'76 Blog

Budgeting is about setting priorities.In most states, K-12 education is the top priority and receives the lion’s share of funding.  Yet across the country, states are grappling with a budget monster that pits education funding against federal health care mandates.In the last three years, total spending on K-12 education in Colorado has fallen by $389 million.  Spending on health care, however, has increased by $763 million during that same period.The problem is that states no longer have the ability to set their own priorities.  The federal-state Medicaid “partnership” increasingly resembles a shotgun wedding.  A state that rejects the federal spending mandates also loses out on federal matching funds that pay for half of the $5 billion price tag of Colorado’s program.In the past five years, the number of Coloradans participating in Medicaid has swollen from 391,962 to 613,148.  If that weren’t a big enough problem, ObamaCare (ironically named the “Affordable Care Act”) locks in current spending and requires states to expand eligibility to 133% of the federal poverty level.  Worse still, government health care programs are notorious for exponentially exceeding estimated costs.Two years ago, the Colorado legislature, then controlled by Democrats, passed a $600 million hidden tax on hospital patients.  Hospitals are prohibited from itemizing this “fee” on patients’ bills.  The state planned to use this fee to leverage more federal matching funds and expand Medicaid eligibility to all adults whose income was at or below the federal poverty level.According a Denver Post story by Tim Hoover, state bureaucrats estimated that the new program would serve 49,200 people at a cost of $197 million per year.  In fact, the number of eligible participants is closer to 143,000 and the cost of treating them $1.75 billion.For now, Colorado’s Department of Health Care Policy and Finance has controlled costs by limiting eligibility.  However, ObamaCare mandates that all states extend coverage to this entire population by 2014.  The federal government promises to pay for it by heaping even more debt on our children and grandchildren.Let’s be candid: Medicaid is government-sponsored charity — a noble but costly endeavor.In our family budgets, we may choose to cut back on extras to support worthwhile charities, but we don’t slash basics, like food and shelter for our children, to be even more generous to charitable causes.Given the choice, it’s inconceivable that legislators of either party would slash K-12 funding in order to expand Medicaid, but that’s exactly what’s happened.  And the outlook grows even more grim under ObamaCare.So, why haven’t those who want to raise taxes for education or want the courts to force the legislature to spend more on education taken aim at the chief culprit that’s cutting into education funding? Either they don’t understand how Medicaid is eviscerating the state budget or perhaps they find it more expedient to lock arms with others who want higher taxes to pay for more spending on virtually everything.Two sensible options exist for restoring fiscal sanity to Medicaid:• Lobby Congress to turn Medicaid into a block grant program whereby states receive a lump sum from the federal government and are liberated to design their own program without federal mandates.  Colorado will have allies because 49 other states are in a similar predicament.• Require Medicaid recipients to pay a small premium or co-pay in exchange for the health care they receive — which costs the state about $4,800 per patient per year.Some will object because Medicaid is a safety net program for the poor.  Yet, households with an average income of $17,500 (just below 100% of poverty) spend an average of $879 on junk food and soda pop, $1,160 on eating out and $1,192 on entertainment.If Medicaid patients paid an average of $400 a year out of pocket, the state could add some $300 per student in K-12 funding.So which is more responsible – more cuts to K-12 education or requiring Medicaid customers to help pay for their health care costs by cutting back on a few extras?   Mark Hillman served as Colorado state treasurer and Senate majority leader. He is now the Republican National Committeeman and a Centennial Institute Fellow. To read more or comment, go to www.MarkHillman.com. 

"It's time to take back our system of education from government control," proclaims the New Jersey Tea Party Caucus in announcing its forum in Jersey City this Sunday, Jan. 22. Details are here http://www.njteapartycaucus.com/?page_id=115 "We'll kick off National School Choice Week by asking the tough questions" about why public education costs so much, performs so poorly, and seems impervious to reform, the website adds. William J. Moloney, former Colorado Education Commissioner and now a Centennial Institute Fellow, heads the speakers panel for the half-day event.   Moloney will outline an agenda for real change, based on his Centennial policy brief, "Much Better Schools on Much Lower Budgets." Bob Bowdon, producer of "The Cartel," a hard-hitting documentary film about teacher unions and the education establishment, will serve as panel moderator.  Other panelists include New Jersey education activists Derrell Bradford, Chris Kniesler, and Dan Hagerty, along with Hillsdale College charter school experts Philip Kilgore and Terrence Moore.  Moore is well-known to Coloradans for his  past leadership of Ridgeview Classical Schools, an award-winning Fort Collins charter school.

  When Gov. John Hickenlooper announced that the state will appeal a Denver court’s ruling that the state inadequately funds education, he acknowledged what Judge Sheila Rappaport — and previously the Colorado Supreme Court — would not:  money is a finite resource, even when it’s spent on worthy causes and when it’s spent by government. The state legislature allocates $4.3 billion to educate more than 800,000 students — just under $6,500 each — in K-12 public schools.  According to the Colorado Department of Education, other sources bring that total to a statewide average of nearly $13,000, as of 2009-10. Over two years ago, the supreme court ruled, in a contentious 4-3 decision, that a lower court should entertain claims brought by a group of parents and school districts that the state constitution’s call for a “thorough and uniform” system of free public schools should be interpreted to require a specific funding amount. That lawsuit, Lobato vs. Colorado, reverted back to Rappaport’s courtroom, albeit with instructions that “the trial court must give substantial deference to the legislature’s fiscal and policy judgments.” Rappaport’s decision, however, offered no such deference.  Her ruling reads like a brief for the plaintiffs — not like a judgment that gives even a modicum of respect to the legislature’s constitutional authority to fund public schools or, more broadly, to adopt a state budget. She condescendingly dismissed the state’s arguments, while fawning over various creative claims and tendentious documents provided by the Lobato plaintiffs, leading to these incredible conclusions: * “[T]he entire system of public school finance . . . is not rationally related to the mandate of the Education Clause.” * “There is not one school district that is sufficiently funded.” * “Current economic conditions . . . have made an unworkable situation unconscionable.  But Colorado’s history of irrational and inadequate school funding goes back over two decades.” If irrationality is a disqualifier, then Rappaport’s decision is on thin ice. For example, she consults the dictionary to accurately define “rational,” “irrational” and “relationship” because the Supreme Court used those terms in remanding the case.  She does not, however, provide that same level of analysis to ascertain what Colorado’s founders intended when wrote, “[T]he general assembly shall . . . provide for the establishment and maintenance of a thorough and uniform system of free public schools throughout the state . . .” (emphasis added). Because “thorough” and “uniform” appear in the state constitution — unlike “rational,” “irrational” and “relationship” — a judge seeking to objectively apply the law might want to know if those terms dictate a necessary and quantifiable level of spending.   Of course, they do not.  An earlier supreme court said, “We are unable to find any historical background to glean guidance regarding the intention of the framers.” Rappaport adopts the Lobato plaintiffs’ argument that, because lawmakers have implemented a means of measuring schools’ and students’ performance against quantifiable expectations, the state is obligated to radically increase funding, perhaps to nearly double current levels. Her ruling rests on the plaintiffs’ creative assertion that a specific funding mandate is created by the convergence of standards and assessments, the constitution’s “thorough and uniform” clause, and the constitutional stipulation that local school boards control instruction. She never mentions “emanations and penumbras,” but clearly Judge Rappaport, like judicial activists before her, is blessed with a rare talent entrusted to only a select cadre of law school graduates — the ability to interpret words that aren’t there. In a final flurry of irrationality, Rappaport strikes down the state’s school finance law and orders a new system of funding, but she concludes the order by allowing this “inadequate,” “irrational,” “unconscionable” finance system to continue, pending further action by the Supreme Court. In announcing the state’s appeal, Gov. Hickenlooper observed: “There are more appropriate venues (than a courtroom) for a vigorous and informed public debate about the state’s spending priorities.” Yes, and, more rational, too. Mark Hillman served as Colorado treasurer and senate majority leader. He is now a Centennial Institute Fellow and Colorado's Republican National Committeeman. To read more or comment, go to www.MarkHillman.com. 

('76 Editor) I believe that Colorado taxpayers and the federal government are spending enough, if not too much, on education.  I believe schooling would be more effective if competition, choice, market forces, and parental control were more prevalent.  And I believe we would be a freer and better-educated society if at some point, decades from now, government no longer operated or subsidized schools in any way.  Since the 1990s, in fact, I have been signatory on a vision statement to that effect.  I was summoned to a Colorado court to testify on the first of those three beliefs, and on nothing else, in connection with the Lobato lawsuit alleging that state aid to local school districts is unconstitutionally low.  While on the stand, I was asked about the Separation of School and State vision statement, and confirmed my adherence to it.  But I said not a word to suggest it has anything to do with who is right or wrong in the Lobato case - because it doesn't. For reasons known only to herself, however, the judge in this case, Sheila Rappaport, thundered against my "extreme" views in her Dec. 9 opinion holding for the plaintiffs.  At the bottom of this post is an excerpt from the Dec. 11 Denver Post story, giving the details. After musing on this bizarre outburst from the bench, I would observe the following: 1- Intellectually, Judge Rappaport missed the whole point of my testimony, which was to affirm the current school finance act, not to advocate change as any kind. 2- Judicially, the judge dropped her impartiality in ranting at me over a personal opinion unrelated to the case before her. 3- And historically, the judge seems oblivious to the massive evidence that our country's 1800s ideal of tax-supported common schools, woven into the local community and open to all, has worked ever less well as it became ever more politicized, centralized, bureaucratized, and unionized. While it may be disputable, as of 2011, to question the article of faith that higher spending is all we need to reach educational nirvana, to do so is hardly "extreme" as Sheila Rappaport indignantly alleges. How, I wonder, did she become so enraged at me on no provocation whatsoever?  You almost have to feel sorry for someone entrusted with the vast power of this judge on this case, who manages to be so wrong, so far off base, indeed so far off the reservation - intellectually, judicially, and historically - as Ms. Rappaport has shown herself to be with this gratuitous slam at someone who came before her to testify calmly, reasonably, mildly, and altogether on point. Here is an excerpt from the 12/11/11 Denver Post story: Denver judge's ruling on school funding levels blisters state's witnesses In declaring Colorado's school finance system "significantly underfunded," Denver District Judge Sheila Rappaport rejected virtually every argument presented by the state's star witnesses in a five-week trial this year over school funding levels. Rappaport's ruling, issued Friday, blasted the state's level of school funding as "unconscionable" and not meeting the requirement in the Education Clause of the Colorado Constitution of a "thorough and uniform" system of public education.  [snip] Rappaport saved her fiercest criticism for former state Senate president John Andrews, a Centennial Republican, who testified for the state, calling his views on education "extreme." "Sen. Andrews' vision for the future is a separation of schools and state similar to the separation of church and state in our nation," the judge said. "He has signed a pledge calling for the end of government involvement in education. He reveres the educational system we had in this country in the 1700s because there were few government-operated schools. He fails to mention that our schools did not educate whole segments of the population, including women and people of color, at that time."

Public education is in dire straits in Colorado, and good options are lacking in this fall's school board races, laments Susan Barnes-Gelt in the September round of Head On TV debates. Not at all, replies John Andrews; it's just a matter of citizens standing up to teacher unions for a change. John on the right, Susan on the left, also go at it this month over Gov. Hickenlooper's 2016 trial balloon, Proposition 103 to raise Colorado taxes, the GOP presidential contenders, and Denver's lucrative cowtown image. Head On has been a daily feature on Colorado Public Television since 1997. Here are all five scripts for September: 1. SCHOOL BOARD RACES Susan:  Our K-12 public education system is broken and needs a massive governance overhaul.  Colorado school districts including Aurora and Cherry Creek can’t even field candidates.  Others – like Denver and Douglas County – are engaged in ideological warfare – the unions versus the reformers.  Time for change. John: Citizens across Colorado – probably including YOU, watching us right now – will soon get mail-in ballots to elect a neighbor to the local school board.  Please, please, get informed and get involved.  Teachers are great, but teacher unions tend to put money ahead of kids.  Bad show.  The reformers deserve your vote. Susan:  What happens when there are NO good choices?  Choosing the lesser of two bad options is hardly a vote for progress.  Neither the reformers nor the traditionalists have a corner on truth.  The system is broken and needs to be overhauled.  Well intended citizen volunteers are ill-equipped to manage complexity. John:  Susan, Susan, get a grip.  Public education isn’t hopeless, it just needs better leadership – and the school board races offer lots of good choices to provide that.  But if the teacher unions keep electing their pawns, learning performance will never improve.  Citizens have to step up. 2. HICKENLOOPER FOR PRESIDENT? John: Being Mayor of Denver must mess with your ego.  Hancock was barely sworn in, and he launched a national celebrity PR campaign.  Hickenlooper was barely sworn out, and he launched a whispering campaign for president.  What a joke.  His accomplishments as governor so far are zip, zero, zilch, nada.  Cool it, Hick. Susan:  America loves quirky and Hick is quirk personified!  Washington is so dysfunctional – on both sides of the aisle - that Hick’s aw shucks may have traction.  As for accomplishments:  Pailn? Bachman? Perry? Newt?  Hmmmm – not sure qualifications count for much. John: I know you have to defend your side, but I also know you think John Hickenlooper was a mediocre mayor.  Now he’s a mediocre governor.  What equips him for the White House?  Does Obama run him for VP next year – the Hick Ticket?  Then is he in line for next time – Hick Sixteen? Susan;  Hick was a mediocre Mayor because he’s not comfortable taking strong, controversial positions. His aversion to exercising power made him popular but ineffective.  He is far more potent as a consensus driven bully puppeteer in the polarized world of partisan politics.  Hick in 2016! 3. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL FIELD NARROWS Susan:  The first Republican presidential primary debate suggests the field is down to two candidates:  Texas Governor Rick Perry and hedge fund tycoon Mitt Romney.  Though it’s way too early to predicts, if angry tea partiers control the primaries, it looks like Perry will prevail. John: Not so fast. In September 2007, Republican polls showed Giuliani and Thompson far ahead, McCain far behind.  Didn’t work out that way.  The GOP nomination to replace Obama in 2012 won’t be settled for six months at least.  Bachmann and Palin are still in it.  And the economy makes Obama so vulnerable. Susan:  Dream on teenage queen.  Short of Jeb Bush getting into the mix, the R’s will nominate Romney. Even the heavy tea drinkers suspect Perry’s stand on Social Security.  Romney, the chameleon, will lose.  Unless Michael Bloomberg runs as an independent. John: The Bloomberg who botched the 9/11 commemoration is not headed for the White House.  Neither is anyone named Bush, heaven help us.  But no one named Obama is likely to live there after January 2013 either.  This president has made everything worse – the economy, the deficit, our national security.  Obama has to go. 4.  STATE BUDGET – TAX OR DROWN Susan: DU’s Center for Colorado’s Economic Future predicts that structural flaws in the state government combined with two recessions, mean the long-term fiscal stability of state government’s at stake.  I know you think government ought to drown in a bathtub – but a bi-partisan group of leaders disagree. John:  Governments at every level are in danger of drowning themselves in debt.  Colorado is no exception, and just like the federal government in Washington, our state has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.  Raising taxes right now would hurt job creation and postpone needed reforms.  Vote no on Proposition 103! Susan:  We’re drowning alright – in our own excesses – waging two wars while we cut taxes, failing to keep up with China in infrastructure and educational investments, coddling Wall Street while we ignore Main Street.  The deficit is mounting – leadership, vision, courage and vision. John: As a free and open society with Judeo-Christian roots, I like our chances against communistic China, decadent Europe, or barbaric Islam. But we do have a responsibility deficit, and the result could be fiscal collapse.  Feeding the beast with more taxes is not the answer.  Vote no on 103! 5.  STOCK SHOW TO AURORA? John: Who will win the Stock Show tug of war between Denver and Aurora?  Ranchers, farmers, and rural Americans everywhere must be laughing at the sight of politically correct, environmentally superior big-city folks scrambling after the National Western pot of gold.  I guess being a cowtown is no embarrassment after all. Susan:  The Stock Show adds nearly $100 million to Denver’s general fund, and millions more to the coffers of downtown businesses, hotels, restaurants, bars and retailers.  Meantime the National Western spends $1 million plus lobbying to move, rather than maintain its facilities. Bad judgment I’d say. John: Mayor Hancock understandably hates to lose that revenue, hence his fight to keep it – so far consisting of one more committee.  Woo hoo.  But the bigger question for Hancock is the one I asked during his transition – can he streamline taxes and regulations to make Denver a magnet for economic growth? Susan:  Denver taxes are among the lowest in the region because the City has more commercial property and sales tax receipts than other jurisdictions.  The development of the Gaylord Hotel with a $300+ million subsidy is a much greater threat to downtown’s economy than an already streamlined regulatory system.  

(Centennial Fellow) As the hard-won accomplishment that is SB-191 moves deliberately towards fulfillment, it is important to remember that however admirable, it is but a single element in the more comprehensive challenge of improving teacher quality. While the public has long fixated on what to do about ineffective teachers- an issue most usefully addressed here in Colorado by last year's Senate Bill 191- far less attention has been given to the much larger question of how we recruit teachers in the first place. It is imperative to focus on this critical matter because today there is abundant evidence that the American approach to teacher recruitment is the most dysfunctional system to be found in any industrial nation. At the heart of the problem is the painful fact that the people being admitted to the ranks of America’s K-12 teachers are the wrong people. As reported by researchers for the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2006 top performing nations draw their teachers from the top five to thirty percent of their high school classes, depending on the country. The United States, in contrast, draws its teachers on average from the bottom third of the class. This fact does much to explain the poor quality of training at U.S. schools of education. As Barber and Mourshed report in How the World’s Best Performing School Systems Come out on Top "Because the quality of students is low, so is the quality of courses; professors at schools of education are famously the least respected faculty at universities. Teaching becomes a low status profession". The stark contrasts between U.S. teacher recruitment practices and those of our international competitors are further illuminated in A Comparative Study of Teacher Preparation and Qualifications in Six Nations (2007) edited by Richard M. Ingersoll. There we learn that top performing nations restrict access up front to teacher training programs, and select only a small proportion of applicants who emerge from a highly competitive process. In those nations serious money is invested in the careful training and development of each individual teacher. Subject teachers also receive "vastly more content- area training" than in the United States, and teachers are much less likely to teach outside of their content area. Training programs are prestigious and teaching is a high status profession. Getting beyond the depressing landscape of American dysfunction in teacher recruitment and training, the good news is that several prominent school districts have recognized this problem and are aggressively and successfully doing something about it. By their example they are conclusively proving that the United States is capable of dramatically improving the quality of our country’s K-12 teachers- an absolutely indispensable element in any real revival of American public education. Among the most successful of these district initiatives are the New York City Teaching Fellows program, Chicago Teaching Fellows, and the Boston Teacher Residency. All have created alternative paths to teaching modeled on the practices of top performing countries. All recruit top graduates of highly selective colleges, and universities and submit them to relatively brief but intensive training. None require applicants to take education courses, or jump through the burocratic hoops of state certification, obstacles which have historically deterred many gifted teachers from considering public schools. The New York program gets particularly high praise from the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement. The program initially drew 2100 top flight applicants, and selected just 325. By 2008 there were 17,000 applicants, and graduating fellows provided fully one-third of the district’s new math teachers. The 2009 class was the most highly selective ever, with just one in ten applicants being chosen. All of these programs owe a great debt to Teach For America (TFA) founded by Wendy Kopp in 1990. Locating only in the most challenging districts TFA today operates in fourteen states including Colorado. Illustrating the heartening appeal of these programs to the "best and brightest" of America’s young, last year 18 % of Harvard’s graduating seniors, and 16 % of Princeton’s were among the 48,000 who applied for 5,100 positions in TFA. Today other districts can emulate these programs while working with legislators to permanently eliminate ineffective course work and credentialing practices in their states. The need is great, and the hour is late, but the road to a greatly improved American teaching profession is clearly visible before us. William Moloney was Colorado Education Commissioner from 1997 to 2007.  

A second consecutive year of sharp reductions to K-12 education funding in Colorado, proposed Gov. John Hickenlooper's budget, could actually help public schools improve learning performance and break out of a 30-year "Groundhog Day" cycle of ineffectual reforms endlessly repeated.That was the argument by Centennial Institute fellows William Moloney and Krista Kafer at Issue Monday, Feb. 28 in the CCU Beckman Center.  Hear the full podcast of Moloney & Kafer's briefing. [mp3:Issue Monday 2.28.11.mp3]  Moloney was Colorado Education Commissioner, 1997-2007, and has held senior education policy posts in a half-dozen other states and countries.  Kafer directed education policy for the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, and is now does quality evaluations for charter schools.The briefing was based on Moloney's Centennial Institute policy brief, Much Better Schools on Much Lower Budgets, published in December 2010 and available here: Centennial Policy Brief No. 2010-2     His fact sheet for Issue Monday is here: Moloney 022811 Education Costs & Results Krista Kafer and Centennial Institute director John Andrews flank former Commissioner William Moloney in the final "lightning round" of school reform questions at Issue Monday, Feb. 28.

(Centennial Fellow) An enduring memory from the early days of the iconic “Monday Night Football” was when the game got out of hand and the late “Dandy Don” Meredith – partner to Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford - would croon, “Turn Out the Lights, the Party’s Over.” Today astute mavens of the Education Establishment- principally the teacher unions- are beginning to hear echoes of that melancholy tune.  Across America from Albany to Sacramento a fifty state rebellion is brewing against the power, privilege, and pensions of the most arrogant and successful political machine in American history. In a supreme irony the new leaders of this assault on union power are Governors of the very same Democratic Party that has kow-towed to those unions for over half a century.  State CEOs Cuomo (N.Y.), O’Malley(Md.), Patrick (Mass.), Quinn (Ill.), and Brown (Calif.) in a bizarre case of “recovered memory” seem to have suddenly recalled the sage words of their greatest hero Franklin Roosevelt who in 1937 stated unequivocally that “the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted in the public service.”  Who knew? Reading the inaugural addresses of the above noted gentlemen one might think they were “channeling” Ronald Reagan, but their real role model has been the outsize figure of Republican Governor Chris Christie who for the last year has in gutsy and colorful fashion stood up to the bullying tactics of the New Jersey teachers union (NJEA) that he dared to challenge. The Democrats saw that Christie not only achieved budget cutting success despite a Democratic legislature but in doing so also won a nationwide popularity that put him atop Republican Presidential preference polls. It is no mystery why even Democratic governors are turning against their long time allies.  The reason is that they all have realized that bloated education spending is far and away the biggest threat to battered state budgets. If Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are the Entitlements that swallowed the federal budget, then Education is the Entitlement that swallowed state and  local budgets. In the words of Adam Schaeffer of the Cato Institute “The key structural problem in state and local finances is education, not health care….(It is) the $600 billion dollar elephant in the statehouse.” Consider the following statistics: Inflation adjusted education spending increase 1970-2010: 102% Teachers increased 61% while students increased just 8% (1970-2008) Education spending as a share of tax revenue increased 90% from 1992 to 2011 at the state level and 73% at the local level. Including pension plans, capital construction, and debt service K-12 education consumes 56% of all state and local tax revenue. To date 36 governors have stated their intention to reduce K-12 spending.  Some do it reluctantly (usually Democrats) but all speak in a vein of realism: They have no choice.  In the words of the old-time bank robber Willie “The Actor” Sutton: “That’s where the money is.” The best symbol of this emerging new environment has to be New York State- the ultimate citadel of union power and corruption.  How ironic that the son of Mario Cuomo- a slavish acolyte of union power in his day- should be the one to announce a 7.3% cut in K-12 spending ($1.5 billion dollars; 409 million in New York City alone.) Predictably union hacks decried Cuomo’s proposed cuts, and just as predictably hid concerns for their perks behind concern for “our kids”.  Lamented one spokesman, “the damage to students will be permanent because children do not get a second chance” but the bulk of his text dwelt on the potential devastation of “teacher lay-offs and larger class sizes.” Governor Cuomo’s sensible observation that “Qualitative decline does not automatically follow a thoughtful Quantitative draw down” isn’t cutting it with the union gang, but that will be precisely the test for the future. There is abundant evidence around the country and the world that America can have much better schools at much lower costs.  Teacher unions will either adapt and sign on for that mission, or end up occupying a well deserved spot on the ash heap of history. The struggle to reclaim America’s educational greatness will not be easy, but it is a battle our country can and must win. Former Colorado Education Commissioner (1997-2007) William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Human Events.  

(Denver Post, Jan. 23) The indignation was feverish.  Teacher-union partisans trembled.  Elaine Berman, a State Board of Education member from Denver, boycotted.  Mary Johnson, an education consultant from Colorado Springs, raged. “A person known for nearly total lack of support for public education” was “bamboozling” Coloradans. The miscreant was William Moloney, our state’s past Education Commissioner under both parties from 1997 to 2007.  He had been invited back on Jan. 13 by State Board chairman Bob Schaffer to testify on school reform.  His crime was not burning books or blowing up buses; it was pointing out the obvious. He had come, Moloney began, to talk about “three incontestable realities concerning which America has been in denial for decades,” but which “the hammer blows of impending financial disaster” have now brought home to everyone.  (Or almost everyone; financial disaster doesn’t faze the Johnsons of this world.) Reality 1, said the former commissioner, is that America’s schools perform poorly in world rankings and when measured against their own past performance.  U.S. seventeen-year-olds have made NO progress in math and reading scores over the past 40 years, even as per-pupil spending in real dollars has doubled. Reality 2 is the unsustainable level of educational costs in this country.  We’re near top dollar on international comparisons, reported Moloney.   Worse, public schools in Colorado spend 60 percent more than in Utah and 80 percent more than parochial schools in Denver – while trailing both of them academically. But Reality 3 is good news, the witness told his former employers: “There are abundant models of better educational performance coupled with lower cost, even some within walking distance” of the Berman-boycotted boardroom at 201 E. Colfax.  The days of school spending as an unquestioned, unmonitored entitlement may be numbered. Perhaps most promising in the magnitude of savings and the chance to do more with less, he added, is the evidence that America has begun to break “the national obsession with class-size reduction, an expensive and counterproductive policy that has never been shown to improve learning performance.”  Examples exist in Florida, California, and locally in Aurora and Jefferson County. Marcia Neal, the State Board of Education vice chairman, thanked Moloney for his “excellent work” on the policy research (available from the Centennial Institute, where I work, at Centennialccu.org).  “There is very little we can argue with,” concluded Neal. Impatient parents and weary taxpayers can expect fierce argument, however, from Beverly Ingle, Henry Roman, and Brenda Smith.  You’ve never heard of this tough political triad; obscurity is to their advantage.  But if Johnson and Berman want to know who is really bamboozling us into the insanity of doing the same thing in schools decade after decade, gold-plating it, and expecting different results, talk to them. They head Colorado’s three largest teacher unions: the CEA, the AFT, and the Denver Classroom Teachers.  The confession of the late Al Shanker, AFT national president, is their guilty secret:  “When school children start paying union dues, I’ll start representing their interests.”  Class-size reduction (read: ever more employees with ever less to do) is their cash cow.  That’s why genuine school reform terrifies them. So, will the Swalm bill for tuition tax credits and the Spence bill for outsourcing noninstructional costs, together worth $300 million in deficit reduction, succeed this year?  Will reformer Laura Boggs survive on the Jeffco school board, and reformer Nate Easley on the Denver school board?  Will national reform leader Michelle Rhee, featured in “Waiting for Superman,” be welcomed here by Hickenlooper as governors have welcomed her in Florida and New Jersey?  Or will the mindless labor mentality of Samuel Gompers, “More,” continue at our kids’ expense?  It all depends on who gets traction: Moloney, Schaffer, and Neal, or Ingle, Roman, and Smith.                                        

Reforming Colorado’s schools, and their finances, links directly to the larger cause of preserving the viability of our American democracy and the free enterprise system that is its indispensable foundation.  Our Centennial Institute Policy Brief entitled “Much Better Schools on Much Lower Budgets,” published last month, offers a new agenda for school reform in the context of fiscal distress in this state and many others today. A central insight of the Centennial Policy Brief is that public education is an entitlement though historically we haven’t thought of it that way.  Furthermore in terms of its size, scope, and metastasizing cost, it is both larger, and more dangerous than the more frequently discussed entitlements of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Left unchecked on its current trajectory American education will be cited by future historians as a central cause in the decline of American Civilization. If this language seems hyperbolic, it is because the truth of these assertions will be vital to your chances of success in changing the terms of public and legislative debate on this critical issue. The thesis advanced in this Policy Brief rests on three incontestable realities concerning which America has been in denial for decades.  Now driven by the hammer blows of impending financial disaster these realities have been discovered and reported as if they were “fast breaking news” and now with the sudden zeal of converts countless education leaders and commentators across the country have embraced them enthusiastically. They are as follows: 1.  Low Performance of U.S. Schools   The Centennial Brief reported U.S. international ranking as 18th in Reading, 29th in Science, and 35th in Math.  Updated results released just last month and given extraordinary coverage across the country confirmed this grim assessment. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called the results a “massive wake-up call” and further stated that “America cannot tolerate falling ever further behind our international competitors.” 2.  High Costs of U.S. Schools   The many studies of comparative international education spending all reach the same conclusion: The U.S.A. is at or near the top in spending. Domestically the Policy Brief draws particular attention to neighboring Utah where per pupil expenditure is just 61% of Colorado’s and the well regarded Denver Catholic Schools which come in at 55%. Despite these facts and the looming fiscal tsunami Colorado education leaders have recently publicly stated that they would need an extra billion dollars “just to be average”.  Additionally they are suing the State of Colorado including the State Board of Education in a landmark court case – Lobato- which could ultimately cost Colorado taxpayers five billion dollars.  To say that this kind of special interest thinking is wildly out of touch with reality would be an understatement. Just as the achievement comparisons have been widely embraced, so too all the world it seems has concluded that education spending must be reduced.  The aforementioned Education Secretary Duncan only recently lionized as the hero of the now passé “Race To The Top” has now gone to the top of the teacher union’s enemies list as a result of his dramatic conversion to the cause of charter schools and his calling out of those unions over their “bloated pension and benefit schemes.” 3.  Abundant models of higher performance coupled with lower cost .  Some are within walking distance of this building; others can be found across the state, the country and around the world.  Most have been there a long time, but despite occasional media reports of their success, as a society we have never been able to replicate them on a large scale.  It’s always been “Oh, you couldn’t do that” or “That wouldn’t work here.”  Now our future will depend on large scale replication of successful models.  Thirty years ago pundits were declaring the American auto industry dead.  German and Japanese cars were the rising stars of the world market.  However American companies didn’t give up.  They bought a bunch of those foreign cars, took them apart, figured out why they were better, and more cost effective, and started making such quality cars in America.  U.S. sales rose; foreign sales declined; and within a few years the productivity of the U.S. worker surpassed both Japan and Germany. We can do the same for American education if with courage and conviction we choose to do so.  As with the auto industry, however, this is not about “tweaking” but about a whole new design. The two biggest challenges we face are also our two biggest opportunities to banish the specter of decline and substitute a renaissance of American public education. The first is entitlements.  Today we see whole national economies on the verge of collapse owing to unsustainable entitlement spending.  Now the wolf is at America’s door. As a survey of inaugural addresses by Governors across the country reveals it is they along with fifty state legislatures that must lead the way in this very difficult but necessary task. The emergency measures taken by the Louisiana legislature in wake of Katrina that have dramatically transformed the troubled New Orleans public schools are a useful example. The second is the paradoxical issue of class size.  Solutions here are within the reach of every local school board in America, and hundreds of them are already doing it , including some in Colorado.  The potential savings are immense, and much of those savings can be invested in reform initiatives hitherto starved by our over-investment in class size reduction. Now, across America, State Boards of Education are asking themselves: “What can we do to address the clear and present danger?”  The answer is: “Things you have never done before.”  As James Madison said to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 “There now devolves upon you an entirely new class of duties, if the American enterprise is to advance and prosper.” State Boards have great powers -- many that they don’t even know about, more that they’ve never used simply because the circumstances of the day did not require or permit their use. Time permits but a single small but telling example of how your power changed the lives of some of the neediest children in Colorado. A few years back some young idealists from Teach For America came before this State Board.  Under state regulation as it then stood, they were forbidden to teach in Colorado.Despite opposition from predictable quarters, your board changed those regulations and as a result some of the best and brightest from the finest American universities entered some of Colorado’s most challenging classrooms and did good things for some of our most at-risk children. There are many other examples.  There are also many possibilities for you to exercise your powers in new ways.  As you find those other possibilities and usefully address them our governor, our legislature, and many others will thank and support you because they know they need all the help they can get if our part of this American Enterprise is to advance, and prosper. This essay is based on remarks delivered by William J. Moloney, a Centennial Institute Fellow and former Colorado Education Commissioner (1997-2007), in testimony to the Colorado State Board of Education, Jan. 13, 2011.