There is one and only one way to determine the “true cost” of an adequate education. That is to create a competitive education marketplace. Alas, that is not the approach New Hampshire has taken.

Instead, legislators have tried to set the cost by decree. Public school districts, asserting with some justification that the amount is too low, have asked courts to… set the cost by decree.

Now a court has done so, and the results are as absurd as one would expect.

On November 20th, Rockingham County Superior Court Justice David Ruoff ruled that the Legislature’s decreed amount ($4,100 per pupil; he excluded differentiated aid) was unconstitutionally low. But, he said, the plaintiff school districts’ asserted amount ($9,929) was too high. The actual minimum constitutionally permissive state per-pupil expenditure was, he figured, $7,356.01. 

Note the penny. Such precision carries the weight of both mathematical and legal certainty. 

Except, the entire number, including the penny, is merely a guess offered as a suggestion for legislators to consider because the court lacked enough information to find the true figure. So says… Justice David Ruoff.

“Although the evidence demonstrates that a base adequacy aid level of $7,356.01 would be constitutionally insufficient, the Court cannot set a higher threshold at this time,” Ruoff wrote. “Such a step is precluded by the limitations of the evidence presented at trial, as well as the involvement of certain policy considerations. The Court is confident, however, that the guidance offered here will empower the legislature to meaningfully consider and appropriately respond to the relevant issues.”

Well, glad that’s cleared up. 

How did Justice Ruoff conclude both that $7,356.01 was the minimum threshold of constitutionality and that he had too little information to make such a conclusion?

After reviewing the statutory and regulatory requirements for adequacy, and examining actual school district spending, he undertook the following policy analysis: 

He used “common sense” to guess that some district spending wasn’t essential for adequacy, lopped off an arbitrary percentage from some figures (without examining others that would be relevant, such as public charter school spending), and wound up with a back-of-the-envelope guess that can’t quite be called educated, but probably could pass as educated at a cocktail party if it didn’t talk too much. 

Justice Ruoff tasked himself with deciding three questions:

“[T]here are three inquires before the Court: (I) what are the necessary components or cost-drivers of a constitutionally adequate education, as defined by the legislature, exclusive of additional services provided to students eligible for differentiated aid?; (II) what funding is necessary for school districts to provide those components and cost- drivers?; and (III) how does that amount compare to the funding currently provided via base adequacy aid? As the third inquiry is a matter of simple mathematics, the evidence presented at trial largely focused on the first two inquiries.”

To answer these questions, Ruoff considered state requirements and district expenditures. At no point did the court consider whether there might be other, more effective, more efficient and less costly ways to satisfy the state requirements.

Damning for the decision is that the word “market” appears just nine times in the 69-page ruling. Plaintiffs use it to argue for higher teacher compensation, as competition for good teachers drives up wages, and the court uses it to argue that professional development funds are part of adequacy. 

The word is used to justify higher spending, never lower. That’s odd, given that competitive market forces have been shown to improve productivity and drive down costs in K-12 education. 

• A 2010 Harvard University Graduate School of Education study found that “competition from private schools boosts achievement and lowers costs.” According to the study, “a 10 percent increase in enrollment in private schools improves a country’s mathematics test scores on PISA by almost half a year’s worth of learning. A 10 percent increase in private school enrollment also reduces the total educational spending per student by over 5 percent of the OECD average.”
• A 2012 study of open enrollment policies in Wisconsin found that “schools respond to competitive forces by improving quality.”
• A 2003 study found that “regular public schools boosted their productivity when exposed to competition.” That productivity increase typically took the form of higher performance rather than lowered spending. Nonetheless, the study shows that schools can produce better results without higher spending when competition is introduced.
• A 2019 study of private schools participating in Wisconsin’s voucher program found that “private and independent charter schools tend to be more cost-effective than district-run public schools in the state overall and for the vast majority of individual cities.” Particularly, private schools received 27% less funding than district public schools overall but generated “2.27 more points on the Accountability Report Card for every $1,000 invested than district-run public schools, demonstrating a 36 percent cost- effectiveness advantage for private schools.”

Any examination of school spending that ignores chartered public schools and non-public schools is incomplete at best. And any that doesn’t even consider the effects that competition could have on the system is negligent. 

The understatement of the ruling came in Justice Ruoff’s caveat that he was hindered by the “limitations of the evidence presented at trial.” Those limitations, he acknowledged, prevented him from determining with certainty how much an adequate education should cost. But the limitations were greater than he realized. 

Not only did the court lack sufficient school district data to make an accurate cost determination, but it lacked equally important data on the efficiency gains created by competition. Going forward with an analysis despite such huge gaps in available data was a critical error. 

The ruling was plagued with numerous problems, the first being its roots in the wrongly decided Claremont decision. But even accepting the Claremont fallacy, the ruling was doomed by fatal methodological flaws and a devastating shortage of information. 

The information problem should have been obvious from the start. Prices are information. Prices absent competition are woefully inadequate information. Since no competitive education market exists in New Hampshire, the court is left applying legal analysis and back-of-the-envelope math to discover something that only the market can discover: the best available cost of a service. 

It’s clear that legislators set a low figure in the hope that this will press district spending downward. Districts, however, encourage local voters to approve ever higher budgets, which counters the Legislature’s intent. Districts then use those higher levels of spending to claim that the state appropriation is too low. Given these dynamics, it’s impossible to determine with any accuracy just how low district spending could go while meeting the state mandates for adequacy.

Until New Hampshire introduces some form of robust market competition, Granite Staters will never know what an adequate education really should cost. 

Andrew Cline | JBartlett

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Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs sent Joe Border Bender Biden a bill. She says he owes Arizona a 512 million dollar handling fee for illegal border crosser management. Those aren’t the words she used, but that’s what this is. She also wants more troops, not to stop the invasion but to manage it.

In a letter to President Joe Biden, Hobbs is requesting that the 243 National Guard troops already on federal orders in the Tucson Sector be redirected to helping with the Lukeville Port of Entry’s reopening.

She also said that she wants “additional National Guard members currently on federal active duty orders to be reassigned to Arizona to assist U.S. Customs and Border Protection to reopen the Lukeville Port of Entry.”

In addition, the governor included in her letter a request for the federal government to reimburse $512.5 million to the state over border security-related costs including “migrant transportation, drug interdiction, and law enforcement.”

Hobbs abrogated the sovereignty of her state and its people to the will of the Federal government and its open border policy but needs them to step up and help her manage their mess.

Here’s an idea. Send your own troops and block the border. Keep the illegals out. Make them stay in Mexico. Send a message that the law as written – not as reimagined by a doddering fool named Biden – will be enforced. Don’t make the trip. Don’t risk your life. Stop selling your children. We won’t let you in. We can’t. There are too many here already.

That won’t happen. Hobbs’ Arizona is a franchisee of the Progressive Cloward Piven agenda. Overwhelming the system is the goal. But if that’s the point, why ask for help preventing the system from being overwhelmed? It’s not like you need votes from actual voters to stay in office.

And what if Biden says no? What do you do then?

HT | Just the News

The post If Overwhelming the System is the Point, Why Are You Asking for Help? appeared first on Granite Grok.

If ever a picture is worth a thousand words, it is the painting of George Washington kneeling and praying by his white horse in the snow at Valley Forge. Because of our forefathers’ prayers and sacrifice, our families enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas by warm fires, stuffing our bellies, and watching football.

In spite of the freezing winter of 1777, the divine seeds of liberty were growing in the hearts of our troops. Even while most observers agreed with John Adams’ conclusion: “The prospect is chilling on every side; gloomy; dark, melancholy, and despairing,” Washington’s faith was the Continental Army’s most powerful weapon. Washington sought guidance to overcome previous defeats, retreats, and how his men would survive the freezing winter. Our forefathers paid the price of liberty with their lives, fortunes, and sacred honors. Let us pray to the same God who guided and answered Washington’s prayers.

Imagine the dark outlook endured by soldiers, half-naked, leaving bloody footprints in the snow of 1777. The Continental Army all but beaten after September’s retreat from New York. Suffering defeat at Brandywine: 200 troops killed, 500 wounded and 400 captured. How did the troops endure the dark gloom when Philadelphia fell to the British? They were a destitute army with soaked ammunition as their only weapon. No one today suffers the hunger our soldiers endured at Valley Forge: “One soldier’s meal on Thanksgiving Day declared by Congress was a “half a gill of rice (1/4 of a standard pint, 2 oz of rice), and a tablespoon of vinegar.”

Beaten down with defeat, the count of 4,000 soldiers was incapacitated in January and February of 1778, resulting from exposure, undernourishment, and disease. Historian George Bancroft tells us that “love of country and attachment to General Washington sustained them through these unparalleled hardships, and that without his leadership, the army would have dissolved and vanished.” Tory Quaker Issac Potts, after observing the source of Washington’s power, praying in the snow, related to his wife, “Independence will be established because God in His Providence has willed it so because Washington was the only one on earth the Lord would listen to.”

Prayers were answered that spring, cheering our soldiers as France entered the war as an ally with the promise of French money and troops. The Continental Congress acknowledged this as the hand of God, declaring a National Day of Thanksgiving on May 7th following Washington’s orders issued at Valley Forge on May 5th of 1778. He proclaimed:

“It having pleased the Almighty Ruler of the Universe propitiously to defend the cause of the United American States, and finally by raising up a powerful friend among the Princes of the earth, to establish our Liberty and Independence upon a lasting foundation; it becomes us to set apart a day for gratefully acknowledging the Divine Goodness, and celebrating the event which we owe to his benign interposition.”

Yes, the political climate of our day is gloomy as globalists move to control our lives. Read Psalms 2, where David tells us that “the Lord laughs at the Kings of the earth and the rulers who counsel together against Him.” Pray that our people once again will rise up in a thundering appeal to the same God our fathers relied on for divine protection. Who was, who is, and who will always be, “The great I Am.” Just as at Valley Forge, prayer was the Continental Army’s greatest asset. Today, it still remains our most powerful weapon.

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