The U.S. Postal Service doesn’t want to deliver mail on Saturday anymore. Facing a large budget gap, the USPS is lobbying Congress to allow the agency to deliver mail only five days per week, a cost-cutting measure it has advanced for more than a year.

As I said back in August, the Postal Service’s decline seems to be inevitable. USPS is subsidized not by tax dollars but by regulatory capture: The Private Express Statutes limit private mail carriers from delivering mail to mailboxes and from charging less than $3 to deliver a letter.

Luckily for the USPS, it doesn’t have to compete in a free market, where its work schedule would be drastically insufficient to compete successfully with others. UPS and FedEx don’t have the same regulatory luxury, and consequently have some locations that are open 24 hours a day and on weekends, because that is what customers want. Private delivery companies also price shipments based on distance traveled, which makes more sense than the flat rate that the USPS levies for first-class letters. Mailing a letter to one’s landlord in the next town over has a lower marginal cost for a postal service than mailing a letter to a cousin across the country, but first-class USPS prices don’t reflect that.

Unlike private delivery services, the USPS does not face direct competitive pressure, and so has found it difficult to adjust to changing technology and market conditions. This has left the agency well past its prime, if that prime ever really existed. James Bovard pointed out in a review of USPS history that government-provided postal services were originally conceived as revenue generators, and that regulators had to actively stamp out competitors who were providing more reliable, trustworthy services at lower prices:

The early colonists inherited the tradition of government postal monopoly from Britain. In sixteenth-century England, the Tudor monarch outlawed private post in order to hinder communication between potentially rebellious subjects. Later, the monopoly was justified as a revenue raiser for the Crown. But even 270 years ago, private carriers were breaking the law and providing the public with better service than the government:

In 1709, Charles Povey used bell ringers to collect letters, which he delivered anywhere in London for a halfpenny. The Post Office prosecuted Povey, who was convicted and fined, and then it adopted his system for the government service.[2]

Since 1709, not much has changed in how governments run their postal monopolies.

In 1789 the Constitution granted the federal government the right to set up a post office, but it did not prohibit competition from private services. However, the first postal act, in 1792, did effectively outlaw private competition.

The first postage rates were extremely high, as Congress tried to force easterners to subsidize the more expensive service to outlying settlements on the western frontier. As the Postal Service’s official history notes, “Until 1851, the cost of sending a single sheet letter 40 miles was either 6› or 8›. When the letter traveled over 400 miles, it cost 25›. These prices doubled, tripled, or quadrupled with each additional sheet.”[3] In 1843, “it cost 18 1/2› to send a letter from New York City to Troy, New York, but only 12 1/2› to send a barrel of flour the same distance.”[4] The government charged 25› to deliver a letter from Philadelphia to New York.

Henry Wells (later of Wells-Fargo fame) entered the market, charged 6› a letter, and delivered faster.[5] In the Boston area alone, over a hundred private express companies carried the mail. Private companies delivered letters directly to addressees’ homes, while the government still required people to pick up their mail at the nearest post office.

As private business flourished, government postal revenues declined. The postmaster general admitted in 1843 that many people thought the government’s monopoly was “odious,” but insisted that it had to be preserved for the good of the country.[6] In 1845, Congress tightened the laws prohibiting competition and increased the penalties for violators. In 1851, Congress lowered postal rates and began providing a direct subsidy for postal operations.

An 1844 competitor, the American Letter Mail Company, was founded and operated by notable proto-libertarian Lysander Spooner. This competition was so effective and efficient that “The end result was that in 1851 Congress again had to lower the postal rates to a uniform 3 cents” from previous prices “of 18 3/4 cents or 25 cents.” Lawmakers simultaneously put Spooner out of business for good by strengthening the USPS monopoly laws.

The notion that government postal services may have been necessary to provide a crucial public service in the absence of trustworthy private alternatives doesn’t stand up to the historical record, and is even less justifiable in today’s electronic information age, in which private companies are the primary means by which most people send and receive sensitive communication.

Missourians — and the United States in general — would greatly benefit if the USPS lost its monopoly protection so that costs could be reduced through the efficiency of competitive pressure, rather than through elimination of services.

A member of a school board in Madison, Wis., has noticed that it pays for districts to set up online schools. The board member deplores the fact that these schools enroll students from outside districts (an act he refers to as “poaching”):

The legislature has created a system that sets up very strong incentives for a school district to contract with some corporate on-line operation, open up a virtual charter school, and set about trying to poach other districts’ students.

He then compares the ACT scores of his district’s students with the scores of an online school’s students. Fewer of the online school’s students took the ACT, and the average score of those who did was about one point lower than the district’s average.

The board member’s use of the word “poach” brings to mind hunters entering a forest illegally and shooting deer. That can’t be what he means, so lets look at the second definition. According to Dictionary.com, “poaching” can also mean “any encroachment on another’s property, rights, ideas, or the like.” Unless the board member has his own definition of the word, it seems that he views students as his district’s property and thinks other schools need permission to educate them anywhere else.

I’m sure the students who attend online schools don’t see themselves as being poached. They know they don’t belong to any school district. Taking online courses is their decision. And while the board member won’t acknowledge that online schools give students a choice, if it weren’t true, there would be no point in comparing test scores as he does in his essay. Telling people that your district has better scores than a competitor makes sense only if students can act on that knowledge and choose for themselves.

The complaints about poaching make the district look defensive and vulnerable. Districts that are doing well don’t panic when someone else offers online education. St. Louis County districts aren’t accusing SLPS of foul play because it enrolls a few of their students in its Virtual School. It would be silly for the districts to get upset when the vast majority of families prefer their brick-and-mortar schools to the SLPS Virtual School.

The board member’s emotional response may indicate that his district is threatened by the online option. Instead of pointing fingers, the Madison Metropolitan School District should consider opening an online school of its own.

A school district in Florida found itself on the Drudge Report after it used stimulus funds to buy iPods. The iPods, which the district will give to parents in exchange for completing a survey, cost $350,000.

That’s a small sum compared to the $1.25 million the Jennings School District spent on hand-held computers for students. Most of those computers ended up in storage. Jennings is now selling some of the devices for a fraction of what it paid, and it plans to distribute others to graduating students over the course of a few years.

It would be wiser for Jennings to emulate the Florida district and give away whatever computers it can’t sell, as soon as possible. If the district gives them all out at once, recipients may be able to find some use for them. If it waits to hand them out to graduates in a couple of years, they’ll be completely obsolete. By then, graduates won’t want to do anything with the computers — except maybe to display them with their caps and gowns as mementos.

There’s no need to attach a survey; just get rid of the devices. But if Jennings does give them to survey participants, I can imagine what a common response will be: “Stop wasting money on gadgets that students don’t use!”

The Jennings School District bought more than 2,500 hand-held computers back in 2006. Now, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, the district is getting rid of them. They were purchased with high hopes:

Students could use them to graph math equations, take notes, draw charts, and even, coupled with external probes, measure temperature and pH.

The north St. Louis County school district, now with about 3,100 students, bought one machine for each third- through 12th-grader.

Jennings made two mistakes when it bought all those devices. First, it didn’t have a specific purpose for the technology. The things students could have done with the computers, like taking notes and studying equations, were tasks they could do already with pencils or calculators. Teachers aren’t going to adopt new technology when the old technology does the job just as well. It’s no wonder most teachers said they didn’t use the computers and don’t intend to use them.

Second, the district bought the computers for too many students. It would have made more sense to introduce the devices to one grade, and wait for results before giving them to other grades.

Districts can easily get carried away by dreams of quick technological fixes, so I don’t blame Jennings for being so ambitious. What’s puzzling is that Jennings doesn’t seem to have learned from what happened. The district plans to get rid of the devices by giving them away to graduating students over the course of several years, even though the devices are almost obsolete and will probably be worthless in a year or two. It’s like Jennings can’t give up on its expectation that students will use the computers — if not in school, then after they graduate.

Jennings should sell the computers once and for all. And remember the moral of the story: More gadgets aren’t always better.

Here’s something to celebrate in the Missouri budget: The governor cut $24 million that would have subsidized broadband Internet in rural areas.

As state officials have noticed, living in a rural community is different from living in an urban environment. You don’t have all the traffic, noise, and light pollution you’d find in a big city. The flip side is that you don’t have your choice of restaurants just around the corner, or the same opportunities to access the Internet.

The state shouldn’t try to smooth out those differences and give rural residents the benefits of city life. It would be silly to open a state-funded Starbucks on every gravel road so that rural areas would have better access to coffee. Broadband subsidies are an equally bad idea.

Anyone following the cyberbullying issue should read this article in the Columbia Missourian. (Thanks to Combest for the link.) The article reports on a proposed bill that would require all public school districts to write policies about online bullying.

The bill’s sponsor doesn’t see any drawbacks to it:

“I feel like this bill has the support of everybody,” Wilson said. “It’s simple, and it’s the right thing to do.”

The sponsor’s intentions are unimpeachable, but her bill still deserves to be challenged and debated. In particular, I see one potential down side to it: Passing such a bill could make people feel like the government had fixed something, when in reality little would change.

For one thing, the bill would apply only to public districts. I wouldn’t suggest expanding its reach; the state should not tell private schools which policies to adopt. But what if a student from a private school bullies a student from a public school, or vice versa? Or, what if someone’s cousin comes for a visit from out of state and bullies the neighborhood kids? How would districts’ anti-bullying policies help in those situations? Many instances of bullying wouldn’t fall under any district’s policy.

Furthermore, the bill just tells districts to write something down on a piece of paper. It’s not guaranteed that districts will enforce their policies well enough to prevent online bullying. Bullying can be difficult to detect and stop, because bullies usually harass their victims away from adults’ supervision. A district can’t track down all the emails and text messages that students send to each other, so the new policies probably wouldn’t affect communications between students as much as districts might want them to.

Missouri’s law against young people sending text messages while driving is only the beginning. Regulators want to make sure drivers can think about nothing but the road in front of them:

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called distracted driving a “hot button” issue for state legislatures and said he’s against all distracted driving, not just cell phone use.

“I don’t care what the distraction is,” he said. “We’re going to set the highest bar possible. There should be no distractions.”

An obvious problem with outlawing all distractions is that we could never enforce such broad controls on drivers’ behavior. That doesn’t dissuade the texting ban’s supporters, who say that whether anyone is ever found to be in violation of a law doesn’t matter. Here’s how an AAA spokesman puts it:

“The benefit of having it in the statute is voluntary compliance, sort of like every other law.”

Perhaps the roads are safer because drivers willingly cooperate with texting bans, but, if so, texting bans are the exception. Most laws are effective because we can prosecute people for breaking them, and thereby deter people from breaking them in the future.

The more laws we write restricting drivers’ activities, the less we’ll be able to depend on their voluntary compliance. Drivers won’t pay attention to a laundry list forbidding every activity they could engage in while behind the wheel.

Missouri intends to give only half of its Race to the Top grant, should it receive one, to districts. The rest would pay for expanding high-speed Internet access.

When a state plans to spend a large portion of Race to the Top grant money outside of schools, that’s a sign that the Department of Education is offering too much money.

A school district in Michigan finds that partnering with K12, Inc. is beneficial both to students and to the districts’ finances. The director of the district’s virtual academy describes its profitability with candor:

“The district makes money whether we enroll one student or 160,” Prescott said. “K12, Inc. charges a fee for each course. It might be $400 a semester. For a student who takes six classes for both semesters, that’s $4,800 a year. We count that student as full time and we get $7,000 from the state, which nets the district about $2,000 per student.”

I wonder whether the St. Louis Public Schools’ Virtual School, which also contracts with K12, is equally lucrative. I would guess not, because SLPS requires students to meet with a district teacher in person at regular intervals. Those meetings could bring up staff costs.

Given that districts can earn a profit from teaching students online, why don’t more of them form virtual schools? I can suggest a couple of explanations. Most districts probably don’t know much about online courses or what they could gain by enrolling students in them. Until recently, distance learning was the domain of old-fashioned correspondence schools, online charter schools, and state-level virtual schools. Traditional districts weren’t involved. Districts are used to a system in which they get revenue based on how many students are sitting in classrooms. The concept of earning more by sending students to a different environment goes against their experience.

It could also be that some districts view virtual schools as an admission of failure. If students choose virtual instruction over in-class learning, maybe that means that the brick-and-mortar component of the district wasn’t so great all along. I don’t think that’s an accurate analysis, because no single educational method is right for everyone. But I can see how districts might reach that conclusion in a school system of few choices.

The USDA, always eager to tell kids what they should eat, wants to spread its message through a more effective medium than “Know Your Farmer” trading cards. The department is soliciting feedback for a contest to reward creators of online games that teach kids about nutrition.The games must be based on USDA data.

MyPyramid Blast Off Game is the only game I’ve found on the MyPyramid.gov website. It’s cute and colorful, albeit inflexible. Players are supposed to select a day’s menu from a list of foods. The game doesn’t take into account differences in nutritional needs, so every player is scored as an average American. A kid who is lactose intolerant has to choose dairy servings anyway, and a kid with Celiac disease has to add whole grains to the rocket ship’s “diet.” Players see a message that their rocket ship didn’t complete its mission if they go over the recommended calorie limit, even if they go just a few calories past the target with an extra serving of vegetables.

The contest will probably inspire new games that improve on MyPyramid Blast Off. Developers could start from the same premise but add complexity, allowing nutritional targets to vary. There would be no need to solicit personal health information from kids — players could be asked the design menus for hypothetical people. Changing targets would also make the game more fun to play repeatedly. In the current game, once players create menus for themselves, there’s nothing more to do.

I’m less confident that an online game can change a generation’s eating habits. Is it worthwhile for the government to sponsor a nutrition contest that may not have a large effect on public health? As usual, the USDA has lofty aspirations, and I’m left wondering whether we’re all really better off because of its actions.

Charles Murray can’t be pleased with the New York City Department of Education’s plan to spend a few hundred thousand dollars on online SAT prep for public school students. Murray doesn’t believe policy can cause a significant rise in test scores, so he must view this expenditure — or any other program with a similar goal — as a waste of resources.

While I’m generally more optimistic that scores can rise, in this case I agree that student achievement is unlikely to change. A test prep course could help if students are simply unfamiliar with the test, or if they just need a little extra practice with the kind of questions that appear on it. But if low scores reflect a deeper problem, as I suspect they do for many New York students, last-minute test prep won’t make a difference.

The best course of action would be to improve schooling for younger students, years before they take college admissions exams. Then, by the time they get to high school, they won’t struggle with the math and vocabulary found in the SAT.

New York shouldn’t give up on current high school students, but it needs to help them build a stronger foundation of knowledge than what they’ll get from a course on test-taking strategies. The department could stick with the online education model, and instead of explicitly offering free test prep, it could open English or math courses similar to the St. Louis Public Schools’ virtual school. Course materials needn’t teach to the test, although students whose skills improved would do better on test day as a consequence. To preserve the college admissions focus, the department could use a practice SAT to place students into different course levels.

New York shouldn’t limit its use of online education to preparing students for one test. We want students to be prepared for the next high school course they take, and for whatever courses they take beyond high school, too.

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.

If a software company announced that it would teach, for free, tens of thousands of people how to use its products, people might view that as a ploy to snag customers. Every business wants people to be comfortable with its products so they’ll buy more. The company could put out a press release saying that it wanted to teach people out of the goodness of its heart, but customers might discern a profit motive.

Microsoft has found a solution to this public-relations dilemma: It will conduct the free training, and people will have to go through the Missouri state website to sign up. (The program is coming to other states, too.) Microsoft claims that its selfless intention is to grow the economy.

There’s no good reason for people to go through the government to collect their vouchers for training — they could just as well apply on the Microsoft website. All that this “partnership” with the state accomplishes is that it makes Microsoft look noble. The state should not be recruiting people for this training, just like it shouldn’t give out pizza samples in a grocery store or perfume samples at the mall.

I’ve got nothing against advertising and free training, but don’t ask the government to sign off on it like you’re a Newfoundland seeking official status.

If this pre-filed bill becomes law, red-light cameras will be with us forever. H.B. 1229 would send all revenue from the cameras to school districts. Anyone who opposes cameras at intersections would then appear to be an enemy of education.

Oregon Connections Academy (ORCA), an online charter school, received an “Outstanding” rating from the Oregon Department of Education for its students’ test scores. That’s the highest rating that the Department of Education gives schools. ORCA is, by the state’s evaluation, one of the best public schools in Oregon.

In any other state, I would expect new students to enroll in a great charter school like ORCA. But this is Oregon — not a welcoming place for charters in general, or for online schools in particular. Additional students can’t enroll in ORCA, because a law that became effective this past summer capped ORCA’s enrollment at 2,574 students.

The ostensible purpose for the enrollment freeze was to give legislators time to study online schooling. I say, study it all you want — but, in the meantime, let new students enroll and do some studying of their own.

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.”

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!" »

Edspresso links to this essay by Hope Frick, a virtual school student in Pennsylvania. She’s written an articulate explanation of why she chose to attend a virtual academy. You have to sympathize with her frustration at the responses she gets when she tells people about her school. Frick is absolutely right that online high schools should be accepted as mainstream.

There is one thing that bothers me about the essay. I’ve highlighted it in the following quote:

Approved by the state, cyber schools enable students from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade to gain a public school education from their homes.

Frick refers several times to state approval and regulation, implying that government involvement is key to virtual schools’ success. Now, it’s true that many good online schools are run by states or strictly regulated, but states are closely involved with public brick-and-mortar schools, too — and the results aren’t always stellar. That’s not to say that they’re all bad, just that there’s a lot of variation, despite the government authorization they have in common. We have to conclude that factors other than state approval cause the difference in outcomes.

The real test of a school’s quality, be it online or brick-and-mortar, is whether students learn from it and parents are satisfied. Given that thousands of students voluntarily choose virtual schools over other options, I’d say they’re doing well by those measures.

The Missouri Virtual Instruction Program (MoVIP) is offering additional courses at the high school level through the National Repository of Online Courses Network. When I first saw the news, I was thrilled because I’ve long thought that the online school covered too few subjects. Then I read through the press release and noticed that the new courses were already available to anyone for free at hippocampus.org.

MoVIP is not bringing students any content they didn’t have access to before. This move is comparable to including a free online dictionary in a virtual English course. There is a potential benefit: MoVIP will direct some students to resources that were out there on the Internet, but that they wouldn’t have looked for on their own. Still, adding these courses does not represent a substantive innovation, which is perhaps why there’s no mention of the news on the MoVIP website.

Facebook recently introduced a Gross National Happiness Index, which measures the relative overall happiness of Facebook in the United States per day. It’s based on the number of positive and negative words that people use to update their status messages. The graph of the index over time is unsurprising — users are happier on holidays and sadder on days in which celebrities die.

In a blog post dated today, a Facebook representative explains:

We adapted a collection of positive and negative emotion words built by social psychologists. Examples of positive or happy words include “happy,” “yay” and “awesome,” while negative, or unhappy words, include “sad,” “doubt” and “tragic.”

Although I find this index to be very interesting, I have some questions about its methodology and its accuracy.

First, this index does not account for the overall happiness of people who do not use Facebook. The population that does use the site is not representative of the general population; Facebook users have been demonstrated to be more affluent.

Why does the graph indicate that people are happier on Thanksgiving than on Christmas? Is that because people typically say “Happy Thanksgiving” and “Merry Christmas?” Plus, holidays are more highly trafficked than others, since people are home from work. If the Y-axis is a simple summation of the status updates (is it?), then this extra traffic would exaggerate the quantity of overall happiness.

Furthermore, the accuracy of this index depends on the genuineness of the status updates. Do status updates accurately reflect the relative value of a person’s sentiment? I am skeptical. On my own profile, I recently posted:

Chrissy Harbin loves her new coffee maker !!!!

But did I really? If I won the lottery, how many exclamation marks would I have to use to demonstrate my relative excitement? Did I unintentionally inflate the level of gross national happiness that day?

Recently I returned to The Story of Stuff Blog to see what had transpired since I last wrote about The Story of Stuff in May. I learned that Annie Leonard is planning to release a follow-up video in November, with more videos to come. The biggest news, from my point of view, is about the ongoing promotion of The Story of Stuff to schools:

We’re developing a two-week educational curriculum—aligned to national standards, with a strong focus on critical thinking—that provides teachers with a fuller set of tools to help students consider and debate the message of The Story of Stuff.

The deferential nod to “national standards” and “critical thinking” notwithstanding, the fact remains that The Story of Stuff presents a controversial and one-sided view of how a market economy works. It’s regrettable that this is taught as fact in the public schools.

Leonard acknowledges that The Story of Stuff promotes her opinions, but she says that students are free to disagree and debate her argument’s merits. I might see her point if teachers showed both The Story of Stuff and a documentary from a competing point of view (perhaps something from Free to Choose Media!), then held a discussion. However, when a school adopts this as a curriculum for two straight weeks, it goes way beyond showing a short documentary. It’s one thing to discuss a cartoon; it’s another matter entirely to challenge the curriculum.

I’m reminded of the presidential address back in September. Apart from the Department of Education’s curriculum, the speech was much like any other speech that politicians have given in schools. The questions and activities recommended by the government, which presupposed that students would be inspired by the speech, were the aspect that many critics found troubling.

Jen Roland brought my attention to a terrific series of articles at Technology Liberation Front, about the many problems associated with municipal Internet provision and, in a larger sense, the problems that result from attempting to treat the Internet like a utility. I highly recommend the entire series.

This relates nicely to the situation AT&T had when they offered wi-fi in downtown St. Louis, in cooperation with the city. Now, AT&T owned the service, and the city did not, and access was always designed to be sold, not given away, so it is a different situation. Despite the problems involved with the wi-fi installation, the city (from my limited understanding of how it works) deserves credit for allowing a private company to provide the service, rather than trying to build the system themselves.

From some of the feedback I’ve received on my writing about virtual schools, I get the impression that readers think online education is about supplanting traditional schools. For example, Million writes that “the digital realm is not going to and cannot replace the physical one anytime soon,” and equates online courses with “taking kids out of classrooms.”

Some students do enroll in virtual schools full-time, but that’s not the only possible model for online education. And while a mass exodus of students from brick-and-mortar schools would certainly spur competition, more realistic scenarios would improve the education market too.

Online courses came to mind when I read this article in the Post-Dispatch about the discrepancy between graduation rates and scores on state tests. High schools are graduating some students who score below proficient on core high school subjects like algebra and English. All high schools require those courses for graduation, but the content students learn varies from district to district.

Virtual schools could boost the achievement of students in districts with less rigorous courses. If everyone sees that a district’s curriculum for algebra doesn’t prepare students for the state test, the students could take that course after school or during the summer through the online academy. The district would have to bring its course up to the level of the virtual schools, or enrollment for that course would plummet.

If all else failed, it could schedule the class in a computer lab and enroll students in the virtual school during class time. Districts no longer have the excuse that it would take them years to design a new curriculum, because online courses are ready for use and available in all districts.

This brief report on the new Spanish-language version of the state attorney general’s website mentions the English-language amendment. Although, as the article correctly points out, the amendment deals with official debates and meetings, and doesn’t affect websites, I’m sure some people will oppose the Spanish website for the same reasons they supported the amendment.

One possible objection to translating state websites is that it compels taxpayers to pay for an unnecessary translation that most of them will never use. This argument has some merit, especially if the translation is repeated in multiple languages that few people speak. However, a translation into one or two major languages may be worth the cost. The up-front expense of translation could prevent costs that would be incurred later because of misunderstandings or ignorance. Some will say, “People should just have to learn English,” but they should consider that learning a language takes time. Do we want foreign-language speakers to remain ignorant of state laws and government for the months or years it takes them to learn English? Furthermore, government publications often contain jargon that would be confusing for non-native speakers, even if they have learned English well enough to get along in daily life.

Translating a website doesn’t get the government involved in new spheres of activity. It doesn’t impose new restrictions on the market. It just makes the English website understandable to more people.

In this chapter of Liberating Learning, the authors introduce some applications of technology that they believe will transform U.S. public education. The central examples are: an online charter school, charter schools that incorporate a few hours of computer use into the traditional school day, and computer programs that track student achievement and predict state test results.

Each of these examples has made its mark on a tiny segment of the education market. We’ll have to wait to see which of them will change public schooling more broadly. I expect online charter schools like the one discussed in this chapter, as well as online schools run by states and traditional districts, to have the greatest effect on the education market as a whole.

Here’s why: Online schools give parents a choice, and they potentially compete with all the public schools in a wide area. That means they affect many students besides the ones who actually take classes. It’s like when a new brick-and-mortar charter school comes to town, and the neighboring schools have to work harder to retain students. The difference is that an online school could attract students from across a whole state, so it provides instant competition in every district.

Using computers more effectively within a traditional school is beneficial for the students already enrolled, but it does little for the rest of the market. The authors of Liberating Learning expect other schools to respond as parents demand accountability, but unless parents can make a credible threat that they’ll leave, schools have little reason to respond to their demands.

On Monday, eight Midwestern governors met in Chicago to sign a memorandum of understanding by which they committed to a widespread effort to vie for stimulus funds that will be used expand high-speed rail systems throughout participating states. The governors of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin were all signatories.

This policy’s price tag will be in the billions. Leaving aside ideologies about public spending, I want to first evaluate this policy in terms of whether it is viable — whether it can even achieve its stated goals. If a policy cannot even accomplish its stated goals, then peripheral discussions about whether the government should spend money, or whether the price tag is too large, become unnecessary. The primary stated values of high-speed rail policy, as I see them, are: job creation; increasing commuter ease; and, reducing environmental impact.

I would contend that the policy fails its cause in all three, and over the next few days, I will try to evaluate high-speed rail’s viability in protecting the environment, creating jobs, providing economic stimulus, and reducing travel times. Stay tuned.

When I first glanced at the title of Bill Schrier’s latest blog post, “Gray, Not Green, Technology,” I thought he must be referring to green jobs. Those are the jobs in alternative energy that aren’t productive enough to sustain themselves in the marketplace, but that are supposed to be the professions of the future (if the government subsidizes them, that is). Wasting resources on jobs that wouldn’t exist in a competitive environment is antithetical to the goal of saving and conserving resources, so I would readily classify such programs as “gray” rather than “green.”

However, reading further I see that Schrier isn’t referring to any specific policy; he’s wary of technological progress in general. Here’s why he thinks green technology is a myth:

Technology contains scarce minerals mined from the earth. It uses a lot of plastic (plastic comes from oil, right?). It takes a lot of water and toxic chemicals to make electronic components. An integrated circuit or chip factory uses as much water and power as a small, not-very-green, city.

Using technology is injurious, both to the environment and to people.

I’m starting to wonder why he took the job of Chief Technology Officer for the city of Seattle!

Schrier doesn’t consider all the materials and brainpower that would be wasted if we tried to do the same tasks without the benefit of technology. For example, imagine if there were no Internet and blog posts had to be printed in newspapers. You would have to deliver the newspapers several times a day in order to deliver information as quickly as a blog. Maybe you’re thinking, “They should just print them once a day and people could do without reading blog posts as soon as they’re written.” But then you have to take into account all the resources that would go to waste because of a lack of information — all the poor decisions that could have been prevented had people known more, sooner.

Even if you accept Schrier’s premise that technology is harmful, you must admit that technology is here to stay. And, because it is, the smartest thing to do is to create more new technologies, because they are cleaner, greener, and more efficient. It’s a good thing we didn’t stop developing computers when they were the size of rooms. Let’s welcome technological innovation and the environmental benefits it’s sure to bring.

This chapter of Liberating Learning describes the political process of education reform. In a nutshell, new practices like merit pay and parental choice threaten teachers’ unions, so the unions do all that’s in their power (and they have a lot of power) to prevent them from taking root. If a significant reform makes it through the political process, unions challenge its legality in the courts.

The authors stress how unions would lose out if public schools became more competitive and efficient. I think they would agree, though, that virtual schools, charter schools, and other new developments in the education market have the potential to help teachers as individuals. The catch, from the unions’ point of view, is that not all teachers would gain in the same way. Good teachers would earn more. The best would have new opportunities for career advancement; an example of this appears in the very beginning of the next chapter, “Technology on All Fronts,” where the authors tell the story of a teacher who goes into curriculum development after helping to create a successful online charter school.

Teachers would depend less on unions if schools competed to offer them better pay and benefits. They might also consider which schools would suit their teaching style — virtual vs. in person would be just one choice they could make. Instead of asking, “Will the union negotiate the best deal for me and everyone else?” teachers would ask, “Which combination of work environment and pay would be best for me personally?” Then unions would lose members, dues, and power.

I’m reading Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education, by Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb. The first chapter, “The Seeds of Change,” introduces the main themes of the book: U.S. public education is inefficient and ineffective, but technology has the power to turn things around. Technology, the authors predict, will change the political realities that have prevented reform in the past.

The authors are vague as to what technologies they’ll be discussing. The first few examples are specifically about online courses, which I agree have tremendous potential. Other technologies, I’m not so sure about. I’ve heard jubilant praise for education computer games and those little devices that let students vote on questions posed to them, but I don’t think either will change the education market much. If they just mean technological progress in general, as opposed to, say, labor or capital, then the first part of the thesis is a truism. Of course, technological progress can improve education, the way it improves any other sector. Which innovations represent progress, however, remains a pertinent question.

The section on political resistance is more informative. It explains how reforms like online schools threaten public school employees, and how unions have succeeded at diluting reforms to protect the status quo. Some may blame education problems on a lack of concern about schools, but Moe and Chubb are right to lay the blame on the political process. Concern — nay, even panic — is everywhere. Meaningful action on the part of schools is what’s missing.

I’m looking forward to reading their analysis of why new technology can change politics in ways that other developments in the education sector haven’t.