Month: July 2024

Hear the School Choice Stories

Speakers: 

Kelley Paul, author and wife, Sen. Rand Paul
Jenean Hampton, KY Lt Gov 2015-19
Walter Blanks Jr, American Federation for Children
Ashley Cornwell, concerned Warren County parent.

September 24 @ 6:30 p.m.
Hilton Garden Inn 1020 Wilkinson Trace

You Are Invited! 

By Mark Doggett

Nobody seems happy with public education these days. Teachers, parents, students, and employers are all upset, but for different reasons.

Teachers say there are too many problems in the classrooms, and they don’t make enough money. Combining state, local, and federal dollars, Kentucky spends about $34,000 per student on education, about average compared to other states. I support teacher pay increases. But there’s little evidence just spending more money leads to better student outcomes.

Only 45% of students are proficient in reading. Less than a third are proficient in math. Yet these students are graduating. Teachers are no longer allowed to fail students. If I’m going to pay more, I want better results.

Parents found out what their kids are learning during COVID, and it doesn’t match their expectations. Dr. Gary Houchens raised the warning flag when he stated, “since 2017, the number of students participating in nonpublic education has increased by 20,000, a growth of more than 26%. Students in nonpublic schools now represent more than 15% of the state’s student body.” (Courier Journal August 15, 2022).

At the national level, the exodus from public schools is estimated between 1.4 to 2 million. Some of this is attributed to demographic factors, but parent dissatisfaction is a significant portion.

Students spend too much time on their devices and too little time learning. WKU President Caboni in January 2023 acknowledged that less than 50% of graduating high school students are interested in pursuing higher education.

The perception of education’s value is important.  We read stories of students graduating who are functionally illiterate. The National Center for Educational Statistics found that 40% of students entering post-secondary schools have not earned a credential eight years later.

Employers need workers. But the boss expects them to show up. The Society for Human Resource management estimates that one-third of companies have eliminated requirements for college degrees. Firms now state they value experience over education. Dr. Aaron Hughey said, “If a student can acquire – and be successful – in a job they could have secured without going to college, then we have a system that is inherently flawed” (Courier Journal January 5, 2023).

The current state of education is like the U.S. auto industry of the early 80s. Automakers thought mass production would ensure success, even with poor quality. Inflated graduation rates are like the automotive production line. Get as many students through with as few dropouts as possible. Take their money. Give them a piece of paper.

Instead, let’s prompt both high graduate rates  and high academic standards. High standards mean both teachers and students must be accountable. This will result in more failures, which is of course unacceptable in a mass production environment.

Public institutions know their quality is not improving. Parents and students are choosing other options. Let’s hope educators see the light as the U.S. automakers did and again produce high quality.

Mark Doggett, PHD

About Mark

Mark Doggett is a professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Western Kentucky University.

By Eric Tuttle

In 1966, Congressman William Widnall quipped, “An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.”  A stunning example is Governor Beshear’s recently announced efforts to address the rental housing shortage.

According to the governor’s office, the state will invest $223 million to build 953 affordable rental units in communities impacted by the 2021 tornadoes.  Half of this funding is in direct subsidies, and the other half in low-cost, tax-exempt bonds.

The program will support 11 projects across Graves, Hopkins, Christian, and Warren Counties targeting low- and moderate-income households. Units will be mostly 2 to 3 bedrooms, with some 4- and single-bedroom units.

Based on these figures, Beshear’s plan will cost taxpayers $234,000 thousand dollars per unit.

In comparison, in Bowling Green, there is a well-appointed, newly built apartment building with 16 units (2 to 4 bedroom)  available for $2.1 million – or $131,000 per unit.  This complex is not low-income housing, but apartments targeted at young families. So, if a normal rental property is valued at $130,000 per unit, how can a taxpayer-funded program warrant a cost of $274,000 per unit? 

One need only look at the governors donor list, for an explanation.  The state chamber of commerce and builders’ associations are significant donors to all our elected state officials, including the governor. 

In communities like Bowling Green the biggest obstacle to economic growth is affordable housing.  But as with any voter driven issue, the opportunity for corporate largess and government abuse is high.  Various governmental and quasi-governmental organizations have allocated monies for the construction of low-cost housing but have left the method of use up to our governor.

Beshear is using this opportunity to play Santa Claus. He gets great press, and the builders, who will help fund his next election campaign (whatever office he seeks next), receive projects that will bring great profit and little risk since each project is underwritten with our tax dollars. Sadly, too many Kentuckians will celebrate the outcome without understanding the real cost.

Another solution would be to only use direct capital subsidies to encourage the building of low-income housing, without entirely underwriting every project.  These capital subsidies can take several forms, but generally they reduce the amount that must be borrowed or obtained through a loan from a bank to develop a rental property because a capital subsidy does not need to be paid back.

By using a 40% subsidy model in conjunction with $130,000 per unit from Bowling Green (that’s 52,000 per unit in subsidy) and using the $100 million in direct funding that has been allocated,1900 units could be built. These units could be operated at least 35% below the current average cost of a rental of the same size. So, a 1 to 2 bedroom low income rental would be $550 to $800 a month. 

The scenario above outlines one of many possible solutions to the housing crisis. Unfortunately, our governor is more interested in his own special interests – than the public good.

Eric Tuttle is co-founder of Warren County Conservatives.

By Gary Houchens

Lawmakers in Louisiana recently made headlines and invoked hysterics from the “separation of church and state” crowd by mandating that the Ten Commandments be displayed in the classrooms of all K-12 and public universities. The law is, like similar laws in the past, probably headed straight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hopefully with a conservative majority, the Court will see the wisdom in what Louisiana’s brave lawmakers have attempted to do: remind students that America’s political culture was not born in a secular vacuum but is the product of a long history of ideas that prominently includes the moral values of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition.

I’m old enough to remember when Kentuckians had their own battle over the Ten Commandments. In 1978 Kentucky adopted a similar law mandating that the Commandments be displayed in classrooms. That law was eventually overturned in a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

The dissenting Justices clearly saw what Louisiana’s leaders also see: that making sure every student is aware of the Ten Commandments is not an attempt to indoctrinate them into a specific religious belief. As evangelism, such an effort would be clumsy and ineffective. The Ten Commandments law is, rather, about forming students with an accurate historical understanding of the American system of government and its patrimony.

This is what the opponents of Louisiana’s law miss, and their ignorance is evident in their claims that lawmakers could just as well mandate that various documents or teachings of other religions, including Satanism, be displayed in classrooms.

But those other religious teachings or documents do not have the same kind of direct, historical significance for the United States. The ideas that formed the American founding were a product of Christian civilization, which was itself a synthesis of ideas from Greece, Rome, and, yes, Jerusalem. The Jewish religious tradition provided the moral and theological foundation of Christian belief, which, as it spread to dominate European culture, gave birth to the very ideas secular liberals take for granted as fundamental to our way of life.

Above all, the idea of the dignity of the individual simply did not exist as we understand it today until Judeo-Christian moral values took hold in late antiquity. Historian Tom Holland documents this process in his 2019 book, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, cataloging the vast number of ways in which the modern world as we know it could not exist without the Christendom that preceded it.

Dominion was not an attempt at evangelism. Holland was not a Christian at the time he wrote the book, although now it appears he may be regularly attending church, in part because of what he discovered in his studies: that human rights, republican democracy and other values we take for granted are inextricably intertwined with the teachings of Judeo-Christianity.

Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law, like Kentucky’s before it, does not infringe on any student’s right to believe whatever they choose about any religion. But it does recognize that students need to know the history of their government, and the civilization from which it emerged, and the religious ideas that informed it. Displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms is a good start on that broader, and necessary, educational goal.

Gary Houchens is director of the educational leadership doctoral program at Western Kentucky University. From 2016-2019 he served on the Kentucky Board of Education.