Washington State’s Big Spenders are Slow Learners || John Merrifield || November 30, 2014

After having little to show for a nearly 30% increase in public school spending by her administration, previous Governor Christine Gregoire (D – WA) said,

“I came in here determined to make the system work better. I put a lot more money into K–12. But then you sit there and say, “Why have I not been able to get the result I set out to achieve?”

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A State Fiscal Impact Calculator for Private School Choice Proposals || John Merrifield || October 22, 2015

Alleged fiscal impact often determines the political fate of private school choice proposals. So, the sad state of fiscal impact assessment for such proposals (“fiscal notes”) had become a major barrier to the kind of school system transformation we need. So, an online fiscal notes calculator was developed to provide a solid basis for much-improved, transparent fiscal impact assessment for private school legislation; a tool to help legislative staff better meet the demand for fast fiscal impact assessment. Since anyone can access the calculator website, and enter the information that determines fiscal impact, the calculator is also useful for designing private school choice proposals, and for holding fiscal analysts accountable for their fiscal impact assessments. Continue reading →

Big Spending Increases – No Improvement || John Merrifield || July 9, 2013

Washington State Governor Gregoire’s Education Legacy provides an in-your-face, re-affirming example of the typical failure to address root causes; that without a laser focus on those causes, additional funding won’t yield noteworthy improvements. I called it an ‘in-your-face’ example because we apparently need frequent, new concrete reminders that the disappointing performance of the current K-12 system is not caused by inadequate funding. Commonplace evidence such as Washington state’s failure to reap improved academic outcomes from a nearly 30% increase in per pupil funding has not deterred repeated claims that increased funding is the key policy reform. Those claims fail to note how much we already spend, or that the tripling of inflation-adjusted, per-pupil funding in the last forty years has not yielded any noteworthy gains in the most trusted performance measures. Continue reading →

Another Money Doesn’t Matter Story: Sadly, this one Includes Charter Schools || John Merrifield || January 27, 2015

This is just a quick take on a significant study; mostly to bring it to your attention. The report compared the rate of return on Traditional Public School (TPS) and Chartered Public School (CPS) spending. The study compared the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores of TPS and CPS per dollar spent on each, controlling for socioeconomic characteristics. The bottom line is that the CPS rate of return is higher. But it seems to reveal, or confirm, a sad truth. In about half of the states in the sample Continue reading →

Low-Income Families Find the Means To Enroll Their Children in Better Schools || John Merrifield || September 8, 2014

I recently re-discovered a finding that twelve percent of Oklahoma’s private school users are from families with annual incomes below $25,000. It reminded me of a key finding from my 2009 study of Edgewood’s (San Antonio) 1998-2008 privately-funded tuition voucher program: low income families find the means to enroll their children in schools that will work better for them. So, an expansion in the menu of schooling options facilitated by price decontrol – school choice including permission to top-off public funding with private funding – is not irrelevant or unfair to the poor. Such an expansion benefits all income classes, directly and indirectly; Continue reading →

Free-Only, Subsidized Schooling: A Priceless Equity Disaster || John Merrifield || April 22, 2014

Like so many other well-intentioned government rules, mandating free-only (no tuition charge) public schooling, and perhaps also free-only publically subsidized schooling options, arguably achieves the opposite of the intended result. It likely has a net negative effect on equity rather than the widely assumed significant net benefit to the lowest income families. Continue reading →

Philanthropists, Please Answer the Nevada ESA Bell || John Merrifield || July 3, 2015

A key to the educational and political success of the landmark Nevada Education Savings Account (ESA) legislation is philanthropic dollars to finance ESA top-offs for low income families. The annual ESA deposit is about $5000. That’s enough to get into a lot of parochial private schools, but not enough for very many, if any, of the non-sectarian private options; either those already available or likely to be available soon via entrepreneurial initiative. Through competitive pressure over time, lots of private schooling options costing somewhat more than $5000/year will likely become available. When the full tuition amount of a preferred private school is more than the ESA amount – say $5000 for discussion purposes – admission to the preferred school will require shared financing, as it is called in Chile, or a co-payment (the term used in the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court Zelman decision that green-lighted sectarian school use of tuition vouchers). Continue reading →

Equity Math for a Transformed System || John Merrifield || June 2, 2016

Suppose we provide a high minimum level of per-pupil public funding to anyone wanting to exit their assigned public school, and independent schools – charter or private – can charge whatever the market would bear. Markets would then set tuition rates; often at the per-pupil public funding (‘free’) amount, but sometimes above. Market entry would drive tuition rates down to just the level needed to finance and sustain efficient operations, including a normal rate of return on investment. Purveyors of poorly conceived instructional approaches would not be able to recruit enough schoolchildren to cover their expenses. But purveyors of some well-conceived instructional approaches would be able to charge more than the per pupil public funding; a 3^rd party co-payment. Continue reading →

Dangerous Chartering Malaise || John Merrifield || June 21, 2015

In 1993, Vice President Al Gore’s “Re-Inventing Government” pointed out that “scandal,” not routine inefficiency drives policy change, and makes/breaks government careers. And I pointed out that the circumstances of chartered public schools were ripe with potential for a school choice movement-imperiling scandal. That would be devastating, and recently, there have been warning signs that such peril may be imminent. It might nothing more than a particularly eye-popping scandal and an especially effective demagogue messenger to launch a doomsday scenario that could even engulf non-charter forms of school choice; for example, perhaps slowing or even totally stifling the copying of Nevada’s universal education savings account law by other states. Continue reading →