This notice may be too late for those of you who read our blog to tune in, but for those of you Columbia readers who encounter this blog entry right after I post it and find yourselves near a radio, be sure to tune in to The Eagle 93.9 FM at 4:33 p.m. to hear research assistant John Payne talk about unemployment and possibly our new study of the relationship between taxes and economic growth.

I’ve noticed that some journalists assume it’s normal for the government to license occupations and restrict entry to them. When states don’t license an activity, these writers point it out as an aberration. An example of this bias appears in today’s Wall Street Journal article about anger management seminars:

There are no licensing requirements for anger-management trainers—anyone an open a business.

Let’s hope it stays that way. I’d hate to see Missouri create a Board of Anger Management Professionals (which would probably hold very calm, boring meetings).

Sorry for the late notice, but two Show-Me Institute staffers will be making appearances later today — one on the radio, and one in person.

Research assistant John Payne will be a guest on the Freeman Bosely Jr. morning show on KATZ 1600 AM, once again talking about the St. Louis–area Metro transit system. His segment is scheduled to start somewhere between 11:00 and 11:15 a.m. If you want to listen but are not in St. Louis (or don’t have a radio), you can listen online at www.gospel1600.com. You can also read John’s op-ed about MetroLink expansion and watch his recent appearance on Fox 2 news.

Also today, policy analyst Dave Roland will be the keynote speaker at the Missouri Libertarian Party Convention in Jefferson City! He’ll be speaking about the importance of capturing the hearts and minds of Missourians in our efforts to spread the ideas of liberty and take practical steps toward increased freedom. The Show-Me Institute doesn’t engage in electoral politics, but we’re always happy to share our ideas with others — so, Democrats, Republicans, Greens, what have you, be sure to let us know when you’d like us to speak at your events, as well. We’d love to talk to you.

Charles Jaco just finished taping an interview with Show-Me Institute research assistant John Payne, about the Metro mass transit system in the St. Louis area. At least some portion of it is slated to appear in tonight’s FOX 2 news broadcast at 10:00. Be sure to tune in. [UPDATE: The video is now online.]

For more information about St. Louis transit, read Payne’s recent op-ed about MetroLink, which also ran on the Riverfront Times blog and in the St. Louis Business Journal. His commentary attracted some attention from a Metro board member, who responded on our blog, followed by a short rejoinder by Payne.

The Show-Me Institute ran a trio of pieces in October 2008 about transit funding in St. Louis, considering the problem from different angles. We’ve also been fortunate enough to publish a few pieces analyzing Kansas City light rail plans, by transit scholar Randal O’Toole and policy analyst David Stokes. Although these latter pieces considered the issue specifically as it relates to the Kansas City area, many of the broad observations about light rail costs and efficiency apply just as well to St. Louis.

Saint Louis’ only orchestral music station might be changing formats, and it has two area congressmen pretty angry:

U.S. Reps. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville, and Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, are asking the Federal Communications Commission to weigh the potential negative consequences of selling KFUO (99.1 FM) to a company that broadcasts “Christian contemporary” pop music.

The station is currently owned by the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church. Facing a cash crunch, it agreed to sell the station last year for $18 million to Gateway Creative Broadcasting.

The pending sale — which still needs federal approval — has raised a cacophony of dissent from the St. Louis arts community, bemoaning the loss of the only station in the region where listeners can hear full time from Brahms, Bach and others.

As someone who likes orchestral music and listens to KFUO fairly often (it is number five on my car presets) but absolutely hates Christian contemporary, I sincerely hope the station keeps its current format.

That being said, what do Shimkus and Clay expect the Missouri Synod to do if this sale is blocked? The church probably wants to sell the station because it is a drain on the church’s resources, so it might just stop broadcasting even without a sale to save the operating expenses. Barring that, the Missouri Synod will have to cut back on other goods or services that it sees as more vital than the radio station. Such a cutback could include anything from laying off marginal employees to reducing charitable work.

If people are interested in saving KFUO’s current format of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, they should organize a fundraiser or a pledge drive for the station.  KDHX 88.1 FM in Saint Louis (number four in my presets) provides a format for numerous different genres of music that are never heard on pop radio, and all without almost any advertising because the DJs and workers are almost all volunteers and listeners give them money for the good work they do. If people truly want a station to play concert music in Saint Louis, they will support it monetarily. If not, then as much as I or anyone else may not like it, the scarce resources used to broadcast it currently should be used for some other kind of programming that people like more.

This weekend, KC Star columnist E. Thomas McClanahan had a terrific article about the benefits of replacing earnings taxes with a land tax, as proposed for St. Louis and Kansas City by Show-Me Institute executive vice president and University of Missouri–Columbia economics professor Dr. Joseph Haslag. This is the second major KC-area piece that really demonstrates an understanding of how a land tax creates a better incentive structure relative to other types of taxation. The Pitch had an excellent story on the issue in 2008.

As if the article was not great enough, I also want to share the remarks of commentor number 3, “jayhawk6″, who said:

Good explanation for just how the land tax works. The spiteful aspect of property taxes [...] is that a homeowner can be discouraged from improving his/her home because it will raise its value and thus the tax burden.

We thank both McClanahan and “jayhawk6″ for the attention and focus on this important issue. McClanahan is absolutely right when he says that a land tax should be adopted as an eventual replacement for the current property tax system even if the earnings tax is maintained. (But it should NOT be maintained.) Although, as the article explains, this would entail amending the state constitution, counties in Missouri could move in that direction simply by applying more of the current value of property to the land, and less to the improvement. Then, as the property might be improved, the taxes would rise less because the portion determined by land value would hold steady.

Show-Me Institute research assistant John Payne recently had an op-ed published in the Riverfront Times about the proposed tax hike to fund a MetroLink expansion. Payne’s piece elegantly summarizes the following points about why Proposition A is a bad idea:

1. Although the campaign message focuses on strengthening current lines that have had service cuts, the proposition would focus appropriated funds on expansion to less populated areas. MetroLink already has trouble paying for its current infrastructure; expansion would only create the need to use even more tax dollars in the future, or cut existing lines still further.
2. MetroLink has a poor track record of correctly forecasting its costs. (Payne cites as an example the Cross-Country MetroLink Extension, which cost upwards of $676.8 million after an initial projection of $550 million.) If it had been constructed through a public-private partnership (like in Denver), the contractor would have been accountable to spend more responsibly, without repeatedly asking for tax increases. In contrast, MetroLink’s need for a tax increase is written into its 2009 fiscal budget.
3. Expansion of bus routes is much more cost-effective than expanding light rail. From the op-ed:
   

   We would obtain a much greater benefit at a significantly lower cost if we instead focused our public transportation dollars on new, higher-speed bus lines, which are cheaper and far more adaptable than light rail. Although the expansion of light rail into every reach of suburbia may promise an end to traffic congestion and the revitalization of the city, it will ultimately entail spending huge amounts of money in order to transport far fewer additional passengers than are served by the lines already in existence.

4. Some, like the members of this Facebook group supporting the measure, argue that additional public transit services are necessary in order to help the city’s low-income residents. Many advocates of Proposition A don’t realize that the tax increase it would bring is regressive, because it offers no rebates or exemptions based on income level, so it would disproportionately hurt the poor. It would be used to expand services past the city and county, so the people paying the taxes won’t benefit directly from the expansion.

The editorial board at my hometown newspaper, the La Crosse Tribune, is critical of the way that federal stimulus funds are being spent in Wisconsin. An editorial published yesterday, “They’re feeling the stimulus … in Missouri,” laments that public works projects in western Wisconsin are being awarded to out-of-state contractors instead of to local ones.

So here’s a scenario that’s a result of force-feeding the U.S. economy through the tube of federal agencies: While $12.5 million in stimulus money will fund projects on French Island and Brice Prairie, projects that local contractors say they could handle, only a handful of out-of-state firms are allowed to bid them.

In one case, a Kansas City, Mo., company got the nod to build a $6.1 million district office on French Island for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And only three firms, all out of state – one them a Missouri-based subsidiary of an Australian steel company – are in the running to handle two projects at the Upper Mississippi Environmental Sciences Center.

It’s rare that I read an article that interests me on a both a biographical and a public policy level. Initially, I feel compelled to pick sides — but which should I support: the state in which I lived for 20 years or the state in which I live presently? Ultimately, I must decide that my conflict of interest is false, because I disagree that the subject of the editorial is even an issue.

The purpose of the fiscal stimulus was to incite economic recovery on a national level, not for certain states on an individual level. Therefore, the La Crosse Tribune shouldn’t lament the fact that a project wasn’t awarded to a Wisconsin-based firm — instead, it should celebrate the fact it went to an American firm. Furthermore, federal money comes from taxpayers in all states, not just those who live in Wisconsin or in Missouri. State officials and residents shouldn’t feel that their companies are entitled to federal stimulus money simply because a project lies within its borders.

States win and lose business from each other all the time in response to supply and demand — this is the beauty of the interstate trade. Wisconsin lost at least one free-market research analyst to Missouri in the last year, along with other business, but the editorial board at the La Crosse Tribune didn’t write about that. Why, then, does it bring this particular project to light? There are probably many public works projects in Missouri that are bid on by out-of-state vendors, perhaps even from Wisconsin.

As some readers point out in the comment section, awarding the project to a Missouri-based firm may not result in as many lost jobs for Wisconsin individuals and families as suggested in the article. This is because the Missouri firm could use local laborers, including perhaps the employees of the Wisconsin-based firms that were outbid.

The practice of soliciting bids from many contractors, regardless of their origin, is very good because it encourages competition and its positive consequences. If many contractors bid for a single public works project, it drives down cost and taxpayers get more for their money.

My Two Census declares the Census Bureau’s marketing campaign a flop, based on data from its YouTube channel:

The Portrait of America video has just over 6,500 hits…which would sound pretty pathetic for a 10 month campaign if only it wasn’t revealed that the other six videos posted 10 months ago each received between 347 and 1,305 hits. In the series of videos posted 6 months ago, the most widely-watched video, about the address-canvassing operations, has been viewed a measly 1,083 times. (This means that only a tiny fraction of the workers involved in this process even watched the video…)

For comparison, 1,700,000 people watched Google’s Super Bowl ad on YouTube. And “How Many Times Must Our Health Care Fail,” the song I linked to in this post, has been viewed 3,700 times.

My Two Census’ numbers don’t reflect the Census Bureau’s full impact on YouTube, because they don’t take into account the separate channel that the Bureau created for its Super Bowl ad. The ad features an imaginary film director named Payton Schlewitt, and it can be found — along with other clips of Schlewitt’s antics — on the Payton Schlewitt channel. There, the numbers are better. The ad itself drew 117,300 hits within five days. Another video of Schlewitt and his cohorts, which highlights the fact that animals are not counted in the Census, is up to 1,400 hits, also after only a few days.

So, the numbers aren’t as bad as they would appear from the Census Bureau’s channel alone. Still, My Two Census has a point. Payton Schlewitt’s viewership pales next to Google’s. And, of the people who watched the Census ad, many reacted unfavorably. Viewers rated it a mediocre two-and-a-half stars, and several comments complain that taxes had to pay for it.

My recent post about how government agencies in Missouri spent $2,047,457.28 on Credit Card Fees and $17,940.49 on Late Payment Penalty Charges during 2009 has generated some interest! The KC Prime Buzz blog and the Political Fix blog both linked to it.

The Political Fix blog initially titled its article “Missouri state agencies fact check blogger,” later changing it to “Credit check: State agencies dispute Show-Me Institute figures.” Both titles misrepresent the truth. The numbers that I reported were produced by Missouri government agencies, not by the Show-Me Institute or myself. The data in the “Show Me: The Spending” web tool comes directly from the Missouri Accountability Portal, which contains information reported and distributed by the state of Missouri.

I spoke with Lorna Domke, outreach and education chief for the Missouri Department of Conservation, who checked with her accounting office and discovered that funds had been misallocated. In an email, she provided the following clarification to me:

Our contracting services for our Permits sales system (”POS system”) should have been through an object code #2496, “other business services.” That category should have had $1.789 million put in it instead of in the object code #2487, “credit card fees.”

Her numbers check out. I isolated these numbers in the Show-Me: The Spending web tool, and then I exported the relevant data to Excel to combine into the following graph. In 2009, the department’s expenditures on credit card fees increased by about $1.7 million and its expenditures on “other business services” decreased by the same amount.

According to her email, the correct FY09 credit card fees total should have been $31,616 and the correct FY08 credit card fees should have been $32,439.

I also asked Ms. Damke if she could define this category for me, because some of our blog readers raised questions about which types of fees it might contain. In the email, she provided the following clarification:

“Expenditures for the fees incurred when accepting payment by credit card.”

Credit card companies will charge the vendor (our Nature Shops in our case ) a fee of a few% of purchase plus 20 or 30 cents per transaction for each purchase, depending on the agreement. So our credit card fees are only for paying the credit card company for being able to accept credit cards for payments. They do not include any interest, late fees, etc.<just the regular fees for accepting credit cards.

At the Show-Me Institute, we’re glad to see that the Department of Conservation admitted that it made a mistake in coding its expenditures. It would be nice if they could get it right the first time. It would also be nice if other departments would also check their numbers. As reported on the Political Fix blog:

Department of Public Safety officials said the figure is misleading, and does not represent late payments from the department.

The Department of Public Safety should check with its own accounting office, because that’s the origin of the numbers that I reported.

Thanks to the Columbia Missourian today for publishing my op-ed about dental therapists and professional licensing laws in Missouri. It’s an issue we have debated here on the blog before.

The 1-percent earnings tax on Kansas City and St. Louis residents and workers has received a lot of press as of late. The Kansas City Star published an article about the “city’s crucial earnings tax.” Christine Harbin recently posted about the earnings tax in Kansas City, pointing out how a land tax would be better than an earnings tax, because it would encourage landowners to utilize their property productively. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote about the earnings tax from another angle, mentioning Show-Me Institute President Rex Sinquefield and the institute’s research on the tax.

The Post-Dispatch editorial used a loaded term, “public safety tax,” to describe the earnings tax, not because it pays for the Metropolitan Police Department — it doesn’t — but because its revenue is coincidentally equal to the Police Department’s budget. This is not the first time the Post-Dispatch has taken a contrary position regarding the earnings tax than Show-Me Institute writers, though it has toned down its rhetoric since August. The new article discusses a need for a replacement tax for the earnings tax revenue, neglecting to mention that the Show-Me Institute has suggested a replacement: the land tax.

Specifically, Show-Me Institute publications have suggested a two-tiered land tax that would impose separate taxes on property and buildings. Land is fixed in quantity, so this would encourage long-term development. In the long run, rescinding the earnings tax could cause the St. Louis city population to double.

Both St. Louis and Kansas City have watched their city populations and businesses stagnate while their suburbs have grown, and the earnings tax is one contributing component that needs to be addressed. Petition proposals have been approved to collect signatures for the St. Louis earnings tax to be reconsidered on the ballot, with the stipulation that a revenue replacement needs to be found. For St. Louis, the land tax makes the most economic sense as that replacement. When an editorial claims that eliminating the earnings tax is infeasible, it’s important to take into account the potential of the land tax to provide a less-distortionary source of revenue and ultimately promote future economic growth.

I learned from the Census Bureau’s advertising launch today that the bureau will be the top advertiser in the United States during the next few weeks. Agency officials intend to bombard the average person with pro-census messages 42 times.

The gargantuan campaign won’t end when the census forms are released. According to the Census Project’s website, some meteorologists will be reporting local census response rates along with high temperatures and the chance of rain.

Why the sudden onslaught of publicity for something that the country has always done every 10 years? The bureau is touting its campaign as “unprecedented,” as though this year’s census were different from previous counts and required a radically new approach. I noticed that sentiment in today’s advertising kickoff, particularly when MTV Networks’ executive vice president of public affairs stated that people should participate in the 2010 Census because it will be “the most important count of their lifetimes.” This characterization is puzzling given that we’re going to conduct another census a decade from now.

One thing that I’ll admit sets this census apart is its timing: As the economy slowly pulls out of a deep recession, any large enterprise that generates employment is welcome. Still, it would be unwise to expect the census to have a big effect on the economy, even through its biggest campaign ever. I agree with MyTwoCensus.com’s prediction that the Census Bureau’s hiring won’t spur economic growth because the jobs last only six weeks. Fortunately, no one is lobbying for continuous recounts to make those jobs permanent, the way fans of tax breaks for filmmakers would like Missouri to grant tax credit after tax credit, year round.

We have had a rather busy week or so in the media. More important than the past, though, is the future — so everyone in St. Louis please listen in tomorrow morning during the 10 a.m. hour, when Professor Joe Haslag will be appearing with McGraw Millhaven on the Big 550, KTRS, to discuss income and earnings taxes.

Also, I appeared last night on KMOV Channel 4 in St. Louis to talk about the Show-Me Institute’s several state income tax studies that were conducted by others here. (Why did I do the interview if others did the work? Because I was the only one available at that exact time, that’s why.)

There have also been a number of stories about the earnings tax in the Kansas City Star. In the interest of brevity, I’ll just link to the one column in the Star that favorably discusses the idea of replacing the earnings tax with a land tax. Another piece takes a less glowing approach, but we appreciate the Star taking the debate seriously.

Dave Roland was quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch with his thoughts about the government spending millions to retrain St. Louis auto workers for the anticipated green jobs of the future. You can probably guess how he felt about the insane proposition that the government has any idea what the jobs of the future are.

Finally, our research assistant Josh Smith did his first radio interview with the Eagle, 93.7 FM in Columbia, about the proposal to require a prescription for all sales of medicine containing pseudoephedrine. Needless to say, Josh (and I) think that proposal is wrong, to put it politely. I should clarify that it was Josh’s first radio news interview while he has been with the Show-Me Institute. He has been on the radio before. In fact, I am pretty sure he was the seventh caller when he was in fourth grade and won tickets to the New Kids on the Block Show. He is still pretty psyched about that. …

Ray McCarty of the Associated Industries of Missouri recently wrote an op-ed, “Film tax credit needs a real shot,” in the Springfield Business Journal as a rebuttal to my op-ed on the same subject. I realize that I have already written extensively about this, but I’d like to take this opportunity to respond to the points that McCarty made.

First, it is more than likely that the money spent by filmmakers via tax credits would have been spent anyway in the market, by private individuals. If a hotel hadn’t rented a room to a member of the film production crew, they could have rented it to somebody else. If the restaurant hadn’t seated the producers at a table, they could have given the table to another party. I think that it is fallacious to assume that, had it not been for the tax credits, these Missouri resources would have been unemployed.

McCarty writes:

Harbin also misses the fact that the movie industry is nontraditional.

Saying that something is a fact does not make it a fact. The only thing that makes an industry like filmmaking “nontraditional” is the fact that the government has intervened to such an extent that it has distorted the market. Health care is another industry that is often described as nontraditional, but as I have described previously on this blog, health care is subject to the same market mechanisms as any other industry.

McCarty also writes:

Lastly, Harbin mentions that it may be better for Missouri to leave the filmmaking to other film states “like California.” She may not know this, but California found itself weakened between 1998 and 2000. Between those years, the U.S. lost $10 billion worth of film productions to Canada, which passed film tax incentives. Southern California alone lost about 35,000 jobs due to the shift to Canada.

It makes economic sense that California would produce fewer films because it had to compete with states and other countries. Filmmakers like Jason Reitman are smart businesspeople, and they will go wherever they can get the best deal. I disagree that this refutes my statement that Missouri shouldn’t feel that it has to compete with other states for filmmaking, however.

Michigan has pursued the filmmaking industry particularly aggressively, and its state legislature is already discussing repealing the program. Missouri would be smart to specialize in producing according to its comparative advantage (i.e., in products that aren’t filmmaking), and then realize gains from trade with those states. Missourians will still be able to enjoy the benefits of the product (i.e., film), and at a much lower cost (i.e., the price an admission ticket at a movie theater vs. the price of subsidizing the production).

As another advantage of producing according to its competitive advantage, Missouri would have an opportunity to differentiate itself. Instead of producing the same products and services as other states do, Missouri could produce the goods and services that are uniquely Missourian.

Furthermore, McCarty did not dispute my argument that targeted tax credits hurt businesses in non-favored industries. By providing special advantages to a select industry, targeted tax credits force everyone else in the market to compete at a disadvantage. In a previous blog post on Show-Me Daily, Dave Roland explains this better than I do:

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.

Another argument of mine that McCarty does not address is the one relating to the supreme opportunity cost associated with film tax credits. What else can Missouri do with this money? What is so special about the film industry, in contrast to other industries? Why doesn’t Missouri target hog farmers or economic research analysts or education or infrastructure?

Maybe in a couple of years, each state in the union will offer tax credits that are targeted to filmmakers, thereby negating the artificial comparative advantage that currently exists in states like Missouri. I can only hope.

The FCC issues three classes of licenses to amateur radio operators. The Extra class — the third, and hardest class of license to earn — is a great example of a license with no public safety justification. It’s purely an exercise of government power.

Here’s how the Extra class works: If you pass a test on electronics and radio regulations that covers more advanced material than the test for the Technician and General classes, you get to communicate over portions of the radio spectrum that are off-limits to people who hold only Technician and General licenses. Nothing about those parts of the spectrum makes them need special regulation; they’ve simply been set aside as the province of elite radio amateurs.

Some amateur radio enthusiasts defend the system, saying that the Extra class encourages operators to gain expertise, and that everyone in society benefits from the resulting propagation of knowledge. This argument is similar to the rationale for the DARPA Network Challenge, which was supposed to contribute to our understanding of communications and problem-solving.

I don’t buy the argument in either case. When the government offers an incentive for learning, the people who already have the information or would have learned it anyway step up to claim the prize. This was clearly the result of the DARPA Network Challenge. The federal government offered a $40,000 prize to whoever could find 10 red balloons released around the country, and scholars at M.I.T. — who were already deeply interested in networks — organized a network, found the balloons, and won the contest. We spent $40,000 of taxpayer money (plus however much it cost to administer the contest) to discover that people at M.I.T. are smart.

So it is with the amateur radio licenses. The most motivated operators brush up on their trigonometry and take the test, while others settle for the General class and its fewer privileges. People who weren’t interested in electronics don’t suddenly become scientists when they hear about the Extra class. And even if some operators do learn facts that they wouldn’t have were it not for the exam, there are less coercive ways to achieve that goal. For instance, public libraries or community colleges could offer free classes about radio communications.

The state of Missouri doesn’t grant amateur radio licenses. But Missouri licenses many other activities, and should beware to avoid the FCC’s manner of regulating. Two pieces of advice: First, don’t issue licenses that have no bearing on the general welfare. Second, once you’ve established a licensing requirement, don’t create a license class for people who have learned more or otherwise gone the extra mile. It’s not the state’s job to give them a pat on the back, or to reward accomplishments with special privileges.

This article about neighborhood associations reminded me of a post I wrote earlier in the year, in which I argued that tools like Facebook and Twitter could help local governments communicate with their constituents. The article describes how groups in the St. Louis area use networking sites — or even just email — to organize and share information:

Neighborhood associations used to be built around face-to-face contact — talks on porches, chats over fences, discussions in doorways. Local groups, though, insist that computers and social media haven’t killed the neighborhood association. Just the opposite, they say — it’s a way to stay even closer and to reach more of their neighbors.

Technology doesn’t sever neighborhood ties; it brings new people into the conversation.

Online networking helps neighborhood associations, and local governments could also use technology to increase community involvement. If you sit in on a few city council meetings, you see a lot of the same people every time. Some dedicated citizens don’t miss a meeting, and others attend whenever an issue that affects them comes up for debate. But there’s an entire group of people who are absent. Those are the people who might occasionally want to voice their opinion or learn about government proceedings, if they could stay involved without too much trouble. They don’t read through the newsletters, nor do they mark all the meetings on their calendars. They would benefit from local governments’ updates on networking sites — and local governments would benefit from their presence.

Among the elements of the health bill being considered by Congress is a requirement that every adult would either have to purchase a health insurance policy or face punitive fines to be collected by the Internal Revenue Service. There has been widespread debate in legal circles about whether the courts would uphold such a requirement, but lawmakers in several states are trying to do what they can to insulate their citizens from such a requirement. In Missouri, state Sen. Jane Cunningham has already persuaded half of her colleagues to cosponsor Senate Joint Resolution 25, an amendment to the state Constitution that would recognize the citizens’ right to decide for themselves whether they will participate in any health care system.

Under this amendment, the government would be denied the authority to prevent citizens from offering or accepting direct payment for health care services, and it would not be permitted to substantially limit the purchase or sale of health insurance in private health care systems. In addition to recognizing that this is a sort of common-sense freedom that ought to be enshrined in the Constitution, the proponents of SJR 25 are aware that state constitutions are permitted to afford liberties above and beyond those secured under the U.S. Constitution, and that there is a possibility the courts might find that even a federal statute cannot violate those additional rights.

This proposed amendment has sparked the interest of some in the media, including an article from the St. Louis Beacon (authored by William Freivogel, director of the School of Journalism at Southern Illinois University–Carbondale) with a headline suggesting that, if passed, SJR 25 would itself violate the U.S. Constitution. I quickly posted a rejoinder in the comment section of that article, but I felt it would be worthwhile to restate in this forum the points I made in those comments.

There are four major constitutional issues raised by the potential federal health insurance mandate and Sen. Cunningham’s proposed amendment: 1) Does the proposed law fit within the powers that the Constitution gives to Congress? 2) Does the proposed law infringe upon powers reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment? 3) Does the requirement to buy health insurance unconstitutionally infringe upon the individual liberties secured to American citizens under the First, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments? And, 4) Does the Supremacy Clause allow for the enforcement of a federal statute even if that statute conflicts with individual rights protected under a state constitution? I’ll address these points in order.

As we all remember from high school, congressional authority is limited to those powers explicitly granted by the Constitution. In this case, the question would be whether the Constitution gives Congress the authority to punish citizens for refusing to purchase health insurance.

Those backing the bill suggest that this authority is part of part of Congress’ power “to regulate commerce … among the several states[.]“ It is true that courts have generally interpreted this power very broadly, resulting in the decision that a farmer named Filburn was bound by agricultural regulations even though he was not taking his grain to market, as well as the decision that Angel Raich was subject to federal drug laws even though her medical marijuana was homegrown and neither bought nor sold.

But courts have also recognized limits to congressional authority under the Commerce Clause. In U.S. v. Lopez, the Supreme Court held that the Commerce Clause did not permit Congress to create a federal law banning possession of firearms in a school zone. In U.S. v. Morrison, the court struck down a law that addressed the subject of gender-based violent crime. The primary reason that the court struck down the laws in Lopez and Morrison was that the subjects Congress sought to regulate lacked a clear impact on commerce among the states.

While much of the health insurance industry is handled within the bounds of individual states (it is very unusual to be able to purchase insurance from a company in a state other than the one in which you are domiciled), I believe that courts will be inclined to find that health insurance as a whole is an issue with a sufficient connection to interstate commerce to permit congressional regulation. But, if Congress passes a bill mandating that individuals must either buy health insurance or face financial sanctions, courts will have to answer a very specific question: Does the power to regulate interstate commerce give Congress the authority to penalize citizens who do not wish to engage in commerce? As Prof. Randy Barnett pointed out at a recent Heritage Foundation debate, the Supreme Court has never faced such a question, so we cannot be certain how it will be answered. I tend to agree with Barnett that the Court’s response will likely hinge on the solicitor general’s ability to explain which aspects of citizens’ lives (if any) would remain beyond the reach of congressional regulation if the Court permitted these mandates to be enforced.

One of the law professors cited by Freivogel argued that even without relying on the Commerce Clause, authority for the health insurance mandate could be found in Congress’ power “to lay and collect taxes … [to] provide for the … general welfare of the United States[.]” I disagree. While this provision might permit the creation of a tax-based public health insurance system like Medicare that all workers pay into, this is not what is anticipated in the insurance mandate under consideration, which is neither tax-based nor public. Nor would the alleged “tax” be collected from all workers. Furthermore, even if the fees for failing to purchase health insurance were classified as a tax, Congress is specifically denied the authority to impose capitation taxes “unless in proportion to the census,” a requirement that this proposal does not seem to meet.

Assuming the courts were to determine that Congress does have the general authority to impose a health insurance mandate, the next question would be whether the issue should be reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment. While Congress has for decades been active on the subject of health care, this does not necessarily imply that Congress may remove state governments’ ability to decide whether their citizens should be punished for failing to purchase health insurance. In fact, this is an issue that several states have previously dealt with, in which at least one state (Massachusetts) has adopted such a mandate and a number of other states have considered — yet refrained from — doing the same. Federal courts have previously been very willing to permit congressional interference even in areas that were traditionally the sole province of the states, but considering the current ideological composition of the Supreme Court, it is possible (although, admittedly, unlikely) that a majority might take this opportunity to redefine (or restore) the balance of power between the federal government and the states.

Most of the arguments I’ve heard so far regarding the proposed health insurance mandate have neglected to address whether it might violate the First, Fifth, or Ninth Amendments, but I think this is an oversight. The Supreme Court has previously recognized that the Constitution protects citizens’ rights to associate with others of their choosing, to enter into contracts, to make their own decisions regarding health care, and, of course, their right to privacy. A violation of any one of these rights could be sufficient to invalidate the health insurance mandate.

While some people may not carry health insurance because it is unaffordable, many choose not to purchase health insurance. Some people’s religions may not permit the use of modern medicine, while others may not believe it to be effective. Still others are simply confident enough in their propensity for health that they are willing to risk the costs of illness or injury in order to direct their money to concerns that they believe to be more pressing. And there are some who, recognizing that most people pay far more to insurance companies than they are ever likely to need for their own treatment costs, would prefer to self-insure by creating their own health fund. For each of these people, a congressional directive to purchase a health insurance policy would mean giving up a huge amount of money — as well as a significant amount of privacy — committing themselves to a contract for goods and services that they do not want, and in some cases may be prohibited from using.

There is a principle in American law that says the government may not punish someone for exercising a constitutional right, and neither may it offer a benefit on condition of the citizen’s willingness to refrain from exercising a constitutional right. In the case of an individual health insurance mandate, the government would be telling its citizens that if they choose not to associate with an insurance company by entering into a contract under which they will be required to pay large sums of money while also disclosing private information about their health, they will be subject to very large fines. I think that this is clearly an infringement of some, if not all, of the constitutional rights listed above.

Unfortunately, establishing an infringement of rights does not end the analysis. In fact, the Supreme Court has long permitted infringement of these kinds of liberty, as long as the government could advance what the court considered to be a sufficiently important interest in doing so. In the case of the individual health insurance mandate, the goal advanced by the government would be to bring about slightly lower insurance premiums and, thus, to increase the number of people with access to health care. This is just a hunch, but I suspect that courts will not find this interest sufficiently compelling to justify forcing citizens to purchase coverage that they do not want and may have no intention of using, particularly when doing so necessarily requires an invasion of their privacy.

My final point is that if the courts find that the U.S. Constitution does not afford citizens protection from being forced to participate in a health care system, the courts will have to decide whether the Supremacy Clause permits a federal statute to be applied in such a way that it violates an individual freedom recognized by a state constitution. As I pointed out in my first comment, it is very possible — perhaps even likely — that the courts will decide that these state constitutional amendments do not bind the federal government. It is important to note, however, that this sort of holding would not strike these provisions down as “unconstitutional.” Rather, it would simply prevent their application against the federal government — perhaps foiling the hopes of the state constitutions’ drafters, but certainly not preventing the effectiveness of the provision against state governments and their subdivisions.

Steve Walsh on Missourinet linked to my recent op-ed about filmmaker tax credits in Missouri, which is a subject that I have blogged about before.

Thanks to John Combest for linking to the post.

As our regular readers will remember, on Nov. 18, the Show-Me Institute published a study that discusses recent research on the impact that charter schools are having on students’ academic achievement. At that time, we sent the study to newspapers across the state, along with an op-ed I had written discussing its findings. As is the case with any op-ed, my ability to address nuances in the research was dramatically limited by the need to keep it short enough for newspapers to consider publishing it. Thus, I was unable to go into great detail about the various studies and instead focused on the primary goal of the piece: making people aware of this new study so they could consider it for themselves.

When the Springfield News-Leader expressed interest in running the op-ed, they asked me to trim it down by 50 words so that it would fit their publishing parameters. As I hope readers will see, an op-ed’s final form rarely allows the author to offer a comprehensive picture of all the information they would convey if space were no constraint. Perhaps as a result of this necessary brevity, some of the News-Leader’s readers have posted a few skeptical comments about my op-ed, so I’d like to take this opportunity to respond to the points they raise.

The first issue I’d like to address is that of my motives for writing on this topic. The commenter writing under the name “Ray Smith” suggested that I am part of a general effort to “undermine public education,” and that I have simply seized upon President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative (which, in part, promotes the expansion of charter schools) as an opportunity to promote my own agenda.

I do have one comprehensive, all-encompassing agenda when it comes to the subject of education, and I don’t care who knows it. I want to make sure that all parents have the greatest possible range of options when it comes to deciding where their children will be educated. While I, myself, am a proud product of an excellent public school system, it does not matter to me in the slightest if parents prefer traditional public schools, charter schools, parochial schools, or secular private schools. All that concerns me is that children get the best available educations — and I firmly believe that the greatest likelihood of achieving that goal is to fashion education policy in such a way that parents can vote with their feet if they decide a school is not meeting their child’s needs.

As should be clear, many parents do not believe that their local traditional public schools are the best educational option for their children — and, with that being the case, it makes the most sense to help those parents find alternatives that will serve their families better. I suggested in my op-ed that, to the extent that charter schools expand the range of options available to parents, they serve as a step toward this goal. Thus, expanding charter school availability represents good policy. In my mind, it is merely a bonus that the best academic research is showing that most (though far from all) charter schools are performing as well as or better than their traditional public school counterparts when it comes to certain measures of academic achievement.

Which brings us to Mr. Smith’s suggestion that I believe charter schools to be a “magic bullet” that will solve the education problems rampant in our state — and his intimation that I was ignoring evidence that I did not like. To the contrary, when writing the op-ed, I wanted to make sure that I pointed out the evidence in our own study that calls into question whether charter schools always generate better results than traditional public schools. Mr. Smith correctly points out that the Stanford study shows that a significant number of the nation’s charter schools appear to be attracting students, even though the schools do not currently appear to measure up to their traditional school counterparts in regard to academic achievement as measured by standardized tests. The reason I addressed the Stanford study in the op-ed was because the authors of the recently released Show-Me Institute study did not have access to research that isolated Missouri’s charter schools, and I believed that it would be valuable to highlight the fact that, in spite of the Stanford study’s broader findings, the data do suggest that Missouri’s charter schools are performing better than most.

Here at Show-Me Daily, I can address the Stanford study’s findings a little more broadly. For charter opponents, of course, the suggestion that some charter schools are not improving their students’ academic achievement is a clear signal that these schools need to close. Maybe … but maybe not. I have previously stated on this very blog that I do not generally oppose the closure of especially bad charter schools. But the facts also bear out that official action is not necessarily needed to close these schools, because in cases where the situation is truly bad, parents will voluntarily move their children to a different school and that bad school will fail for lack of funding (much as any other business would).

Also,as I note in the op-ed, parents consider a wide array of factors when deciding where to send their children to be educated — and, for many parents, academic achievement may not be the most important factor. So, if a charter school lags a little bit behind its traditional charter school counterparts in academic performance, but dozens of parents still want to send their children there, maybe government officials shouldn’t force its closure. After all, we don’t allow government officials to tell wealthy parents what factors they can consider in choosing a school for their children, so why should we assume that government officials are within their rights to tell lower-income parents what factors they can consider?

And, finally, I will add that I would actually prefer that Missouri not seek “Race to the Top” funding. In my opinion, the Tenth Amendment should preclude the federal government from interfering with educational matters, because they have always been reserved to the states. While I do think it would be good policy to expand the availability of charter schools in our state, if Missouri’s legislators are not persuaded that a particular policy is the best idea for our families, they certainly shouldn’t adopt it simply because the federal government is dangling money out there as an incentive.

Our own Dave Roland published an op-ed in the Springfield News Leader today, “Reports say charter schools aid state’s struggling students.” He discusses a recent study by the Show-Me Institute demonstrating that the proliferation of charter schools is a desirable policy for Missouri and for the country.

Thanks to John Combest for the link.

I was very pleased with how this morning’s interview went with Charlie Brennan. I hope you’ll give it a listen.

It has been brought to my attention, however, that at least one person in a position of relative influence in the city of St. Louis was not pleased with what I had to say. He claimed that Mr. Brennan and I were both “McCarthyites,” attempting to scare citizens with false claims about imagined evils. I’ll explain the critic’s displeasure as best I can, and I hope that our readers will offer their own perspectives in the comment section.

The central point I wanted to make in the interview was that I see in Missouri an unsettling pattern of powerful people working to prevent citizens from having their say on matters of public importance. Mr. Brennan and I discussed several examples of such behavior — most of which were noted in yesterday’s blog post. My critic felt that we were unfairly assigning blame to government officials. He also claimed that the examples we cited in no way constituted a “pattern” of bad behavior.

My critic’s first argument was that I was leveling baseless charges against government officials. Specifically, he said that I had accused a particular elected official of ordering Gustavo Rendon’s arrest. In fact, if you listen to the interview, it is clear that I did not do so, and I continued to refrain from doing so even as this critic was trying to goad me into it. As I tried to communicate in the interview, it may well be a coincidence that Mr. Rendon’s arrest took place outside of the church attended by a city official who champions the plan that Mr. Rendon’s flyers criticized. But, regardless of what the facts eventually show about whether this official actually played a part in Mr. Rendon’s arrest, the circumstances allow for a reasonable inference that this was the case because of previous (and ongoing) situations in which powerful people have tried to squelch the voices of those who oppose them. My conversation with Charlie Brennan simply laid out part of the reason why I am concerned that it may not, in fact, have been a coincidence — but it is up to everyone else to draw their own conclusions.

As for those other situations, my critic acknowledged that the Northeast Ambulance and Fire District is a concrete example of powerful people attempting to intimidate and silence opposition (although he wrote off those officials as “a bunch of crooks”). But he took issue with the rest of my examples. In regard to the governmental effort to eliminate Jim Roos’ “End Eminent Domain Abuse” sign, he first tried to say that matter was settled years ago (I reminded him that, in fact, it is still being litigated), then he tried to say that the sign was “an eyesore” that is bad for the community. I responded that one man’s eyesore is another’s call to action, and pointed out that the Constitution does not generally permit aesthetic considerations to trump a citizen’s right to express a political opinion. My critic was (apparently) unpersuaded by that point.

When I pointed out how, at a meeting in which Paul McKee addressed residents about the proposed NorthSide Regeneration Project, public officials sent staff members to prevent a resident from filming the meeting, my critic argued that because I could not at the moment recall whether the meeting was held at a public facility (it was) and whether the meeting was open to all interested citizens (again, it was), my concern was not valid. As for the Missouri Municipal League’s efforts to prevent Missourians from voting on a constitutional amendment that would restrict eminent domain abuse, I don’t recall any specific objection by my critic, just a return to the claim that these were (in his words) unsubstantiated claims about isolated incidents, and that no fair-minded person could draw from these my conclusion that they represented a pattern of powerful people trying to prevent citizens from having their say on issues of public importance. He demanded that I offer more examples.

Now, I don’t believe this critic will ever really be satisfied — but my call to you, gentle readers, is to think of further examples (from anywhere in the state) that also seem to fit this pattern, then please post them in the comments. I’d love to start keeping a running tally.

I’ll be a guest on Charlie Brennan’s morning show on KMOX tomorrow from around 9:30–10:00 a.m. What will I be discussing? I’m glad you asked. …

Although we haven’t yet discussed it on the blog, I hope that all of our readers are aware that the St. Louis Police arrested Gustavo Rendon, husband of the president of the North Side Community Benefits Alliance. Why? Because he was distributing fliers that opposed the NorthSide redevelopment project recently approved by the city. Even worse, he just happened to be doing so outside the church of Alderwoman April Ford-Griffin, a staunch supporter of the project. So, two police officers arrived, threatened to put his kids in foster care if he didn’t stop distributing the fliers, then arrested him.

The charge? Affixing advertisements to private property.

Fortunately, the city attorneys quickly realized that the ordinance under which they arrested him didn’t, you know, prohibit what he was doing. And even if it had prohibited distributing fliers that communicated purely political ideas, the ordinance probably would have been unconstitutional anyway. So, today they announced that they were dropping the charges.

The bigger problem, which I hope to address with Mr. Brennan, is that Mr. Rendon’s arrest is suggestive of a much larger problem: powerful people trying to stop citizens from having their say on important public issues. In this case, it was police officers arresting someone for communicating opposition to a redevelopment project. In Jim Roos’ case, a city agency is trying to destroy a sign calling for an end to eminent domain abuse. In the Northeast Ambulance and Fire Protection District, officials tried to fine and ban from future meetings certain taxpayers who protested the district’s insane spending. And, of course, the Missouri Municipal League is using taxpayer money for a lawsuit with the primary goal of keeping off the ballot a constitutional amendment that would go a long way toward ending eminent domain abuse in the state — because they know it will pass if citizens are allowed to vote!

So, like I said, tune in tomorrow morning as Charlie Brennan and I discuss these issues. Who knows, there might even be some interesting surprises involved. And, if you can’t listen to tomorrow’s show, keep an eye on the Policy Pulse website, where Audrey Spalding is continuing to do excellent work reporting on abuses of taxpayer money and government authority.

Uh oh. News media and bloggers have been reporting all week about federal stimulus dollars going to fictitious congressional districts. The website Watchdog.org reported that, nationwide, the fictitious districts are receiving $6.4 billion in stimulus money.

I did some reporting of my own over at Policy Pulse, the Show-Me Institute’s news site, and found that four fake congressional districts had cropped up in Missouri to receive more than $900,000. KMOX picked up on the story here.

Was it fraud? Not really. The Recovery.gov website has a little data integrity problem. Federal grant and contract recipients are responsible for making their own reports of project progress. After a 20-day review period, the self-reported information is posted online. Apparently, federal agency employees can only alert a recipient that reporting errors exist; only recipients can fix them.

The reason we’re seeing so many fake districts is that recipients are required to choose a congressional district from a drop down menu. They can choose between a range from 00 to 99. And it looks like some recipients just guessed.

I looked through the data on Tuesday,which you can download in raw form here (scroll to the bottom of the page), and although fake congressional districts make for good headlines, I think there’s a bigger issue.

Contract and grant recipients aren’t required to report a project name, description, or status. In fact, for Missouri alone, 2,258 grant recipients and 76 contract recipients left all three fields blank. Yet only 18 of those were flagged for correction.

If Recovery.gov is really supposed to promote government transparency and accountability, why not require that federal stimulus recipients report what they’re actually doing with the money?

The Show-Me Institute will be hosting a blogosphere event on Nov. 21 for established bloggers, as well as new and prospective bloggers. There will be training, panel discussions, and a panel presentation from the the Motorhome Diaries folks! It’s free, and will be a lot of fun. If you’re interested, check out the flyer posted below.

Keep government honest.
Want to know how?
Learn from the best and meet bloggers
from throughout the state, and across the country.

As more cuts are made at mainstream news media outlets, there are fewer reporters keeping tabs on what local and state government officials are doing. Increasingly, bloggers have stepped up to break stories, or call attention to issues that are being ignored. The Show-Me Institute is hosting its first blogosphere event to help train and support both Missouri bloggers who are working to help keep government transparent, and citizens who want to learn how.

Presenters include Saint Louis’ most prominent bloggers and social media practitioners, Saint Louis media, and an editor of the award-winning TexasWatchDog.org.

On Saturday, there will be training sessions in investigative reporting, social media, blogging, videography, and documentary-style reporting. Panelists will hold discussions about the tradeoff between immediacy and accuracy, how to effectively use social media, and the future of traditional and online media.

What: The Show-Me Institute’s first blogosphere event
Date: Saturday, November 21, 2009
When: 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
How much: Free with RSVP
Location: Sheraton Hotel, 7730 Bonhomme Ave. Clayton, MO 63105

Complimentary breakfast and box lunch provided, complimentary parking. Please RSVP.

The goal of the Show-Me Institute’s blogosphere event is to empower any person interested in advancing government transparency through factual reporting. Please feel free to forward this invitation to others who may be interested in attending.

To RSVP:
by email: Jason.Hannasch@showmeinstitute.org
on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/ygog9ku
with Twitter: tweet a reply to @MOPolicyPulse
by Phone: contact Jason Hannasch at (314) 726-5655

The Show-Me Institute (SMI) is a nonpartisan and nonprofit think tank that addresses major public policy issues facing Missouri from a free-market perspective. We publish scholarly research on the potential for applying free-market principles to six areas of public policy: taxes, education, health care, red tape, privatization, and corporate welfare.

Continue reading "Calling Missouri Bloggers!" »

MoDOT Director Pete Rahn has received a well-deserved award from Governing Magazine for his work at MoDOT. I eagerly second the award. (A quick note on Governing: I used to read it regularly. You might assume that most of the writers and readers here, coming from a free-market perspective, would hate a magazine dedicated to government. But, honestly, it’s not as terrible as you might imagine.)

Here’s the key quote from the award, via the MoDOT presser:

Governing magazine specifically praised Rahn’s ability to “partner with the private sector in unique ways to build large-scale transportation projects quickly and affordably.”

That is definitely something worth praising.

During the drive home from work yesterday, I listened to a discussion of high-speed rail on NPR’s “Marketplace.” Mitchell Hartman discussed a new report from the Pew Research Center reminding us that high-speed rail depends on federal assistance. Pew calculated that Amtrak receives a $32 subsidy per ticket, on average, from taxpayers. Amtrak, however, estimates that the size of the subsidy is $8. From the show’s transcript:

The difference is Pew includes all the costs of running a railroad, like depreciation — that’s wear-and-tear on tracks and trains — and overhead, like the legal and HR departments. Taxpayers pick up those costs too. Amtrak got $1.3 billion in funding last year.

The program even quoted Randall O’Toole, a Cato Institute senior fellow and self-described “Antiplanner”:

Best thing we can do for mass transportation would be to privatize it, let the private operators respond to the market, and then we’ll have a more efficient system that might be attractive to more people.

O’Toole has written several policy studies for the Show-Me Institute on the subject of high speed rail and its free-market alternatives. His most recent, “Why Missouri Taxpayers Should Not Build High-Speed Rail,” was published late last month.

High-speed rail is relevant to Missouri, particularly as officials consider upgrading the tracks from Saint Louis to Kansas City to accommodate high-speed trains. As David Stokes testified before the Joint Committee on Transportation Oversight earlier this month:

For Missouri to build true high-speed rail — the type that American tourists ride in Europe at 150 mph — would cost Missouri taxpayers billions more, all to serve the small percentage of the population that uses passenger rail.

Laura Dekker is still waiting for permission to set sail; latest reports say the Dutch court will issue its decision on Friday.

Dekker is bending over backward to respond to criticisms of her plans. She’s delaying her trip until after this school year. She says she’ll study while she’s sailing, and take exams when she stops at ports along the way. She’s already submitted to an IQ test for the court’s scrutiny. (What will they ask her to do next? Postpone the voyage until she gains entrance to Harvard Law School?)

Another boat will shadow her in the most challenging waters, and a veteran sailor has volunteered to escort her the entire way.

And the big news is that she might have her own reality show. I can hear the response now: “These reality shows have gone too far. People need to stop doing outrageous things to get on television.” But I think a show could be a positive thing. It would involve a lot of close monitoring of Dekker’s voyage, and probably extra safety measures. Dekker would not be able to recklessly head off into a storm or other dangerous situation into which a film crew would not agree to come along. (Although I doubt Dekker would act foolishly on her own, considering that she intends to break up the trip into short segments and take other precautions, the close presence of people and cameras should reassure everyone further.)

I’m looking forward to hearing the court’s decision. There are just a few more days to wait!

This week, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to spend two consecutive afternoons being interviewed on St. Louis’ WGNU, a radio station with programming directed to the city’s African-American population. On Monday afternoon, I spent an hour as part of a panel conversation (with Sheila Rendon and Romona Williams of the North Side Community Benefits Alliance) discussing eminent domain and the proposed NorthSide Regeneration Project on Kuumba Nia’s radio show. (Audio available here.)

The conversation went so well that I was invited back the following afternoon to spend another hour discussing the same topic with co-hosts state Sen. Robin Wright-Jones and John Bowman on her show, “The Wright Side of Politics.” (Audio available here.) My conversation partners the second day were Barbara Manzara and Keith Marquard, also of the North Side Community Benefits Alliance. If you’re interested in hearing from those on the front lines of the upcoming battle over the proposed redevelopment effort, give these two shows a listen!

Over the weekend, the Columbia Missourian ran an interesting article that questioned the effectiveness of Missouri’s charter schools. Using MAP scores as a benchmark, the article suggests that the lower average MAP scores of charter school students as opposed to traditional public school students show that charter schools are doing worse in educating children. Problems abound in this analysis.

The article makes an oft-repeated mistake in education: viewing education as static, as happening in a vacuum. The static view leads one to analyze student scores as isolated events — as snapshots — and ignore the underlying trend. Only in taking a longer view of the data can we begin to see the degree of value added at each stage. Yes, the average test scores of students in St. Louis charter schools are lower than the statewide average of students in traditional public schools. But, no, it does not follow that those charter schools are worse. For starters, that claim is based on an apples-to-oranges comparison between St. Louis city charter schools and statewide public schools. Instead, it should be based on the relative performance of St. Louis charter schools as opposed to St. Louis traditional public schools — a gap which, it should be noted, has also been established and will be outlined in more detail in a forthcoming Show-Me Institute study. But charter critics still have to contend with the value-added component, something the article does not do.

So, the article fails to reject the claim that charter schools are effective. Can we actively prove the claim? As Show-Me Institute policy analyst Dave Roland writes, in the comments section of the article:

A simple comparison of MAP scores doesn’t even come close to telling the real story. None of these comparisons take account of “selection bias” in making charter and non-charter comparisons. A recent study by the Center for Research on Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University examined the effectiveness of charter schools in 16 states, including Missouri. The Stanford study took careful account of the prior test scores of charter school students, and every charter school student was paired with one or more similar students (aligned by race, sex, grade, poverty status, English language learner status, special education, and prior test score by subject) in schools that acted as feeders for the charter school. The study revealed that Missouri’s charter schools attracted students who were underperforming in their traditional public schools, and that this state’s charter school students were realizing larger academic gains than their counterparts in traditional public schools. The difference was small, but statistically significant.