Quotulatiousness

April 15, 2012

Virginia county considering creating first virtual public high school

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:50

In many ways, it’s a tribute to the resilience and determination of the educational establishment that it’s taken this long for a school district to even consider offering completely online classes:

Fairfax County schools could become the first in the Washington region to create a virtual public high school that would allow students to take all their classes from a computer at home.

No sports teams. No pep rallies. No lockers, no hall passes. Instead, assignments delivered on-screen and after-school clubs that meet online.

It’s a reimagination of the American high school experience. And it’s a nod to the power of the school choice movement, which has given rise to the widespread expectation that parents should have a menu of options to customize their children’s education.

Of course, it might not just be simple willingness to allow more choice on the part of the school district … there might be other pressures being applied:

Dozens of younger students have left Fairfax schools for the public Virginia Virtual Academy, the first statewide full-time virtual program. Open to any Virginia student in kindergarten through eighth grade, it is run by a Herndon firm — K12 Inc., the nation’s largest operator of public virtual schools — and enrolls nearly 500 students.

April 9, 2012

“Teacher tenure is one of those ideas” [that] “do real damage to the public education system”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:58

If I told you that an article in support of ending tenure for public school teachers appeared in The New Republic, would you believe it? I wouldn’t have done, until today:

Like the abortion measures, this bill was also pushed by Republicans — but here’s the strange part: It was actually a halfway decent idea. The subject of the bill was an important one: tenure for public school teachers. And, while the proposal wasn’t perfect, it was at least an attempt to rectify what is perhaps the least sane element of our country’s approach to education.

The vast majority of states have long granted public school teachers tenure. The way it works is simple: After a certain number of years, teachers qualify — “virtually automatically” in most states, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality — for a form of job protection that makes it extremely difficult to fire them for the rest of their careers.

[. . .]

So what is the case for K–12 teacher tenure? The truth is, there isn’t a good one. One argument typically offered by tenure defenders is that teaching is a notoriously difficult profession in which to measure success. But this is true for lots of jobs — yet, in all other professions, efforts are still made, however imperfect, to evaluate whether an employee is succeeding and to remove those who are not. Why should teaching be different? In fact, given that teaching is arguably the most important job in our society, it would be difficult to name a profession, save maybe the military, for which these sorts of heightened job protections would be less logical. If a job is truly important to the nation’s future, then you want to make sure that the most able, talented people are doing it — and doing their best work at all times.

That goal is simply incompatible with tenure. Indeed, tenure is so illogical that it’s impossible to see why it shouldn’t be abolished. And that is exactly what the Virginia bill sought to do. Predictably, however, Democrats — who remain far too beholden to teachers’ unions — scuttled the measure. As a result, tenure lives on in Virginia for now.

July 23, 2011

Virginia’s state surplus less than meets the eye

Filed under: Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:02

Doug Mataconis takes a jaundiced eye to the Virginia “surplus”:

So, in other words, what we’ve got here are accounting gimmicks. In one case, the State legally permitted itself to defer a contribution to public pensions that were twice as big as the reported budget surplus. In the other, they legally permitted themselves to collect thirteen months of sales taxes for a twelve month fiscal year. The impact of both of these should be rather obvious. Reduce obligations while you are increasing revenues and, wow what do you know, we’ve got a surplus.

This isn’t at all new. As Virginia political bloggers Norm Leahy and Adam Bitley noted last August, the legislature used virtually the same accounting tricks to create the $220 million surplus that was reported last year.

It’s also not unique to Virginia. The same techniques are used in states across the country, and in the Federal Budget. Call it “off book budgeting.” Call it “creative accounting.” Call it whatever you like really, but it’s a pretty stark demonstration of the just how hard it really is to believe any government when they say their budget is balanced. More likely than not, they’ve used one or more of these gimmicks, plus a few others, to defer budget items and artificially increase revenue to make it appear that the budget is in balance when it really isn’t.

February 24, 2011

They’re called “factoids”, not “facts”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:46

There’s a factoid in common circulation at the moment that, measured by SAT scores, the states that ban collective bargaining for teachers rank almost dead last, while Wisconsin ranks 2nd. Neal McCluskey explains that this is not particularly true:

Now, aside from the factoid, if true, providing no real insight into whether collective bargaining is good or bad for education — there are myriad variables at work other than collective bargaining, none of which does this control for — but the factoid itself is highly dubious. Again, it is hard to find the original source for this, but I looked up 2009 ACT and SAT state rankings, and at the very least it seems highly unlikely that Virginia ranks 44th out of all states. According to the ACT ranking, for instance, Virginia places 22nd, and on the SAT (assuming the linked to list is accurate — I’m doing this fast), it ranked 33rd. It’s hard to see how those would be combined for a 44th place overall finish.

How about the Wisconsin second place-finish? Well, that is accurate for the SAT, but notably only 5 percent of Wisconsin students took the SAT — a negligible rate. On the ACT, which is the main test taken in the Badger State, Wisconsin finished 13th — not bad, but hardly great.

So what does this tell you? Not that collective bargaining is educationally good or bad — like I said, you just can’t get there from here — but that you have to be very careful about your sources of information. Unfortunately, that seems especially true when you’re dealing with education.

January 29, 2011

Inappropriate license plates, Virginia style

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:07

Jason Ciastko send a link to this article. You can see why the Virginia authorities decided to recall the license plate (but you’re probably wrong):

A Virginia motorist has apparently had to return their vanity license plate after the Department of Motor Vehicles decided it was too lewd for public roadways.

According to the user-generated news website Reddit, the DMV revoked a special-issue “Kids First” Virginia plate with the personalized license plate “EATTHE” to spell out the phrase, well, you know…

Full story, including the sad bureaucratic recall procedure, here.

Most reactions were like the one from a mom in a minivan plastered with pro-Christian bumper stickers who chased him down.

“I thought she was going to yell at me and tell me I’m going straight to hell, but she and her kids found it absolutely hilarious and she took pics of it with her kids next to the plate,” said Yeaman. “I learned my lesson on judging people before they speak.”

Sadly, the Virginia DMV didn’t talk to him before they judged him offensive and sent him a letter requesting the plates back immediately. With his brother’s encouragement, Yeaman requested a hearing with a mediator to keep the plates, which he didn’t find offensive.

H/T to Craig Zeni for the Jalopnik link.

May 3, 2010

Virginia cracks down on smut . . . on the state seal

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:57

Some folks just don’t “get” art. Others think they do, but they’re wrong:

Virginia’s attorney general Ken Cuccinelli is hard at work on the important issues of the day — like making sure the Roman goddess depicted on his state’s official seal isn’t exposing herself.

The current seal shows “Virtus, the goddess of virtue, dressed as a warrior,” with her foot resting “on the chest of the figure of tyranny, who is lying on the ground.” She is holding a spear and her left breast is exposed.

Or at least it was exposed. At a recent meeting, Cuccinelli provided pins to his staff with a new seal on which “Virtus’ bosom is covered by an armored breastplate,” the Virginian-Pilot reported. These new pins were not paid for by taxpayer dollars, Cuccinelli’s office insisted.

January 27, 2010

Where Virginia is headed, will Ontario follow?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Law, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:31

November 13, 2009

Virginia to privatize their state-run liquor stores?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Law, Wine — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:35

Katherine Mangu-Ward on the prospect of Virginia selling off their state-owned liquor stores:

Virginia is one of 18 states where the government is the monopoly rumrunner. Supermarkets, gourmet shops, and corner stores are all forbidden to sell liquor. But Bob McDonnell, the newly-elected Republican governor, has promised to end the monopoly on liquor sales in the Old Dominion.

This bold gesture isn’t because McDonnell is an especially thoroughgoing libertarian; there are plenty of other areas where he’d like to see more state involvement in the private lives of citizens, not less. This isn’t a 12-step program to help the commonwealth go cold turkey on alcohol money either. McDonnell has no intention of letting Virginia’s bottle-based income fall below its current levels of more than $100 million a year. In fact, part of the reason McDonnell is considering privatization at all is that he is looking for cash to spend on transportation infrastructure. He predicts that selling off the state’s 334 liquor stores to private players and gathering licensing fees from more private sellers will bring in $500 million in the short run, while leaving long-run income intact. (The Washington Post remains unconvinced, noting that McDonnell’s figures may be too optimistic.)

But no matter what the political and budgetary machinations, Virginians are unlikely to wind up paying more for their rotgut, and they are very likely to wind up with a better selection and a relatively skeeze-free shopping experience. Commonwealth officials can focus on governing a large landmass without having to fuss with the details of running a liquor empire. And the move may even represent a net gain for the state budget in the future when the state sheds responsibility for ABC employee benefits and pensions, and starts bringing in real estate and other tax revenue from the privatized stores.

I’ve written about Ontario’s LCBO and the (dim) hopes of privatization at the old blog. In 2004, there was a brief flurry of discussion on privatizing the LCBO:

For those of you who don’t live in Ontario, the LCBO is the government-run monopoly provider of almost all alcoholic beverages except beer and wine, which are sold through the Brewers Retail, now operating under the name “The Beer Store” and through individual winery-owned wine stores, respectively. Both the LCBO and the Brewers Retail were set up after the repeal of prohibition in Ontario to control the sale and distribution of alcohol in the province. The LCBO is government-owned, while the Brewers Retail is owned by the major breweries (Labatt, Molson, & Sleeman).

A few elections ago, the Ontario government under Premier Mike Harris started talking about getting the government out of the liquor business. The LCBO, which up until that point had operated like a sluggish version of the Post Office, suddenly had plenty of incentive to try appealing to their customers. Until the threat of privatization, the LCBO was notorious for poor service, lousy retail practices, and surly staff. Until the 1980’s, many LCBO outlets were run exactly like a warehouse: you didn’t actually get to see what was for sale, you only had a grubby list of current stock from which to write down your selections on pick tickets, which were then (eventually) filled by the staff.

If the intent was to make buying a bottle of wine feel grubby, seamy, and uncomfortable, they were masters of the craft. No shopper freshly arrived from behind the Iron Curtain would fail to recognize the atmosphere in an old LCBO outlet.

During the 1980’s, most LCBO stores finally became self-service, which required some attempt by the staff to stock shelves, mop the floors, and generally behave a bit more like a normal retail operation. It took quite some time for the atmosphere to become any more congenial or welcoming, as the staff were all unionized and most had worked there for years under the old regime — you might almost say that they had to die off and be replaced by younger employees who didn’t remember the “good old days”.

To return to the early 1990’s, the LCBO had gone through massive changes (from their own point of view), but were still far behind the times. The threat of being sold to the private sector seems to have operated as a massive injection of adrenalin to the corporate heart: the LCBO suddenly became serious about serving the customer, expanding their services, making themselves more customer-friendly and providing their staff with proper training.

In the end, the Tory government decided that they preferred the direct stream of profits from the LCBO monopoly and backed away from their privatization plans. To my amazement (and probably that of most impartial observers), the LCBO did not immediately fall back into their bad old habits: they continued the modernization that had already taken them so far from their roots.

Today, the LCBO is almost unrecognizable as the Stalinist bureaucracy of the 1960s and 70s. Their staff are generally friendly, helpful, and (mirabile dictu) know far more about their products than ever before.

All that being said, I still am happy to hear that the current government is talking about privatization again. The LCBO is better than it used to be, and continues to improve, but they are still a monopoly provider with little real competition. I don’t pretend that a badly run sale might well end up (in the short-to-medium term) reducing the variety of alcoholic products for sale in Ontario, but having competing retailing channels would (in the long term) produce a healthier market with the competitors striving to attract more customers by better service, wider selection or even (dare we say it) lower prices.

Of course, 2005 came and went, with no movement in the direction of privatization, and it won’t happen under the current provincial government. The revenue stream is still too good for the province to give up.

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