Furloughs and the Hawaii DOE Budget

When any bureaucracy faces a budget cut, it typically cuts services before it cuts fat. When a bureaucracy cuts services, it enlists the public as an ally in defence of its budget. Further, the high-paid, do-nothing jobs in a bureaucracy typically go to politically-connected insiders, who can best defend their positions. The DOE Furlough Friday has Hawaii parents scrambling for day-care and screaming for higher taxes. Unasked and unanswered is the question: "How much money is enough?"

Raw statistics on the DOE budget appear with suspicious infrequency in the print and broadcast news media. Although politicians and DOE administrators make self-serving and deceptive statements which their pet media shills seldom question, one source, the DOE accounting branch, files an official financial summary, the Public Education Finance Survey, which carries a penalty for false reporting.

Hawaii DOE total revenues, fiscal year 2006-2007
a=$2,950,803,000.

Hawaii DOE, current expenditures
b=$1,998,913,000.

Hawaii DOE revenues and expenditures, fiscal year 2006-2007:
c=Total revenues = $2,985,593,000.
d=Current expenditures = $2, 061, 560,000.

DOE enrollment, 2006-2007
e=enrollment= 180,728

a/e=$16,327.00
b/e=$11,060.00
c/e=$16,519.00
d/e=$11,406.00

Since 1970, DOE per pupil expenditures have more than doubled, in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Hawaii DOE current expenditures per pupil, 1969-70 to 2005-06:
$4,280 to $10,131 (inflation-adjusted dollars).

No country on Earth spends more, per pupil, than Hawaii's $11,000.
International comparison and US average:
#1 Switzerland ($9,348.00). #3 USA ($7,764.00).

It does not take 12 years at $11,000 per pupil-year to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom. State (government, generally) provision of History and Civics instruction is a threat to democracy, just as State operation of newspapers would be (is, in totalitarian countries).

Neither George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, nor James Madison attended a government-operated school. Cyrus McCormick and Thomas Edison were homeschooled. The Wright brothers were high school dropouts.

Consider what we do to our kids. Is it really a good idea to send your 6-year-old into a room full of 6-year-olds, and then, the next year, to put your 7-year-old in with 7-year-olds, and so on? A simple recursive argument suggests this exposes them to a real danger of all growing up with the minds of 6-year-olds. And, so far as I can see, that's exactly what happens. Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do.

--Marvin Minsky

Why is $11,000 per pupil-year insufficient? Is there any amount of money so great that the out-of-classroom parasites who infest the DOE bureaucracy cannot waste it?

Across industriies, across countries, State-monopoly enterprises deliver wretched services at high cost. In abstract, the education industry is an unlikely candidate for State (government, generally) operation. The education industry is not a natural monopoly. Beyond a very low level, there are no economies of scale at the delivery end of the education business as it currently operates. Education only marginally qualifies as a public good as economists use the term and the "public goods" argument implies subsidy and regulation, at most, not State (government, generally) operation of an industry.

Gerard Lassibile and Lucia Navarro Gomez,
"Organization and Efficiency of Educational Systems: some empirical findings"
Comparative Education, Vol. 36 #1, 2000, Feb.

Furthermore, the regression results indicate that countries where private education is more widespread perform significantly better than countries where it is more limited. The result showing the private sector to be more efficient is similar to those found in other contexts with individual data (see, for example, Psucharopoulos, 1987; Jiminez, et. al, 1991). This finding should convince countries to reconsider policies that reduce the role of the private sector in the field of education.

Current policy in Hawaii and most other US States restricts parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' K-12 education subsidy to schools operated by State (government, generally) employees. This policy originated in anti-Catholic bigotry. This policy survives on dedicated lobbying by current recipients of the Hawaii taxpayers' $2.9 billion/year K-12 education subsidy. The "public" school system has become an employment program for dues-paying members of public-sector unions, a source of padded construction and supply contracts for politically-connected insiders, and a venue for State-worshipful indoctrination. If this is not so, why cannot any child take, at any age, an exit exam (the GED will do) and apply the taxpayers' age 6-18 education subsidy toward post secondary tuition or toward a wage subsidy at any qualified (say, has filed W-2 forms on at least three adult employees for at least the previous four years) private-sector employer?

Delicious Spam

Harriet occasionally receives education-related commercial appeals. Most go into the trash folder. Harriet elevates this offering to a post. The future has arrived. Perhaps this advertisement contains the seeds of a rebuttal to Neal McCluskey's argument against free degrees from US Service academies.

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The Burris Challenge

Harriet left a comment at the Akamai Politics post of 2009-10-31 ("Furlough Mess Gets Worse"), correcting the New York Times figure for the DOE budget. The Times put the budget at $1.8 billion, while the Commerce Department, using DOE figures, put it at $2.9 billion. While waiting for the comment to pass moderation (it must be all the vulgarities, like "and" and "the"), Harriet browsed the Akamai Politics archive.
In a post of 2009-10-25, "Furlough Game of Bluff", Mr. Burris writes:

There is nothing to stop the DOE and the teachers from shifting some of the furlough shifts to non-instructional days. And there is nothing to stop Lingle from working with Democrats in the Legislature to find money to restore some of the lost funding to the DOE.

That’s what should happen.

What does "should" mean? Why is $15,000 per pupil-year insufficient?

Harriet announces the Burris Challenge: In the entire archive of "Akamai Politics", find any figure for "Total Revenues to Education" or " Total Current Expenditures" for the Hawaii DOE with a cite from an official US government (Commerce Department or Department of Education) statistics repository. Find any comparison between Hawaii and international per-pupil spending.

The comments which Mr. Burris has not yet (2009-11-08-1620 GMT) passed through moderation:...

(2009-11-05-0814 HST): The New York Times editorial: "The governor, who had ordered the Department of Education to cut its $1.8 billion budget by 14 percent, now says she had not expected the union to take its furlough days from instruction time."

They're only off by $1 billion. In 2007 (the last year for which complete figures are available), the Hawaii DOE reported "total revenues to education" of $2,985,593,000 and a total enrollment of 180,728, which works out to more than $16,000 per pupil-year, and current expenditures (total minus capital improvements and debt service) of $2,199,604, which gives a per-pupil budget over $12,000.

Why is this insufficient? Even with a 20% cut, this is more than enough.

...and...
(2009-11-05-11:59 HST):

Sorry. Add three zeros. That's $2,199,604,000 current expenditures for fiscal 2007-2008. Google-search "Public Education Financial Survey".

Homeschool. Parents do not need to sacrifice an income to homeschool. Nothing in Hawaii Revised Statutes requires that homeschool instruction occur between 8 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Pool resources with five or six other families extend day care to age 17, then take the GED.

Don Your Hip Boots

Former Honolulu Advertiser editorial page editor Jerry Burris, who used to write the Advertiser's education-related editorials, notes the national attention which the Hawaii DOE furlough policy has attracted. Mr. Burris cites the criticism of US Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the New York Times editorial page.

From 1993 to 1997, reporters and editorial writers of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser (that would include Mr.Burris) bemoaned "cuts" to the DOE budget. Harriet gave to Education writers and editorial writers of both papers copies of reports which the Hawaii DOE makes to the US DOE which showed budget increases, both in aggregate and per-pupil terms. Writers for both papers continued to complain of "cuts" to the DOE budget. They lied. Harriet eventually called in to Rick Hamada's morning talk show and related the above facts. The papers temporarily stopped lying about "cuts" to the DOE budget.

Secretary Duncan's Department suppressed a favorable review of the DC voucher program before the program came before Congress for reauthorization. As Superintendent of the Chicago School district, he claimed credit for illusory performance gains.

No matter how mistaken or deliberately deceptive an argument, most attempts at persuasion proceed from assertions which the proponent believes his/her audience will accept. Secretary Duncan's criticism of the Hawaii DOE's furlough policy combines trite truisms with bald assertions and bait-and-switch misdirection. He writes: "...we need to invest in our future (1). Too many of our schools are not preparing students for success in college and careers.(2)...On international tests, American students are struggling to compete with their peers around the globe. Twenty-seven percent of the nation's ninth graders don't finish high school within four years. In Hawaii, 36 percent of freshmen don't complete high school on time...(3)...now is not the time to decrease investment in education(4)."

1. Like, we can invest in our past? What a maroon.
2. Why give this failing institution more money?
3. Okay. See point 2, above.
4. Not ("school"="education"). Cuts to the DOE budget and to the span of compulsory attendance do not equal cuts to education.

From the NYT: "The governor, who had ordered the Department of Education to cut its $1.8 billion budget by 14 percent, now says she had not expected the union to take its furlough days from instruction time."

They're only off by $1 billion. In 2007 (the last year for which complete figures are available), the Hawaii DOE reported "total revenues to education" of $2,985,593,000 and a total enrollment of 180,728, which works out to more than $16,000 per pupil-year, and current expenditures (total minus capital improvements and debt service) of $2,199,604, which gives a per-pupil budget over $12,000.

Why is this insufficient? Even with a 20% cut, this is more than enough.

Remember when, as a child, you got caught in a lie, and tried to cover that lie with another, and another, until the fable collapsed? The persistent lies about "public education" proceed from the false assumption that society at large benefits from a State (government, generally) role in the education industry.

Beyond a very low level, the education industry exhibits no economies of scale at the delivery end. Education only marginally qualifies as a public good as economists use the term, and the "public goods" argument implies subsidy and regulation, at most, not State operation of schools. The State cannot subsidize education without a definition of "education", but then the State's definition binds students, parents, teachers, and taxpayers. Since oversight of State functions is a public good which the State itself cannot supply, State sssumption of responsibility for the subsidization of public goods transforms the collective action problem at the root of "public goods" analysis but does not eliminate it.

The Hawaii "public" (i.e., government-operated) school system originated in anti-Catholic bigotry. The "public" schoool system has become an employment program for dues-paying members of the NEA/AFSCME cartel, a source of padded construction and supply contracts for politically-connected insiders, and a venue for State-worshipful indoctrination. If this is not so, why cannot any student take, at any time, an exit exam (the GED will do) and apply the taxpayers' age 6-18 education subsidy toward post-secondary tuition or toward a wage subsidy at any qualified (say, has filed W-2 forms on at least three adult employees for at least the previous four years) private-sector employer?

Update (2009-11-06): I left a comment at Mr. Burris' blog supplying a correction to the NYT budget figure. That comment sat in moderation until it evaporated.