Samuel Meisels, the president of the Erikson Institute in Chicago, was quoted in this article about kindergarten readiness tests:

Meisels said readiness surveys are not accurate indicators of childhood success. He advocates for teachers to observe children over time, rather than a one-time evaluation.

Districts might be inclined to use a flawed assessment rather than none at all, but Meisels explains the damage a readiness test can cause:

“It changes people’s perceptions. It can change a teacher’s perception of likely success in school. It can create parental anxiety. Worst of all, it can make a small student feel stigmatized and less capable,” Meisels said. “If any one of those consequences occur, based on a poorly designed test, it’s inexcusable to me.”

Meisels’ suggestion to observe students over time is a good one, and districts like Fulton could adopt it in place of the readiness tests they use now. The districts could accept all five-year-olds and observe them in their kindergarten class for a week or two. Then, if it’s determined that some children aren’t ready to continue with kindergarten academics, the district could place them in a separate class, have them repeat a year, or make other arrangements.

This system would give children a better chance to prove themselves ready than a short assessment provides. Kindergartners can easily fail a short readiness test because they’re nervous or distracted at the time; observing them in a classroom over several days gives a better picture of how they interact with their environment. And the only downside is that a few children with below-average hand-eye coordination or counting skills would attend kindergarten with the others for a week. (Serious developmental disabilities are not diagnosed with kindergarten readiness tests, but through more involved — and medically meaningful — assessments. So, abolishing readiness screening for all need not interfere with special education services.)

Districts shouldn’t settle for faulty readiness tests when there are better alternatives.

In a Reason article, “Have a Coke and a Tax: The economic case against soda taxes,” Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University explains that selective sin taxes are ineffectual because consumers tend to substitute one bad habit with another. De Rugy explains that soda taxes will be unsuccessful at slimming American waistlines because consumers are likely to switch to beverages that are higher in calories.

The trouble is that sin taxers don’t appreciate human creativity: Consumers have a knack for replacing one sin with another. When the price of a “sinful” good increases, people often substitute an equally “bad” good in its place.

As I have blogged about previously, selective taxes on sinful goods are an application of libertarian paternalism. I’m skeptical of plans to implement “nudges” à la Sunstein and Thaler for two main reasons.

First, they assume that the government/”choice architect” actually knows what the “right” choice is for other individuals. The answer to the question “What is healthy?” is a subjective one; it depends on who you ask and when. It also depends on who holds political office and which business interests have his ear.

Second, the government/”choice architect” could restrict free choice by artificially raising the cost of “bad” choices too much. I agree with David Friedman’s deducement that nudges can all-too-easily turn into compulsions. When the government has the authority to micromanage the eating habits and desired weights of its citizens, the individual isn’t free to choose how to eat as she desires.

Instead of nudging people into eating habits that are considered to be healthy at the time, choice architects should focus their efforts on improving the quality and availability of information to consumers, who can decide for themselves.

If America were serious about reducing the caloric intake of its citizens, then officials would eliminate the subsidies that it pays to corn producers rather than instituting sin taxes, because that would be more efficacious. Then food products that are made from corn would be relatively more expensive, and the quantity demanded would decrease. It’s a different means to the same end.

American should also stop pretending that such selective taxes (such as those on fatty food, cosmetic surgery, or indoor tanning) are actually implemented in order to improve public health — their real purpose is to raise enough tax revenue to support the government’s spending habit.

English is the official language of the state of Missouri. One official language is bad enough, but at least we don’t have two. Ottawa is finding that multiple official languages can cause hassles after a ceremony featuring speeches in official English left out any mention of official French. The mayor apologized — the news report doesn’t say in which language.

I can think of two explanations for the fact that people didn’t speak French at the ceremony: Either it’s reverse psychology, or people just speak whatever language they want without regard for state approval.

My kindergarten readiness posts met with some disagreement from readers, who responded that if children can’t complete the tasks on readiness tests, then they’re not mature enough to learn in a classroom.

I’d like to ask those readers how they explain the success of Building Blocks, a federally-funded preschool curriculum based on neuroscience research. This program takes four-year-olds who, by the customary measures, aren’t ready to learn math:

In one videotaped exam, a 4-year-old boy in a FUBU jersey and long dreadlocks who entered P.S. 99 in 2006 was unable to count or match cards with 3, 5, 2, 1 and 4 on them to cards with equivalent numbers of grapes.

And it teaches them, along with addition and subtraction, math concepts like quantity and cardinality that most schools don’t introduce until students are certifiably ready kindergartners. They learn it, averaging 26 percentile points higher on math tests than their peers who didn’t participate in Building Blocks. A year later, the Building Blocks kids are still ahead by an average of 21 percentile points.

It’s always exciting when you find an intervention that works. But I’m not surprised that the four-year-olds were able to learn, with the right program. Because unlike Building Blocks, kindergarten readiness tests are not based on neuroscience. The “research” behind them consists of not-always-strong correlations between kindergartners who couldn’t tie their shoes and later academic problems. They’re like the personality tests some companies have tried giving employees, reasoning that if the last star employee answered the questions a certain way, maybe the next one will too.

Building Blocks’ creators took the right approach to teaching students who were considered unready. They didn’t wait for them to catch up on their own, which probably would have set them further behind. And they didn’t waste time developing unrelated skills to satisfy a testing requirement. Instead, they developed a curriculum that teaches math despite students’ supposed unpreparedness.

Districts like Fulton Public Schools would do well to learn from Building Blocks and stop asking, “Are the kindergartners ready to learn?” A better question is, “Are we ready to teach them?”

Last week, the State Tax Commission proposed a plan that would change the levels of taxation for Missouri farmland. Combest had a number of links to stories about this. In short, taxes on higher-quality farmland would rise, and taxes on the lower quality land would decrease. I'll admit that I learned a lot about how farmland is valued and assessed because of this story — which is nice, because it's my job to know stuff like that.

Let's start by admitting that property taxes on farms and farmland in Missouri are very low. That does not mean that I think they should be higher, just that we can all admit they're low. Under the new plan, the value of an acre of the best farmland, for tax purposes, would be $1,270. An acre of land in a nice part of St. Louis County can easily be valued at $50,000 for tax purposes — and that is the assessed value, not just the appraised value. I realize there is a big difference between someone paying taxes on those higher valuations for one or two acres, and a farmer paying them on hundreds of acres, but still it is quite a difference — especially when the farm land is making money for its owner, while the residential acre just sits there and looks pretty.

Farm buildings and equipment are also valued lower than personal property: 12 percent, compared to 33 percent. So, I pay higher taxes on my car than the farmer does on his or her tractor. Then again, my car just gets me around, while that tractor helps feed the world.

We keep farm property taxes low because high property taxes are an impediment to productivity in a resource-heavy usage like farming. Higher taxes on farms would lead directly to higher food prices for the rest of us. The people of Missouri decided a long time ago to encourage farming by levying lower taxes for it than for other land uses. I think that was a good decision then, and still a good decision now. The changes that would result from an average increase in farm taxes are not a good idea for Missouri.

An article in the Columbia Daily Tribune explains the commotion over the Columbia Public Schools’ brand-new elementary school building. The problem with it? It looks too nice — much nicer than the districts’ other buildings. Some people say it’s inequitable for one school in the district to have handsome facilities while other school buildings need repair.

Those people would probably prefer that the district divide up expenditures, improving each building a little bit at a time. But that’s not always practical. It can be more cost-effective to build a new structure than to continually patch up an old one. And seldom (if ever) does any district have the opportunity to build new schools for all students simultaneously.

Some children in Columbia Public Schools enjoy nicer buildings than others, and some districts have more expensive auditoriums and science labs than Columbia Public Schools. However, that’s not the main cause of educational inequity. Much more important than the appearance of buildings is what children learn inside of them. A school that looks drab on the outside may have excellent teachers and a great curriculum. On the other hand, a new building is no proof that classroom materials or teaching practices have been improved.

No matter how good your building is, you’ll always be able to find a school out there that’s physically superior in some way. (For example, although the Ladue School District has many new classrooms, it recently sent out a newsletter stating that various cafeteria and library spaces fall short of Missouri School Improvement Guidelines.) The quest for perfect buildings could be unending, but it would be better to pursue perfect academics instead.

Supporters of increased government involvement in health care — such as Michael Moore, as seen in his film Sicko — are always keen to show private insurers denying legitimate claims for medical care. That does happen, but it’s less than half the story. As Mary Theroux at the Independent Institute points out, Medicare denies claims at a far higher rate than private insurers:

According to the American Medical Association’s National Health Insurer Report Card for 2008, the government’s health plan, Medicare, denied medical claims at nearly double the average for private insurers: Medicare denied 6.85% of claims. The highest private insurance denier was Aetna @ 6.8%, followed by Anthem Blue Cross @ 3.44, with an average denial rate of medical claims by private insurers of 3.88%

In its 2009 National Health Insurer Report Card, the AMA reports that Medicare denied only 4% of claims—a big improvement, but outpaced better still by the private insurers. The prior year’s high private denier, Aetna, reduced denials to 1.81%—an astounding 75% improvement—with similar declines by all other private insurers, to average only 2.79%.

Maybe there’s something to be said for the need to keep your customers satisfied in order to make that profit after all.

And not only is Medicare more likely to deny claims, it is also driving up health care costs for everyone. Our August policy study on health insurance reform shows that Medicare and other government health care expenditures drive a wedge between consumers and producers that fuels price inflation.

Government interference in health care markets only gives Missourians higher costs while leading to coverage of fewer claims. Effective health care reform must go in the direction of markets, but now that the Senate seems set to vote for cloture on the health care bill, that seems very unlikely in the near future.

Last summer, I had the privilege of being a Koch Summer Fellow for the Show-Me Institute. It was a terrific experience, and I recommend it to anybody who is interested in public policy and liberty. The Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program flew me (and the other 81 fellows) to Washington, D.C., for a week at the beginning and end of the summer, where we listened to lectures about liberty, participated in career workshops, made group policy presentations, and had an overall good time.

For the other eight weeks of the program, I interned at at the Show-Me Institute in St. Louis. As a state-based organization, the Show-Me Institute gave me more opportunities to research and write about policy issues than I would have had at a larger national organization. There were also weekly deadlines for the KSFP program, writing op-eds and letters to the editor, and watching online lectures.

And why should you care about my summer internship experience?

The Koch Summer Fellowship Program (run through the Institute for Humane Studies) is accepting applicants for next summer! Any college or graduate student interested in free-market public policy (whether at the federal or state level) should apply. (Make sure to specify the Show-Me Institute as a preferred destination on your application!)

This 2010 program lasts from June 5, 2010, to August 13, 2010. As a state-based fellow, you receive:

A $1,500 stipend for the duration of the fellowship

Travel allowance to and from D.C. (for both of the week-long seminars)

Housing allowance

The deadline for applications is January 31, 2010, and admissions are rolling. APPLY TODAY!

The Missouri State School Board voted today to close the Wellston School District. Wellston students will be Normandy students after this school year.

Normandy is only provisionally accredited; its student MAP scores are better than Wellston’s, but not by much. Normandy has shown admirable willingness to accept new students; however, it hasn’t demonstrated that it can provide a significantly better education than Wellston did.

If Wellston students were given a choice, some might wish to attend Normandy, and others would probably prefer other schools. It’s too bad that the board assigned everyone to a single district and did not allow the students and their families to make the decision.

Wellston students are left with one option besides Normandy: They can attend the St. Louis Public Schools’ Virtual School.

Nashville’s mayor has announced the creation of a charter school incubator to train principals. The center will start out as a nonprofit financed by private donations.

Supporters hope the incubator will teach school leaders about the features of successful charters:

Ideas about common traits shared by good charter schools — longer school days, a strong school culture — have become important training tools as the number of schools expands.

Missouri, with two cities among the top 10 list of cities with highest charter school market share, is home to several charters that principals in training could learn from. Either St. Louis or Kansas City would afford ample opportunities for incubator participants, and would be a good site for an incubator like Nashville’s.

The diversity of Missouri’s charters could make this an especially attractive place to start an incubator. Future principals who want to learn about charter schools in general, rather than one particular “brand” of charter, would be able to study a wide range of schools. Charters here are a mix of elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, so participants could observe charter classrooms at any grade level. And the Missouri charter market is not dominated by any particular chain of charters. Some charters belong to national chains and some belong to groups of affiliated schools, but there are also charters that stand alone. And still other charters combine common elements with a unique focus; one such charter that comes to mind is City Garden Montessori. This school employs the same educational approach as other Montessori charters, while concentrating on a small geographic area — which most charters don’t do.

If a charter school incubator is established in Missouri, I’m sure its proximity to a variety of excellent charters would be a key selling point. But Missouri’s less-successful charters might be instructive examples for participants, too. If a future principal who wanted to study charters came into a market where every charter was applauded, he might conclude that running a charter is always easy and glamorous. He would be in for a rude surprise if, once he had his own charter to manage, he encountered challenges or didn’t see drastic improvements in student achievement.

Missouri is already in a good position to welcome a charter school incubator, and a few improvements would make it the perfect choice. To be an even more favorable site for an incubator, Missouri could expand charter schooling in these areas:

• Online charter schools. These would be essential in training anyone who intends to work for a virtual charter, of course. And future principals of brick-and-mortar schools could look to virtual schools for ideas about incorporating technology into the curriculum. They also might want to familiarize themselves with online education in case they eventually decide to expand their schools’ enrollment beyond the classroom walls, like these private schools did.
• Single-sex charter schools. There are single-sex classrooms within charter schools in Missouri, but no all-girls’ or all-boys’ schools. Single-sex charters are growing more popular in larger markets like New York, and although Missouri probably couldn’t support a dozen of these schools, opening one or two would keep the state on the cutting edge of charter education.
• Rural and suburban charter schools. Missouri law confines charters to Kansas City and St. Louis. As charters crop up in other states’ suburbs, and as rural districts convert to charters to attract students, educators may expect to find these kinds of schools in a well-rounded market.

I definitely recommend this piece about property taxes in today’s Springfield News-Leader that Combest linked to today. My favorite line from it:

When did $98,560 household income qualify for welfare in Missouri?

This is the new America. Everyone’s on welfare. I guess we have to get used to it.

In this KMOX article from yesterday, Saint Louis Mayor Francis Slay comments about Missouri’s film tax credit program:

They (filmmakers) spent a lot of money, had about a $50-$60 million dollar economic impact on the St. Louis area.

Hold on — $50–$60 million? Where is he getting this figure? Allow me to crunch some numbers and demonstrate that an impact of this magnitude is unrealistic.

In the comment section of my recent post about film tax credits in Missouri, Econdiva provided an estimate that the producers of Up in the Air spent “just shy of $12 million” in the state. I will grant her estimate for the sake of argument, because she worked on the film and is more likely to know this information.

For an economic multiplier, I’ll reference a fiscal note from Louisiana regarding the estimated economic and fiscal impacts of film and video tax incentives (emphasis added):

[T]he current statewide economic multipliers, supplied by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce, for the motion picture and sound recording industries estimate that each dollar of expenditures in those industries generates about 40¢ of earnings throughout the entire economy (a final demand earnings multiplier of 0.3982).

Using this figure, an expenditure of $12 million for Up in the Air would generate only $4.8 million for Missouri’s economy.

Even if Mayor Slay used the January 2009 prediction of $30 million in the Saint Louis Business Journal, the amount generated for the state’s economy would only be $12 million.

Both numbers fall pretty far short of $50–$60 million. This is just wishful thinking.