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State K-12 Spending Up, Results Not Improved

2/26/2019

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State K-12 Spending Up, Results Not Improved
By Ron Knecht – 26February2019
This is the fourth in a series of columns summarizing my Controller’s Annual Report for fiscal year 2018 (FY18).
The first two columns showed that since FY06 state spending has grown faster than Nevada’s economy, thus imposing an ever-larger real burden on Nevada families and businesses, whose real incomes are lower now than in FY06.  The third one noted Health and Social Services spending, the largest budget item, has grown most rapidly by far, driven greatly by federal health care mandates and funding.
This column addresses the second largest and second fastest growing budget item: K-12 education.  The problem is that additional spending, instead of the policy reform we need, has not significantly improved student performance.
State K-12 spending grew from $1.24-billion in FY06 to $2.34-billion in FY18.  On a per-student basis, not including local K-12 spending, this was an increase from $3,172 to 4,760 annually. In 2007, Nevada eighth-graders ranked 44th nationally on reading and mathematics evaluations.  By 2015, Nevada’s ranking rose only to 43rd in reading and 41st in math.
Not only have increases in spending, without policy reforms, failed to improve results here, but international comparisons also show spending levels are uncorrelated with results.  Per-student U.S. spending is fourth among 33 developed nations, but our achievement rank is 23rd and our test scores are below average.  Japan’s achievement is highest, but its spending is only 15th.
To improve the effectiveness of Nevada’s education spending, we must allocate funds to programs that have been shown to boost student achievement.  Instead, we continue to placate teacher and administrator unions, which are selfish special interests, by throwing ever more money at them.
State and local politicians and the unions, administrators and school districts continue to serve primarily the adults running the system, instead of students and their families and the other taxpayers who pay the bills.  These groups continue falsely to claim that Nevada K-12 is “underfunded,” needs “full funding” or “adequate funding,” etc.  But they never say what level of funding would be adequate or how they know.  Instead, they simply want more for themselves at taxpayer expense, even as they deliver poor and stagnant value.
Research literature shows no school-controlled variable has greater influence on student achievement that the quality of the teacher.  Studies show that students lucky enough to have a top teacher make 1.5 times as much testable progress in a school year as those with average teachers.
Also, the best teachers are able to deliver effective instruction regardless of class size across a wide range.  That gives the lie to the continuous bleat from the education establishment and their political supporters about class sizes, which are greatly reduced from the levels that served most adults.  Mostly, class-size complaints are simply another way for the unions and districts to milk taxpayers for money for themselves.
The primary focus should be on recruiting and training highly talented teachers.  Nevada should relax restraints on who can apply for teaching licenses, instead of catering to the self-serving monopoly that education colleges now have on teaching positions.  Many good professionals, with only minor additional pedagogy training, could become excellent teachers.
Schools should also be free to offer attractive compensation packages to the most talented (effective) teachers.  Strict, formulaic schedules, especially those that reward longevity instead of excellence, give insufficient flexibility to administrators seeking to recruit top talent.  Again, the system serves the adults running it, not the students, their families and other taxpayers.
Families are the primary consumers of public education, and each family knows best its needs.  So, allocation of public spending on education is most effective when families are free to exercise choices among a wide range of educational offerings.  Studies have shown that schools of choice, including public charter schools and private schools, operate at lower costs than traditional neighborhood monopoly public schools, while delivering better results.
Strong evidence also exists that technology-assisted learning leads to better student outcomes while also allowing teachers to better manage larger classes.  Thus, on-line home-schooling is becoming ever more popular.  Many students are much happier with it, while doing ever better.
If we focus on these policy initiatives, instead of throwing more money at the current system, we can improve.
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Washoe County Republican Leadership Doing a Fine Job

2/19/2019

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A month after the November 2018 election, I wrote an analysis of the results of recent statewide elections.  From total statewide voter turnout data, I came to one clear conclusion: 2014 was the outlier year and the most recent results were quite in line with the long-term trends in Nevada.
Recently, Republican state party leaders and national staff have been trying to pin our 2018 losses on the new leaders of the Washoe County party who refused to knuckle under to them.  They have conned some rural Republicans into repeating their false narrative.  But they’ve avoided numbers and facts, sticking to name-calling (“ankle-biters”) and rant.
An even more detailed look at the numbers and facts below shows clearly Washoe County’s new Republican leadership has done a fine job – certainly much better than the state party and national staff did with Clark County in 2018.
The other good news is that the Clark County party now also has new and energized leadership and is getting out from under the thumb of the state party and national operatives.  Thus there is reasonable hope we may overcome the Democrat hegemony in the vital 2020 elections that will determine which party draws the district boundaries for the next decade.
So, to the numbers.
As I noted previously, the total statewide turnout in 2014 was 45.56 percent of active voters, while that in 2018 was 62.51 percent.  Delving into the data for the two previous “midterm” elections (those between presidential elections), I noted the 2006 turnout was 59.16 percent and that for 2010 was 64.62 percent.  Hence, 2014 was the outlier event and 2018 was right in the mainstream.
To further test this conclusion, I obtained county-by-county and party-by-party data from the Nevada Secretary of State’s website for the years for which it is available, 2010-2018.
Comparing the results for all four elections and especially comparing midterm and presidential elections separately, one fact jumps out.  In 2014, all Clark County turnout, especially that for Democrats and other parties even more than Republicans, just dropped through the floor.  Because Clark County votes total 67-68 percent of the statewide totals in other years but were only 62 percent in 2014, Republicans had a banner year, led by the other 16 counties.
The Clark Democrat vote in 2014 was only two percent higher than the county’s Republican vote, but in the other three elections the Democrat margin was 33-43 percent.  Essentially, the Clark Democrats and other party voters in 2014 deserted in droves.
So, we won all six state constitutional offices and both houses of the legislature.  Of course, what the governor and 2015 Republican legislative leadership did with that bonanza was despicable. Sadly, it will be exceeded by what Democrats will do with their big advantage this term.  Hence, it is essential for the Clark and Washoe Republicans, who provide 80 percent of our votes, to do well in the 2020 elections.
Turning specifically to Washoe County, it’s notable that Democrats there made a great leap forward from 34 percent of the Washoe vote in 2014 to nearly 37 percent in 2016 (before the current Washoe Republican leadership took over), rising to 37.5 percent in 2018.  However, Washoe Republicans improved their percentage of the county-wide vote slightly this year, too, with the other parties taking the losses.
Washoe County had the highest turnouts of their registered voters for all three parties: 74.9 percent for Democrats, 74.4 percent for Republicans and 58.5 percent for the others.  In Clark County, Republicans got 67 percent, Democrats 62.5 percent and others 48.8 percent.  In the other 15 counties as a group, Republicans got 63.2 percent turnout, Democrats 61.3 percent and others 46.9 percent.
With cracker-jack ground work organization and strong local fundraising, Washoe Republicans won 19 of 23 contested local races, including one city council and two school board flips.  Of the six state constitutional and two federal races on which the whole county voted, Republicans won four.  In Clark County, Republicans won no statewide and federal races, while in the other 15 counties as a group, they won all.
If the new Clark leadership joins and matches Washoe and the ever-steady other 15 counties, we can win in 2020.
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The Green New Deal: Doubling Down on Past Mistakes

2/12/2019

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My first full-time job after college was assistant city engineer in Urbana, Illinois in 1972.  I worked on my liberal Democrat green interests: bikeways, undergrounding communications and power lines, better sewer systems, sidewalks, traffic, planning and zoning codes.
I learned a key lesson in those matters.  Its breadth and importance would become clearer as my career progressed.
One day the public works director, a crotchety old conservative Republican, said: “You want bikeways, underground lines, sidewalks and all those things?  Well, it really is easy and cheap.”
I was stunned.  Previously he’d always been the naysayer, citing costs, practicability, etc.
Then he said: “At the edge of town, find a green field and you can design and build in all the amenities you want fairly inexpensively.  But once you start laying out a subdivision and constructing things and then you decide to add those features, it gets difficult and expensive.  And when you try to retrofit an already built neighborhood for them, it becomes ridiculous.”
Immediately I understood the point, but not all the implications.  Those became clear only as I pursued my environmental and consumer interests in a greater professional context.
Upon completing my civil engineering masters project, I became expert in the full range of power generating economics, with particular focus on nuclear power.  As an expert witness, I had small partial credit in helping stop perhaps a dozen nuclear units around the country.
In my analyses, I highlighted the skyrocketing costs over time of building nukes, which were rising as much as 15 percent annually in real terms, a trend no one seemed able to explain.  I suggested the increases would continue and were due to “cost internalization” processes driven by new regulations.  As it turned out, that was true, but it missed two important aspects of the problem I would see only later.
In 1984, as principal economist at California’s Public Utilities Commission, I toured the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which had been delayed many years and was to come on line at a cost about 20 times the original estimate.  My first look inside the building housing the reactor was stunning.  Instead of elegantly and cleanly designed, it looked like a mess with structural beams in odd places and many other misplaced weird features.  Like something constructed in a nightmarish hallucinatory fit.
I learned this was due mainly to the retrofit problem explained to me years earlier.  Nuclear construction was licensed to safety and environmental standards prevailing when the license was issued.  However, as those standards changed – and they changed greatly and fast – the builders were required to retrofit projects being built to the new standards.  Thus, the visual nightmare.
The other problem also soon became clear.  Sound public policy for safety, environmental and all standards is to raise them only as high as the point at which the diminishing incremental social benefit they provide equals their cost, which rises with the regulatory requirements.  But nuclear standards weren’t set with reference to social cost and benefit.  Instead, they were set as high as technically feasible, regardless of cost.
So, nuke costs increased ridiculously as builders were required continuously to retrofit to wasteful standards, especially as retrofit caused schedule delays that led to further retrofit.  And utility ratepayers paid the cost.  Once I understood that, I reversed my opposition to nuclear power and began to support nuclear regulatory reform.  (I also became a limited-government Republican conservative.)
In sum, unsound public policy – unjustified standards and retrofit regardless of its costs – combined to damage the public interest by killing a no-carbon energy option and sticking people with ridiculous costs.
So now comes Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and today’s liberal Democrat enviros with their Green New Deal.  They plan to remake the world to an unsound standard, zero carbon emissions – achieved by retrofitting or replacing all existing buildings, ending use of fossil fuels in transportation, outlawing steaks and destroying numerous industries.  Also, implementing many of their socialist dreams.
The folly of earlier greenies in killing the nuclear power option cost the country many billions of dollars.  The Green New Deal, if it could be achieved, would cost many trillions of dollars.  For uncertain but paltry benefits much below the costs.
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Trump Rises to the Occasion

2/5/2019

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Rising above the persistent political turmoil and smallness of Democrats and the mainstream media, President Donald Trump Tuesday delivered a memorable State of the Union speech.
Forget the incessant whining and complaining of CNN, et al. that followed.  Let’s focus on what he said.
He began by noting our “unlimited potential” as a country, and he told legislators he is ready to work with them to realize it: “We must govern not as two parties but as one nation.”  So, from the start, he focused on the most important thing, especially in view of the nastiness and pettiness of politics this decade: America’s potential.  And how to achieve it by working together.
Visionary and conciliatory.  The ideal way to start in these troubled times.
He began by noting two great anniversaries that remind us of our unlimited potential and what we have done in the past when we worked together.  First, he saluted three World War II veterans who participated in the 1944 D-Day landing in Europe to rescue the world from the fascist and socialist Axis powers.  That drew a huge, enthusiastic standing ovation.  Inspiring.
The second event was the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon.  He introduced lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin and promised that this year Americans will be going back to space in American rockets.
Next, he directly appealed for compromise to promote the common good and break decades of political stalemate.  “Tonight, I ask you to choose to make America great.”
His main theme was a plain-spoken and clear list of specific issues and policies.  He noted that, despite the problems of the last decade, we have a strong economy on which to build.  Unemployment is at its lowest in 50 years, with record low figures for African, Asian and Hispanic Americans.  And five million Americans lifted off food stamps in recent years.  Later, he noted 58 percent of last year’s newly created jobs went to women.
He pointed to the growth-inducing tax cuts and regulatory reforms that are major achievements of his administration.  He noted we have become the world’s leading producers of oil and gas and a net exporter of oil for the first time in 65 years.
“The state of the union is strong. ... Our country is vibrant.”  That’s as true as we make it.
He asked senators to confirm 300 qualified needed nominees the Democrats have held in limbo.
He praised the ground-breaking criminal justice reform First Step Act the administration and congress passed by working together.  He recognized two good people who benefitted from it.
Then he turned to the many burdens of illegal immigration, saying providing safety and security to Americans from the minority of dangerous illegal aliens is a moral issue.  He recognized the heirs of the Jerry and Sherri David of Reno, recently murdered by an illegal alien.  He celebrated the legal immigrants who enrich our nation and strengthen our society and challenged congress to act on the issue in the next ten days.
Mr. Trump saluted the brave men and women of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau and promised walls and see-through steel barriers will be built where they are needed.  What he rightly called a common-sense solution.
Although I have reservations about his tariff wars, he extended an olive branch to China in this regard and offered other constructive trade initiatives.
Promising efforts to lower the cost of health care and protect people with pre-existing conditions, he again reached out to the Democrats.
Recognizing the needs for real solutions in education, he promised school choice for American children.  He challenged us to build a culture that cherishes and protects innocent life.  He noted foreign affairs progress, especially in Venezuela.  And he promised, “America will never be a socialist country.”
In the end, he returned to the D-Day heroes, noting one of them later helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp, including a survivor seated next to him.  He denounced the vile poison of anti-Semitism and celebrated moving our Israel embassy to Jerusalem.
He closed by again inviting the Democrats to work in bi-partisan cooperation with Republicans and his administration so our most thrilling achievements are still ahead.  Just right.
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    *Opinions expressed here may or may not reflect the views of the Lyon County Republican Central Committee. 

    Author

    Ron Knecht has served as Nevada Controller, a higher education regent, legislator and economist. He can be reached at RonKnecht@aol.com.  
     

     

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