Posts Tagged ‘schools’

Schools roundup

  • Even as Washington, D.C. saddles child-care providers with new degree requirement, it leaves unenforced some of its certification rules for public school teachers [David Boaz, earlier here, etc.]
  • Mayor de Blasio plans to overhaul admission to NYC’s elite high schools. Watch out [Lisa Schiffren, New York Post]
  • On the Banks of Plumb Crazy: American Library Association removes Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from children’s-book award [AP/The Guardian]
  • Max Eden investigation of death at a NYC school [The 74 Million] Eden and Seth Barron podcast on school shootings and discipline policy [City Journal]
  • “The Transgender Bathroom Wars Continue in State Court” [Gail Heriot]
  • Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arizona and on: are teacher uprisings justified? [Neal McCluskey and Caleb Brown]

Frequent flyer education complainants

“According to the Education Department, 41 percent of the 16,720 complaints filed in the 2016 fiscal year came from three people,” one of whom has filed thousands of similar complaints over the web accessibility of schools’ websites. Now the department intends to wrest back some control of its civil rights docket, which sounds like a long overdue move. [Erica L. Green, New York Times]

Schools roundup

  • Thread on Broward County, Fla. discipline policies and blame-shifting after Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting [Max Eden on Twitter]
  • Nothing wrong with Kansas making clear that school finance is province of elected legislature, not courts [Gavel to Gavel] Study finds that successful school finance lawsuits do redistribute funds, even after public agencies adjust [Zachary Liscow via Caron/TaxProf]
  • “Why the Federal Government Can’t Mandate an Ideal School Suspension Rate” [Robby Soave, Reason] “School Discipline: Don’t Make a Federal Case Out of It” [Gail Heriot]
  • Teacher strikes might have begun backfiring [Jessica R. Towhey, Inside Sources] Are teachers underpaid as a group? [Andrew G. Biggs and Jason Richwine, City Journal] Opponents of school choice embrace a logic that might lead to overturning the landmark liberty case Pierce v. Society of Sisters [Caleb Brown, Kentucky]
  • Judge dismisses remaining “clock boy” claims against Texas school district [Elvia Limón, Dallas News, earlier here and here]
  • Kent, Wash.: “Parents sue school district after son killed in car-surfing accident” [Amy Clancy, KIRO]

The wages of public sector unionism

From a new paper by Michael Lovenheim and Alexander Willen, via Tyler Cowen:

Our estimates suggest that teacher collective bargaining worsens the future labor market outcomes of students: living in a state that has a duty-to-bargain law for all 12 grade-school years reduces earnings by $800 (or 2%) per year and decreases hours worked by 0.50 hours per week. The earnings estimate indicates that teacher collective bargaining reduces earnings by $199.6 billion in the US annually. We also find evidence of lower employment rates, which is driven by lower labor force participation, as well as reductions in the skill levels of the occupations into which workers sort. The effects are driven by men and nonwhites, who experience larger relative declines in long-run outcomes.

Jon Gabriel discusses the current wave of teacher strikes, Caleb Brown notes that “Kentucky Teachers Have Had Enough” — but of what? — while this Twitter thread discusses the Oklahoma walkout. More: Eric Boehm on Kentucky’s efforts to shore up underfunded teacher pensions.

Baltimore will sponsor student anti-gun protests

Taxpayers will shell out $100,000 so the city of Baltimore can bus public school students to an anti-gun rally. And that’s only the start of what’s wrong here, I write in a new Cato post. “A protest outing that is ardently enabled or even meticulously organized by the authority figures in your life can be like the ninth-grade English course that ruins Macbeth or Moby Dick for you.” I quote Lynda C. Lambert in the Baltimore Sun: “Part of protesting is finding your own way, for your own reasons….. Government sponsorship is destructive to these ends.”

My parting shot: “As for the separate question of whether compulsory attendance and truancy laws should be enforced against students for skipping school in a favored cause, I’ll see and raise: don’t enforce those laws against anyone period.”

Schools roundup

  • “Wyoming: Efforts to strip state courts of jurisdiction to hear K-12 funding lawsuits reintroduced; courts could declare funding system unconstitutional but could not order more funding” [Gavel To Gavel, more on school finance litigation]
  • Coalition of accusers’-rights groups sue Education Department demanding restoration of earlier Obama versions Title IX guidance [KC Johnson Twitter thread pointing out weaknesses in suit]
  • “A High School Student Faces Expulsion for Noticing the Square Root Symbol Looks Like a Gun” [Scott Shackford]
  • How a political machine based on the schools lobby ran one affluent suburban county (Montgomery County, Maryland) before fumbling its grip [Adam Pagnucco, The Seventh State]
  • Costs approach $1M in Southern California special ed dispute over one student’s education [Ashly McGlone, San Diego Union-Tribune]
  • Japan: “Of course, this ignores the absurdity that students are being required, or feel required, to dye their hair because of a policy that was supposedly meant to prohibit students from dying their hair.” [Lowering the Bar]

Housing roundup

  • “One year ago, Portland enacted inclusionary zoning. One year later, “apartment construction in Portland has fallen off a cliff.”” [@michael_hendrix citing Dirk VanderHart, Portland Mercury] Better policy is to focus on building supposedly unaffordable housing [Scott Sumner]
  • Intractable problems of residential zoning and of public schooling in the U.S. have a great deal to do with each other [Salim Furth, American Affairs]
  • New NBER study “suggests building energy codes hurt the poor, too” [Vanessa Brown Calder, Cato]
  • Upzoning of Dumbo helped catalyze Brooklyn’s revival [Ira Stoll] How Henry George and followers influenced NYC property and tax policy, and the tax deal that helped touch off the Manhattan building boom of the 1920s [Daniel Wortel-London, The Metropole]
  • How to live in some apartments forever without paying, and more tips for unscrupulous NYC tenants [Jeremiah Budin, Curbed]
  • For “but,” read “therefore”: “Marin County has long resisted growth in the name of environmentalism. But high housing costs and segregation persist.” [David Henderson, quoting]

Schools and childhood roundup

D.C.’s childcare credentialism, cont’d

From Jarrett Dieterle and Shoshana Clara Weissmann of R Street Institute in a comment on a Washington, D.C. government rulemaking (see earlier):

Even in a nation overwhelmed by well-intentioned but misguided occupational licensing laws, the District of Columbia’s childcare degree requirement has achieved particular notoriety. …

Specifically, the requirement that childcare workers obtain an associate degree in early childhood education or childhood studies (or at least an associate degree that includes 24 semester credit hours in these subjects) is problematic for three main reasons:

1. The requirement disproportionately hurts low-income childcare workers and individuals seeking to become childcare providers….

2. The requirement reduces the ability of out-of-state childcare workers to move to the District of Columbia….

3. The requirement will raise the cost of daycare in the District.

A yet more basic problem is that there are large numbers of persons who would make or are making excellent caregivers, some of whom are experienced parents themselves, whose liberty the D.C. law abridges. In addition to abridging their liberty to offer their services, the law also abridges the liberty of families who would like to engage those services.

Note that in order to engage in paid child care in the District, it wouldn’t do to have a bachelor’s degree or for that matter any number of impressive advanced degrees. There would have to be that concentration of specific coursework. The continued survival of the human race is evidence that children can be raised successfully without credentials of that sort being expected of caregivers.

Schools roundup