwillingness to authorize a round of base closures should surprise no one. But congressional inaction doesn’t merely undermine military efficiency. In the most recent Strategic Studies Quarterly, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith (D‑WA) and I explain how the status quo is actually hurting military communities.
To be sure, closing a military base can be disruptive to surrounding economies, and for some communities it may be economically devastating. But such cases are the exception, not the rule. Evidence shows that most communities recover, and some do so quite rapidly. A 2005 study by the Pentagon Office of Economic Adjustment researched over 70 communities affected by a base closure and determined that nearly all civilian defense jobs lost were eventually replaced.8 The new jobs are in a variety of industries and fields, allowing communities to diversify their economies away from excessive reliance on the federal government.
Rep. Smith and I are not alone in our assessment of the impact that congressional inaction on BRAC has on local communities and our military. In June of last year, over 45 experts from various think tanks of differing ideological and political bents signed onto an open letter urging Congress to authorize a BRAC round.
In a 2016 letter to congressional leaders, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work explained that “local communities will experience economic impacts regardless of a congressional decision regarding BRAC authorization. This has the harmful and unintended consequence of forcing the Military Departments to consider cuts at all installations, without regard to military value.… Without BRAC, local communities’ ability to plan and adapt to these changes is less robust and offers fewer protections than under BRAC law.”
Further, an overwhelming majority of the communities represented by the Association of Defense Communities would prefer a BRAC to the current alternative. This should not come as a shock because, as Smith and I note, “Local communities have been deprived of the support BRAC would provide and have been denied access to property that could be put to productive use.”
Just to recap, nearly everyone—from think tank experts to DOD officials and from presidents to local community leaders—want a BRAC. Alas, a few key members of Congress stand in opposition.
BRAC has proven to be a fair and efficient process for making the difficult but necessary decisions related to reconfiguring our military infrastructure and defense communities. Rather than continuing to block base closures for parochial reasons, Congress should permit our military the authority to eliminate waste while providing vital defense resources where they are most needed, and give communities the clarity and financial support they need to convert former military bases to new purposes.
If you would like to hear more, Rep. Smith and I will be discussing the issue at the Cato Institute on March 14 at 9 am. Click here for more information and to register.
“An astonishing miscarriage of justice”
Yesterday, Public Affairs published a compelling new book by Cato alum Radley Balko and his co-author Tucker Carrington entitled The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist. The book chronicles the horrific and sordid tale of how the State of Mississippi railroaded innocent men for heinous crimes with the help of Dr. Steven Hayne, a medical examiner, and Dr. Michael West, a dentist.
Those who have followed Radley’s career over the years may be familiar with his investigations into Hayne and West, particularly their repeated use of deeply flawed forensics and preposterous testimony. We are proud to welcome Radley and Tucker to Cato to talk about the remarkable story that is garnering praise across literary and criminal justice circles. Already named by Amazon.com as a “best nonfiction book” selection, it should be a smashing success and we couldn’t be happier to have both authors share their work with us.
The event will be held Thursday, March 15, at 4pm here at Cato. For those unable to attend in person, the event will be livestreamed on cato.org/events and facebook live. You can register here.
The headline is a quote from this BookPage review by Deborah Mason.
Are Mass Shootings Becoming More Frequent?
Terrible mass shootings like the one at a Parkland, Florida high school are so shocking that it is easy to get the impression that mass shootings are increasingly common. The number of deaths from mass shootings has been unusually high since 2007, because of five horrific incidents – Las Vegas (58), the Orlando nightclub (49), Virginia Tech (32), Sandy Hook (27), and the Texas First Baptist Church (26). Statisticians would never try to fabricate a trend from such a small sample, even though the untrained eye may want to.
Last November, however, a Wall Street Journal essay by Ari Schulman claimed,
It isn’t your imagination: Mass shootings are getting deadlier and more frequent. A recent FBI report on “active shooters” from 2000 to 2015 found that the number of incidents more than doubled from the first to the second half of the period. Four of the five deadliest shootings in American history happened in the past five years, and 2017 already far exceeds any previous year for the number of casualties.
That FBI report “identified 160 active shooter incidents that occurred in the United States between 2000 and 2013,” with 486 people killed. The authors literally drew a straight line between just one incident in 2000 (after many in 1999) and 13 incidents in 2013, and called that a “rising trend.”
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From 1983 to 1999, the CBO issued two-year forecasts that added up to a 2.7% growth rate, which would now be widely dismissed as a “rosy” forecast. Yet actual growth averaged 3.7% from 1983 to 1999 – a full percentage point higher – despite a recession in 1991. Today, the CBO forecasts that even 2.7% economic growth is impossible, and claims only 1.9% is within reach.
The Administration thinks the economy can grow a percentage point faster. The 2019 Budget estimates the economy will grow by 2.9% a year for ten years. The Committee for a Responsible Budget (CFRB) argues that this “strains credulity, especially if interest rates and inflation also remain under control, as the budget predicts they will.” [This appears to suggest higher inflation would be good for growth.]
“Given population aging and other economic fundamentals,” says the CFRB, “the United States is likely to ultimately achieve growth of 2 percent per year or perhaps less – not 3 percent. The Federal Reserve projects long-term sustained growth of 1.8 percent per year [1.7–2.2%], and the Blue Chip average for sustained growth is only slightly higher at 2.1 percent. Prior to the tax deal, CBO projected a long-run growth rate of 1.9 percent.”
Is the OMB unrealistic to estimate the economy can grow by 2.9% a year or is the CBO unrealistic to assume it can’t grow faster than 1.9%?
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Mixed News in the Trump Education Budget
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Quickly reading through the overviews of President Trump’s proposed FY 2019 budget, the good news is that funding coming through the U.S. Department of Education would be cut. The bad news is that the budget would potentially include up to $1 billion applicable to private school choice, which would threaten centralized regulation of choice, rendering such choice far less meaningful. Think Common Core for all!
Overall it appears spending by the U.S. Department of Education would decrease by around $3.6 billion—or about 5.4 percent—from 2017, based on quick calculations using the Department’s budget summary and data in an addendum that alters the summary due to the budget legislation enacted last week. As I’ve noted before, eliminating such ineffective—and unconstitutional—undertakings as the $1.2 billion 21st Century Community Learning Centers would be solid policy, and frankly the evidence is compelling that the overall K‑12 and higher education federal endeavor has been an expensive mistake.
The bad news is that overall cuts would not be greater, while the budget would create a new, $1 billion Opportunity Grants program that would include money for private school voucher programs. The program would be broken into two pieces—Scholarships for Private Schools and Open Enrollment Grants—with only the former open to private choice programs. No specific funding split between the sub-programs is identified in any of the budget materials I’ve seen, so it is unknown how much of the funding would go to private choice. But even a small amount of money relative to overall education spending can be a powerful lever to get states and schools to open themselves to regulation—it just needs to look like a lot in news stories or ledgers—and that is the huge danger of federal school choice. Of course, the Constitution no more authorizes federal choice programs than it does other education undertakings.
The budget is likely dead on arrival, and there are certainly things I missed in a quick once-over. But at the very least it reveals an administration that has sort of the right inclination on education—shrink the federal footprint—but that will curb that inclination when it comes to school choice.