Published In: Health Care News > June 2011

Publication date: 05/10/2011

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

In the latest round of public opinion shifts among employers regarding President Obama’s health care law, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has done an about-face.  Originally a strong supporter of Obamacare, he has now expressed worry about how the employer mandate to provide insurance may harm businesses, including his own.

Burdensome Mandate

In an interview with The Seattle Times in March, Schultz responded to a question about health care costs saying that the cost for Starbucks in 2010 was roughly $250 million.

“We have faced double-digit increases for almost five consecutive years with no end in sight. So when I was invited to the White House prior to health care being reformed, I was very supportive of the president’s plan, primarily because I felt it was literally a fracturing of humanity for almost 50 million Americans not to have health insurance,” Schultz said.

While acknowledging the need for people to be insured, Schultz said the mandates within the law would pose a heavy burden.

“I think as the bill is currently written and if it was going to land in 2014 under the current guidelines, the pressure on small businesses, because of the mandate, is too great,” Schultz said.

Harms Businesses, Employees

Beverly Gossage, director of HSA Benefits Consulting, agrees the mandates will be harmful.

“The government will dictate the type of plans offered, usually raising the cost of the plans. An extra layer of accountability is added as the business must determine the ‘family’ incomes of its employees to calculate if they qualify for subsidies,” Gossage said.

“Businesses must interface with the federal government for reimbursement for these subsidies. Companies must make certain their plan offerings meet the ever-changing government guidelines. Companies like Starbucks with a revolving door of employees will have to hire extra HR staff to keep up with all the tracking and paperwork,” she added.

Supporters Turning Away

Christie Herrera, director of the Health and Human Services Task Force at the Washington, DC-based American Legislative Exchange Council, says Schultz is not alone in his concerns.

“Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is just the latest in a string of about-faces from health law supporters. What Howard Schultz is realizing now is something that we’ve known from the start: The so-called Affordable Care Act will cripple small business growth,” Herrera said.

“Businesses should be focused on employing our workforce and growing our economy, not worrying about mandates from the federal government,” Herrera added.

Advocating Portability

Gossage suggests a different course for Starbucks.

“For businesses like Starbucks who care about their employees’ access to health insurance, they could accomplish a win-win by doing the following: Lobby to repeal Obamacare, then increase their employees’ salaries by the amount paid for their health insurance benefit, less any tax deduction difference lost from going from benefit to salary,” Gossage said. “This allows the employees to have expendable cash to go to the open market and buy a private policy just like they do now for auto, home, and renter’s insurance.”

Gossage points out moving to a private policy would give employees a portable solution—if they leave their job at Starbucks, they don’t lose their insurance.

“Employees get more plan choices, more affordable options, fewer worries. They can’t be kicked off a plan because they get sick, and their rates can’t be raised due to their personal claims,” Gossage said. “Employers can drastically reduced HR staff, have no hassles with dealing with COBRA, carriers, TPAs, and claims issues, and will find it easier to budget the cost of hiring an employee while providing more competitive salaries.”

Employee Flexibility

Gossage says empowering these younger workers to enter the marketplace, will give them more flexibility while benefiting the employer’s bottom line.

“Employees today, particularly younger workers like Starbucks generally has, are more mobile and want a portable policy,” Gossage said. “They don’t like their employer or the government selecting their health insurance package any more than they want them to pick their cell phone package.”

Sarah McIntosh, Esq. (mcintosh.sarah@gmail.com) is a constitutional scholar writing from Lawrence, Kansas.

Published In: School Reform News

Publication date: 05/16/2011

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

In the face of a $1.6 trillion federal budget deficit, a national debt topping $14 trillion, and with Congress debating a plan to cut spending by $6 billion over the next decade, one U.S. lawmaker is proposing a new program entitling parents to federally funded universal preschool and childcare.

The “Foundations for Success Act” by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would allow the subsidy to start when a child reaches just six weeks of age.

Sanders’ bill would begin as a pilot program in 10 states and eventually expand nationwide. States would compete for federal grant money and establish standards, in a process Sanders compares to President Obama’s “Race to the Top” program for K-12 schools.

“As we struggle to recover from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, too many American children do not receive the high quality early care they need,” Sanders said in a statement. “The best way to both address our educational shortcomings and strengthen our economy over the long term is to invest in our children as early as we possibly can.”

The Congressional Budget Office has not estimated the cost of Sanders’ proposal. The federal government spent more than $7 billion in 2010 on the Head Start preschool program for at-risk and inner-city youth.

‘One-Size-Fits-All’ Criticized
The federal government should refrain from meddling in preschool, says Lisa Snell, director of education and child welfare studies at the Reason Foundation in California.

“The state already has an uneven track record with K-12 education,” she said. “Right now there are many different kinds of preschool programs, and parents have many choices. If the state offers free preschool, it [will be] difficult for private and nonprofit preschools to compete.”

While noting Sanders’ bill promotes ostensibly competitive grants, Snell said the government has a tendency to overshadow all other options.

“We risk diminishing parent choice and creating a one-size-fits-all public preschool,” she said.

Snell also warned Sanders’ bill would create a needless, redundant program.

“We should not be using scarce taxpayer dollars to start new federal preschool programs,” she said. “If this kind of preschool is a federal priority, we should use resources from existing preschool programs like Head Start rather than developing new government programs that duplicate programs that already exist.”

The United States has already made a multibillion-dollar yearly investment in early education at the federal, state, and local levels, Snell said. More than 75 percent of four year olds are already enrolled in public and private preschool programs, “and yet we have not seen large-scale academic improvements from this huge investment in early education.”

‘Flat Outcomes’
“On multiple measures from graduation rates to the performance of 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Education Progress, we have seen flat outcomes and little improvement from this long-term investment,” Snell said.

Multiple studies of Head Start, which President Lyndon Johnson helped establish as part of his War on Poverty in 1965, have shown weak outcomes or no change at all despite the program spending more than $150 billion over four decades, Snell said. A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study published last year found “few significant differences” in academic outcomes among first graders who participated in Head Start and those who did not.

The weight of research argues against Sanders’ bill, said John LaPlante, a fellow with the Minnesota Free Market Institute.

“If state-funded preschool has a weak record, then it’s a waste of money that could be better used elsewhere—paying teachers better, giving students scholarships for private schools, whatever,” he said.

Government-funded preschool, LaPlante said, is “an instance of government crossing the line between the political culture and the philanthropic one. It’s based on the assumption that government intervention can ameliorate the problems faced by children from less-than-ideal family situations.”

“Private, community-based efforts can make a difference, but even then there are limits to what we can do to fix human problems,” he said. “The problem is more serious once you bring in government, which involves politicians and bureaucracies.”

Appeals to Middle Class Parents
Preschool is a popular cause because voters see it as “‘doing something’ for children,” LaPlante said.

“There’s widespread agreement that kids are not getting the education they need in today’s world, and it’s easier to add something onto the K-12 industry than to make fundamental changes to it,” he said.

Making preschool a universal rather than targeted program is also an obviously political move, LaPlante added, because “any time you open a new spending stream to the middle class, you’re going to boost its political support.”

Several states such as Florida, Colorado, and Missouri have, however, made significant progress with reforms focused on elementary and secondary schools, LaPlante said.

“Florida has taken a multipronged approach,” he said. “They give letter grades to schools, which shames the poor-performing ones and praises the high-achieving ones. They’ve created some school choice programs, and they’ve made some changes in curriculum. They’ve also invigorated the teaching staff by creating one of the leading programs in the nation for alternative paths to getting a teaching certificate.”

As a result, LaPlante said, Florida has experienced impressive improvements in student achievement and significant gains in closing the achievement gap, especially among Hispanic students.

“This record suggests that we benefit when government focuses on reforming its own programs, and enlisting the power of private choice, rather than replacing parents,” he said.

Sarah McIntosh (mcintosh.sarah@gmail.com) is a constitutional scholar writing from Lawrence, Kansas.

Published In: Health Care News > June 2011

Publication date: 05/19/2011

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

Louisiana’s Republican Governor, Bobby Jindal, has announced his state will not create a health insurance exchange mandated by the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act.

Confirming an earlier report in Health Care News, Gov. Jindal’s press office released a statement on the anniversary of Obamacare’s passage indicating the governor would be directing the state government not to implement an exchange. PPACA requires every state to submit a plan for their exchange to the Department of Health and Human Services by January 1, 2013.

“Obamacare is a terrible policy that needs to be repealed and replaced. It creates enormous new costs and future unfunded liabilities for states financing their Medicaid programs,” Jindal press secretary Kyle Plotkin said in a statement.

Not Alone in Opposition

Other Republican governors, such as Nathan Deal in Georgia, Susana Martinez in New Mexico, Rick Perry in Texas, and C.L. “Butch” Otter in Idaho, have announced opposition, vetoed bills, or issued executive orders as ways to prevent implementation of a health exchange.

Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, also a Republican, has stood adamantly against the exchanges. Scott has spoken out against Obamacare from the start and first became a candidate after his strong opposition to the legislation.

John Graham, director of health care studies at the California-based Pacific Research Institute, points out both Jindal and Scott have backgrounds in health care. Jindal was Louisiana’s state secretary of health before becoming governor, and Scott helped run one of the world’s largest health care providers.

“I believe that they learned—correctly—that anti-Obamacare state politicians should not be collaborating in Obamacare in any way. There is no way for a state to put ‘market-friendly’ elements in a state-based exchange,” Graham said.

Some Republicans on Board

Not all governors are standing with Jindal and Scott, however. Mississippi’s governor, former Republican Governors Association chairman Haley Barbour, has publicly announced support for an exchange, and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has supported an exchange law, albeit with restrictions against payments for abortions.

That is shortsighted, Graham says. “The federal Obamacare legislation states very clearly that state laws which establish exchanges cannot impose rules that differ from the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services’ regulations, which will change through time,” Graham said. “If the Supreme Court finds Obamacare constitutional, it means that the Supremacy Clause will give the Secretary the power to nullify state law.”

Graham said governors and legislators who oppose PPACA have several other options to defy the mandate, as well.

“States have more power to resist Obamacare exchanges than they believe, because the federal law also states that the Secretary can only allow health plans to participate in an exchange if they are licensed and in good standing with the state,” Graham notes. “This gives state legislators and insurance commissioners a lot of leverage over the health plans that are right now lobbying to establish exchanges.”

Sarah McIntosh, Esq. (mcintosh.sarah@gmail.com) is a constitutional scholar writing from Lawrence, Kansas.

Published In: Health Care News > June 2011

Publication date: 05/05/2011

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

Published In: School Reform News

Publication date: 04/18/2011

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

In a ruling hailed by school choice supporters across the country, the United States Supreme Court has ruled opponents of Arizona’s 14-year-old tax credit scholarship program may not challenge the program on grounds it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The Court ruled 5-4 in Garriott vs. Winn and Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization vs. Winn against a lawsuit by the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which contested a tax credit program giving Arizona parents choices other than their neighborhood public schools.

The April 4 ruling overturns a 2009 decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which held the Arizona program promotes religion.

Clint Bolick, director of the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute’s Center for Constitutional Litigation, says the ruling is important and has ramifications beyond school choice. “It takes tax deductions and tax credits that can be used for religious purposes out of the realm of federal legal challenges, so long as they are not discriminatory,” he explained.

Not State Money
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion for the majority, which included Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia.

“By helping students obtain scholarships to private schools, both religious and secular, the [student tuition organization] program might relieve the burden placed on Arizona’s public schools,” Kennedy wrote. “The result could be an immediate and permanent cost savings for the State.”

Later in the opinion, Kennedy explained: “The distinction between governmental expenditures and tax credits refutes respondents’ assertion of standing. When Arizona taxpayers choose to contribute to STOs, they spend their own money, not money the state has collected from respondents or from other taxpayers.”

Tim Keller, executive director of the Arizona chapter of the Institute for Justice, which helped represent the Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization, said the majority opinion “reflects the commonsense notion that private charitable donations to private nonprofit organizations involve private funds, not public funds.”

“The fact that the government reduces an individual’s tax liability based on that donation does not transform those funds from private to public money,” he said.

“Sadly, the four dissenters appear to believe that all money is government money except that which the government deigns to let us keep,” Keller added.

Taxpayer Standing Was Focus
The court soundly rejected the ACLU’s argument that tax credits constitute state funds, in effect claiming all money is state money except what the state declines to collect.

“On standing, this was a genuinely close question,” said Bolick.

“Prior rulings indicated that unlike in other areas of the law, taxpayers have standing to challenge actions under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment,” Bolick said. “The court ruled that tax credits are not public funds, and therefore taxpayers have no standing to challenge them. If the Court [case] had reached the merits of the program, it should not have been a tough call.”

Keller agrees. “Even though the court ruled the plaintiffs did not have standing, the majority decision strongly suggests that if the court had reached the merits it would have upheld the program as perfectly consistent with the Establishment Clause,” he said.

“For example, the court recognized that the program was religiously neutral, neither favoring religion over non-religion or one religion over another, and that private decisions control every aspect of the program,” Keller explained. “The Supreme Court has never found a neutral program of private choice to be unconstitutional.”

Kagan Dissents
Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

“Cash grants and targeted tax breaks are means of accomplishing the same government objective—to provide financial support to select individuals or organizations,” Kagan wrote.

“Taxpayers who oppose state aid of religion have equal reason to protest whether that aid flows from one form of subsidy or the other,” Kagan argued. “Either way, the government has financed the religious activity.”

Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational, took issue with the dissenters’ claims.

“Justice Kagan seems to be claiming that taxpayers could never have standing to sue under credit programs, but she is mistaken on that point,” Coulson said. “She does seem to think that a parent who was unable to obtain a scholarship to a secular school would have standing, but I would argue that that would only be the case if it could be shown that parents seeking secular schooling were at a relative disadvantage in obtaining credits to parents seeking religious schooling.”

Coulson says that’s simply not the case.

“The share of private school scholarships available for secular schooling is actually larger than the share of families seeking secular private schooling, so secular families are not at a disadvantage, in practice,” he said.

Future Challenge Unlikely
Even if the facts were otherwise, Coulson says, a future plaintiff would lose on the merits because the allocation of scholarships is decided by independent scholarship organizations, not state officials.

“The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause applies only to state actions, not the actions of individuals, which is why tax deductions for donations to religious charities have long been found constitutional,” he said.

Arizona’s scholarship program offers individuals a 100 percent tax credit up to $500 (or $1,000 for couples filing jointly) for donations to state-authorized school tuition organizations. Those charitable groups then award scholarships for students to attend a private school of their parents’ choice. More than 27,000 students used scholarships averaging $1,889 in Arizona in 2009 under the program.

Although Arizona ACLU attorney Paul Bender told reporters the court’s ruling leaves a small opening for a future challenge to the program, Keller says he does not anticipate another attack.

“I believe that school choice opponents have exhausted their legal challenges to the Arizona program,” Keller said.

Sarah McIntosh (mcintosh.sarah@gmail.com) is a constitutional scholar writing from Lawrence, Kansas.

Internet Info:
U.S. Supreme Court: Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization vs. Winn
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-987.pdf

Published In: Health Care News > April 2011

Publication date: 04/01/2011

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

The Vermont legislature, which has considered imposing a single-payer health care system in the past, is discussing the step once again in the current legislative session.

William Hsiao, the K. T. Li Professor of Economics at the Harvard University School of Public Health, was commissioned by the legislature to conduct an examination of Vermont’s health care system. Hsiao, who was directly involved in developing single-payer systems in Taiwan and eight other countries, testified in favor of such a system for Vermont before the legislature on January 19.

“Despite its valiant efforts, Vermont has not been able to provide high-quality, affordable health care for all of its residents. It is fair to say that the system is broken,” Hsiao said in his testimony, expressing doubts that President Obama’s law would solve the state’s long-term problems.

Three Options Offered

Hsiao was tasked with developing three options for reform to present to the legislature in the report, which he coauthored with Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He compared a state government-administered and publicly financed single-payer health benefits system, to a state government-administered, public option that “would allow Vermonters to choose between public and private insurance coverage,” and proposed as a third option a “public/private single-payer system.”

Hsiao endorsed this third option, claiming it was designed to provide an “essential” benefits package, which would be administered by an independent board and run by a third party after a competitive bidding process.

“Beyond yielding greater cost savings, we believe Option 3 is most feasible because it is likely to be accepted by the broadest cross-section of Vermont stakeholders,” Hsiao testified, calling the approach “economically responsible and politically palatable.”

Complete Government Control

Yet Hsiao’s plan is not moving forward without criticism. John McClaughry, president of the Vermont-based Ethan Allen Institute, observes several problems with a single-payer system.

“From 1990 to the present, liberal legislators have voted millions of dollars for study and design projects to bring the wonders of single payer health care to the people of Vermont,” said McClaughry. “Under a single payer system, health insurers and premiums become history. The government determines the type and location of medical facilities to ensure that all benefits are equal and available to everybody. The government levies progressive income and payroll taxation to pay for all health care. No one can be allowed to use their own money to purchase health care covered by the single payer plan, because that would introduce another payer and inequality.”

Despite these critiques, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin (D) is moving forward. He announced plans in February to create a health reform board to make recommendations for the single-payer plan.

Sarah McIntosh, esq. (mcintosh.sarah@gmail.com) is a constitutional scholar writing from Lawrence, Kansas.

Published In: Health Care News > April 2011

Publication date: 04/01/2011

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

Published In: School Reform News > February 2011

Publication date: 01/18/2011

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

Officials at the U.S. Justice Department and Education Department say closer scrutiny of school discipline cases will be a high priority for 2011. The department announced it would use a “disparate-impact analysis” to help determine whether minority students are disproportionately punished at school.

“Regrettably, students of color are receiving different and harsher disciplinary punishments than whites for the same or similar infractions, and they are disproportionately impacted by zero-tolerance policies—a fact that only serves to exacerbate already deeply entrenched disparities in many communities,” said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights.

A federal investigation into local school discipline policies would be an unusual but not unprecedented action, said Dave Roland, director of litigation at the Freedom Center of Missouri.

“The Fourteenth Amendment specifically empowers the federal government to pass and enforce laws that will ensure that citizens enjoy due process and the equal protection of law,” Roland explained. “The reality is, certain bad actors at the state and local level, if given the opportunity, are perfectly willing to institute racially discriminatory policies in public schools.

“While I do believe that the federal government should generally not be involved in substantive education matters, I also think the Justice Department has a legitimate role to play in safeguarding students’ civil rights,” Roland added.

Analysis Method Questioned
The tougher question, Roland says, is whether the “disparate impact” model of analysis is appropriate in monitoring public school discipline.

“One of the concerns raised by Justice Department officials is that minority students in a given school system may be receiving harsher treatment than white students receive for the same misbehaviors,” he explained. “The implication in that sort of case seems to be not so much that that the policy itself is flawed, but rather that it allows too much discretion as to the punishments that are meted out, allowing racial prejudice to influence those punishments.”

Roland noted the Obama administration’s approach would be different from the tack taken by President George W. Bush’s Justice Department, which emphasized “different treatment” instead of “disparate impact.”

Justice ‘Should Not Interfere’
“‘Disparate impact’ is properly applied to policies that are neither facially nor intentionally discriminatory yet still result in one or more groups being systematically disadvantaged as a result of the policy’s enforcement,” Roland said. “A mere showing of ‘disparate impact’ only begins the analysis of whether a policy might be improper.”

The government should not act unless there is real evidence of intentional discrimination, Roland explains.

“Absent any indication that the policy or its enforcement is influenced by racial animus, the Justice Department should not interfere with schools’ efforts to establish the best possible learning environment for the students in their care,” he said.

Sarah McIntosh (mcintosh.sarah@gmail.com) is a constitutional scholar in Lawrence, Kansas.

Published In: School Reform News > February 2011

Publication date: 01/18/2011

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

In the wake of a series of high-profile teen suicides, the Obama administration says it plans this year to promote initiatives aimed at combating bullying in schools. Education Department officials are collecting “best practices” for anti-bullying efforts, and they say the White House will host a conference in the next few months to “raise awareness” of the issue.

The administration’s efforts follow a 10-page “Dear Colleague” letter from the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights advising school officials they are required under federal law to stop discriminatory behavior.

“Some student misconduct that falls under a school’s anti-bullying policy also may trigger responsibilities under one or more of the federal antidiscrimination laws enforced by the Department’s Office for Civil Rights,” wrote Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights, in the October letter.

Student misconduct could trigger action under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which targets discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bans discrimination based on sex, Ali said. Ali also cited provisions of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the amended Americans with Disabilities Act of 1994.

“When behavior implicates the civil rights laws, school administrators should look beyond simply disciplining the perpetrators,” Ali advised.

Overreach, Discrimination Cited
While no one is defending bullying, Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, says the federal government should refrain from micromanaging what is fundamentally a local problem.

“It is far better to let local and state authorities handle bullying incidents, because they are much more familiar with the circumstances,” McCluskey explained.

“More importantly, Washington can only step in when specific protected classes of people are involved,” McCluskey continued. “Well, what happens when a kid is repeatedly bullied for being a nerd, or wearing out-of-fashion clothes, or the numerous other things that set bullies off that have nothing to do with being in a protected class?”

“As far as federal protection goes, they are second-class students. That is unacceptable,” he said.

‘No Authority’
Robert Holland, a senior fellow for education policy at The Heartland Institute, notes while there is no “pro-bullying lobby,” neither is there “any statutory or constitutional authority for the federal government to bully school districts and universities into adopting federally prescribed policies for defining and prosecuting bullying.”

He added, “The administration’s directive essentially rewrites Title IX, which forbids harassment based on race, color, national origin, sex, or disability, to include gender identity. It is doubtful most parents want these kinds of agendas forced on their local classrooms. Under President Obama, the ‘bully pulpit’ is giving way to plain old bullying.”

Sarah McIntosh (mcintosh.sarah@gmail.com) is a constitutional scholar writing from Lawrence, Kansas.

Published In: School Reform News > February 2011

Publication date: 01/10/2011

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

The Kansas State Board of Education (KSBE) voted to make the Sunflower State one of the last states to adopt the national Common Core State Standards Initiative. These standards were designed by a state-led effort put together by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officials. The program is supposed to set common expectations for those students who plan to go to college and for those who plan to enter the career field after high school.

The KSBE decision was not unanimous, with one member in opposition and two not present. The vote was 7-1. The standards could take effect as early as 2012. Forty-three states have signed on.

Ken Williard, who was absent for the vote, said he worried the board had not adequately considered the federal government’s influence on the process or the possibility of strings eventually being attached.

“We received explicit assurance that there would be none of either, and that strongly influenced the decision of the board,” Williard said.

Kansans ‘Were Way Ahead’
Board member Janet Waugh said the board concluded the standards would be “a positive step forward” for Kansas students.

“We appreciated the variety of input that was provided during the development of the standards, including considerable input from representatives of our state,” Waugh said. “I believe the Common Core Standards provide the appropriate focus and rigor necessary for student assessment, and I appreciate that the standards are internationally benchmarked and allow us opportunities to collaborate with other states.”

Board member Kathy Martin praised the state’s previous standards while approving the changes.

“Adoption of the Common Core Standards by a majority of states is supposed to help provide more continuity across states. However, being a teacher for over 30 years, I found repeatedly that our Kansas students were way ahead of most every child who transferred into our school from out of state,” she said.

“The Kansas Department of Education did extensive review and alignment and offered some well-received suggestions,” Martin addd, explaining her yes vote. “The final draft resembles the Kansas standards for both areas but with some alterations. There is also the provision that each state can add up to 15 percent to the common core standards in areas that they feel are weak.  In math, for example, Kansas will probably add some material covering estimation and patterning.”

Adopting the Common Core Standards means the state won’t have to review and revise language arts and math standards this year, Martin added.

Says Board Ignored Criticism
John LaPlante, an education policy fellow with the Kansas Policy Institute in Wichita, says the state board ignored arguments Common Core would deprive state and local officials of a say in education policy making.

“It’s unfortunate that Kansas has bought into the idea that better education can come about through centralizing education even more,” LaPlante said. “The beauty of our political system is that even today, power is dispersed not only among three branches of the U.S. government but [also] between the U.S. government and state governments. The Common Core Standards Initiative moves us further away from that model of government.”

Although the Common Core Standards technically aren’t a federal initiative, LaPlante says the U.S. Department of Education will find it easy to oversee and shape national standards in the years ahead.

“What’s the point of ‘common’ if it’s not national? The result will be local controversies writ large,” said LaPlante.

Jeff Reed, state program director and government relations director at the Foundation for Educational Choice in Indiana, agrees, saying, “What state residents have to ask themselves is, by whom do they want their learning standards determined? And are these individuals and groups so omniscient that they know what 65 million students need to learn? Spare me the elitism,” Reed said.

‘Expect More Flare-Ups’
LaPlante says the plan won’t end political controversies over education. “Rick Doll, the superintendent of the school district in Lawrence, has praised the standards, saying ‘what we teach in school should not be dependent on the political leanings of a governing body.’ And I agree. How ironic, then, that he and many others in Kansas want to contract out the setting of school standards to the national political stage.

“Kansas became the butt of national jokes when it changed its science standards a few years ago, so I understand why some people would find it useful to put the decisions about standards out of the reach of fellow Kansans. But that runs against federalism, and in the end, Kansas voters, voted to flip their standards to the status quo ante,” LaPlante added.

Reed says the politics could become even more heated. “I would expect more political flare-ups, not fewer, if Washington takes over learning standards,” he said. “Americans get angry—and rightly so—when they’re stripped of power, only for it to be amassed in Washington, DC.

“Kansas needs to do what Milton Friedman suggested decades ago: Move from a system that funds schools to one that funds students,” Reed advised. “And with that change, suddenly parents will be empowered to shop for the schools that fit their children best. And when schools compete for those children, their quality will increase as a result. It’s as simple as that.”

“Only broad-based, statewide school choice programs—like universal vouchers, tax credit scholarships, and strong charter school laws—can achieve this end,” Reed concluded.

Sarah McIntosh (mcintosh.sarah@gmail.com) is a constitutional scholar writing from Lawrence, Kansas.