When X Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have X

Apparently when something that lots of people want is banned by authorities, an "underground" or "black" market is created. Shocking, I know. This is the harrowing story of two parents confronted with evidence that their son was dealing in contraband at his school:

Billy and his parents had been at odds. The junior at Boulder’s Fairview High School, whose identity has been changed for this story, had been letting his hair grow and was routinely getting it styled. He was buying things without any visible means of income. A few weeks into the 2007 fall semester, he had a brand new iPod. He had new boots, new clothes and was talking about a new car.

“He had no friggin’ job,” his mother, Sue Anne, told Boulder Weekly. “His dad and I won’t let him have a job. We want him focused on school. We want him at Stanford after he graduates, so we don’t need him distracted by a job and all that comes with it. We don’t want him buying videogames and iPods.”

As money became less of an obstacle for Billy, the boy’s parents became more concerned. It had become common to see him with a one- to two-inch-thick wad of cash. They became certain he was dealing drugs. They confronted him.

Indeed, the boy was a dealer, selling "treats" to his fellow students. And by treats, I mean candy. Sweets. Sugar.

“Hey, suddenly it all made sense,” William said. “At this point, we believed that drugs were not a part of it. It was just a bunch of candy. Instead of fearing visits to drug rehab, we had to worry about a dental visit. We went home and laughed about it. We were just so relieved. We were actually kind of proud of him for finding a niche, filling it and making a profit.”

Because schools are trying to enforce the latest health fad/scare by banning anything that might contain flavor, the market for candy has taken on aspects of the drug trade. This kid was marking up candy he had bought at Costco by 900% and making a killing. At least his parents were cool about it. Some might have reported him (to, um, someone) for being an enabler.

Read the whole thing here, for and this picture →

and more great lines like "a candy ban in public schools turned Austin High School into an underground candy market that resembles 'Willy-Wonka-meets-Casablanca',”

HT Reason

Inefficient Public Schools

We all know that the Public School System is a well practiced money waster. Cape Diem, however, has run some numbers on just how much money they waste and produced a series of posts on the subject.

Here he points out that spending per student in constant dollars has grown by 10x since 1929. But this post shows where that money is being spent. Quoting Cato's Saving Money and Improving Education, he notes:

Student enrollment in public schools grew by 13% between 1979 and 2000. During the same period the total number of school employees grew by 61%, and the number of teachers grew by 35%. Nationally, public schools now have about 1 employee for every 8.1 students, and teachers make up only 40% of total school employees

As a side note, my favorite part of the post is the comparisons he makes at the end.

1. The Chicago Board of Education, which has 3,300 employees, is larger than the entire Japanese Ministry of Education.
2. The New York City public schools system has 250 times as many administrators as the New York Catholic school system (6,000 administrators in public school system versus 24 in Catholic school system), even though New York public schools have only four times as many students as the Catholic schools.

In this final post, he shows that because Public Schools have so many more administrators than teachers, they cost much more per pupil than their private counterparts. In contrast to the common perception that private schools are elite organizations awash with old money to trow at their privileged students, they operate with budgets of, on average, 1/3 to 1/2 the size per student.

Average private school tuition ($6,600) was about 1/3 less than the spending per pupil in public schools ($9,620) in 2003-2004 (the most recent year available), and average Catholic school tuition ($4,254) was less than half of public school spending per student.

Not only was the average private school tuition between 1/3 and 1/2 less than the cost per public school student, the private schools had on average 18% more teachers per 1000 students (72.25 in private schools vs. 61 in public schools) in 2003-2004.

Yet our money continues to be funneled into the Public Schools, reinforcing their failure with increased spending. If parents were free to spend that money on the school of their choice they could procure a better education for their children while saving the taxpayer a whole lot of money.

DC Education Spending

Great post from Classically Liberal about DC public school spending. I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Besides the typical stories about spending millions to employ useless people for political reasons and unions demanding free money in exchange for political support at the cost of actually teaching children anything, for me the most interesting thing was the cost of private schools in the District.

St. Gabriel School has a tuition of $4,500. The more prestigious German School in the suburbs charges $10,000 per year. The most expensive, elite private school in the city, St. Albans charges $26,500 per year.

The most expensive school in DC is $26,500 per annum. The budget for the public schools comes to $20,000 dollars per student. DC could eliminate the public school system, send every student to a "prestigious" school in the suburbs, and still save $10,000 per student per annum.

Of course every year politicians campaign for more money for schools. As CL observes,

Markets reward solutions with profits. Politics is used to address “problems”. The more problems you have the more programs and subsidies that you qualify for. The nature of political financing is perverse. It rewards dysfunctionality far more than efficiency.

Yet some people hold up our public education system as a model to be extended to health care. After all, it worked so well for our "most precious resource."

Two More SCOTUS Decisions

The Supreme Court has been announcing a lot of 5-4 decisions lately. Two of the latest are lifting the ban on retail price floors and ruling that race cannot be used to determine school assignments for students. I highly encourage you to read up on both decisions.

More Blood Pressure Raising Goodness

Well, OK, not all of it is bad. Compliments of Fark:

• If turning traffic has a green arrow for 14 seconds after the main light turns red and cars are spaced two seconds apart, how many $100 fines can a red light camera collect from law-abiding drivers?
• Activist judge rules that police do not have the right to search your buttocks in public
• School officials consider paying teachers extra just for showing up. Wait, what?
• Dairy prices mooving up rapidly, cheesing off customers. "My blood is curdled with anger. They're milking us for every penny." - Darn markets always manipulating the prices.
• Rent-A-Clap now available to government agencies needing larger audiences for public works projects - Don't worry, it's not our government this time.
• Michigan triples deposit on beer kegs. EVERYBODY PANIC - Heehee, even markets can have unintended consequences (although, granted, the government is involved in this one too)

The Case Against Homework

Boing Boing has a review of The Case Against Homework, which argues that homework is counterproductive. It posits that homework wastes time and stresses kids out, and is not significantly linked to any academic benefits. While I am not completely convinced (only mostly convinced) that the free form, do-what-you-want education endorsed by the Boing Boing reviewer is the most effective way to educate children, I think this is a great example of why parents should be able to send their kids wherever they want, and let their kids be taught however they think best. While some people will argue that parental school choice will mean society can't guarantee that all of our nation's youth receive the best possible education, forcing everyone to attend centrally administered public schools merely ensure no one does.

Education Choice and Commie Toys

Two quick things:
Cato has a nice article on the rising support for education choice, specifically tax credits for education. Apparently support runs at about 3 to 1.
Also, Create-a-Commie is perhaps the greatest communism-themed toy ever.

First Annual White Heterosexual Male Scholarship

Reason is covering the fallout from University of Rhode Island College Republicans' announcement of the titular scholarship.

Applicants were asked, first, to certify that they were indeed white, heterosexual, American and male and then to answer two questions: 'In 100 words or less, what does being a White Heterosexual American Male mean to you? As a White Heterosexual American Male, what adversities have you had to deal with and overcome?

After the College Republicans refused to apologize, the Advisory and Review Committee voted to derecognize them, only backing down after the Student Senate overturned them on constitutional grounds.

Some of the comments on Reason's blog are quite interesting. I particularly liked, "Whatever else might be said about the general concept of a race-specific scholarship, it's clear that the intent here is to generate controversy and piss people off. So that certainly qualifies the College Republicans for the "obnoxious asshole" label." Seems that after all the effort spent educating people on the injustice of racial and sexual discrimination, straight white men still get no respect on campuses across the nation.

Educational Disease

Brain cancer may cause debilitating headaches, but the cancer is the cause and the headache is a symptom of that disease. Some treatments of breast cancer might cause heart failure, but the cancer is still the root problem. If there’s no cancer, none of these problems exist.

The major educational problems in this country – poor student achievement, the achievement gap, low efficiency, high and climbing costs, social conflict, even discipline and safety – are not independent of each other. These problems are symptoms caused by the same disease: a government controlled and operated educational system.

Read the rest of Government Monopoly is our Educational Disease from Cato-at-Liberty

No Child Left . . . Without an iPod

Michigan lawmakers have floated the idea of buying every kid in the state an iPod.

From an editorial entitled "An iPod for every kid? Are they !#$!ing idiots?":

"We have come to the conclusion that the crisis Michigan faces is not a shortage of revenue, but an excess of idiocy. Facing a budget deficit that has passed the $1 billion mark, House Democrats Thursday offered a spending plan that would buy a MP3 player or iPod for every school child in Michigan.

"No cost estimate was attached to their hare-brained idea to "invest" in education. Details, we are promised, will follow.

"The Democrats, led by their increasingly erratic speaker Andy Dillon of Redford Township, also pledge $100 million to make better downtowns.

"Their plan goes beyond cluelessness. Democrats are either entirely indifferent to the idea that extreme hard times demand extreme belt tightening, or they are bone stupid. We lean toward the latter."

HT: Drudge Report

The Benefits of Having a Degree

CARPE DIEM has put together a great, simple graph showing the difference in unemployment rates between those holding college degrees (or higher) and those not holding high school degrees.

Spending ≠ Success

Just a quick response to Ken's post about DC literacy rates.

1. DC spends more per pupil than any state in the Union (as of 2005 roughly $11,300)
2. DC public schools perform worse than any state in the Union

While I would hesitate to claim this as evidence that more spending hurts children, I would point to it as evidence that more spending is not the panacea for all education woes.

EDIT: There was a comment that I needed to adjust for regional cost differences. If you click the link in point 1, they claim the numbers are already adjusted.