The same federal agency that brought us monumental failures like public housing wants to play a bigger role in fostering so-called regional “smart growth.” HUD secretary Shaun Donovan recently traveled to Portland, Oregon to announce the Obama administration’s new Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities.

This new bureaucracy will distribute $140 million in grants for regional “smart growth” planning:

With OSHC’s grant programs, HUD will provide funding to a wide variety of multi-jurisdictional and multi-sector partnerships and consortia, from Metropolitan Planning Organizations and State governments, to non-profit and philanthropic organizations. These grants will be designed to encourage regions to build their capacity to integrate economic development, land use, transportation, and water infrastructure investments, and to integrate workforce development with transit-oriented development. Accordingly, OSHC’s grants will be coordinated closely with the Department of Transportation (DOT) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Donovan told a Portland State University crowd that “We at HUD are big admirers of what you’re doing here.” However, Randal O’Toole’s dismantling of the Portland planning utopia myth in a Cato Policy Analysis shows that the city is nothing to be emulated. That is unless other cities want less affordable housing, more congestion, higher taxes, and businesses relocating elsewhere.

Donovan then met up with his EPA and DOT colleagues in Seattle at smart growth conference. HUD isn’t the only one opening up the taxpayer’s wallet:

And the Department of Transportation is proposing $527 million to promote “livable communities” through grants to states and cities. Transportation secretary Ray LaHood says those grants, too, must meet the goals of his partner agencies.

LaHood: “It supports any new initiatives we develop on our own like expanding transit in low–income neighborhoods, or what our friends at HUD and EPA are working on in collaboration.”

Local coalitions are already forming to seek those federal dollars.

Let the rent-seeking begin.

The merits of Portland’s urban planning can be debated all day. But it stands federalism on its head when the federal government takes a particular city’s policies and then tries to shove it down the throats of the rest of the country. Based on what I know of Portland’s planning, I certainly wouldn’t want it where I live. Other cities, like Houston, have reached the same conclusion. But, I guess if Shaun Donovan likes it, then damnit, we’re all going to like it.

On Tuesday, I criticized a new economic modeling paper (“Anti-Lemons”) purporting to show that unfettered education markets are bad and that government can fix them with the right regulations.

Andrew Gillen comes to the study’s defense, and I’m delighted that he’s taken the trouble to reflect on it rather than just saying “I like it.” But there are problems with his analysis. First, he faults me for dismissing the “Anti-Lemons” models for being based on false assumptions, citing Paul Krugman:

I am a strong believer in the importance of models, which are to our minds what spear-throwers were to stone age arms: they greatly extend the power and range of our insight. In particular, I have no sympathy for those people who criticize the unrealistic simplifications of model-builders.

Even if we put aside the fact that Paul Krugman is at times less reliable than the Daily Show website, there is an important difference between assumptions that are “unrealistically simplified” and those that are patently wrong. With the former, your model might still huck its intellectual spear somewhere in the general vicinity of the truth, with the latter, you’re just going to put your eye out.

“Anti-Lemons” is in the put-your-eye-out camp. Among other things, it assumes the productivity of all schools is equal. This is both totally false and highly germane — efficiency varies dramatically among schools, and private schools as a whole are consistently more efficient than government schools (as we will see below). Failing to recognize that reality will lead to incorrect results from the model, and this is just one of the false assumptions the paper adopts (see my previous post for others).

Second, Gillen writes that

going by Coulson’s numbers in figure 2 here, we would expect to find a positive impact of markets over government on achievement in slightly less than 2 out of 3 studies (with insignificant findings making up the majority of the others). If the case for free markets over government schools is really so clear cut (and I lean strongly in this direction), than why isn’t this 3 out of 3?

There are many plausible reasons for this result (lack of statistical power, omitted variable bias, other misspecification errors, etc.), but one is particularly worth raising here: government schools in many parts of the world spend several times as much per pupil as their private sector counterparts. This is true in most developing countries, from which a great deal of the inter-sectoral research hails. And when I looked at statewide data from Arizona in 2006 I found that government schools spend roughly 50 percent more than private schools. While it’s true that government school outcomes tend not to improve much as spending rises, the same cannot be said of private schools.

If this is true, you might ask, then wouldn’t the inter-sectoral research on school efficiency be more stark than the research on achievement (that fails to take spending levels into account)? The answer is yes. In fact, if you examine the efficiency bar in the same figure 2 cited by Gillen above, you will see that every single one of the efficiency comparisons between market and monopoly schools is significant and favors the market schools.

So, not only is the “Anti-Lemons” model useless, it is worse than useless: it seems to mislead even intelligent readers into believing that there is some mystery in the literature that needs to be solved by blindly waiving a spear around.

“Anti-Lemons” is neither Camelot, as I said yesterday, nor is it Sparta as Andrew implied. It’s the kid from Christmas Story who nearly puts his eye out by the cavalier application of a potentially powerful tool.

There’s an act for that! And another act, and another act, and another…

Oh, did we forget to mention the painful results? Well, federal education “gifts” do have a tendency to blow up in your face.

Tomorrow night at 8:00pm, Fox Business News will air a John Stossel special on the failures of state-run schooling and the merits of parental choice and competition in education. I make an appearance, as do Jeanne Allen and James Tooley.

News of the show is already making the rounds, and over at Demo​c​ra​ti​c​Un​der​ground​.com, one poster is very upset about it, writing:

When will these TRAITORS stop trying to ruin this country?

HOW can AMERICANS be AGAINST public education?

Stossel is throwing out every right-wing argument possible in his namby pamby singsong way while he “interviews” a “panel” of people (who I suspect are plants) saying things like preschool is a waste of money and why invest in an already-failing system.…

I hate Stossel and I hate all of those who think the way he does.

This poster goes by the screen name “Live Love Laugh.” I guess there wasn’t enough space to tack “Hate” onto the end.

What this poster–and many good people on the American left–have yet to grasp is that critics of state monopoly schooling are NOT against public education. On the contrary, it is our commitment to the ideals of public education that compels us to pursue them by the most effective means possible, and to abandon the system that has proven itself, over many many generations, incapable of fulfilling them. I wrote about this crucial point more than a decade ago in Education Week, in a piece titled: “Are Public Schools Hazardous to Public Education.”

Fortunately, a small but steadily growing number of American liberals have already grasped this pivotal difference between means and ends, as the growing Democratic support for Florida’s school choice tax credit program evinces. Giving all families, particularly low income families, an easier choice between state-run and independent schools is the best way to advance the ideals of public education.

Who said public schooling is all about the adults in the system and not the kids? Everyone knows it’s even more basic than that: Public schooling is a jobs program, pure and simple. At least, that’s what one can’t help but conclude as our little “stimulus” turns one-year old today.

“State fiscal relief really has kept hundreds of thousands of teachers and firefighters and first responders on the job,” declared White House Council of Economic Advisers head Christina Romer today.

Throwing almost $100 billion at education sure as heck ought to have kept teachers in their jobs, and the unemployment numbers suggest teachers have had a pretty good deal relative to the folks paying their salaries. While unemployment in “educational services” – which consists predominantly of teachers, but also includes other education-related occupations — hasn’t returned to its recent, April 2008 low of 2.2 percent, in January 2010 it was well below the national 9.7 percent rate, sitting at 5.9 percent.

Of course, retaining all of these teachers might be of value to taxpayers if having so many of them had a positive impact on educational outcomes. But looking at decades of achievement data one can’t help but conclude that keeping teacher jobs at all costs truly isn’t about the kids, but the adults either employed in education, or trying to get the votes of those employed in education. As the following chart makes clear, we have added teachers in droves for decades without improving ultimate achievement at all:

(Sources: Digest of Education Statistics, Table 64, and National Assessment of Educational Progress, Long-Term Trend results)

Since the early 1970s, achievement scores for 17-year-olds — our schools’ “final products” — haven’t improved one bit, while the number of teachers per 100 students is almost 50 percent greater. If anything, then, we have far too many teachers, and would do taxpayers, and the economy, a great service by letting some of them go. Citizens could then keep more of their money and invest in private, truly economy-growing ventures. But no, we’re supposed to celebrate the endless continuation of debilitating economic – and educational — waste.

You’ll have to pardon me for not considering this an accomplishment I should cheer about.

A new poll from Washington Post/​ABC News poll shows that most respondents oppose the recent Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Just over 70 percent of those polled want to reinstate the unconstitutional restrictions. The questions asked may be found here.

Sean Parnell asks whether the wording of the questions in this poll drove the results. William McGinley shares Parnell’s concerns and suggests some alternative questions for future polling.

I was not surprised by the result. Polls have long found that substantial majorities support something called “campaign finance reform.” Over two years ago, a poll found that 71 percent of Americans wanted to limit corporate and union spending on campaigns. 62 percent also supported limiting the amount of money a person could give to their own campaign, even though such donations could not involve the possibility of corruption. (This desire to restrict self-funding, by the way, has been patently unconstitutional for over thirty years).

The history of public opinion also should be kept in mind. Fifty years ago, when mass polling started, researchers found that the public both supported and opposed the First Amendment. Surveys found overwhelming support for “the First Amendment” and other abstractions like “the Bill of Rights.” They also frequently detected less than majority support for actual applications of the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. Majorities opposed, for example, permitting Communists or other disfavored groups to speak at a local school.

Not much has changed over the years. In 2007, a survey funded by the First Amendment Center reported the following opinions related to First Amendment freedoms:

• Only 56 percent believe that the freedom to worship as one chooses extends to all religious groups;
• 50 percent agree “A public school teacher should be allowed to use the Bible as a factual text in a history or social studies class.”
• 58 percent of Americans would prevent protests during a funeral procession, even on public streets and sidewalks;
• 74 percent would prevent public school students from wearing a T‑shirt with a slogan that might offend others;
• majorities thought “the government should be allowed to require television and radio broadcasters to offer an equal allotment of time to conservative and liberal commentators.”
• That same poll also revealed that 66 percent of the public thought “the right to speak freely about whatever you want” was essential. Moreover, 74 percent found “the right to practice the religion of your choice” to be essential.

In the abstract, Americans continue to support First Amendment freedoms. In concrete cases, majorities still often oppose the exercise of such freedoms. Citizens United vindicated the First Amendment in a specific case that a majority does not support. This gulf between principle and application has been and continues to be common among Americans.

These findings suggest two thoughts. Liberals are now saying Citizens United should be undone because majorities oppose the decision. The principle that First Amendment rights should be overturned by majority sentiment may not please liberals in the future. Freedom of religion, in particular, attracts minority support in many concrete applications.

The more important lesson here involves an often ignored truth: the U.S. Constitution does not establish a government through which a majority can do anything it likes. The Bill of Rights marks a limit on political power even if a majority controls the government. (James Madison might have said especially if a majority controls the government). We have a Supreme Court to enforce those limits against government officials and against majorities. In Citizens United, the Court finally did what it should have done: protecting unpopular groups from the heavy hand of the censor. The fact that a majority favored and favors giving unchecked power to the censor matters not at all.

Still doubt that the Church of Universal Coverage is a bona fide religion? Consider:

1. The American people have been solidly against the Democrats’ universal-coverage plan since July 2009.
2. Roughly 60 percent of the public wants Congress to scrap that legislation and start over.
3. President Obama will nevertheless use that legislation as the starting point for negotiations with Republicans at next week’s health care summit.

Mmmm, that’s good fervor.

Republican summiteers shouldn’t spend too much time discussing their own ideas — which aren’t going anywhere, and really aren’t that great anyway — lest they unwittingly aid Democrats in changing the below-illustrated narrative. They should instead focus like a laser beam on the dangers of the Democrats’ legislation, and how dangerously close it is to becoming law.

Then they can all return to the drawing board and come back with better ideas.