Oklahoma Councilor for Public Accountability

In my last post Same Song, Umpteenth Verse  I took Dave Bond and Curtis Shelton of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs to task for their ill-informed and misleading September 19 post “Oklahoma Public School Revenues Are Higher Than Ever”.  Here is the graph they used

I tied in to their numbers and showed how they were double counting and using non-recurring funds to fabricate a tale of growing education revenue in our state.  There was more I could have said, as I have in many past posts ( Double, Double, Toil and Trouble  and Paradox of Thrift are two of several) , about their failure to comprehend even the most basic school district finance principles, but I stopped at those two and declared Mr. Shelton a Limited Thinker for the first time (Mr. Bond is a repeat offender,  see Done Waiting for Mr. Bond ).  So when I first read Mr. Shelton’s latest post “AP Reports States’ Funds ‘Slashed’, ‘Depleted’”, and saw this graph

I sadly thought here is a young “research fellow” going down the same path as the other Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs limited thinkers being unable to think clearly or do real research.  But then I noticed the graph has changed.  The total numbers for each year are now less and they appear clearly to be lower by the amount of the “double-counting” of “Non-Revenue Receipts” that are included in the first graph, which was the most obvious half of my prior critique.  So there is hope for this new thinker and I want to continue his education.

Here’s what he says in the earlier post after trying to convince us that Oklahoma schools are awash in funding:

“Tragically, too much of this increased funding hasn’t made it to the classroom where it could most directly benefit students.”  Then he pleas for giving school districts flexibility to re-allocate funding by saying, “For instance, lawmakers should send to a vote of the people a resolution allowing a larger percentage of local ad valorem dollars to be utilized for teacher salaries and other classroom expenses, rather than for buildings and technology upgrades only.” 

In the more recent post he echoes the same thought, “Murphy (the Associated Press writer) never explains why, with over $2 billion increased funding in a decade and with “new buildings and huge football stadiums,” school districts fail to prioritize teachers.”  Again his thinking (or the editorial direction he was given) has led him to the conclusion there is plenty of money, some of it just needs to be re-directed from its current uses to higher priority expenditures like teacher salaries.

Here’s my new chart to help him think about that with facts at hand.

I show FY2009 and FY2016 to keep it simple and for the reasons I stated in my last post, i.e. the state was still making a reasonable effort through 2009; our policy-caused woes have occurred since then.  I do not include “Cash Forward” or fund balances for reasons I’ve repeatedly written about ( see Where to Begin? and Paradox of Thrift ) , primarily you don’t rely on one-time money to cover recurring expenses and these funds are almost entirely already committed and even encumbered.  The Total New Revenues shown are the same as in my earlier chart, taken directly from the same Oklahoma State Department of Education data Mr. Shelton shows, however they are broken down by “fund” instead of “source”.   This makes it easier to explain what the revenue is used for.  Let’s work from the bottom up.

All Other is mostly the OKC area MAPS funding and statewide private gifts to school districts.  (The 2009 amount includes $1.333 million to make the overall total equal the state’s numbers due to an error on their end that I can’t explain.)  Local boards already have control over these funds subject to the giver’s requirements.

Student Activities is controlled by Title 70 Okla. Statutes Sect. 5-129 and is essentially where athletics admissions, school fundraisers, and other student activity related funding is deposited and must be expended for school activity purposes.  This is not a source for teacher raises.

Sinking/Bond Project funds are controlled by Article 10, Section 26 of the Oklahoma Constitution as more fully spelled out in Title 70 Okla. Statutes Sect. 1-119 and 15-101 through 15-106.1.  These funds cannot be used for teacher salaries.  We will come back to this shortly.

Child Nutrition funds are primarily federal money for school breakfasts and lunches, money paid by parents and students for student meals, and a little bit of state matching funds to secure the federal money.  These expenditures are controlled by Title 70, Sect. 3-119 and federal law.  None of this money can be used for teacher salaries.

Building funds are derived from a 5 mill levy established by our state’s Constitution at Article 10, Sect. 10, specifically for the purpose of erecting and maintaining school buildings.  These funds also cannot be used for teacher salaries, BUT can be used to maintain and operate school buildings including utilities and custodial costs.  In effect, based on local discretion, these funds are essentially operational and can free up other unrestricted operational funds to be used for teacher salaries.

Lastly, I have combined the General and Co-op funds together since the latter is essentially operational funds combined by two or more school districts to carry out a joint educational program.  These funds can be, and are mostly, used to compensate instructional and other staff needed to operate our school programs.

Note the last three lines of my table; these show per student revenue for 2009 and 2016, first for all New Revenue which includes much that cannot be legally used for teacher pay, then for the General/Co-op funds only, and lastly adding in the Building funds which I pointed out are operational, even though not available for teacher pay.  Despite the silly math of the OCPA the reality is clear—Oklahoma school districts have less funding per student ($260 per student less in their general funds and $214 per student less including their building funds) available now to fund classroom instruction than eight years ago and we haven’t even considered that insurance, utility and fuel costs have all steadily risen and take a larger share of those operational dollars now than in 2009.

So what is our little thinker thinking when he decries the money spent on buildings, technology and football stadiums?  Those are all choices made by local communities, paid for with local property taxes out of district Sinking funds, to retire bonded indebtedness used pursuant to our state Constitution.  Apparently, if he understands state law which is a big IF, he is advocating allowing local communities to sell bonds, i.e. incur debt, to give teacher pay raises.  That’s a pretty shocking recommendation coming from a “conservative” think tank.  You see all the operational millage that school districts receive is provided for in Article 10, Sections 9 and 10, of our state constitution, namely 35 mills for the general fund of each school district based on its own valuation, another 4 mills raised county-wide and distributed by student population (was originally the funding for Oklahoma’s separate schools under segregation), and the 5 mills for the building fund.  All of this is already available, the building fund by substitution, for teacher pay as I’ve discussed above.  The only other millage allowed is for retiring bond debt.  The legislature can do no more without an amendment to our Constitution to increase property taxes.

So I don’t get it and I don’t think little thinker Shelton does either.  But there is hope that he will actually read, think and do research in the future before simply regurgitating the misinformation he is being paid to promulgate.  What is even more amazing is that he and others at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs are given space in the Tulsa World, a reputable news organization that recently committed to a relationship with Politifact to enhance its fact-checking capacity in our state.  If the World is interested in facts it will give no space to OCPA Limited Thinkers until they learn how to read, think and research.

As always lunch is on me to the first to ID the location of the above photo showing me as king of thinkers—and good luck with that.

 

 

  Centennial Carousel, Elk City, OK  ID’d by Senator Stephanie Bice

Tomorrow the Oklahoma Legislature begins a special session to address the budget shortfall for FY 2018 and to consider funding for a teacher pay increase.  Having checked the website of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs some days earlier and seeing nothing particularly related to the special session other than their regurgitation of non-specific “government bad, private good” drivel that they are paid to produce, I anticipated I would need to reprise my “The Glib, The Bad and The Ugly” post from just before the 2017 regular session when there was also talk of a teacher pay increase (which didn’t happen).  It’s pretty interesting how even our legislature, which is somewhat fiscally accountable, can tell there is no funding for teacher pay raises, but the Limited Thinkers at the OCPA continue to assure us that there is–by just distorting facts and making stuff up, though sometimes I wonder if the poor fellows there even know that’s what they are doing. 

The latest example, and I assume their attempt to “inform” the legislature before the special session convenes, is a September 19, 2017 post by fellows Curtis Shelton and Dave Bond.  I don’t think I’ve commented on Mr. Shelton’s work before but I’ve documented Mr. Bond as a Limited Thinker more than once (Something Special, Waiting for Dave Bond and Done Waiting for Mr. Bond) so it was no surprise that their attempt at providing “research” falls short of any standard of credibility.   To understand why, we must first examine their numbers.  Below I’ve copied their data from the row labeled “State Sources” to the row labeled “Per Pupil Revenue” for three fiscal years, 2006, 2009 and 2016.  Then below the horizontal line, taken from the same Oklahoma State Department of Education source, pdfs, I show “New Revenue”, a re-calculated “Per Pupil New Revenue”, “Bond Sales” and a calculated “Net Ad Valorem” for each of those three years.  

Here’s why I selected those three years.  I picked 2006 and 2016 because that’s the years they use as the start and the end; they are also the earliest and most recent now showing on the SDE website.  Then I picked 2009 because, having managed an Oklahoma school district’s finances during that roller coaster decade, I know that was the last year that school districts saw any appreciable increase in state appropriated funding over the prior year.  It also marked the beginning of the Great Recession (caused in no small part by the kind of anti-regulatory policies urged by the OCPA) which unfortunately coincided in the following years with the full fiscal impact of the silly “cutting taxes increases revenue” state fiscal policies urged by the OCPA.  Here is the actual data:  Revenue 2006, Revenue 2009 and Revenue 2016

By choosing 2006 as the start they are able to say revenues have grown 41% over that 10-year period; however, over half, 23% of that “growth”, took place in just the first three years and only 18% in the most recent 7 years.  Using their data, the per pupil growth rates for the same two segments are 21% and 8%, respectively, making up their touted number of 29%.  It’s easy to cherry pick start and stop dates to prove a point if you don’t care about presenting real facts and context.  Even using their numbers, it is clear revenue growth has not been robust for Oklahoma schools since 2009.

Now let’s look below the line, where we find the real numbers.  Here is the bottom half of the last page of the 2016 SDE Revenue Report.  Notice nowhere do you find their “Total Revenue” amount of $8,812,222,076.52.  That’s simply because only a limited thinker would see that as a useful number.  The useful number that you do see is “New Revenue Received From School Year 2016” which is the $6,012,945,268 that I have entered in that row below the line, along with the New Revenue numbers for 2006 and 2009.

 

Bond and Shelton, showing that they can actually add together numbers they don’t understand, add on to the New Revenue amounts for each year the entries for “Balance Sheet Accounts”, being $2,048,140,826.61 for 2016, and for “Non-Revenue Receipts”, being $751,135,986.24 for 2016.  Because these two line totals have increased more rapidly over the years included than the ones that make up “New Revenue” then their inclusion simply distorts the facts in a way that fits the OCPA’s preconceived conclusion—that Oklahoma school districts have plenty of money for teacher pay raises or whatever.

I have written extensively in previous posts about each of these fallacious efforts to overstate school district revenues.  The easier to dispose of ( Double, Double, Toil and Trouble ) are the “Non-Revenue Receipts”—duh, aren’t Bond and Shelton at least curious why OSDE labels them as “non” revenue?  This is revenue that is recorded for tracking, but adding it to total revenues would overstate, or “double count”, the financial resources that are available.  The largest category is “Bond Sales” at $652 million that year most of which was probably raised to build and repair buildings; but you simply do not count that revenue AND the property tax revenue used to pay off the bonds—that is double counting.  Stated so perhaps Bond and Shelton can understand, if you borrow $10,000 to buy a car and then pay back the loan using $10,000 from your wages over the next year, your “income” was not $20,000, it was just $10,000 and you used it all to pay for the car.  The “New Revenue” used to pay back the “Bond Sales” non-revenue is included local ad valorem revenue, specifically property taxes collected into school districts’ sinking funds.  If you look below the line at “Bond Sales” and “Net Ad Valorem” (their “Total Ad Valorem” less my “Bond Sales”), it crudely shows bond sales grew 89% over that 10-year period while other ad valorem grew just over 60%.  Real research would probably reveal that more school districts turned to bond sales as a way to balance their general operating budgets for such things as text books, technology and student uniforms.  That’s not a very efficient way to pay for those items, but when other sources have dried up that’s how they are coping.

As I’ve written before there are also reasons why it is fallacious to view “Balance Sheet Accounts”, called “Cash Forward” by Bond and Shelton, in the same way as “New Revenue” ( Where to Begin? and Paradox of Thrift ).  First, and most obvious, is that it is one-time money.  So using it for something like recurring teacher salary increases would create an immediate revenue shortfall the following year.  Second, most of the “Balance Sheet Accounts” funding is already earmarked for such uses as retiring bond debt, child nutrition services, early fiscal year payroll obligations in advance of ad valorem calendar year collections, etc.  And the almost yearly state revenue failures since 2010 have caused prudent school boards to increase their local “savings accounts” to assure their ability to make payroll and pay district operational expenses when state revenue promises are not kept.

What’s the bottom line?  Look at the calculation of “Per Pupil New Revenue” for 2009 and 2016, it went from $8,644.40 to $8,680.82, essentially no actual dollar increase over seven years, while at the same time utilities, employee health insurance, fuel for buses, etc. all were steadily rising in price.  That is the reality of what Oklahoma school districts have faced, not the preconceived fantasy of abundance concocted by limited thinkers Bond and Shelton.  And what about their parting shot “…this increased funding hasn’t made it to the classroom…”?  I don’t even have to click on the link to know they’re echoing the same song, umpteenth verse about the “Surge” in hiring non-teachers.  Just read my posts A Dirge for a Surge , Purging the Surge and Return of the Surge to see more of their limited thinking, and laziness, on display.

As always, lunch on me for the first to ID its location; and good luck with that.

 

 

 

Wartburg Castle, above Eisenach, Germany; ID’d by Brooks Williamson.

Linda and I survived our old person adventure in another country where the people were friendly, the scenery was nice to look at, the food was good and our walks were pleasant, just like we enjoy in our own city and state.  After a week of getting caught up with tasks, enjoyable and not, I took a peek at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs website to see if maybe they have improved while we were out of the country and found a September 1 post under “Educational Freedom” titled “Dangerous Distractions” by their President Jonathan Small.  Of course “dangerous” can make your mind go to “lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”  But we’re talking the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs so my mind went to what silliness is documented Limited Thinker (Onward to the Past and The 64 Million Dollar Question ) Small up to this time.

Here is his argument in a nutshell:  Everyone knows the Oklahoma City Public Schools are terrible—just look at all the F grades they get from our state legislature.  But instead of working to make the schools better, the OKC school board is worrying about schools named for Confederate soldiers.  They need instead to figure out why, over the last 25 years, they’ve wastefully hired all those non-teachers who obviously don’t help kids learn.  And, almost forgot, just give the money to private schools and for-profit charters and the students will instantly be better educated.

Wow; that’s some deep thinking about what’s “dangerous” for the students in Oklahoma City.  About the F grades and the school choice arguments I don’t have any comment today except to refer you to three other Oklahoma bloggers who have written extensively about these topics including how Oklahoma’s school grade cards are more about zip codes and income than about school effectiveness:  okeducationtruths.wordpress.com   viewfromtheedge.net and fourthgenerationteacher.blogspot.com

I will comment on the Confederate soldier names for schools.  I agree with Small that naming schools is not as important as assuring that all our children have access to a quality and safe education.  However, school boards are called on to set policy for a wide range of matters that may seem peripheral to the core function of education, like competitive athletics, candy sale fundraisers, facilities use agreements, dress codes, school building designs, etc., and naming schools is one of them.  I attended Celia Clinton Elementary, named as best I recall for the daughter of the man who provided the land on which the school was built, Eli Whitney Junior High, named for the cotton gin inventor, and Nathan Hale High School, named for the Revolutionary War patriot (of his new nation, not his state) who courageously gave his life for his country.  I remember the names but those are just the places where my education took place and if the Tulsa School Board, in its wisdom, were to re-name any or all of them I would not object.  Both Nathan Hale and Eli Whitney will long be remembered as part of our nation’s history regardless of whether these or any other buildings are named for them; and the family and friends who may remember Celia Clinton do so because of their relationships with her, not the building named for her.

Many school names have disappeared and changed in Tulsa, usually as with Lincoln, Pershing, Barnard, Irving, Horace Mann, etc. when the buildings are destroyed or no longer used as schools.  Others, like the former Wilson (where I taught in the early 70s) and Nimitz Junior High buildings, are renamed for new uses, now Mayo and Eisenhower Elementary schools, respectively.  Did those names disappearing or changing constitute “dangerous distractions”?  I think not.  And also I am among the many who understand that naming public buildings is not in and of itself “history”, nor does changing a building’s name change “history”.  Rather naming public buildings should be about who we, through our elected representatives such as the OKC school board, choose to honor and hold up to students and the public as examples of citizenship.   An interesting and inspiring choice in the Tulsa system is Memorial High School which, if my memory is correct, is named in honor of our service men and women collectively who have given their lives for our nation (not our state).

Yes, in grade school I read the biography of Robert E. Lee and understand that he was a man of courage and ability.  I have also since read that he was asked to serve as a military officer for the United States of American in defense of an armed rebellion against our nation and he declined, instead choosing to join that armed rebellion which cost hundreds of thousands** their lives.  I was born in Oklahoma, have lived here over sixty of my seventy years, and will most likely die here, but I have never considered myself an Oklahoman first above being a citizen of our great nation.  No, I do not think we should honor those who took up arms against the country they had once taken an oath to serve.  Changing a school name does not alter history; it is the relatively unimportant prerogative of each generation of school board members to do or not as they deem appropriate and doing so is not “dangerous”.

What is dangerous?  I did some quick and dirty searching on the word along with some Oklahoma state budget related topics and here’s what I found.

1. This 2013 USA Today article “States with the most dangerous bridges” lists Oklahoma as the second worst, and the only state among the 10 worst that had more dangerous bridges then than two years previously. I wonder how Oklahoma fares today after four more years of failed budgets due to the fiscal policies urged by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.  Now this is scary.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/06/29/states-most-dangerous-bridges/2456467/

2. This from the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety website in March of this year:

OHP Chief Rick Adams said, “The perilous security environment created by a 15 percent budget cut places citizens at increased risk, local law enforcement at risk and our troopers’ lives at risk. This is a gathering Public Safety Crisis that can only be fixed by adequate funding, and everyone will feel the impact. Further triaging of resources, further cuts in mileage and no manpower replacements – all at a time when 26 percent of the OHP is eligible for retirement – makes this evolving situation far more sinister than budget crises of the past.”

You can read the rest of it and then decide which is more “dangerous”, these cuts to Oklahoma Highway Patrol services and capacity or renaming some schools.

https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/OKDPS/bulletins/18c0b67

3. And this from Oklahoma News 4 story “Oklahoma Department of Corrections: prison overpopulation becoming dangerous”:

According to the DOC, there are 26,619 inmates being housed in state-run and private prisons or halfway houses; 32,564 being supervised on GPS monitors, community supervision or by probation and parole officers; and 1,829 in county jail backup.  Corrections Director Joe M. Allbaugh said the numbers are a sobering reminder of how overpopulated and dangerous the state’s prison system continues to become.  “We are beyond the tipping point,” Allbaugh said. “The staff and the public are at risk every day when we operate at this capacity. We are critically understaffed in facilities that weren’t built to house inmates. Some of these places are over a century old, causing the agency to hemorrhage money. Statewide, our prisons are in need of more than $2 billion in infrastructure repairs.  We have individuals working in the agency who qualify for food stamps and an astronomical turnover rate close to 40 percent, which is leading to money spent on perpetual officer academies and training for new employees,” he continued. “The inefficient practices inundating the agency for decades must end.”

http://kfor.com/2016/12/16/oklahoma-department-of-corrections-prison-overpopulation-becoming-dangerous/

Again Small demonstrates that he is a Limited Thinker by focusing on the inconsequential, school boards changing school names, as being dangerous, when his “Think Tank” has prescribed the very “tax cuts increase revenues” fiscal policy that has left our state unable to take care of basic state services, like having safe bridges, adequate state law enforcement, and prisons that increase our safety instead of putting corrections officers and the public at risk, thereby making our state truly a more dangerous place to live.  If the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs were truly interested in helping our public policy discourse then they would do real research instead of echoing the same old stories like this statement in his post:

From the 1992-1993 school year to the 2013-2014 school year, OKCPS saw student increases of just 10 percent and teacher staff increases of just 11 percent, according to the SDE. That same time period saw non-teacher staff increases of 24 percent, or approximately 545 additional non-teachers.

As I’ve pointed out in Purging the Surge , A Dirge for a Surge and Return of the Surge , if the OCPA is truly concerned about this data then do the hard work and let’s see how many of those 545 are teacher assistants due to the expansion of early childhood education, how many are cafeteria workers due to the expansion of the school breakfast and lunch programs, and how many are mandated because, duh, Oklahoma City’s student population has changed with more special education students, more students for whom English is not their primary language and more students living in poverty.  Each of these categories mandates more staffing than was the case in 1992.  But no, the OCPA isn’t interested in discerning the truth, they are only interested in pushing the narrative dictated by their funders—government bad, private always better.

As always lunch on me to the first to ID where the photo was taken, a place far away where long ago a real thinker found refuge from real danger.  My friend Brooks Williamson Id’d the photo; thinking of school names I have to pay tribute to his grandfather T. D. Williamson who was a loyal supporter of his beloved Central High School in Tulsa and his support continued even when the school board did the “unthinkable” and moved it outside of downtown Tulsa and out of its wonderful building that is headquarters now for AEP/PSO.  Loyalty to schools and education is not about names or buildings, it’s about caring for next generation and the future.

**I originally posted “millions” without fact checking.  One reputable source says about 600,000 deaths.  Unlike the OCPA I will correct my errors when found.

  Spreckles Organ in Balboa Park, San Diego; the world’s largest outdoor pipe organ.  ID’d by Tom Spencer.

We leave soon to spend two weeks touring historical sites, in a country with responsible adult leadership, related to the 500th anniversary of a pivotal event in world history.  Though focused on travel preparations I wanted to write another post before leaving without having to work too hard. Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs Communications Associate Hallie Milner, by regurgitating arguments from Limited Thinkers I’ve previously debunked, handed me an easy assignment. Based on her title and photo I’m assuming she is fairly new to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs mission of misleading Oklahomans and that she still can learn how to thoughtfully analyze information and present truthful arguments that are not formed in advance of her analysis like her colleagues, the Fellows at the OCPA, usually do.  So I will not deem her to be a limited thinker this time.

 

Dear Hallie,

Congratulations on having a job with an organization whose mission is supposed to be doing research and providing information about matters of importance to the quality of life for the people of Oklahoma.  It is an opportunity to use your academic skills for the betterment of our state.  Unfortunately, based on my thoughtful review of many writings promulgated by your colleagues over the last year, summarized in my recent Declaration of Intelligence, they fall far short of any reasonable measure of quality.  In several writings about them I have demonstrated that they often are deliberately misleading, shoddily researched and of no useful value to Oklahoma’s policy makers.

Your July 17, 2017 post “Comparing Oklahoma School Districts To Surrounding States” is similarly deficient in a couple of ways.  I applaud that you tackled the issue of school district consolidation in Oklahoma; as a big city guy I’ve always believed that having fewer school districts would improve education in our state, though I admit my belief is not based on any real research, and your writing does not provide any other than to state the obvious that there would be fewer superintendents.  While the savings from having fewer superintendents is real, I doubt that it is highly significant, probably less than what we’d save if we got rid of either our state house or senate, a consolidation idea that also has much merit.  Rather the real savings would come from reducing the “fixed costs” to which you allude but about which you do not elaborate or quantify.

As a Tulsa Public Schools board member during the early 1980s when we were still adjusting to its dramatic decline in school enrollment, I reviewed many studies about the cost savings of school consolidation.  My recollection is that the primary savings came from not operating as many buildings, i.e. fewer custodians, lower utilities, less maintenance and repairs, etc., from having fewer building administrators, and from having larger class sizes when students are served in one building instead of two.  Most of the savings came from changes in staffing standards, but undeniably operating fewer buildings saves money.  And isn’t that the political challenge with school consolidation in rural Oklahoma:  fewer buildings means many small towns lose their primary employer and even their reason for being.  We also had to consider the increase in student transportation costs which in a rural setting would be even greater and some offset.

I suspect much has been written and researched about the experiences other states have had with school consolidation which might provide helpful guidance to our state’s policy makers, but instead of turning to the obvious you looked only at a brief summary of work by Benjamin Scafidi that I’ve reviewed in several posts, Purging the Surge, A Dirge for a Surge and Return of the Surge.  Based on his work you make this statement:

The abundance of school districts could also explain some of the growth of non-teaching jobs in Oklahoma public education. Between 1998 and 2011, Oklahoma increased school administration employees by 49 percent, while student enrollment only increased by 6 percent. In other words, in the Oklahoma education system, administration grew eight times faster than the students did. When federal or state overreach imposes burdens on local districts, those burdens can require hiring additional district-level staff. While no one can blame school districts for unfunded mandates, perhaps the cost of such overreach would be less if Oklahoma had fewer public school districts. 

By referring only to “school administration employees” you do not inform your readers that Scafidi’s work looks at two categories of employees—teachers and all others.  All others includes school administrators but mostly consists of “teacher aides, counselors, social workers, reading and math coaches, janitors, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, curriculum specialists, etc.” to use his most recent words.  In Oklahoma, if you did real research, I suspect you’d find that the largest numbers of “all other” are teacher assistants, bus drivers and cafeteria workers– job categories most people would not consider as “school administration”.   Why then do you use the term “administration”?  If you are misinformed, then at least read the source material.  If you just want to mislead your readers, then you are working at the right place.

Now if your theory, that an abundance of school districts explains the growth in administration employees per Scafidi’s research, is correct then we should see a correlation between the number of students per school district in a state and the ratio of the growth in “administration” to the growth in students, namely an inverse relationship.  In other words, if we look at the six states you mentioned in your post, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas, the “Scafidi Ratio” as I’ll call it, namely growth in non-teaching employees divided by growth in students, should be in the opposite order of your first graph and the same order as your second graph.  Specifically, Oklahoma should have the highest Ratio, followed by Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Colorado, and Texas, in that order.

Here’s the data from Appendix 1 of Scafidi’s most recent work, see Return of the Surge, that is based on student and employee growth rates from 1992 to 2015, and my calculation of the Scafidi Ratio:

State Student All Other Staff Scafidi Growth Growth Ratio Oklahoma 17% 36%      2.12 Missouri 9% 24%      2.67 Kansas 12% 50%      4.17 Arkansas 12% 50%      4.17 Colorado 50% 94%      1.88 Texas 48% 66%      1.38

The data doesn’t support your argument because the Ratio column should trend steadily down, but instead rises before it then falls.  If there is a relationship to the Scafidi Ratio it appears to be to the Student Growth percentage, i.e. the greater the student growth, the lower the Ratio, which has nothing to do with school district consolidation.

Again school district consolidation is a worthy topic for research by a think tank.  Think harder and maybe next time your writing will contribute meaningfully to the discussion.

 

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the location of the photo above.  14 free lunches eaten so far.

Nebraska Capitol in Lincoln; ID’d by Kenneth Cole

As summer draws to a close and with my grandkid Uber driver duties suspended unexpectedly while they are out of town a few days, I took a look to see what’s happening on the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs website—and it wasn’t pretty, but it does give me an opening to complete the San Diego trifecta before summer’s end.  I first wrote about the amazing Slomo in A Rise By Any Other Name.  We actually saw him again this July, for the first time in several visits to Pacific Beach, while we were watching the sunset, hoping for a green flash.  We did not see the flash which I wrote about in my post In A Flash and is the second of the trifecta.  The third happening in the trifecta is to see a grunion run.  More about them in a bit.

Hot off the press on the OCPA’s “Educational Freedom” blog is the title “Oklahoma’s (Missing) $8,872 Teacher Pay Raise”.  It is another iteration of the research done by Benjamin Scafidi about the scandalous fact that school districts nationwide have dared to hire adults to help educate, transport, feed and keep safe our nation’s children.  His newest report is titled “Back-to-the-Staffing-Surge-by-Ben-Scafidi”.  I have dealt with his work in earlier posts, namely a A Dirge for a Surge, Purging the Surge, The Glib, The Bad and The Ugly, and The Ugly Step-Thinker, but like a bad horror movie genre (think Return of Swamp Thing, Return of the Living Dead or Return of the Killer Tomatoes), he keeps “surging” back to remind us of the obvious, that school districts could afford to give Oklahoma’s teachers an $8,872 raise if they would just fire thousands of teacher assistants, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians, and, of course, administrators. 

But first let’s enjoy the beach.  Grunion are small (think double the size of minnows) ocean fish that return to Southern California beaches with the twice monthly highest tides (full moon and new moon) from spring through summer to spawn in the sand.  The eggs are laid and fertilized in a frenzy of activity on the beach as the grunion ride in with each wave during a “run”.  The eggs take about a half month to incubate in the sand and then the new little grunion can head out with the next lunar high tide.  It’s pretty cool to see and also reasonably predictable.  Linda and I saw them first in the early nineties while taking what we thought would be a quiet night time stroll on the summer sand—instead we found a grunion run in progress and lots of spectators and a couple of “fishermen” who were gathering them up by hand in buckets (this is allowed for some of the season’s runs).  Here’s this year’s schedule.  https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Fishing/Ocean/Grunion#28352306-2017-runs

Here’s a couple of photos, not ours which I couldn’t locate, but similar to what we have seen a few times over the years. 

 

Here is a video of our most recent grunion run experience in June, 2016.

So you see the grunion “return” each year to do their thing.  You may have heard of another California based annual returning, namely the swallows of Mission San Juan Capistrano.  After driving past the exit many times on I-5 between Los Angeles and San Diego we finally made a brief visit to the Mission and were so impressed that we timed a spring vacation visit the next year to coincide with the March 19 festival when the birds would return to nest at the Mission.  Turns out they don’t.  The only nesting swallows we saw that year at a mission were at Dwight Mission in Oklahoma a few weeks later.  The swallows do return to San Juan Capistrano but they no longer nest at the old Mission building, preferring higher buildings and bridges instead.  Still the Mission festival and activities are lots of fun, including a lecture by a biology professor from the University of Tulsa who does field work studying cliff swallows in Nebraska.

Now we return to the surge.  The timing of Surge Scafidi’s post is ironic coming the same day the Oklahoma Supreme Court has nixed the legislature’s $1.50 per pack “fee” on cigarettes costing our already strapped state budget over $200 million in budgeted revenues.  So now our governor and the majority of our legislators who previously swallowed the supply side tax cutting myth peddled by the limited thinkers at the OCPA are learning that when you cut tax rates you generally will collect less revenue—duh.  But there is no easy correction because with the passage in 1992 of State Question 640, in direct response to the implementation of House Bill 1017, see Once Upon A Time and House Bill 1017 25th Anniversary, it takes a super majority three-fourths vote to raise state revenue.  Not to worry though because the Surge assures us there’s plenty of funding for teacher pay raises, just fire all the other excess school employees—exactly 6,221 of them.

As I pointed out in my earlier critiques of his work, his not so veiled effort to mislead his readers into believing that school administrators made up the bulk of the non-teacher hiring surge certainly diminishes his credibility as a “researcher” interested in presenting facts.  He has yielded somewhat to that criticism by now clearly stating up front that “all other staff” includes “teacher aides, counselors, social workers, reading and math coaches, janitors, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, curriculum specialists, etc.” as well as school administrators.  He also acknowledges that from 1950 to 1992 perhaps additional staffing was justified “because during those decades public schools began welcoming students with special needs and were allowed to integrate by race or were integrated by government policies.”  Translated he’s thrown in the towel on holding up the state of public education in 1950 as being a lofty standard to which we should aspire.  Instead he harkens back to 1992 as the gold standard for school staffing.

For Oklahoma his data, which I have not vetted, shows that from 1992 to 2015 our student population went up 17% and the “all other staff” increased 36%.  By doing simple arithmetic, i.e. 36% – 17% = 19%, that is the percentage of excess “all other staff” schools have, being 6,221 positions, which at $60,000 each would free up over $373 million for teacher raises—did you notice the $60,000?  Now Surge Scafidi looks at national data first, and then does a state by state breakout so all the little echo tanks around the country, like the OCPA, can try to capture a newspaper or other media headline telling the public there’s plenty of funding for schools and teacher raises.  Fair enough if your objective is pushing a preconceived narrative, i.e. “public schools bad, school choice good” instead of doing real research and analysis.

What drives me crazy is that the limited thinkers at the OCPA, if they were true thinkers, should not regurgitate this data for Oklahoma consumption without a little localized vetting.  For example:

1.  If Surge Scafidi acknowledges that staffing levels for schools in 1950 that did not serve all students regardless of race or disability were less than what is justifiable and needed in 1992, then perhaps the passage of House Bill 1017 and subsequent legislation expanding early childhood education and mandating the use of teacher assistants in those programs explains some of the surge since 1992.  If the Surge’s pay raise plan for teachers comes at the expense of dismantling early childhood education programs in Oklahoma our policy makers need to know that—if facts mean anything to Limited Thinkers. 

2.  A quick glance at national school nutrition data (https://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/child-nutrition-tables ) shows that total meals served nationally went from 4,953,830,000 in 1992 to 7,339,690,000 in 2015 for an increase of 48.2% while student population increased only 20% according to the Surge’s table.  I suspect Oklahoma’s data would show a similar pattern.  More meals served per student likely means more staff, i.e. cafeteria workers, needed at a rate of increase greater than student growth.    If the Surge’s pay raise plan for teachers comes at the expense of cutting back on child nutrition programs in Oklahoma our policy makers need to know that—if facts mean anything to Limited Thinkers.  It’s also worth mentioning, Surge Scafidi, that any funding saved by reducing cafeteria staffing will lower the price of school meals and is not available for teacher raises.

3.  $60,000; yes, $60,000, tell that to Oklahoma’s teacher assistants, bus drivers and cafeteria workers.  That’s what Surge Scafidi, for his “thought experiment”, determined is a low side estimate of their average annual compensation and cost to their employer that, if laid off, could be used for teacher raises.  In my posts Miserables Love Company and Later, Sooner I show why The 1889 Institute’s Byron Schlomach, my Schlomo, is off by $10,000 when he claimed the average Oklahoma teacher costs $66,000.  So a real number for the cost of a teacher in 2015 is about $56,000; ask teacher assistants, bus drivers and cafeteria workers if they are paid, in Oklahoma, as much as teachers.  $60,000 as an average cost saved for each of those 6,221 “all other staff” the Surge wants Oklahoma districts to lay off is an absurdly high number.  At most it is half that amount so double the number of “all other staff” the Surge wants us to fire so teachers can have a raise—if facts mean anything to Limited Thinkers.

I shouldn’t be doing this quick analysis.  If the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs is going to print this stuff and pass it off as real research, the limited thinkers there should vet it themselves—if only they knew how.  But see facts don’t matter to them as long as the “research” conforms to their narrative that “public education bad, school choice good”.

As always lunch on me to the first to ID the lead photo.

 

 

This is the real challenge; the one below it is a hint.

A couple of years into my decade of teaching economics at Tulsa Junior (now Community) College a couple of us decided to organize a men’s (late 1970s) faculty softball team and enter the City’s park and rec league. There were ten positions and you had to buy your position so there was no coaching and no subs during games. We called ourselves the Pedants (look it up, I had to).  I played mostly outfield for three years till I tired of the lousy schedules we got being in the lowest league and the rest of my life, like coaching youth soccer and politics picked up.  We included a couple of ringers, one named Charlie came to us by way of his neighbor Danney Goble, gifted member of the history faculty and published author (see Onward to the Past), but more a wannabe ball player like the rest of us than the real deal.  Charlie, though more than a decade older than the rest of us, was the real deal having played for a baseball state championship as a student at Tulsa Central (I think they won).  Charlie taught mathematics at a local junior high school and we welcomed him as a polished player at any position who quietly led by example and consistency, and he could suffer us fools.   Here is a photo of gifts he welded for each of us.

 

Here is the display commemorating the Pedants at the Tulsa Community College fiftieth anniversary exhibit in 2019 at the Tulsa Historical Society.  We original Pedants played in jeans and light blue Pedants T-shirts, not the uniforms seen in the photo.

Our softball friendship evolved into four of us Pedants playing doubles tennis year ’round every Saturday morning for about 15 years at the courts by Hillcrest Hospital.  Charlie was not then a tennis payer but had accepted my challenge and beat me (I had played off and on since junior high) with steady defense the first time, and every time, we played singles.  He was savvy and a good athlete.  He was my partner all those years against our shortstop and first baseman, the Mikes.

 

Over the years we shared many conversations and experiences off the court as our children grew up and some left home.  Our Saturday matches ended when Charlie and one Mike could no longer play hard court tennis without pain so they focused on golf while the other Mike and I continued with tennis by joining a USTA league and settling in with new tennis friends.  As happens when common interests end Charlie and I just didn’t stay in touch except through reports by mutual friends.  I did visit him last December and planned to do so again.  He died in July.  

My first job out of college was teaching secondary mathematics for the School District of Philadelphia.  I had scholarship offers to study for a PhD in economics at UCLA and Wisconsin (my preference) but a 1A draft status and the Vietnam War (Plan C for us losers who didnt have bone spurs or other medical disqualification) derailed my plan A.  Plan B presented itself when the Philadelphia recruiters came on campus looking for math and science teachers.  My minor in mathematics qualified me so they got a two year commitment from a certifiable, though wholly unprepared, math teacher and I got an occupational deferment from the state of Pennsylvania; my time in Philly lasted four years and every day I was grateful for the deferment my education provided me and knew that otherwise I could be one of the thousands of my less fortunate contemporaries.   

In reality I was a poor recruit to teach in the Philadelphia schools.  True I knew math, would easily get emergency certification followed by standard certification in one year, and I was highly motivated by the evening news to stay employed, but I had no experience and no training to be a teacher.  Regardless, I had a contract to teach; the only question was at what school. The best secondary positions were in the high schools simply because the students are calmer at that age and many of the hardest to manage had dropped out.    Many junior high teachers, if they had high school subject certifications, would put in for transfers that were often awarded based on seniority.  So I was first assigned to a north Philly junior high, went for the interview, and the principal wisely passed, opting instead for his uncertified long term sub on whom he knew he could rely to last year after year, unlike us newbies who had a 60+% no show rate the second year. 

The principal at my second assigned north Philly junior high either didn’t care or figured he was stuck with me so I reported there the first day with the other faculty for my teaching assignment, as did an experienced teacher from the Catholic diocese schools. He had taken the job for higher pay and the pension, not the working conditions.  Yes, the District Office bureaucracy had assigned two of us to the same position.  He pulled out his union book and cited something that said since he was there first he would get the assignment; I didn’t object assuming I’d have a job somewhere since they’d signed a contract with me.  He spent the day in teacher meetings while I sat in the office.  At some point the District Office acknowledged their error and determined I would be assigned to West Philadelphia High School which happened to be a pleasant one mile walk from our apartment near the University of Pennsylvania.  The next four years were challenging to say the least, but I know my work life would have been much harder but for this lucky accident.  Here is West Philly High.

 

Working hands on as a classroom teacher those four years in Philly, then two at Wilson Junior High in Tulsa, followed by eleven at Tulsa Junior College, left me with several observations.

1.  Not much good is going to happen in your classroom for students if you don’t have disciplinary control.  Individually my students at West Philly were as sweet and fun as anywhere else, but there were enough who couldn’t sit still, goofballs, that maintaining discipline my first year was impossible and very challenging the other three.  Lower class sizes definitely help.

2.  Some people have a natural or acquired teaching charisma that students respond to; most of us do not.  These “naturals” are special and every student deserves to be taught and inspired by one or more each year.  The rest of us can be good teachers if we follow the well-established teaching rubrics that are tried and true and that most teachers are exposed to in their college instruction.  Simply stated:  review prior, introduce new, practice new, evaluate, then use evaluation to guide next session, i.e. review, etc.

3.  The best teachers are in K-12 schools; not colleges and universities.  College and university teachers look good because they start with self-disciplined students who are motivated to please the teacher—how can you fail to look good.  But many of them haven’t a clue how to really teach and wouldn’t last a semester at the schools where Charlie and I taught.

4.  In real world K-12 schools a strong, effective building leader makes a huge difference.  This fact was driven home to me when, after several days on the picket line in West Philadelphia a judge ordered my union, the American Federation of Teachers, back to work.  After a day of reflection, I went back to work; most did not.  With the teachers available the District established “Senior Centers” so the high school seniors could stay on track for graduation.  I was assigned to Bartram High School in southwest Philly where the principal was a well-organized, highly visible, leader.  Unlike my school where the school office was the center of chaos and the principal (his name was Walter Scott, I kid you not) rarely left his office, if he was in the building at all, the Bartram principal and school administration functioned and had your back which the students figured out.  It was like night and day.

So, in my opinion, if you want K-12 schools to function properly hire all the natural teachers you can recruit, be sure the rest follow a sound teaching rubric, give every building a strong, knowledgeable leader who will stay several years, and then get out of their way.  The best resource for understanding how this works is the Effective Schools movement; I was lucky as a school board member in Tulsa to hear its founder, Ron Edmonds, speak a few years before his passing.  Here’s what makes effective schools:  have strong building leadership, an orderly environment (discipline), high expectations for student success, focus on instructional time, and frequent monitoring of student progress using results to adapt instruction.  At one time Tulsa Public Schools had a School Effectiveness policy, I know because I introduced it; a policy isn’t needed, it’s just what I could do as a board member, but having educators committed to these strategies that are known to work is essential. 

I don’t know if Charlie was a good teacher because I was never in his classroom and never talked with one of his students.  I do know that he showed up for work every day, that he worked hard and that he cared about his students.  I know this because that is how he approached every endeavor we shared—he showed up, worked hard and cared about the people he was with.  With the right educational leadership in our state, in our school districts, in each school, and with the committed educators we have, the many more we need in our classrooms and lots of Charlies, children in all parts of Oklahoma can learn, thrive and help our state become a better place to live for us all.  What’s stopping us is state political leadership, bolstered with the shoddy cookie-cutter policy work done by Limited Thinkers at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and its echo tank the 1889 Institute, that sees only what public education costs our state with no attention to the lasting benefits it produces or to financing proven strategies that will make our schools more effective. 

As always lunch is on me (13 free lunches so far) to the first to ID each photo location.

Capitol Building in Jefferson City, MO.  ID’d by Dave Hansel

Having served as attorney for over a decade for two of Tulsa’s original charter schools (Deborah Brown and Dove Science Academy) and as CFO for a decade with the Sand Springs Public Schools, naturally the Tulsa World article last week announcing that the Oklahoma Charter Schools Association had filed suit against the Oklahoma State Department of Education to secure more equitable financing for charter schools caught my attention.  Here is the Charter Schools Lawsuit petition.  Additionally, my son Ethan and I were plaintiffs, he as a student and me as a school board member and taxpayer in Fair School Finance Council v State of Oklahoma, decided in 1987, which unsuccessfully challenged the then inequitable system used to finance Oklahoma’s school districts.  Even though the litigation was unsuccessful the legislature, beginning in the 1980s and culminating with House Bill 1017 25th Anniversary, see also Once Upon A Time, put in place our current State Aid Formula that I think works pretty well in equalizing state support for our school districts.  What follows is my attempt to provide information that will be helpful in any reconsideration of how Oklahoma’s public charter schools are financed.

The basic framework is in Title 70, specifically the Charter School Act, Section 3-142, which provides that the state revenue for charter schools is calculated the same way as it is for school districts, subject to as much as 5% being kept by a charter school sponsor for its services.  Additionally, charter schools can apply for all the same state and federal grant revenues that are available to school districts.  So what’s the lawsuit about?  Actually I don’t want to comment on the legal arguments set forth, but rather focus on financial facts.  The numerical examples given in opening paragraphs 11 and 12 are the only factual demonstration of inequality cited in the petition so most of this post focuses on that.  What is alluded to, but not demonstrated in the petition, is the fact that the State Aid Formula only seeks to address inequality among the General Fund revenues of school districts; it does not address inequality among school districts with respect to their Building Fund and Sinking Fund capacities and charter schools do not have access to these significant revenue sources that are provided for by the Oklahoma Constitution.  

Look at my Charter Smarter Chart way below.  The petition uses the State Department of Education’s Annual Report as its data source, which is shown in top section of the chart, for its allegation that for the 2013-2014 school year “the total revenues received by the Oklahoma City Public School District (OKCPS) less federal funds was $242,502,928.  The revenue per Capita by weighted ADM was $3,588 (e.g., per pupil funding).  Whereas, ASTEC charter school located within the boundaries of OKCPS has a total revenue received less federal funds of $661,095.  The revenue per Capita by weighted ADM was $501 (e.g., per pupil funding).  The charter school received approximately $3,087 less per student.”  It then goes on to state that the Tulsa Public Schools revenue per Capita that year was $3,827 whereas the per Capita revenue for Deborah Brown charter school in Tulsa was $3,126 which is $701 less.  The Annual Report numbers are clearly for only school districts’ and charter schools’ General Funds, not Building, Bond, Child Nutrition or Sinking Funds.

The TPS to Brown comparison is believable on its face but the OKCPS to ASTEC comparison doesn’t pass any test of believability so I went to the OCAS data for each of the four entities to compare with the Annual Audit data.  My Charter Smarter Chart below shows what I found.  OCAS reporting is done by code numbers for revenue sources.  1000s are local sources, 2000s are county sources, 3000s are state sources, 4000s are federal, 5000s are essentially in/out correcting entries, i.e. bookkeeping offsets that don’t represent actual new revenue, and 6000s for funds carried forward from prior years.  OKCPS, TPS and Brown all had two entries for 3200s, namely 3210 for state aid (the Formula) and 3250 for employee health insurance (revbrown, revtul, revokc); ASTEC had only the 3250 entry for health insurance and nothing for state aid, 3210 (revastec).  I looked at the ASTEC Formula state aid allocation sheet and it clearly shows they were to receive $4,000,693 that year.  So what happened to it?  Look at their entry for OCAS revenue code 5800 (defined in OCAS manual as “5800* CHARTER  SCHOOLS.  Revenue received for per capita costs as provided by the district.”) which is $3,974,411.41.  It doesn’t equal their prescribed allocation but is 99.3% and remember the school district may keep up to 5%; note that Brown’s 3210 entry is exactly 95% of their Brown Formulastate aid allocation which means their sponsor Langston University is retaining the full 5%.  After this adjustment is made the ASTEC per Capita amount becomes $3,513 and the difference with OKCPS melts away.

Now that we have apples to apples and believable numbers for all four we can proceed.  I fully agree with the lawsuit plaintiffs’ decision to exclude federal funds from the calculations since the state can’t control their allocation.  In my opinion there are other sources that should be excluded as well.  In the 1000s, local sources, I think it only makes sense to include local property taxes.  The other sources are categories like contributions (nice people giving money), sales of assets (old desks, buses, etc.), rental payments (private dance recital in the auditorium), interest earnings and much more that rise and fall year to year, are often associated with offsets, i.e. greater custodial expense to clean the auditorium after rental, and vary widely from district to district.  Including these in a discussion about inequality is very problematic.

In the 3000s, the 3300s are for child nutrition; some school districts and most charter schools report their school nutrition financials in their General Funds, but most school districts do not.  Every student has the same entitlement to federal and state support for the school nutrition programs so including anything related to it will distort the comparison the plaintiffs are seeking.  The 3500s to 3800s are for programs like Alternative Education, high school remediation (ACE) programs and Career Tech which have specific requirements and are almost all secondary level programs.  Secondary charter schools can avail their students of these services; comparing a TPS that includes these secondary programs to a Brown that is an elementary school is not apples to apples.  Therefore, my next section (subtractions) recalculates the per Capita or per WADM amounts using only the remaining revenue sources.

Finally, under “true state aid”, I remove all revenue sources for which both school districts and charter schools are either already entitled to receive based on some fair measure, like student population (3433 text books) and number of employees (3250 employee health insurance) or for which they can apply on an equal basis.  What is left are the revenue sources, property taxes and state dedicated revenues (1100s, 75% of 2100, 3110, 3120, 3130 and 3140) that are expressly accounted for in the formula, and a handful 2200 (county mortgage tax), 2300 (county repurchase fund) and 3150 (vehicle tax stamps) that are paid to school districts with no strings, or entitlement other than statute, attached.  Including only those revenue sources brings us to my final grouping a bottom line calculation that a more apples to apples comparison among the four entities listed in the Petition is OKCPS  , ASTEC  , TPS  , and Brown  .

This last part may make little sense if you have not learned how the state aid formula works, and if you haven’t you are not alone.  One statement I’ve run across on the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs website, or in a publication referenced there, is by Martin Lueken of EdChoice   in his paper “Tax Credit Scholarship Audit” where he opines, “ These funding formulas are highly complex. In the school finance world there is an adage about individuals in each state who understand these formulas: You can count them on one hand.”

My experience with the House Bill 2244 fiasco which you can read about in these posts, A Turkish de Fright  and ‘Twas the Night Before Sine Die  , convinces me there are few if any in the legislature, or even their staffs, who understand it.  Otherwise why would they remain clueless for over a year and a half while some $20 million was shifted from over half the state’s school districts to the remaining 150 or so?  Then they completed the folly, wholly fixable and avoidable, this last session by changing motor vehicle collections allocations going forward without any compensating offset in the formula, assuring that “loser” districts will again fall way short next April while “winner” districts pocket a final month of gain.  You see those revenue sources that are included/charged in the formula are calculated not in actual collection amounts but by current valuation for property taxes and by prior year collections for the rest.  If there is a disconnect then school districts bear the win, more collected than predicted, or the loss, less collected than predicted.  Charter schools do not get to play this game, a fact that prevents them from being winners, but also protects them from losses like the motor vehicle collections fiasco which has cost TPS over $3 million. 

The revenues, 25% of 2100, and all of 2200, 2300 and 3150 source codes, that are without strings attached and available for any general fund purpose, are not available to charter schools.  Likewise, charter schools bear an up to 5% loss in state aid for their sponsor’s services.  The gap between TPS and Brown per WADM amounts largely disappears if the 5% is restored (it becomes $3032).

I doubt these discrepancies are sufficient to gain much interest regarding equity within the state aid formula among school districts and charter schools.  The real discrepancy in funding has to do with the lack of access by charter schools to financing like what school districts have through their Building and Sinking funds.  In effect most school districts can finance the costs of having and operating their schoolhouses without significant impact on their general funds, though those capacities vary widely among districts.  Charter schools on the other hand start with at least 5% less in operational funding through the formula and other sources and the first expense they bear is to rent or otherwise acquire a schoolhouse.  I think most charter schools do not have significant transportation costs which offsets some of the discrepancy caused by not having a building or sinking fund, but it doesn’t make up for all of it.  Those funds are established in our Constitution and are not really within the purview of the State Department of Education, the only defendant in the litigation, to affect.  Perhaps more about that in a later post.

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location.  ID’d by Dave Hansel

Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in Hannibal, MO.  ID’d first by Shannon Meeks.

Much of the confusion surrounding what to do about financing our health care system in the United States results from not understanding how our health care markets differ from others.  Would you purchase insurance to protect you against the expense of having to purchase an airline ticket unexpectedly?  I hope not, but hope you have purchased insurance to protect you against the expenses of having an unexpected serious illness.  The former would be an irrational use of your money both because the cost of an airline ticket is affordable and it is hard to imagine being forced to purchase one in any case.  Contrast that with having an unexpected serious illness which you now cannot avoid and can cost tens of thousands of dollars to treat; it is irrational not to have insurance in place to protect against this loss.

In selecting a voice/data transmission provider for your home and mobile devices, do you need the assistance of a professional who has received eight years of post-secondary education and charges $400 per hour to recommend the right provider?  It might help but it really doesn’t make sense to expend that kind of money for advice making a decision that most people are comfortable making on their own after a little comparison shopping.  Contrast that with having an unexpected serious illness and your life depends on the right choices being made about your medical treatments going forward; likely the rational way to proceed is to rely on the recommendations of a trained physician whom you trust—if you even get to choose your physician.  Dennis Not The Menace.

Our health care markets are radically different from other markets in our economy, like airline transportation and voice/data transmission services, in that parties other than the consumer, such as insurance companies and physicians, are often the actual deciders about both the services provided and their cost, and often the consumer doesn’t have a real choice about the services provided.

To this point in my March 3, 2017 post A Spoonful of Sugar I attempted to explain why Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs Limited Thinker Mark Perry is misguided if he thinks relying on competitive markets alone, without public or collective intervention in health care insurance and services markets, is going to curb health care inflation and assure that we have a healthy workforce so our economy remains internationally competitive.  Simply stated there is a fundamental disconnect between individual consumers and the health care market place due to the respective roles of insurance companies and health care providers which are the true price setters, not consumers.  He tried to generalize from the beneficial results of market forces on pricing for elective cosmetic surgery procedures where individual consumers are the sole deciders about how much they are willing to pay for what quantities of these services, i.e. I don’t have to have a tummy tuck at all so I have the time to shop around for the best deal without any consideration of insurance since most elective procedures are not covered by major medical insurance. 

By contrast, if I am transported to the hospital while experiencing a stroke or heart attack, or even in the event of a less urgent illness, I do not have the practical opportunity to shop around, nor the ability to second guess the procedures and devices ordered on my behalf by the medical team working to save my life.  In any event the bulk of the costs will be borne by my insurer so it has the immediate motivation to control costs/negotiate prices, not me.  Anyhow you can read my post which reflects the kind of analysis most economists would say is a starting point to understanding health care price inflation and why health care markets do not follow the same dynamics that more competitive markets where consumers are informed buyers and insurers are not dominant.

All this went through my head on Wednesday morning this last week, July 26, listening to CNN host Chris Cuomo interview Anthony Scaramucci, a/k/a “the Mooch” and the new White House Communications Director, about the efforts by the President and Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare.  Mr. Scaramucci, referring to himself as trained in economics, argued that what will fix our health care system and control its inflation, is taking action like was done by the federal government in the airline and telecommunications industries.  In the early years of the airline industry the numbers and pricing of flights was regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board.  Perhaps initially this regulation made sense in developing this new industry in an orderly way.  In 1978, with President Carter’s leadership, the industry was deregulated and most observers believe this resulted in more choices for consumers and lower prices about which the Mooch and I would agree.  But to believe the same can easily be accomplished with market forces in our health care system simply ignores the reality of the role played by health insurance companies and fact that consumers too often are not the real deciders. 

In the early years of the development of voice communications in the United States, AT&T became a regulated monopoly.  Like airline transportation perhaps this was initially necessary for the orderly development of nationwide communications.  In 1974 the U. S. Department of Justice filed anti-trust litigation to end AT&T’s national monopoly which led to its break-up in 1984.  Now we have a more competitive voice/data communications market with amazing technological innovation and many consumer choices, a market where consumers are the actual deciders without third-party intermediaries such as insurance companies and the health care providers.  A consumer can walk into any mobile phone service store and learn what services will be provided and for what price.   Try doing the same at a hospital, especially when you are under anesthesia. 

The Mooch may have the charm, but he’s no economist and doesn’t have the answers.  Comparing our health care markets to airlines or voice/data communications markets is not like comparing apples to oranges, it’s like comparing apples to baseballs.

As always lunch is on me to the first to ID the photo location.         

State Capitol of Illinois in Springfield, ID’d by Bruce Niemi

The short answer is that I am smarter than a bed bug and the Limited Thinkers at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and their echo tank, the 1889 Institute, are not.  It is the confluence of recent occurrences that have led to this post.  First, we are in San Diego where a little over a year ago I posted my first blog while we were enjoying respite from our first month of battling bed bugs in our house.  Second, Roger Federer just won his ninth Wimbledon title.  And third, the Tulsa World reported recently that, as we do for reductions in state funding for K-12 education, Oklahoma now leads the nation in reductions in state funding for higher education.  These three seemingly unconnected happenings I will now connect.

Around 2004 I developed a fascination with tennis pro Roger Federer that I think remained within the bounds of normalcy, but will let you judge.  In addition to subscribing to more channels than the number of used tennis balls in my garage to get The Tennis Channel, I learned the time zone differences for each major, i.e. add 7 or subtract 17 for the Australian Open, subtract 6 for Wimbledon and 7 for the French Open, so I could faithfully watch as many of his matches as possible in real time.  In 2006 spring vacation timing allowed us watch him win the title at Indian Wells, defeating James Blake who, the night before, we cheered on to defeat Rafael Nadal.  We returned in 2007 but he had been knocked out in the first round so settled for a Nadal/Djokovic final.  In 2008 we traveled to the US Open and saw him defeat Gilles Muller in the quarterfinals en route to winning the title.  We were fortunate to again see him play, this time in the 2009 Montreal quarterfinals being his first tournament after the birth of his twin girls, but he was defeated by Jo Wilfred Tsonga.  In 2010 we traveled to Cincinnati and witnessed two victories, though the first was an early walkover due to injury by Isotomin and the second an outright default before the match began, also due to injury, by Kohlschreiber.  We returned to Indian Wells seeing him defeat both Nadal and John Isner for the title in 2012 and win a match in 2015.  He was there but not in action for our sessions at Wimbledon in 2006 and at Miami in 2013; we even held tickets to the men’s championship final at Wimbledon in 2005 when he defeated Andy Roddick, but could not make the trip.

The Cincinnati tournament was our only road trip and I remember hearing on National Public Radio while driving there that August that the United States was experiencing an explosion of bed bugs and Cincinnati was the epicenter of the infestation.  When we checked into our tournament motel and saw bugs climbing the walls inexplicably I did not think “bed bugs”, only that we were moving first thing the next morning, which we did and enjoyed sleeping without bugs and another day of tennis, though no more Federer due to the default.  We drove back home and gave no thought to bed bugs for almost six years till discovering that our bedroom was very infested.  With hindsight I realize I had seen one from time to time but disposed of each and thought each was just a small bug that had come in from the cold, until in May, 2016 I killed one close to our bed, saw the resulting bloodstain, and made a tentative internet identification.

After a thorough search of our room we found they were nesting in our mattresses and in multiple crevices near our bed, particularly those created by a built-in wardrobe (the bane of older homes is limited closet space).  I read all I could find until I thought I understood the critters with whom we had been sharing our bedroom.   The best information was a brochure Bed Bugs by the Illinois Department of Health.  Bed bugs, unlike other parasitic critters, thrive by keeping their hosts alive, near and unaware.  They operate in the dead of night; they inject an anesthetic when biting to avoid detection; many humans, including us, do not exhibit bite marks; and they do not transmit disease.   All of those characteristics made it possible that our bugs came from Cincinnati almost six years earlier, though I suspect they were more recent travelers from some other destination.  It’s just that the Cincinnati room was the only one where I’m sure we had bugs.

There are two main methods of extermination, one is to hire a professional exterminator and the other is a do it yourself “mechanical disruption” which involves intense cleaning, repeated vacuuming and removing the hosts.  I decided on the latter because we could easily relocate to a different bedroom in our house and we have hardwood floors which makes the cleaning and disruption much easier than with carpets.  Of course we disposed of the mattresses and bedding, and purchased mattress covers for all others in our house.  I taped off the many crevices and removed all items from areas where I knew they hid out.  I sprayed the known areas with a retail product and vacuumed daily for several days and then only when a bug was detected. 

Working against me was the fact that bed bugs have been known to survive up to six months without feeding; working for me was the fact that they generally will not travel more than twenty feet in search of a host, being more inclined to stay put for a host to return.  We never found evidence of bugs spreading outside our bedroom so we remained secure in the bedroom where we relocated.  At two months I decided to try sleeping on an air mattress, easy to vacuum, in our infested bedroom.  Unfortunately, I detected a presence.  At about five months we purchased a new bed and mattress that could be placed on bug traps (they’re like a round plastic maze) and away from previously infested areas.  We successfully slept in our own bedroom, with the bed backwards, for three months with no sign of bugs.  We then were able to restore and use our bedroom as we had seven months earlier, sans bugs, our battle ending in total victory for the humans, proving I am smarter than a bed bug.

Now enter the limited thinkers at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, and their echo tank the 1889 Institute.  They have mindlessly argued for cutting Oklahoma’s public education expenditures for twenty-five years and it looks like their advocacy has succeeded as described in these posts from the Oklahoma Policy Institute:  OK Policy K12 Cuts  and  OK Policy Higher Ed Cuts.  The OCPA has never met a tax cut or service reduction they don’t like.  Their mission, based on the whims of their donors, is to always advocate for less government spending and taxation regardless of the facts, sound policy or common sense.  One has to wonder if they have ever pondered the economic success stories of places that have little in natural resources to extract and sell, like Silicon Valley, the Boston/Cambridge metro area, Hong Kong, London and the list can go on.  What distinguishes these economic engines is not low taxes and skimpy public services, but rather a coming together of a highly educated workforce coupled with access to world-class research institutions and smart public services, like public transportation, airports, harbors, schools, etc., that facilitate their economic success. 

Like bed bugs, leaders of these successful economic engines understand that for them to thrive their hosts, i.e. public education and infrastructure, must maintain vitality.  Unfortunately, the Limited Thinkers at the OCPA and 1889 Institute are not as smart as bed bugs.  They view taxes and government spending as a zero sum game and prefer to starve their host communities of essential collective services failing to recognize that smart investments can be made by public, as well as private, entities.  If they had their way there would be no Cal Berkley, no interstate highway system, no public health research (like that produced by Illinois that I used to defeat bed bugs), and no “Greatest Generation” educated through the G. I. Bill.  Where they do want to direct public funds is to their private donor companies promoting virtual charter schools without accountability and individualized retirement savings for public employees with higher fees and lower returns.

Enough of that; you get the point.  It’s my birthday (I’m a 70 year old Geezer, Not An Old Geezer Yet) and I’m taking a break from doing real research to brag about my success conquering bed bugs and vent a little–like the OCPA/1889 limited thinkers regularly do.  As always lunch on me to the first to ID the photo location.   

 

 

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Oklahoma’s Capitol Building (taken by a kind construction worker)

It’s been about a year since I began this Blog for my own mental exercise and to engage in the public dialog afforded by our democracy.  I intended to do a kind of year in review and decided, after listening to the reading of our Declaration of Independence on National Public Radio as I have on many past Independence Days, to do so in the style of that most sacred document of our collective journey in democracy.   So here it is.

Declaration of Intelligence

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one Thinker to dissolve any respect which may have connected him with others and to assume going forward an expectation that such other thinkers will consistently fail to meet even minimal standards of research and reasoning,  losing respect among the populace of Oklahoma, the better and higher station to which the Laws of Economics and of Fact-Based Research entitle him, a decent respect to the opinion of his fellow Okies requires that he should declare the causes which impel him to the separation.

I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all thinkers are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable intellectual abilities, that among these are Empathy, Reasoning and the pursuit of Knowledge. That to develop these abilities, Governmental and other schools are instituted to educate thinkers, deriving their purpose from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any thinkers about Government become destructive of its just ends, it is the Right of the People to ignore or to ridicule them, and to support new thinkers about Government, laying their foundation on such reason and understanding about its function in the economy and state, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Prosperity and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that thinkers about Government long established should not be challenged for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that people are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by ignoring the thinkers to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and willful neglect of reason, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to seduce them under a spell of false Economics and Public Policy, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such limited thinkers about Government, and to support new Guides for their future prosperity. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Okies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to discard their former Limited Thinkers about Government. The history of the present Tanks of Limited Thinkers, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and its echo tank The 1889 Institute, is a history of repeated injuries, shoddy research and fallacious reasoning, all having in direct object the establishment of false Economics and Policy over our State. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

They have distorted facts and logic to deprive state and education workers of a dependable retirement income at greater expense to taxpayers (Hello World, A Turkish de Fright, Fouling Our Nest….Egg, What’s Up Doc? or Should Teachers Eat A Carrot? and When Two Wrongs Make A Right);

They disparage our children’s teachers, publish inconsistent and exaggerated per pupil expenditure data and, while advocating accessing the public purse for private school education, do not ascertain the number of pupils to be so financed and their cost, thus demonstrating their inability to do even the most basic research (This is too much fun, In A Flash);

They advocate the abrogation of contracts, fiscal profligacy and violation of state law in order to deceive the public about the financial status of its various school districts, demonstrating their utter void of understanding about the constitutional and statutory framework by which said school districts must abide (Where to begin);

They fail to understand and apply simple concepts of economic logic presented to introductory students for decades such as the avoidance of double counting and the Paradox of Thrift (Paradox, Double, Double, Toil and Trouble);

They use baseless assumptions and misleading calculations to misinform taxpayers about the true cost of public pensions, all in a likely effort to increase the fee and management income of their benefactors while damaging the financial security of state and education employees (Lies, Damn lies);

They have denied the adverse impact on the State’s revenues and services caused by their advocacy of demonstrably false “Supply Side” tax cuts for the wealthy using distorted and uninformed financial data (Waiting for Dave);

They have falsely represented on statewide television inconsequential legislation as a source of “$100 million in savings on employee health insurance” that could be used to finance pay raises for Oklahoma teachers when in fact health insurance costs have increased (Waiting , Something Special, Done Waiting for Mr. Bond);

They advocate the wasteful and nonsensical imposition of sales taxes on purchases by the state and its political subdivisions, demonstrating their maniacal commitment to the reduction of all publicly financed activities and improvements (lighthouses, The 64 Million Dollar Question);

They consistently advocate the use of one-time funding for recurring expenses of our state’s school districts, thus encouraging fiscally irresponsible action (done waiting);

They advocate increasing teacher compensation by laying off other school employees, deceptively labeled as administrators, without making any reasonable inquiry or conducting any meaningful research about the purpose and necessity of the work they perform for the children of our state, demonstrating their disregard for informed public policy (A dirge for a surge; Purging the Surge, The Ugly Step-Thinker);

They have falsely and relentlessly peddled misinformation assuring the public that school districts have sufficient funding to increase their teachers’ compensation (the glib, the bad, and the ugly);

They have advocated the removal of regulations to permit private companies to pollute the air we breathe, spoil our sources of drinking water, damage the health and safety of our children, and monopolize the provision of essential products and services without constraint of price, by selectively citing only the costs of implementing said regulations without citing the offsetting and exceeding benefits to our state and its people (o regulation, Onward to the Past);

They hypocritically extol the virtues of a national electoral system that can anoint the choice of a minority of voters as the winner while bemoaning the results of local school elections because only a minority exercise their right to vote (crybabies);

They employ simplistic and deceptive graphing techniques to obscure the underlying data relationships and to provide false support for their preconceived conclusions, demonstrating either their inability to analyze data or their intent to mislead the public (short and not the point);

They use selective and elective medical procedures market outcomes to generalize the impact their unrealistic, short-sighted and parsimonious policies would have on the provision of and payment for essential health care services needed to maintain the health and productivity of our nation’s workforce (Spoonful, Dennis Not The Menace, Not An Old Geezer Yet, Looking for Mr. James);

They consistently present ill-researched, glib and incomplete analyses of the effectiveness of governmental services at all levels to further their agenda of delivering tax reduction for their benefactors (they made it look, Shooting Fish in a Tank, Who Wants to be a Billionaire?, Freedom From Want, There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch);

They present data and policy recommendations concerning Oklahoma teachers’ compensation that are bereft of reason, accuracy and understanding of fundamental school district finance and public pension actuarial analysis (miserable);

When their rantings are challenged based on facts and reason they resort to baseless threats and name-calling (you’re not in);

They claim intelligent thought based on their doctoral credentials but produce clearly erroneous data grossly exaggerating the level of teacher compensation in Oklahoma, inflated calculations to support their fantasy of diseconomies of scale among school districts and an incorrect description of the growth in per pupil expenditures, demonstrating either ignorance of economics and statistics or an intent to deceive (double, A Rise By Any Other Name); and

 They copy and present graphic data that is clearly erroneous, in excess of one billion dollars, in support of their conclusions, and show no curiosity, or perhaps ability, to understand a billion dollar deviation (unbelievable, There You Go Again).

In every stage of these Transgressions I have Posted my Correction in the simplest terms: My repeated Posts have been answered only by repeated injury. A Tank, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Limited Thinker, is unfit to be an advisor to a free people.

Nor have I been wanting in attentions to our Policy-Makers. I have warned them from time to time of attempts by these Tanks to extend an unwarrantable influence over them. I have reminded them of the circumstances of our progress and improvement here. I have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and I have conjured them by the ties of common sense to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our progress as a state. They too often have been deaf to the voice of justice and of reason. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity of our improvement as a state, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, accountable for their intentional and glib acts, but still as Friends.

I, therefore, the Oklahoma Councilor for Public Accountability, a Thinker, appealing to the Readers of this Blog for the rectitude of my intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good reason and fact-based research, solemnly publish and declare, That all Oklahomans of Right ought to be Free and Independent of the unreasoned and harmful Tank-based Limited Thinkers of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and its echo tank The 1889 Institute; and that as Free and Independent Thinkers, we have full Power to ignore their Limited Thinking which Independent Thinkers may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of rational thought and sound research, do pledge to hold them accountable for another year—though maybe not as often.

Oklahoma Councilor for Public Accountability

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the introductory photo location.  ID’d by Peg Gotthold.