More stringent TOPS best idea yet from higher education

Comments made by Louisiana State University Agricultural and Mechanical University (that is, the Baton Rouge-based campus) Chancellor Michael Martin should provoke a lot of interest not only because of their sensibility in dealing with Louisiana’s looming budget crisis, but also as they open an interesting window into some of the internal politics going on with how the higher education approaches dealing with the impending fiscal difficulties of the state.

Martin, speaking at a university forum, addressed LSU’s potential responses to anticipated, potentially large, cuts coming his school’s way. Because of a revenue-generation decline and inability to curb state spending, given the constitutional and legal fiscal status of the budgeting process, in dollar terms higher education is likely to face the second-largest cut absolutely, but the highest in relative terms, in next year’s state budget.

The best thing to do about this would be to review the nearly 350 dedicated funds in state government that are constitutionally or legally prevented from being cut more than a pittance without extraordinarily maneuvers, whose dedications may bear little resemblance to actual objective needs for state spending, and make appropriate changes to reflect genuine priorities. But the Legislature whiffed on a procedure to do just this earlier this year.

It also has choked on giving more authority to universities to raise their tuition levels, although in recent years a modified proposal passed to allow school to make a series of periodic, small hikes on their own. Otherwise, any such increases ridiculously must receive two-thirds support in the Legislature. This hangover from the state’s populist past needlessly interferes with market forces, not trusting that the market will create a situation that allows universities to fund themselves at a level they feel adequate given the amount of students they would be able to attract at that level of tuition.

Recently, the justification accompanying this continued ability for the Legislature to interfere in tuition rates acquired new life through the creation of the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, which awards scholarships worth the highest tuition amount (LSU’s, in essence) to (mostly) Louisiana high school graduates that achieve certain benchmarks. It has been argued that, because the TOPS amount of money spent is tied into tuition, that the Legislature should have some fairly stringent control over tuition.

Martin’s comments were interesting here, because he argued the standards to qualify for TOPS, achieving certain scores on a standardized test and passing a core curriculum in high school, should be increased. Refreshingly recognizing that this is a scholarship program which implies academic excellence, this view runs counter to the current conceptualization of it as, frankly, a semi-entitlement program since, to be honest, its standards are so low. Presently, for the in-state graduate, on the American College Test only a score of 20 is necessary, well below the national average. Further, only minimal academic performance (such as a low 2.3 for the first 48 hours, 2.5 Grade Point Average – B-/C+ – from there) is required to maintain the typical award at a four-year university.

When mediocrity is being rewarded, it’s hard to argue that excellence is being encouraged. Raising standards for the program would encourage improved high school performance – sending a ripple effect throughout all of secondary and elementary education – not just better performance once in college and on TOPS. It also would discourage those not that serious about college from wasting their time and taxpayer dollars; some students lacking direction in life currently go to college because TOPS will pay for them to drift there and subsequently flunk out.

Of course, with fewer students qualifying, the state would spend less than the $130 million or so currently budgeted to TOPS, and less demand would wash over Louisiana public institutions – already overfunded and maldistributed in some ways – but the payoff might be taking the tens of millions of dollars saved and putting it back into the universities. And it’s not really that courageous of a statement by Martin, in the sense that LSU already has admission standards for incoming freshmen at an undemanding but higher level than the basic TOPS award, so it would lose few students from an increase up to its admissions levels.

However, most interestingly, Martin’s suggestion not only runs counter to the inane opinion of his boss, LSU System President John Lombardi, that TOPS become a need-based program, but also implicitly bucked the LSU System position that admission standards should not be raised. Elevating TOPS requirements would have the same effect as a rise in admissions standards across the higher education system, producing fewer enrollees because some no longer would qualify. That Martin publicly contradicts Lombardi and gets away with it can mean just one of two things, that Lombardi is on slippery ground with his employers, the LSU Board of Supervisors, or the System recognizes that Lombardi’s position and perhaps other controversial statements of his regarding the funding of higher education have become non-starters so Martin’s now becomes a fallback position.

The latter seems to be the case as state government appears to be approaching a consensus on raising admissions standards at schools that offer degrees beyond the associates’. Regardless of the motive, Martin’s suggestion is the best heard from higher education leadership to date, and coupled with a rise in admission standards and the consolidation leading to cost-saving efficiency of the several governance boards in Louisiana higher education are requisite first steps to creating more efficient higher education delivery in the state, especially vital to countering the pernicious effects of future budgetary woes.

Bad vote by Cao not made for electoral preservation

The problem for Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao simply was political dynamics had put him into a no-win situation, a reality becoming more apparent as time puts distance into his vote for the disastrous H.R. 3962. But he probably knew that, and that’s why he voted as he did.

This bill, which will lower the quality of health care provision in America in exchange for higher premiums, higher taxes, and with incentives to bring under direct control of the government the sixth of the American economy it represents, barely passed with Cao being the only Republican to vote for it (although his was not the crucial vote.) Indeed, that he voted at the very end indicates he wanted to make sure his would not be the decisive vote in its passage.

Some have argued that this sequence of events and result shows political calculations mainly drove Cao’s decision-making: he needed to vote for it to please enough constituents in his district with about two-thirds Democrats, and about one-half black Democrats. To date his announced opponents, both black Democrat state legislators, have been critical of his votes against the Democrat agenda, particularly concerning the spending bill that massively increased the deficit while unemployment surged after its passage. This vote could inoculate him enough against such criticism to give him a chance to win, it has been argued.

But that view disregards reality. The analytic process is easy enough to understand: it was assumed voting for it would gain more votes than would be lost, while voting against it merely would keep votes but lose others. However, the problem with the calculus of this is it probably works in reverse: the affirmative vote would attract fewer supporters that it would lose present supporters, with that difference probably still greater than votes he would lose by voting negatively.

The validity of this latter assessment already has received confirmation in canceled fundraisers on his behalf and requests for return of donations. It’s not that he will be denounced by Republicans or the party, just that any enthusiasm for his reelection will wither away. Why work for or even vote for somebody who went against you on the most important issue of this Congress? Any Democrat in the seat would have done the same, so what’s the difference if it’s Cao or somebody else in there?

Cao will need a lot of voluntary activism and funds to swim against a huge tide for reelection. Think of the typical Democrat in the district: for many, no matter how Cao voted on anything they’ll never vote for him because they have alternative candidates who will vote just as they would like and who are more “representative” of them (i.e., black Democrats) than is Cao. Only through energetic campaigning can he swing enough Democrat moderates, independents, and Republicans, who will have to turn out at significantly higher numbers than liberal Democrats behind their eventual nominee, to win.

Yet as a result of this vote, that no longer is possible. The enthusiasm necessary to create this kind of turnout evaporated with it. And Cao seems to have known this himself when he spoke of making the vote saying he recognized it would “probably be the death of my political career.” Knowing he was only slightly less unlikely to win by opposing than by supporting, and that his vote would not be crucial, he chose to support because that’s what he thought was best for people in his district – and maybe even of the whole state, if rumors that he was able to get assent to increase the federal government’s contribution to Louisiana’s Medicaid costs from Democrats are true.

So it’s doubtful that Cao’s decision was based on boosting his reelection chances. Rather, he did what he thought was best for his neck of the woods. In larger sense, isolated from the fact that his vote didn’t make any difference (and even if Democrats try to use it as a propaganda ploy the very emphasis they place on it shows they know how weak a tool it is; otherwise, why even bring it up?), it was the wrong decision for the good of the country, but that does not mean it was made in electoral self-interest.

Recommendation may keep education integrity intact

It appears that Louisiana is about to take the correct step in resolving the difficulties posed by the new “career” diploma, but, as is typical, resolution of the details will be the most important step.

The High School Redesign Committee overwhelmingly passed a recommendation to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education that students pursuing this diploma, only recently introduced which requires a less-rigorous curriculum than the “traditional” diploma, pass the same exit exam as other students. Passage of this test is required for graduation.

Rather, passage of choices from among tests is required, as the nature of the exit exam process is about to change. The state’s Department of Education recently approved moving away from the Graduate Exit Exam, which compiled questions from the areas of English, mathematics, social studies, and the sciences and of which students had to pass the first two areas and one of the other two. Now instead, what are more properly termed “end of course” exams will be administered. They will mandate passage of Algebra I or geometry, English 2 or English 3, and of biology or American History.

This makes some sense as it would allow for later taking of the exams in a student’s career (some were taking the GEE as early as their sophomore years) to allow for more time to acquire knowledge and may create better alignment of material learned and tested. However, BESE must be wary that the overall rigor present in the GEE not be decreased in the formulation of these new exams. In other words, if the GEE had math questions beyond Algebra I and geometry now these would be eliminated and the reduced rigor, if that applies overall across all subject areas tests, would produce a disservice to the students and the state.

Hopefully, this will not be the case. If so, the new diploma will become a benign development and not reduce standards as many feared its initiation would bring. While it still may handicap students that pursue it in that will not prepare them for college who then later in life may want to go to college, whatever enhanced vocational training it may provide might outweigh that cost. BESE needs to adopt this recommendation.

"Obama Lite" Walker reaps what he, Council sowed

The foremost question on the minds of Bossier City’s citizens is, what did Mayor Lo Walker know and when did he know it?

Drained of his usual pompous arrogance, last month the chastened Walker announced that the city heading into the end of its budget year was short $6.5 million, over 10 percent of its total spending, and would lay off immediately almost 15 percent of its workforce. The mayor, reelected unopposed in April, who once told observers that if they didn’t like this “conservative” budget they could vote against him, said now after the elections had come and gone that it was his fault alone, all due to some surprising fiscal “discovery.”

And if you believe this, give me $35 million of the city’s money and I’ll get you an office building that will attract the Air Force’s Cyber Command. None of this should have been a surprise to Walker or anybody in the city government. Every city keeps regular, usually monthly, tabs on its revenue intake, primarily on sales taxes which are remitted almost constantly. Bossier City’s finance department knew exactly what was going on from the beginning of the year. The only question is when did the trend become unmistakable?

Melancon keeps alive, Cao snuffs political career

When the vote was called for H.R. 3962, a monstrous bill that will lower the quality of health care provision in America in exchange for higher premiums, higher taxes, and with incentives to bring under direct control of the government the sixth of the American economy it represents, two Louisiana representatives went into the chamber with their political careers on the line. One walked back out with it intact.

Rep. Charlie Melancon managed to get a pass from his mistress in the Democrat leadership to vote against the final version. The way it worked, the leadership lined up supporters with an eye towards letting those of their party in the most vulnerable electoral positions off the hook, with a hierarchical ranking. Since Melancon is not defending a district, but trying to knock off incumbent Sen. David Vitter, he probably had low priority and would be one of the first to be told to fall on his sword to venerate liberalism. Luckily for him, because 219 Democrats pledged or were ordered to support it and voted accordingly, with 218 needed to pass with a full chamber present, apparently enough slack existed for Melancon to have the leash taken off of him.

His bid for the Senate is a longshot, but he would have had absolutely no chance at winning it had the Democrat leadership not been able to round up a few extra bodies – including the newest member just narrowly elected from New York. Take him away, and that leaves one to spare – because one Republican only voted for the measure.

LA earmark procedures need changing, not elimination

In its deliberations, an interesting request came from Treasurer John Kennedy for the Commission on Streamlining Government to pursue: the end of earmarks as we know them. Kennedy argued that a Commission recommendation be to eliminate them completely, arguing they allowed too much wasteful spending. Opponents countered that this approach threw the baby out with the bathwater. What’s the correct policy here?

First, note that this is a statutory matter, not a constitutional one. This is because the Louisiana Constitution grants the Legislature power to make appropriations (Art. X Sec. 7(D)(1)). Thus, to alter the Legislature’s ability to make such appropriations, it would take just a statute to do so.

Second, this would affect the theoretical principal-agent relationship between the state and local governments. In theory, local governments are entirely creatures of the state, created and assigned to perform certain tasks (with a few dozen of these entities granted extra latitude in doing so through the use of home rule charters). Thus, to surrender the power to transfer money to a local government for a purpose the legislature finds desirable impedes its ability to act as the principal.

Third, a conceptual distinction needs making between one kind of agent, local government, and another, the so-called “nongovernmental organization” (NGO) which is an entity not connected to government, probably nonprofit in nature, but seen as a vehicle by which to carry out state policy. That differentiation relies upon another theoretical principle in intergovernmental relations, known as “subsidiarity.” This idea argues that governmental functions should be performed at the lowest possible level, regardless whether the administering level has the power to do so independently. There is some history of subsidiarity concerning federal-state relations in America, exemplified by the (vastly de-emphasized) 10th Amendment.

However, there are 50 separate political cultures concerning state-local relations, and Louisiana’s history is weak in the practice of subsidiarity. For example, the state provides extensive services in health care through its charity hospital system, and with the majority of funding in elementary and secondary education. Especially since the 1930s, this notion has not played as strong of a role in policy-making as it has in many other states.

Applying these principles, some measure of earmark reform is possible and desirable by the Legislature. It would be too restrictive to completely ban the practice. It does serve the principal-agent purpose, and if there are “abuses,” the means have been implemented, at least by legislative rules, to ensure transparency which would assist in the real solution to earmarks considered wasteful, voter recognition of this and use of elections to replace offending legislators. (Not that this couldn’t be strengthened; the standards need to become a matter of law and perhaps made stricter.)

However, in regards to NGOs, the principal of subsidiarity would mandate that the state get out of that business. Since the NGOs are confined to local areas and perform functions assigned to local governments, those governments would be the appropriate ones by which to make such decisions. A statute limiting state earmarks to go only to local governments to perform tasks assigned to local government by Art. VI of the Constitution would be entirely appropriate, and should be pursued.

Democrats continue desperate tactics against Vitter

You can tell that Louisiana Democrats do not think much of their chances to defeat incumbent Sen. David Vitter when they continue to reinforce their only line of attack on him based on the strategy that he’s “evil.”

With the issues preferences of the Louisiana public solidly on his side (as well as his continuing to hold comfortable poll leads a year out from the election), Democrats have engaged in the age-old strategy of coming up with as many implausible accusations as possible and throwing them all at Vitter, desperately hoping some mud sticks that portrays him as some insensitive weirdo. The latest effort was a coordinated attempt to make Vitter appear, in the words of the Democrat operative, to “support a law that tells a rape victim that she does not have the right to defend herself.”

(It is shameful that Democrats took advantage of a woman with personal tragedy to try to score political points this way. More to the point, if Democrats continue this line of inquiry, they’re going have to agree upon how they regard Vitter’s temperament. Because he said he committed a “serious sin” and his phone number turned up on a list of calls received by an escort agency, although he never has confirmed this, it is suggested by his political opponents that he paid for sexual intercourse. So Democrats are hinting that the same guy who allegedly paid for sex also would countenance rape by an unwillingness to let women defend themselves from it? Doesn’t seem consistent if he’d go so far as to pay for it, implying he would not want to prevent rape – if he didn’t think so, why pay for it?. But trying to figure out how and why liberals think the way they do has baffled even the wisest, keenest, and best-informed observers for decades.)

Of course, as Vitter himself pointed out, opposing the amendment (that would set a precedent in the government’s ability to intervene in internal corporate relations) doesn’t prevent a defense against alleged crimes, and the amendment isn’t even necessary since the courts recently ruled in a universal way that in those kinds of cases they would be adjudicated in the U.S. courts regardless of whether they occurred on U.S. soil or whatever contractual arrangements apply. All the useless amendment really did was to prevent arbitration from being used in any legal circumstance for Defense Department contractors, increasing business for trial lawyers and costs ultimately to be paid by the American public. As Vitter also noted, even the Pres. Barack Obama Administration opposed the amendment initially, although after its successful passage has expressed neutrality about it. The empty amendment will have nothing to do with the ability of employees to seek judicial relief.

Stunts like this, creating an issue that doesn’t exist, to date seem the only trick in Democrats’ bag against Vitter. Perhaps the foreknowledge that a huge wave is building against their candidates in the 2010 elections is driving them to such longshot tactics. If this is the best they can do, a year from now Vitter will have cruised to an easy reelection.

Whining appointee proposes setting back LA ethics law

If there ever seemed to be a man unhappy in his voluntarily-accepted job, it is Frank Simoneaux, current chairman of Louisiana’s Board of Ethics. Proclaiming ethics administration has become “crippled”, dispassionate investigation reveals the only “crippling” threat comes from Simoneaux’s constant yawping in favor of interjecting more politics and favoritism and less professionalism into the process.

Naturally, Simoneaux complains, as he has for some time, about the changes brought a year ago to the functions of the commission he heads. Prior to his joining, the board’s powers were changed by removing its adjudication function, leaving only with the power to bring charges. Now administrative law judges decide, the products of which the law states must be accepted by the Board.

The advantages of such a system, considered best practice in the ethics administration literature, over the previous are legion and well-known: rather than have political appointees without any necessary legal training or following legal advice render decisions, randomly-chosen civil servants insulated from political forces with law degrees and specialized legal training in this area of law decide. It’s worth noting that, under the previous system, in no other place in Louisiana jurisprudence outside adjudication for civil servants did any one body have the power to be all of the prosecutor, judge, and jury.

How anybody could assert that the change could create such an inferior situation only can be explained by understanding the real motive behind it of the pursuit of power and privilege: bringing back some version of the previous situation would give more of that to appointees like Simoneaux. Wholesale revisions of the nature suggested by him clearly would not be in the public interest.

Regardless, this does not mean that some review and perhaps tinkering at the margins may not have any value. Simoneaux recommends that the Legislature request the Louisiana State Law Institute to review the current law. Why not? By the time the request is made next year and the Institute accomplishes it, there will have been enough time to render initial judgments on the workability of the new system.

Also, as suggested by the more temperate Board member Scott Schneider, perhaps the board could have more input on interpretations, rather than utilizing cases with actual controversy concerning the law. Finally, maybe the board could be given an expanded appellate role. Instead of mandating that it sign off on any decision, if a majority of it contests a ruling made by the initial three-judge panel, three of the four remaining judges could be impaneled to review the initial ruling.
But acquiescing to Simoneaux’s power-aggrandizing demands does not serve the goal of better ethics enforcement. If he’s so upset about all of this, perhaps he should heed the advice of House Speaker Jim Tucker and resign the post he thinks is so worthless. His expressed attitude indicates he won’t be missed by those interested in high ethical standards.

Current education course will reward LA and its children

Louisiana is jumping into the fray for some helpful federal money for elementary and secondary education – no thanks to entrenched special interests which would rather protect their own interests than see improvement in education, and to others who have the wrong idea about quality education.

This week, the state invites public comment on its plan for the “Race to the Top” program which could provide as much as $250 million for intervention mostly in troubled schools, and some for underperforming schools. Part of the proposal calls for the potential expanded use of a successful tool used in the past, charter schools.

Of course, this irks the primary protectors of the current below-mediocre system, teachers’ unions, as the charter school concept allows for greater administrative freedom that makes it more difficult for inferior teachers not only to get continual pay raises, as has been the recent norm, but even to keep their jobs. Turning a school into a chartered one doesn’t always immediately bring results because better tools have to be used effectively and do not automatically improve matters, but the state’s track record with them has proven they do bring improvement beyond what the traditional model does.

This means representatives of unions, whose job is to siphon as much taxpayer money as possible to as many members that do as little work as possible, have to resort to disingenuous argumentation to try to criticize this strategy. Thus, you get one flack saying that charter schools generally fared worse than traditional public schools in the state’s most recent accountability report card, as a tactic to try to discourage use of them in the plan and in any other situation.

But this slyly tries to deflect from the truth. It is true that, when comparing all charter schools to all traditional schools, that traditional school scores on the state’s accountability system exceed those of charter schools.’ However, the reason why practically every charter school exists is because they were abysmal-performers taken over by the state for that reason then switched to charter status. When comparing progress of charter schools to traditional schools of the same kind, in fact (in New Orleans since most of the state’s charter schools are there) you see much greater improvement with the charter schools. No matter how much special interests try to deny or obfuscate it, charter schools have worked better than traditional schools in improving the worst-performing schools.

Yet putting greed ahead of children’s learning isn’t the only threat to the success of the proposal. With its recently-implemented “career” diploma that lowers rigor in the classroom, concerned observers wonder whether the state’s new “dummy diploma” will be used as a strike against the application, signaling the state lacks seriousness in its accountability efforts and favors making politicians look good by pumping up graduation rates at the expense of actual learning. This can be avoided by having the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education at its next meeting by requiring graduates under this diploma meet the same Graduate Exit Exam standards currently in place.

If BESE does this right thing and also ignores the background noise from defenders of the past struggling system, with its current accountability program Louisiana stands a great chance of getting rewarded for its progress and the steadfastness behind it. This will make many children in the state the biggest winners of all.

LA must investigate fund use for legality, efficiency's sake

The greater the reform, the more time and effort it will take, and one step in the process of overhauling Louisiana’s incredibly inefficient long-term health care system should begin with discovering the proper disposition of investment gains from a key health care account.

Last week, the former head of the state’s Office of Citizens with Developmental Disabilities Bruce Blaney, who now runs a nonprofit agency, called for an investigation into the disbursal of funds from the state’s Medicaid Trust Fund for the Elderly. The account holds funds for eventual disbursement to Medicaid providers, and the balances before being used are invested.

Blaney claims that these earnings, in the neighborhood of $50 million annually, should be apportioned so that two-thirds go for nursing home reimbursement and a third to reimbursement of home- and community-based providers. Instead, he asserts that it all may have gone to nursing homes, a violation of an agreement between the state and federal government that was providing funds. Not only does the former head of the overseeing department, Health and Hospitals, confirm this split, but written documentation of it exists, in the form of a letter signed by both state and federal officials.

However, the current overseer of the fund insists that the agreement lapsed with the end of Gov. Mike Foster’s second term. But unless the letter specifically states this, that seems an incredulous interpretation. Blaney has asked the Legislature to look into this, arguing that perhaps $200 million or more was misallocated over the past several years as a result of this. At the very least, something like the Legislative Audit Advisory Council needs to investigate this before the end of the year.

Bolstering Blaney’s claim is that lobbying by the nursing home industry in 2003 tried to get a constitutional amendment adopted that would have dedicated all funds to the industry’s reimbursements. Why would this be necessary unless it was generally understood that the division as described in the letter was in place?

But if Legislature does not act, or it does and finds the facts do support Blaney’s view and it then does not provide redress, then those supporting the integrity of the agreement need to go further and bring suit against the state. Perhaps knowledge of this may focus the Legislature, which has a notorious bias on favor of institutionalizing care of the resource-poor elderly and of the disabled.

That bias is indicated already in many ways, such as by the extremely favorable funding formula that, years ago, was costing the state almost $100 million extra a year according to the Legislative Auditor (and which could be much higher now) which rather than changing, the Legislature subsequently put into law. Also, the Legislature has tolerated giving the industry $20 million a year for empty beds.

Some recent favorable signs have been coming that the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration, facing huge potential future budget deficits in part caused by Medicaid spending, is ready to stop the gravy train for institutions in the area of long-term care. It needs to add this resource to its efforts to increase efficient use of taxpayer dollars in this policy area, a move that likely will improve care and quality of life for program clients.