"Shopping" for schools isn't a good metaphor

In this week's Crossroads section, the Journal Sentinel hosted another community issues round table discussion, this time about K-12 education. Interestingly, this week one invited guest at the round table was unable to attend, so he was given room to write his own editorial. Brother Bob Smith, President of Messmer Catholic Schools, has this to say about K-12 education:

[The] Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. . . is one of the jewels of our city and state and is talked about and replicated in cities, states and countries around the world. . . This is one of the few times in life in which people with little money can go into a store full of school options and pick what is best for their child. This provides the poor with the same educational choices as the rich. [Emphasis mine.]

The school choice program does indeed open up many options for low-income students, but unfortunately there is no such "store." Parents cannot get information about their private school options anywhere other than the 124 independently run schools themselves. The only place they can even get a list of all the participating schools by grade level and religion is from the Public Policy Forum. And that's about all the information we can provide them. Any parent hoping to get information about student achievement, graduation rates, curriculum, or even after-school programs had better gas up or get a bus pass because these schools are located all across the city. Which means Brother Bob is reaching when he says, "Around Wisconsin, [the voucher program] is parallel to open enrollment for public schools."

Parents interested in open enrollment can simply visit the state's schooling information website to view, and compare, data on all of Wisconsin's public schools, including charter schools. Parents interested in private schooling are not offered this convenience. In fact, over a year ago PAVE, one of the original voucher program proponents, began, for the first time since the program started in 1990, an initiative to collect and disseminate private school information in a parent-friendly way. That effort has since been abandoned.

The result of this opacity? A greater burden on low-income parents. When Brother Bob says the poor have the same educational choices as the rich, he's only half right. The poor could have the same options as the rich, if they knew what they were. In reality, the rich have many more options, mainly because the opportunity costs for them to research schools are much lower. The poor, we have found via survey work, depend on word-of-mouth referrals when choosing schools. Thus, we end up with a choice program in which nearly a third of the schools enroll 99% or more voucher students. Or, in other words, schools that no rich students have chosen.

"Slow train coming"

On April 3rd, 2007, history was made. On that day, a French TGV train set a new world speed record of 357 MPH, smashing the old mark of 320 MPH set in 1990.

Meanwhile, we may just be setting a record of our own here in Milwaukee County. After 16 years of debate, Milwaukee County, the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin Center District, and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce still have not agreed on how to spend $91 million in federal funds to improve our transit infrastructure.

Jeffrey F. Kober, President of Oak Creek manufacturer Milwaukee Composites Inc., can be counted as those not impressed by Milwaukee's inaction. He wrote the following in response to an editorial by Frank Jandt, editor of Mass Transit magazine.

"Fred, I passionately share your viewpoint on the poor state of transit affairs in our mutual home state of Wisconsin. I am embarrassed at how Milwaukee has completely mismanaged the $91 million fund during the last decade.

I operate a rapidly growing transit vehicle component manufacturing company located in the Milwaukee area and we provide good quality jobs for all our employees. All the jobs we provide have been created by the increasing demand of mass transit bus and railcar projects underway in most if not all other cities of comparable size to Milwaukee throughout North America. We also export our products to Korea and China to serve their growing commitment to mass transit railcar and bus projects.

While the rest of the world embraces mass transit, Milwaukee truly needs to recognize that the time for a serious commitment to transit is upon us. The proven benefits of transit are strong and clear. Milwaukee leaders need to end their political posturing and gather a community together to formulate an organized transit plan for the betterment of the community."

Maybe it's time for the City and County to sit down together and iron out their differences on how best to use the $91 million. It's been 16 years, after all. Otherwise, perhaps they should think about giving the money back to the federal government. There are other cities that can make a decision.

State budgets as policy documents

As Rep. Frank Lasee notes this week, Wisconsin's biennial budget, as proposed by the Governor, included several substantive policy provisions. Now that the budget is in the hands of the legislature's Joint Finance Committee, other substantive provisions could be added. Rep. Lasee points out correctly that:

"Governors (or legislators) who want bills to pass without having them considered individually amend them to the budget bill. Once it is under the umbrella of the budget bill (“under the Christmas tree” as some people call it), it is very difficult to get it removed. People are generally more worried about the big ticket items in the budget and let the minor amendments pass without as much review."

Including substantive policy in the budget makes it nearly impossible for the proposed policy to receive its own public hearing for debate of its merits. Did you know Milwaukee's private school voucher program was created via the state budget process? When searching the legislative history of that program as research for our book, we were amazed to discover that no public hearing was held on the topic of private school vouchers.

But not every state operates in this manner. Colorado, for instance, has a constitutional requirement that the "long bill" (as their budget bill is known) contain only appropriations and no substantive law or policy. In addition, the long bill is drafted by the nonpartisan staff of the legislature's Joint Budget Committee, which makes it easier to keep substantive policy proposals out. (Note, also, that the JBC receives a draft budget from the governor, but is under no obligation to use it as a starting point.)

Thus, in Colorado and other similar states, proposed policies are debated on their own merits and the resulting appropriations are made within an appropriations bill. Importantly, the Colorado constitution also forbids appropriations bills from containing more than one subject, which further prevents the occurrence of Wisconsin-style political slights-of-hand.

Lasee's suggested solution to Wisconsin's partisan budgeting process is for his colleagues simply not to pass a budget...in his words, "If we cannot pass a budget we would be proud to take back to the constituents that elected us, we should not pass a budget at all." Colorado's budget process isn't without problems (transparency being one) but it illustrates a different, more productive, way of approaching the problem Rep. Lasee points out.

A Lesson from the Quiet Company

Northwestern Mutual (NML), Milwaukee's second largest corporation (112th largest in the United States), is highlighted in a recent Wall Street Journal article as possibly the only company in corporate American that invites a small group of policyholders to evaluate the company and issue an annual report. According to Ed Zore, NML CEO, every year the company brings in four or five policyholders to pour over books and meet with senior management. Mr. Zore states:

"...they come up with ideas for us that are usually pretty helpful on how we can improve the business. It keeps us on our toes because we know every year we're going to have some new people that come in and we've got to explain to them all we do and how we do it. They always challenge us..."

The public sector could learn something from NML. Why not invite a few taxpayers into some of our large public institutions to kick the tires, interview department heads and issue an annual report. Essentially, this is what was recommended by the Public Policy Forum in last year's report on City of Milwaukee economic development efforts. The recommendation was to have the city "submit a comprehensive annual report on economic development progress to the common council, the mayor, and general public." After all, why spend $100 million per year on economic development if we don't know what we're getting out of our investment.

Just this month, the City of Milwaukee Department of City Development published its first annual report. It provides details on jobs created and retained, number of housing units created, private dollars leveraged and amount public support. To make future annual reports more robust it may be beneficial to include performance comparisons with previous years and other peer cities along with notes on any progress made on strategic goals.

Like at NML, where policyholders annually challenge upper management to prove their worth, it may be time for us taxpayers to annually challenge our governments to report measurable and strategic results.

Social experiments as good public policy

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced a new privately-funded program aimed at moving families out of poverty. The program, Opportunity NYC, is being called a conditional cash transfer program. The basic gist is that participating families will work toward a series of goals and will receive cash bimonthly for each goal they meet. After a year a family could earn up to $5,000.

It will be interesting to see how this program is received. Most of the goals are short-term (school attendance, doctor and dentist visits, job training activities), but it is long-term planning and goal setting that will be the key to truly lifting these families out of poverty, I would guess. It's not clear how many years the families will be in the program, nor how long they anticipate the funding will last. Opportunity NYC is modeled on a cash transfer program in Mexico that has been shown to be effective. Whether small cash rewards provide the same incentive in New York City as they do in Mexico is yet unknown.

The most encouraging thing about this program, however, is that it is designed with a built-in evaluation, so that its effectiveness can be analyzed scientifically. (There will be a comparable control group of families who will work toward the goals but not receive the cash.) If a government is going to try a new and innovative program, even if it is privately funded, ensuring there will be a rigorous evaluation is important. If it works and is cost-effective, great...bring it to scale. If it doesn't, it is unfortunate, but better to know than to expose even more families to it.

This is a lesson Milwaukee and Wisconsin should learn. Innovation in public policy can be desirable, but without evaluation from the get-go, we don't know whether we should invest more or try another option. It shouldn't matter whether the innovation is publicly or privately funded; taxpayers want to know they are making wise investments just as much as foundation officers do. Evaluating after several years and even more millions are spent is not good public policy. . . no matter what the results of the underlying program turn out to be.

Capital Project Audits Show Continuing Problems

The City of Milwaukee’s Comptroller Office released its audit of the Canal Street expansion project. The audit was requested by Alderman Murphy in order to determine why the project cost millions of dollars more than was originally projected. The audit determined that the City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works (DPW) had never provided an accurate cost estimate of the entire project.

The most disturbing part of the audit is that many of the recommendations to improve the capital project planning process were made four years ago in the comptroller’s audit of the 3rd District Police Station project. These recommendations include the development of better cost estimation procedures; a cohesive system for monitoring and reporting capital projects; and a comprehensive project budgeting system rather than separate budgets for different project components.

The city is currently involved in a very large, expensive capital project: the City Hall restoration. According to DPW and the Department of Administration, the process for this project is going much more smoothly and is in accordance with some of the comptroller’s recommendations. Hopefully, these mechanisms will keep the city’s capital projects in check.

Are you your own worst enemy?

The Business Journal recently reported the findings from an Aurora Health Care public health survey ("Violence cited as top city health problem.")

Violence was stated as the city of Milwaukee’s top health problem followed by alcohol and drug use and chronic disease. The article states 58% of those surveyed felt violence was one of the 3 biggest health issues Milwaukee faces. However, obesity-related diseases, such as heart disease and cancer, are the main concern of insurance companies (Fischer, 2007). So what should one be more concerned about in Milwaukee? Violence or chronic disease? The answer may depend upon your age group.


The Wisconsin Interactive Statistics on Health from the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services allows users to query for the most prevalent causes of mortality in our seven county area. The data from the graph above suggests people’s fears of violence as a health concern may be warranted if you are young. Ages 15-29 are more likely to be killed by violence versus cancer or heart disease, and they are even more likely to die in an accident.

There may be several reasons why more people in the survey feared violence versus chronic disease. The immediate danger of someone being the victim of a criminal act may be more frightening than the prolonged danger of developing a chronic disease. Lets say you were to put a person in a room with a serial killer and a doughnut; chances are your test subject would be much more fearful of the murderer. However, in the real world we are more likely to be tempted by junk food versus chased by violent criminals. It may be that people are more fearful of what others may do to them versus what they may do to themselves. Also, media attention to violence may instill fear among viewers more so than warnings about lifestyle habits leading to certain chronic diseases. Often times the six o'clock news will show a crime scene with victims being hauled off in body bags or stretchers, but they often do not show the actual victims of chronic disease fatalities.

Also check out the national odds of dying of certain diseases and injuries.