The man who was denied admission to the bar because of his unpaid student loans has once again been told he can’t get a law license.

When I blogged about Michigan’s bill to exempt babysitters from daycare regulations, I didn’t know it imposed a $600 limit. The bill has been signed into law, and babysitters are free to watch kids in peace — as long as they earn less than that amount in a year.

A teenager who watches kids one night a week for $50 would exceed that limit, so I’d say Michigan’s daycare regulations still apply to way too many people.

When I last blogged about the BASIS charter schools, I hadn’t had a chance to watch Two Million Minutes: The Twenty-First Century Solution, which is the fourth in the Two Million Minutes series. Now that I’ve seen the full documentary, I can revisit the question: “Is BASIS the 21st century education solution?”

I’m impressed by the dedication of BASIS schools’ founders, and by their commitment to bring students to a high level academically. However, it’s still unclear to me that BASIS could be replicated on the scale that would be necessary to change American education.

BASIS schools are not large. One of the students says, “This is such a small school,” and several describe it as a close-knit, caring community. The family-like environment allows the teachers to get to know individual students and help them catch up. One student recounts how she worked through several extra textbook chapters each week after she first enrolled in BASIS. It might be difficult to motivate kids to do that if they didn’t have a personal connection with their teachers. And, because of its size, BASIS is not directly comparable to the big suburban high schools shown in the first Two Million Minutes documentary.

The mention of distributing fliers on a university parking lot makes me suspect that BASIS students are above average in educational background, as do some of the students’ hobbies and interests — such as opera. And, while BASIS now runs schools in two cities with different demographics, it’s hard to tell whether the student bodies are representative of their respective communities, because in both cases, BASIS has encountered a lot of opposition from neighbors and drawn students from beyond its immediate surroundings. BASIS doesn’t report how many of its students are eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch, making it impossible for an outsider to judge whether its claims of economic diversity are accurate.

The schools’ founders are aware of criticisms of BASIS, and they respond briefly in the documentary. In particular, I appreciated Olga Block’s comments on the challenges of integrating students into BASIS midway through the program. I agree that she’s in a catch-22. If her schools don’t improve student achievement, she’s not doing her job; but when the students outperform their peers, she faces the charge of running an elite school.

Although we’ll have to wait to learn if BASIS can scale up, it’s already a good example of a charter that serves its students well. What matters for American education is not whether a specific school like BASIS is able to expand, but whether equally ambitious schools will be permitted to open and compete.

Olga Block says it best in this essay:

The curriculum and policies specific to BASIS are not formulaic. They cannot simply be applied, like fertilizer, to any system and ‘watch the students learn.’ The formula that makes this sort of success possible is the freedom to innovate and reform at the school level.

Combest linked today to a Missourinet article about a decline in the state’s transportation funding:

State Transportation Director Pete Rahn has warned lawmakers that transportation funding will soon drop from $1.5 billion dollars to $421 million, which would end the ramped up construction the past few years which has vastly improved Missouri roads and bridges.

The article talks about proposals to address the decreased budget with more taxes, specifically targeting Missouri’s gas tax, which is lower than in all of our neighboring states — except for Oklahoma, which has the same 17-cent tax. A reliance on gas tax increases can only do so much, however. After all, as the article mentions, new cars are becoming more fuel efficient, and raising the gas tax only accelerates a switch to more fuel-efficient cars, decreasing the budget further.

Instead of taxes, what about tolls? The Show-Me Institute published a policy study last year about privately funding roads. It’s a model that has worked in Europe, and in other parts of the United States. The Skyway in Chicago is a good example of a public highway being successfully transferred to private ownership. A 99-year lease shifted a large cost from the government to a private company, and the people are paying directly for their travel on that road, rather than having to pay a flat fee regardless of their usage.

Maintenance of roads is expensive, but also potentially lucrative for a private company. The profit motive incentivizes companies to attract customers by maintaining the roads and keeping road closures to a minimum; so, a private company almost certainly wouldn’t entirely shut down a highway for two years to do roadwork. Rather than increasing taxes, Missouri should be transferring its expensive public roads to private companies that have a a financial stake in keeping the traffic flowing.

The Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal weighed in with its position on truck-only lanes for Missouri. Its editorial view is really that truck-only lanes are worth considering and could be good for Missouri, but the paper didn’t stake out a strong view either way. The editorial is mildly disappointing, because although it mentions how the Kansas City Star has called for the use of toll roads (as have I), it then says that toll roads “aren’t perfect,” but never tells us what it views as the problems or weaknesses of toll roads. But the good news is that the paper is at least writing in positive terms about truck-only lanes, provided a fair financing system can be found.

Of course, a great financing system could pretty obviously be enacted simply by making the trucks that use the roads pay the tolls to finance the roads. For that matter, the entire highway should be tolled so that we all pay for whichever system we choose to use. I have no problem with gas taxes, and raising the gas tax to pay for highways is far preferable to raising the general sales tax. But using the gas tax as a financing system for truck-only lanes would make the people who drive only on local roads pay just as much for the highway as truckers and long-distance commuters would.

I won’t go into the extreme detail of how we fund transportation in Missouri, but we pay for our roads in many different ways. The people who primarily use local roads pay for them through gas, sales, and property taxes. Tolling the highway would be the fairest and most efficient way to make sure that the people who use the highway — especially people and truckers from out of state — pay for their use of the asset. Passenger cars and, I presume, trucks with enormous gas tanks can quite easily make it across Missouri without filling up and thereby paying gax taxes within Missouri. Currently, many people and trucks driving across the state intentionally stop and fill up while in Missouri because of the low gas taxes here. However, if we pay for a new I-70 and a new I-44 with increased gas taxes (which, again, isn’t the worst idea), we can expect some of the current fill-ups to be redirected across state lines.

Tolling the highway, and eliminating gas taxes for the drivers who pay the tolls, is the best way to fund the changes. Fears of diverting trucks to lesser highways are overblown, especially if trucks are allowed to double-rig in the truck-only lanes, and the toll itself isn’t set too high. The goal is to bring in enough funding to build and maintain the road, not earn a profit.

Thanks to Combest for the link.

As we have written previously, one of the great evils of tax increment financing (TIF) is that it offers special advantages to the beneficiaries selected by elected officials, forcing everyone else in the market to compete at a disadvantage. Sadly, there’s a new example of how destructive this sort of policy can be.

Months ago, the city of Rock Port, Mo., decided to approve a TIF project worth $175,000 in order to bring a new grocery store to town. The long-time owners of Rock Port Market (up to that time the only local grocery store serving the town’s residents) said they didn’t mind fair competition from a new store, but objected that the TIF would give the new store a gigantic financial advantage not offered to the existing business. Sadly, just six months later, the family that has operated Rock Port Market for nearly 80 years has decided to close the market’s doors.

True economic development happens best when governments allow businesses to compete on a field that offers no special advantages to any of the players. The government does a grave disservice to its citizens when it assumes the responsibility for picking winners and losers in the market, rather than letting businesses succeed or fail on their own merit.

While they waited in line this morning, I wonder if any Black Friday shoppers read George Will’s op-ed, “The Gift of Not Giving,” in the Washington Post. He explains that holiday-related shopping activities destroy wealth and aggregate utility.

Gifts that people buy for other people are usually poorly matched to the recipients’ preferences. What the recipients would willingly pay for the gifts is usually less than the givers paid. The measure of the inefficiency of allocating value by gift-giving is the difference between the yield of satisfaction per dollar spent on gifts and the yield per dollar spent on the recipients’ own purchases. [...]

Were it not for sentimentality about sentiments, which are highly overrated, we would behave rationally, giving cash, thereby avoiding value subtraction.

For our Easter baskets, beginning a couple of years ago, my sisters and I convinced our parents to give us cash instead of candy. Our reasoning wasn’t as well-worded as Will’s, but the principle was the same. If we really wanted candy, we could use the money to buy it. Mom and Dad agreed because it saves them a trip to the store. Plus, they’re not wasting money on plastic eggs and baskets every year. Cash is better because it doesn’t expire, unlike candy and gift cards. The Harbin family destroys no wealth on Easter.

The University of Missouri Extension runs a program called the Kindergarten Farm Food Initiative. A newsletter to parents from the beginning of the school year states (emphasis in the original):

your child will enjoy locally grown fruit and vegetable snacks three times a week.

It also characterizes locally grown food as “fresh” and “delicious,” and admonishes parents:

If your child asks you for a tasty fruit or vegetable snack at home, we hope that you will encourage this healthy habit.

Serving healthy snacks to a class doesn’t endorse any particular ideology. And, by itself, a visit to a farm isn’t indoctrination. (I applauded when this school took kindergartners to a farm to learn about agriculture.) Where this program crosses the line is in its newsletters, which are based on the assumption that locally grown food is inherently good. I would guess the same attitude toward local food is conveyed to students during class time.

To explain my objection with an analogy, suppose a school, in connection with a unit on China, announced to parents that students would play with fun, high-quality toys from China three times a week. Suppose it sent home newsletters about the toys emphasizing the fact that they are from China. Wouldn’t that be seen as an unfair endorsement? Everyone agrees that kids need to play, but whether toys from China are the best choice is debatable. Even if the school didn’t explicitly tell the kids that toys made in China are better than other toys, a kindergartner could easily form that conclusion if the school made no mention of toys from other places.

It’s fine for a school to tell kids where food comes from, but it shouldn’t focus on one food source to the exclusion of others. Parents can always tell their children that local food is preferable, if that is something that their family values.

When online schools in Oregon used technology to compete with traditional districts, legislators responded that the virtual schools shouldn’t accept new students until the state can study the matter further. Yet when an Oregon district uses the Internet for crisis management, it’s celebrated as innovative. No one calls for the district to suspend the program and subject it to scrutiny.

In Missouri, the virtual school teaching academic subjects to a couple thousand students is cut from the budget because it’s seen as an unnecessary cost, but the state plans to distribute more than 24,000 vouchers for an online program that teaches people to use Microsoft Excel. The governor explains why:

“I’m proud that the state of Missouri is teaming up with Microsoft to provide cutting-edge, in-demand training that will help our citizens compete in the 21st-century economy,” Gov. Nixon said.  “The world has gone digital, and it’s vital that Missourians have the knowledge and skills to land and keep the jobs of tomorrow. For folks seeking a new job, or looking to brush up their skills, Elevate America will be a tremendous resource.”

Abby Sunderland, a 16-year-old American, is another sailor who hopes to become the youngest to sail around the world. In a few weeks, she plans to depart for a nonstop six-month voyage.

I haven’t heard about any government criticism of her or any attempts to put her in state custody. That could change before the middle of December, but it seems likely that she’ll set sail without any state interference.

Abby Sunderland, Laura Dekker, and Jessica Watson are three teenagers with similar goals but divergent experiences — and those differences are a result of the actions of their respective countries’ governments. They’re a reminder that policies can change the course of people’s lives.

To learn more about Sunderland, check out her blog.

By way of Edspresso, I see that Pittsburgh is dealing with the same issue that St. Louis did not long ago: Its public school district won’t sell a building to a charter school.

I’m optimistic that this will turn out well for Pittsburgh charters. Districts can dig in their heels and try to hold on to real estate, but when enough people prefer charters, political pressure will force districts to give up the empty buildings.

Do U.S. high school students score poorly on math and science tests because of too many commercials and not enough encouragement from Big Bird? If so, a new federal campaign will remedy that. It’s a hodgepodge of initiatives, ranging from science-themed video games in public libraries to commercial-free science television shows. Scientists will volunteer to help teachers, and “Sesame Street” is getting in on the action.

One thing is clear:

“It has nothing to do with the day-to-day teaching,” said Dr. Schneider, who was the commissioner of education statistics at the Department of Education from 2005 to 2008.

None of the new programs would transform science class. Few would affect schools at all, instead giving children opportunities to learn about science through after school activities. Their success would depend on whether anyone wants to participate in these particular initiatives, and whether the science video games teach as much as they’re supposed to. And there’s a disconnect between the programs and the campaign’s stated goals: high schoolers are too old to care about many of the “hooks” (like Big Bird), yet the campaign seeks to improve high school science scores.

Here are some policies that would have a greater effect on science in school:

• Alternative teacher certification. If you like the idea of scientists volunteering to work with students for the duration of a single project, just imagine what students would learn if  scientists stayed on as full-time teachers.
• Science-themed charter schools. Allow the students who are most interested in science to choose specialized schools and devote more time to studying it.
• No national standards. Schools should strive to offer the best science instruction possible, not conform to a single standard. No matter how good the standard is, it will always be possible to improve on it. We don’t want schools to stop once they reach whatever level that the government finds acceptable — but that’s exactly what standards legislation prompts them to do.