Legislative Therapy

Too many laws get approved as a form of legislative therapy -- as a way to make politicians feel needed, relevant and better about themselves. Here's one excellent example. Whether or not those new laws make much sense -- if they can be enforced -- is of secondary concern. It's all about feelings: how we feel about them and how they feel about themselves. I'm open minded on the question of whether this simply mirrors, or whether it feeds and perpetuates, our national neurosis.

How much trouble we all would be saved -- and how much madness could be avoided -- if, instead of letting them "act out" legislatively, we simply paid their psychiatry bills instead.

Recession-proof

Recent polls showed that perpetually-disgruntled, chronically-underappreciated federal workers are feeling much better about their jobs these days. Wonder why.

The Washington Post's Poop Scoop

Washington Posties finally got on the Arlington National Cemetery scandal today, playing it as a scoop, even though it had been unfolding for several decades right beneath their noses, with nary a word. Other publications began writing about a chronic pattern of mismanagement at the storied facility about a year ago, but one intrepid reporter had the real scoop back in 1998, when he was writing for The Washington Times.

That nothing was done about problems that dated back 20 years, and that were known about, documented and reported on more than 12 years ago, is the scandal within the scandal. And it shows just how impossible it is to really change the way the federal bureaucracy works -- or doesn't work, as the case may be.

That The Post didn't pick up on the story for 20 years, when it was occurring in the paper's backyard, shows how inured the city's self-styled watchdogs can be to the chronic bureaucratic bumbling that swirls all around them, like a cesspool. That's the other scandal within the scandal.

Post Goes Postal on Teacher Unions

Say what you will about The Washington Post -- and most conservatives say it's a left-leaning piece of fish wrap -- but the paper's editorial page in recent years has become a strong and consistent voice for school choice and school reform. Some on the paper's news side still shill for the teacher unions and other anti-reform reactionaries. But the editorial page has seen the light.

Today's editorial, which comes to the defense of a successful Baltimore charter school that's been the target of "outlandish demands" by the city's teachers union, isn't an aberration. The Post has been a fairly reliable ally of D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, in her epic struggles to turn that school system around. And the paper's oft-repeated mantra of "put children first" is helping bring slow but perceptible change to some public school systems that need it most.

Now, if only the Post would incorporate that pro-freedom, pro-reform ethos into all its editorials.

But then there would be no reason for The Washington Times.

Recession-Proof

Years ago, when I decided to move to Washington, my father, a child of The Depression who fretted about my employment prospects, offered this practical reason for endorsing the decision. "Washington is recession proof," he told me, because the government would be there, and still be growing, even when the rest of the economy was tanking -- even if the rest of the nation lay in ruins. Dad was right about this, too, as today's Washington Post explains.

Washington is riding out the recession in relative style, even if sky-high home prices have come down to Earth a bit, according to a Brookings Institution report. "In line with other studies, Brookings reports that the Washington area's economy has been shielded from the full brunt of the recession because of the dominance of the federal government and contractors, which has kept employment stable," according to The Post.

Government is the biggest single "industry" in America today. And that industry is booming with Barack Obama at the helm, as work formerly contracted out to the private sector is brought "in-house" as part of Obama's "in-sourcing" initiative; as agencies grow in size and power; as an explosion in government spending, borrowing and money-printing takes place; as the nationalization of productive sector industries moves ahead, with nary a peep of protest from the world's most famous capitalists. Lobbyists haven't gone away: on the contrary, they're enjoying a field day, as they do whenever more power and money is concentrated in the capital city.

Even if tax revenues plunge, due to a down economy, the "government bubble" never really bursts -- especially when economic downturn, in the inverted logic of the moment, becomes a justification for growing government, and spending more, rather than tightening the government's belt and siphoning less from the productive sectors of the economy.

Washingtonians may claim to feel the country's pain, but they truly live and operate in a world apart, in which the normal rules of economics, like the normal rules of everything, don't really apply.

Liberal Newspapers for School Choice

The Boston Globe has an excellent editorial today urging an end to that state's resistance to, and discrimination against, charter schools. It joins The Washington Post among otherwise left-leaning newspapers that have broken with anti-school reform dogma of teachers' unions, and the Democratic Party, by embracing educational choice as an imperative for the troubled schools in the urban areas the papers serve. And the impact of this can't be underestimated, since such arguments have much more power coming from the left than from the right.

There may be other left-leaning editorial pages out there that have similarly broken ranks, understanding that a slavish conformity to ideology is costing millions of kids a better education and opportunity. But today I can cite only these two.

So bully for The Boston Globe.

Bully for The Washington Post.

The Post blazed this trail by supported a voucher program for the District of Columbia, which must have set unions and Democrats back on their heals. And the paper has generally seemed to support controversial D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee in her efforts to turn around a terrible school system, including with this Jan. 7 editorial excoriating the D.C. City Council for undermining Rhee. And now comes the Boston Globe, to advocate for lifting the state's caps on charter schools, in response to compelling evidence that they're producing better results.

Here's The Globe:

Raise the cap on charters
January 10, 2009


THE SHORTEST DISTANCE between urban students and quality education is a charter school that is free to lengthen the school day, enhance the curriculum, and assign teachers without interference from teachers unions or downtown bureaucrats. Yet state education officials not only resist lifting tight caps on new charter schools but are now contemplating measures that would undermine opening charter schools under the current cap.

A new Boston Foundation study compared the achievement of Boston students at charter, traditional, and in-district pilot schools, which have adopted some charter-like reforms. The charter schools, which are run by independent boards, topped the list. The most dramatic finding in the new study was the success of charter schools in raising math performance by middle school students - usually a resistant bunch.

For middle school students in Boston, the impact of attending a good charter school meant moving from the 50th to the 69th percentile on the MCAS math test. The study also dispatched the tired argument that charters succeed only because they attract students from education-minded families and leave district schools with the hardest-to-serve students. It compares the achievement of charter school students in Boston with those who were motivated to enter the lottery but failed to win a seat.


With 61 charter schools underway, there seems to be plenty of room under the statewide cap of 120 schools. But a deeper look reveals a problem. State law also requires that no school district be required to transfer more than 9 percent of its net school spending to charter schools. That cap looms over Boston, where there is room for only 111 more charter school seats while 7,000 Boston students linger on waiting lists.

And how does one expand charter school opportunities in North Adams, with room under the cap for only 34 students, or in Somerville, with room remaining for just 70 students? The situation is barely better in Cambridge, Chelsea, Holyoke, Lowell, and other urban districts where the addition of a single new charter would meet or exceed the cap.


Now, to make matters worse, Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester is working on a proposal to the Board of Education that would delay the opening of new charter schools even under the current cap. State education officials are under heavy pressure from school district and local officials who must reallocate per-pupil costs to charter schools in hard times. But these are the same officials who are responsible for running schools that so many families are determined to flee. The touchstone in this debate should be student achievement, not the fiscal challenges in school districts, which can close or consolidate schools to offset declining enrollment.

The best strategy would be to double the potential for new charter schools in low-performing urban districts by raising the net school spending limit from 9 percent to 18 or 20 percent. School districts will howl. But they may also recognize the urgent need to provide their own students with longer school days and deeper opportunities.