After months of blandishments from an eager staff, the Show-Me Institute’s powers that be have given us the green light to open comments on this blog. We’d love to hear from you, and we hope that our comment sections will help Show-Me Daily serve as a forum for vigorous, active debate.

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The inevitable has come to pass. The Missouri Textbook Transparency Act has become law.

I adopted this issue as my pet cause at the beginning of the summer, leading to a critical op-ed that received a little bit of attention.

It’s not surprising that the bill passed. I understand that only one senator opposed it as it glided through the General Assembly. I am, however, satisfied to see that its proponents have already begun apologizing for its inadequacies. From the AP article:

The law’s sponsor, Rep. Jake Zimmerman, D-Olivette, said his measure won’t help the price of new textbooks but could give students and their instructors more ways to save money.

I’d like to emphasize again how unlikely it is that any government mandate will positively affect the marketplace for used books. I contend that the combination of the law’s shortcomings and a vibrant online alternative to school bookstores offers virtually no benefits to outweigh the costs of market intervention. I don’t anticipate seeing an increase in textbook success stories for otherwise cash-strapped students during the coming years. More likely, this law will pass into obscurity, where it may or may not create hidden costs for buyers. If nothing else, it can serve as an example of unnecessary regulation in an area that has and will continue to be well-served by market forces.

It’s just not something you ask: How much money do you make in a year, what exactly do you do to earn it, what insurance does your employer provide, and what’s your allowance for a company car?

Contrast this to: What was the turnout in last year’s school election?

If you ask the first questions of a superintendent, and the second of a county clerk, both are required to answer. But the first is clearly a more invasive question.

In the Show-Me Institute’s Columbia office, my fellow researcher, Audrey Spalding, has been asking the first question of all 522 Missouri school districts. I, in the same office, also using the Sunshine Law, have been asking the second of all 114 Missouri county clerks, plus the city of St. Louis election board, if you’re keeping score.*

So, who’s had more success?

The answer might surprise you.

Continue reading "The Compliance/Resistance Divide" »

"You don’t just file that sort of request without expecting to find something," said one Missouri superintendent when I called to ask for a copy of his employment contract.

A few superintendents have asked about Rex Sinquefield’s involvement (directly, next to none), or how closely these requests are tied to the Show-Me Institute’s apparent support of charter schools (we have sent several requests to charter schools as well). Many simply want to know why I am filing a Sunshine Law request for each and every Missouri superintendent’s contract. I do not need to justify my request, nor does anyone else asking for public information. But the question itself is fair.

The point of these requests is not, as I see it, to publish each superintendent’s name and annual pay and then highlight every six-figure salary as excessive. Yes, perhaps it is fair to scrutinize a contract that pays $8,000 or so to a superintendent for his dependents’ health care, regardless of whether he has any. From here, that looks like a salary bonus for not having children.

But, in general, the contract between a superintendent and a school district can tell us a lot about what a school district values, and where it is struggling.

Continue reading "Motive" »

We’ve added a new tool to our Show-Me Living arsenal.

Check out our new Google map of the Saint Louis metropolitan area. It provides our visitors with the ability to interactively look up the academic rankings for their school and school district on a map, and compare those rankings to other schools nearby. Thinking about moving this summer? See how your new school compares with "Show-Me: The Grades." And, while you’re there, be sure to check out how your taxes might change, too.

We plan to expand this map to cover the entire state, so please feel free to send us your thoughts on how we can make it more useful for you.

I’m a meticulous record-keeper, particularly when it comes to either my car or my finances.

In our recent ethanol case study, Dave Stokes and I argued that the E-10 savings projections reported in the Missouri Corn Merchandising Council’s study were wrong partly because they failed to address the fuel efficiency decrease of ethanol-blended fuel that had been noted in numerous scientific studies, including one by the Environmental Protection Agency.

So, I’ve been curious to see how much the E-10 mandate has affected my car’s individual performance. After filling up my car this morning, I looked through my fuel log and made a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the difference in fuel efficiency this year.

My car has a 13-gallon tank, but I typically fill up about 12 gallons on average. In 2007, my car averaged 308 miles between fill-ups (25.67 miles/gallon). This year, my car has averaged 281 miles between fill-ups (23.42 miles/gallon). That’s a drop in fuel efficiency of 8.77 percent.

Now, admittedly, this is a little bit of an ad hoc calculation and other variables clearly impacted my car’s gas mileage. But Missouri’s E-10 mandate has obviously played some role.

So, how much has the drop in fuel efficiency cost me? Let’s say I fill up my car twice a month (24 gallons). With $4-per-gallon gas, the 8.77 percent drop in fuel efficiency will cost me nearly $100 this year.

So much for E-10 savings.

This is a "Read it all and make up your own mind"-type post. The Show-Me Institute’s Dave Roland just wrote a new op-ed about the issue of zoning and property rights in Missouri. To put the op-ed into today’s context, here are two ongoing major zoning disputes in Missouri, neither of them related to the "Village Law." In Kansas City, the Star is reporting on a dispute involving the proposed expansion of a prominent museum. Just north of there in Platte County, the St. Joseph News-Press reports on a subdivision dispute — the kind typical in many fast-growing areas. (Or, at least, areas that were fast-growing before $4-a-gallon gas, but that’s another issue.)

Not to put words in his mouth, but Dave Roland would say that both the museum and the subdivision developers have the right to develop their property however they want to, and no city or planning commission or neighbor has the right to prevent that. Subsequently, if those developments harmed the neighbors’ property values, the neighbors should be compensated for that harm via civil action. I encourage you to read it all (particularly the op-ed), and come to your own decision.

So just how much does it cost to hold an election?

Well, obviously, that depends on the election. If you’re like me, you’ve heard the figures for high-profile, national elections, but the general focus there is campaign costs. What about the cost of renting polling places, printing ballots, and even paying postage on absentee ballots? For a Missouri municipal election, at least, Andrew and Hickory counties were able to shed some light on that question.

Continue reading "Just How Much Does It Cost?" »

According to the Post-Dispatch, experience is not the sole factor to consider when hiring teachers:

That’s the conclusion of a new study released Wednesday that looks at the quality of public school teachers in Illinois.

The 44-page report from the Illinois Education Research Council found the highest percentage of academically talented teachers were at schools in the Champaign area, with those in suburban Chicago and west-central Illinois close behind.

I know this isn’t really shocking news for anyone who has given the subject serious thought. It seems fairly obvious that experience is only one of many factors that need to be taken into account when hiring mechanics, doctors, financial analysts, stock brokers, farmhands, dishwashers, sales clerks, and, yes, even teachers. So, surprise! This study confirms the obvious.

The reason this study is necessary at all is that unions have strong incentives to favor policies that benefit current workers at the expense of future workers. The result is an overemphasis on experience relative to other merits in the workplace. So it really shouldn’t be surprising when teacher unions favor experience-based pay and oppose merit-based pay — even when both common sense and science contradict them.

The St. Louis Public School District is looking for a new superintendent. If you think you’re up for the job, keep in mind that this is the only school district in the state where the superintendent is required — by law — to post a $50,000 bond to be hired. (It should be noted, however, that posting a bond generally costs only a fraction of its full value.)

Why would a school district, let alone Missouri legislators, require such a thing?

In general, having a person post a bond is done to encourage something. It all depends on the wording. For example, the St. Louis district could use the bond to encourage the superintendent to stay (she could get it back after five years with the district), to work toward an academic goal (she could get it when the district’s drop-out rate decreases by a set amount), or simply to lower the school district’s costs.

The bond required of Dr. Diana Bourisaw, and every other St. Louis superintendent hired by the district during the past 40 years, encourages none of those things. In its entirety, the bond requires the superintendent to "Faithfully perform the duties of his (her) office as provided by law."

How did this happen?

Continue reading "What Does $50,000 Get You? (A St. Louis Story)" »

"Rains clog sewer system, residents asked to limit toilet use," the Kansas City Star reports. The hilarity of this headline should be apparent to anyone with a bit of schooling in economics. According to the article:

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment issued a statement Wednesday urging Sublette residents to curtail water usage and use toilets as little as possible. The statement said sewers will remain shut down until further notice.

I sincerely doubt that this statement will have much of an effect on water usage. A much more effective way to curtail water usage would be to simply raise prices, much like a private provider would do when the costs of supplying water temporarily but dramatically increase. In response to the higher price, water consumers would cut back on consumption. Only when the benefit to the consumer outweighed the cost to the water producer would water be consumed.

Admittedly, this is an imperfect solution because, as the article alludes to, the primary problem is not in water usage per se, but in the sewers. Ideally, sewage companies would be able to charge for each flush independent of how much water it uses, but this may be impractical. If these services were privatized, they might be provided by different companies, but the sewage company would have a strong incentive to pay the water company to raise prices.

Under the current system, both Kansas and Missouri get bureaucratic proselytization about when they can and can’t flush, rather than actual results, and that just stinks.

Dr. Philip Anderson, Dean of the St. Louis University School of Medicine, calls for tuition assistance for students studying to be primary care physicians over at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His rationale is that there aren’t enough primary care physicians, and tuition assistance would provide an incentive for young bright minds to move into the field.

I suspect that the supply of doctors is relatively inelastic, and thus tuition assistance woouldn’t have much of an effect on the number of primary care physicians available. The problem is that the supply of doctors is fundamentally limited by occupational licensing laws. It’s no secret that it costs an enormous amount of both time and money in order to become a doctor in the United States. As a result, there are fewer doctors than there would be otherwise, and those who do become doctors enjoy much higher wages. In the end, this hurts the average family who has to pay more for medical services — particularly low-income families who are already strapped for cash.

The standard argument for requiring doctors to be licensed is that this protects the public from fly-by-night operations that only endanger the public’s health. There may be some merit to this argument when it comes to invasive surgery. When it comes to things like treating a cold or giving birth, however, the argument loses much of its force. You simply don’t need an M.D. to effectively do many of the things doctors do. What this argument ignores, though, is that fully functioning adults are capable of making their own decisions. It may be a useful service to warn the public about the dangers of not using a doctor for any given medical need, but requiring the public to use a doctor only limits the options available.

Speaking of midwifery, as Justin Hauke notes, the Missouri Supreme Court has just upheld a law to legalize the practice. Midwifery provides a textbook example of how occupational licensing hurts both the consumer and the competition. The Post-Dispatch reports:

Doctors’ groups have fought efforts to loosen the regulations, arguing that midwives lack training and that pregnancies can quickly become dangerous.

Even if this is correct — and it probably isn’t — this issue is fundamentally a matter of personal choice. We don’t allow the government to treat us like children when we decide what to wear in the morning; why shouldn’t we insist on autonomy when it comes to health care?

My fellow bloggers  have written quite a bit more about midwifery in Missouri — for example: here, here, here, and here.