The best way to get rid of government workers is to let them die?

According to USA Today,

Death — rather than poor performance, misconduct or layoffs — is the primary threat to job security at theEnvironmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget and a dozen other federal operations.

The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 — 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce. Research shows that the private sector fires about 3% of workers annually for poor performance, says John Palguta, former research chief at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal firing disputes.

The Federal Communications Commission (which should be shut down due to technological obsolescence - there is no longer any legitimate economic reason for its existence - and the fact that it is a slap in the face to the U.S. Constitution, specifically that part about FREE SPEECH) had more people die while employed than terminated for poor job performance.

Yeah. You're more likely to die than get fired as a Federal worker (at least in several agencies).

This is yet another reason why government workers should NOT be allowed to unionize.

Democrats for Education Reform...in Nevada?

Last weekend I spoke with some people about setting up a chapter of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) in Nevada. I think this is an excellent idea as it is badly needed. To date, Nevada's Democrats talk a big game about reforming education, but often rubber stamp union written bills that do nothing to improve student achievement.

You see, Democrats for Education Reform are a group of Democrats that realized there can be no meaningful progress on education if the union dictates education policy. Yes, the Nevada State Education Association literally writes the education bills for the Nevada State Democrats. Not kidding. The union does SOME great things for teachers (SOME!!!). But that's it! The unions job is to protect teachers, not students. In fact, many policies the union supports actually harms students. This is why I repeatedly state that K-12 education is about funding jobs for adults, not educating students.

Several key members of Democrats for Education Reform support tearing down the "Pillars of Mediocrity" which includes tenure, lock-step pay, and seniority (they are also joined by Brookings Institution, the Center for American Progress and dozens upon dozens of respected academics). These policies tend to discourage great teachers from staying in- or joining the profession, while also encouraging the worst teachers to stick around longer than anyone would like.

Just check out a few of the DFER policies:

• We support policies which stimulate the creation of new, accountable public schools and which simultaneously close down failing schools

• We support mechanisms that allow parents to select excellent schools for their children, and where education dollars follow each child to their school.

• We support governance structures which hold leaders responsible, while giving them the tools to effectuate change. We believe in empowering mayors to lead urban school districts, so that they can be held accountable by the electorate.

• We support policies that allow school principals and their school communities to select their teams of educators, holding them accountable for student performance but allowing them flexibility to exercise sound, professional judgment.

This sounds EXACTLY like my series on expanding the empowerment school program (I wrote a bill on this called SB 196 but unfortunately most of the above provisions were stripped out by Nevada Democrats in committee). 

Independent thinker wanted...preferably a registered Democrat

On a side note, someone expressed interest in having yours truly lead the Democrats for Education Reform Nevada chapter since I'm not a Republican and on board with much of the DFER platform (I'm a registered independent and have been so since turning 18. I, however, consider myself a classical liberal and little "l" libertarian). I turned down the offer on the grounds that working for NPRI "ruined my brand" as far as mainstream Democrats would be concerned. I suggested to these individuals we need to find real Democrats who understand the education reform research and are willing to question the union's motives.

These Democrats do exist....believe me. If you know one, let me know.

ATTEMPTing to educate

At Basic High School in Henderson Nevada there is no such thing as false advertisement - you get a basic education. Um, well, at least they ATTEMPT to give you a basic education.

Take a look at this screen shot of a letter from the Basic High School Principal. They "will continue to ATTEMPT to fulfill our mission of preparing all students for post-secondary education." Ah gee, that's swell. It's as if they've never succeeded in actually educating students to begin with...and that may actually be true.

Nevada spends just over $10,000 per pupil when you include capital costs and debt repayment, graduates 44 percent of students according to Education Week (56 percent according to the U.S. Department of Education) and fails to get more than half of minority and low-income 4th grade students to read at grade level.

At least Basic High School is ATTEMPTING to educate.... They should get an A for effort...

As for some of the principal's claims in the letter: K-12 Education in Nevada appears to be facing its first real budget cut in many years...so yeah that is historic! Yes the budget cuts in 2009 and 2010 were all cuts from imaginary dollars the school districts had never before spent in their entire history. Facing a real budgetary decline, CCSD administrators, principals and teachers don't know what to do (it's called innovation and learning to do more with less...it is what the private sector has been doing for years!!!).

Next, I don't know if Basic will really have class sizes that average 35 students as the principal claims. However, I do know that the Nevada Department of Education states that Basic had 2,557 students in 2009-10 and the Basic website lists 104 teachers. That is 24.6 students per teacher - above the Nevada average of 20. But what this means is that teachers have a lot of non-teaching time in school if their classes average 35 or more students. Thus if you want smaller class sizes have TEACHERS TEACH MORE!

It is also unlikely that teachers will be responsible for as many as 300 students. That would require a teacher to work all day with only a lunch break and still average 43 students per class. Since most teachers have a lunch break plus one or two "duty periods" the average teacher at Basic will probably have only 175 students they are responsible for throughout the year.

A little lesson on wealth and technology

Debt limit

Publishing another column, the editorial board of the the Las Vegas Sun prove they still don't know what they are talking about. Today, they wrote on the U.S. debt limit, claiming all sorts of horrors and blaming Republicans for being greedy and self centered. In case you weren't riled up enough by their mindless, nonsensical tribal cheerleading rant, the Las Vegas Sun editors tossed in the pejorative phrase "trickle down economics" just because they know it makes American liberals angry.

Hey, look! Its the Las Vegas Sun mascot.

Ok, so what is really going on with this "debt limit"? According to Reason Magazine and the academics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, not much.

1. August 2nd is an arbitrary date; it has already changed 4 times this year
2. Reaching the debt limit does not mean default (you can max your credit card without defaulting, its CHOOSING not to pay the debt that results in default)
3. Both Republicans and Democrats are simply using August 2nd to negotiate what they want for their respective tribe
4. Our government is incompetent and has been for a long time
5. Debt limit is meaningless - its been raised 100 times since 1917 and 10 times in the last 10 years. Additionally, government spending has increased by 60 percent in the last decade alone...far more than population growth and inflation combined. In other words, its the spending stupid!

Keeping good teachers...the dirty secrets

The Las Vegas Sun editorial board recently wrote a fairly vapid piece on keeping good teachers in Nevada. Sticking to the usual meaningless platitudes, the Sun simply calls for more spending and higher pay for teachers. Additionally, the editors seem to wrongly assume that every teacher is a good teacher.

Once again, I'm going to school the editorial board of the Las Vegas Sun. Let's begin...again.

Note any relevant facts or academic research and you're bound to be attacked...

First, Nevada spent an estimated $7 billion on K-12 education in the last biennium. We spend so much money on a per-pupil basis, that if Nevada were its own nation we'd rank about 10th highest in the WORLD! That is right, we spend as much, if not more, than France and Germany.

Spending more money on education has nothing to do with actual education - its actually all about creating jobs for adults. This is why most studies show no correlation between spending and student achievement. 

The relationship between spending and student achievement is random...like this picture.

Next, Nevada teachers are not underpaid. According to the Nevada Department of Education the average teacher is paid around $50,000 a year for 185 days of work. Including benefits the average teacher earns a little more than $70,000 in compensation. Additionally, there is evidence that because of the last round of salary schedule negotiations with the union that teachers in Nevada may not have had an actual pay cut....AT ALL!

CCSD Teacher Pay Schedule,
Growth in teacher pay 2007-2011

Oh and a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey estimates the average teacher works about 36-40 hours a week during the school year. That is only about 1,600 hours or 400 less than the average American. Thus, the average teacher is NOT overworked as the Las Vegas Sun claims.

Finally, bad teachers exist. They really do. Some teachers are so bad, in fact, that students will know less at the end of the year than at the beginning. Worse still, there is evidence that teacher skills begin to deteriorate over time. According to this study by Paul Peterson and Mathew Chingos of Harvard find that teacher skill (in terms of student achievement) tends to rise and then decline over time. 

In an interesting side note, Mathew Chingos is a fellow at the left-of-center Brookings Institution where Las Vegas Sun editor and owner Brian Greenspun is a board member. This begs the question...does he actually read their reports?

So why are the Las Vegas Sun editorials on education so cowardly? mute on real meaningful education? I'm not sure; maybe the editorial board really believes what they write (and don't bother reading the research on the issue). Or, maybe they're afraid that doing real journalism would bring down the wrath of the education union (it will).

When it comes to teachers we need to end or reform tenure, eliminate lock-step pay, terminate bonuses for extra degrees (more on ending additional degree bonuses for teachers because its a hot topic), and convert the pension into a 401K (pensions trap teachers in teaching long after they've burnt out. Converting to a 401K allows teachers to take that money and go at any time).

Economic freedom

Economic freedom is correlated with higher incomes, longer life expectancy, lower poverty rates, better education, lower infant mortality rates and more. In graduate school I even found a correlation between economic freedom and democratic durability (meaning the more free the economy the more stable the democracy).