Looming Population Decline?

November 3rd, 2011 by Eric Cochling
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For those concerned about overpopulation, news that we’ve surpassed seven billion people on the planet may seem like additional cause for alarm. However, if you dig into the numbers, you find that dramatic population decline may be just over the horizon in many parts of the world given current trends – and “developed” countries are likely to be hardest hit.

This article points out that in countries like India and China, where you might think population growth is very strong, the reality is much different. This is particularly true for China, where a government enforced one-child policy has decimated the young female population and contributed to the aging and elderly becoming the fastest growing demographic – not an enviable position for any country to be in.

While fertility rates in the US remain slightly above the replacement rate of 2.1, the decline in fertility continues here much as it does across the industrialized world, where most countries are facing a dramatic fertility decline.

In this interview, Brad Wilcox, Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, points out that while lower fertility rates may have a short-term positive impact on the economy (because adults are free to work harder in the economy instead of raising children), the long term impact is a different story:

In the short term, this demographic dividend can work out brilliantly, as the East Asian miracle attests. But in the long term, this dividend can turn into a demographic liability as birth rates fall well below replacement and a society ceases to produce enough people to work in the economy and pay for the welfare state. This is what is now happening in Japan, and a similar fate may befall other leading economies in the region — from Taiwan to South Korea.

The phenomenon that Wilcox describes can be seen in the US baby boom following World War II that preceded the economic surge in the US economy during the 1980s and 90s. At the same time as the Baby Boomers entered their most productive economic years, they were also having far fewer children than their parents did, leaving much more time for the careers that were driving the economy. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view of things), the Boomers set in motion a general fertility decline in the US that continues until today.

Wilcox goes on to point out that the current pressures on major government programs in the US (like Medicare and Social Security) are largely the result of that fertility decline. At this point we have far fewer people paying into these programs (relative to beneficiaries) than we once did, which is impacting their solvency. As fertility rates decline further, the pressure will only grow worse unless the programs are changed significantly to reduce the benefits offered or the number of people who qualify.

While increasing the US fertility rate is also a solution, it’s difficult to imagine reversing our current trajectory. Our culture has come to value personal autonomy and career advancement above the duties required of child bearing. While we’re still having children, we’re waiting much longer to have them (roughly five years later on average than in the 1970s) and when we do start having children, we have considerably fewer than our grandparents did.

Indeed, it seems that we’re approaching a crossroads where the perceived short-term personal benefit of having fewer children will have to be reconciled with the reality of a long-term declining and less prosperous nation as a whole.

My hope is that we can reconcile the competing views before the situation becomes dire. And, when we do, I hope we come down on the side of more human life rather than less.

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Occupy Atlanta and Representative Government

November 2nd, 2011 by Joseph M. Knippenberg
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I have been following the Occupy movements with some interest, especially since the Occupiers criticize, among other things, the “unrepresentative” character of American government in the name of the 99% (of which I am one small, insignificant part).

Occupy Atlanta garnered all sorts of national publicity when the city’s mayor, Kasim Reed, decided that the time had come to evict the Occupiers from Woodruff Park.  Some noted the apparent irony of an African-American mayor, who was in some sense the heir of a successful civil rights movement, ordering the police to take action against those who were “sitting in” on behalf of the rights they claimed.  Here’s how one protest spokeswoman put it:

Group spokeswoman La’ Die Mansfield said at an 11 a.m. press conference that they are a group dedicated to “peaceful and lawful protest and we will continue to do so.”

“We are an occupying protest, so we are going to continue to occupy Atlanta,” she said.

State Senator Vincent Fort, arrested along with the Occupiers, had this to say:

“He’s using all these resources … This is the most peaceful place in Georgia,” Fort said, referring to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. “At the urging of the business community, he’s moving people out. Shame on him.”

I, on the other hand, think it was a great act of forbearance for the mayor to leave Woodruff Park “occupied” for so long.  People do indeed have a First Amendment right to protest, but the Supreme Court has long recognized that these rights are subject to neutral “time, place, and manner” regulations.  A rule is a rule is a rule, and there was no reason not to enforce it against Occupy Atlanta.  Living in a decent society requires that we treat one another civilly, even as we disagree.  Rules prohibiting the kind of occupation we experienced over the past few weeks are intended to protect that civility and mutual respect.

Now, the Occupiers might respond that the rules are made at the behest of and on behalf of the 1%, while they speak for the 99%,  Consider this strident critique of Kasim Reed and, indeed, of all of his predecessors in the mayor’s office:

Nobody should doubt that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is firmly in the pocket of the one percent. It’s old news. It’s a choice he and leaders of the local black misleadership class made more than a generation ago. The clique of black political leaders who came to power with Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson in 1973, and who still hold sway today, have never been friends or advocates of black or white working people. Though they owed, and still owe their offices, careers and personal fortunes to the political victories won by the Freedom Movement, Atlanta’s black misleadership class has rarely, if ever, lined up with black and working people when it came to economic justice….

The current mayor is firmly within the tradition of his predecessors. Kasim Reed is a corporate lawyer for the rich and racist, a man who has never fought for, or believed in, justice for ordinary people.

The problem, of course, is that the current spokesmen for the 99% are self-appointed.  No one elected them; they just showed up and made claims on behalf of a group defined by nothing other than its relative wealth.  As I said earlier, I’m part of the 99% and they most certainly don’t speak for me.

Of course this claim is just a rhetorical device.  They simply aspire to rally as many people as they can against the very wealthy, who are said to dominate the political system.   But in making the claim, they raise and very inadequately answer an interesting question: our government is supposed to operate in accordance with a system of representation, but if, as they say, it doesn’t work, what are we supposed to do?  Many of us actually voted for our current officeholders, or at least participated in elections where they were chosen.  Are our votes illegitimate because we’re victims of “false consciousness” or because our choices were conditioned by the resources of the very wealthy?  The Occupiers would seem to think so.  But, as I said, they seem to have appointed themselves.  They can be “legitimate” only if they speak “more authentically” for “the people.”

Needless to say, such a claim is even more problematical than any election in which I’ve ever participated.  It throws out the possibility of any sort of selection procedure in which “the people’ are actually consulted.  Instead, we’d have as our representatives those who know better than we do what’s good for us.

Thanks, but no thanks.  “Democracy,” Winston Churchill is said to have said, “is the worst form of government…except for all the others.”  Amen to that.

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The Global Financial Crisis: A Religious Perspective

October 25th, 2011 by Joseph M. Knippenberg
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Because the Roman Catholic Church has a longer and more distinguished tradition of serious reflection on social, political, and economic issues than does any other Christian denomination, and because its statements are influential even among non-Catholics, the recent “Note on Reform of the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority” from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace is worth a careful examination.

Early reactions to the document fall along more or less predictable lines.  According to the New York Times, one liberal Catholic theologian was quick to identify the Church’s teaching with the Occupy Wall Street movement:

“It’s clear the Vatican stands with the Occupy Wall Street protesters and others struggling to return ethics and good governance to a financial sector grown out of control after 30 years of deregulation.”

Others are more critical of the document, observing, first, that its principles don’t stray from traditional Catholic social teaching and, second, that its analysis hews closely to conventional economic thinking.

From my point of view (closer to the latter than to the former reaction), the Note’s most compelling passages invoke the first principles of Roman Catholic social teaching and its least compelling passages attempt to show how those principles can be put into practice.  The document contains a critique of liberal individualism for which I have a great deal of sympathy:

What has driven the world in such a problematic direction for its economy and also for peace?

First and foremost, an economic liberalism that spurns rules and controls. Economic liberalism is a theoretical system of thought, a form of “economic apriorism” that purports to derive laws for how markets function from theory, these being laws of capitalistic development, while exaggerating certain aspects of markets. An economic system of thought that sets down a priori the laws of market functioning and economic development, without measuring them against reality, runs the risk of becoming an instrument subordinated to the interests of the countries that effectively enjoy a position of economic and financial advantage.…

In his social encyclical, Benedict XVI precisely identified the roots of a crisis that is not only economic and financial but above all moral in nature. In fact, as the Pontiff notes, to function correctly the economy needs ethics; and not just of any kind but one that is people-centred. He goes on to denounce the role played by utilitarianism and individualism and the responsibilities of those who have adopted and promoted them as the parameters for the optimal behaviour of all economic and political agents who operate and interact in the social context….

Recognizing the primacy of being over having and of ethics over the economy, the world’s peoples ought to adopt an ethic of solidarity as the animating core of their action. This implies abandoning all forms of petty selfishness and embracing the logic of the global common good which transcends merely contingent, particular interests. In a word, they ought to have a keen sense of belonging to the human family which means sharing the common dignity of all human beings: “Even prior to the logic of a fair exchange of goods and the forms of justice appropriate to it, there exists something which is due to man because he is man, by reason of his lofty dignity.”

In 1991, after the failure of Marxist communism, Blessed John Paul II had already warned of the risk of an “idolatry of the market, an idolatry which ignores the existence of goods which by their nature are not and cannot be mere commodities.” Today his warning needs to be heeded without delay and a road must be taken that is in greater harmony with the dignity and transcendent vocation of the person and the human family.

At the level of prophetic witness, I’m happy to embrace this not-quite-ringing reminder of our common humanity, of the primacy of the human good, and of the nature of the market as one among many mere instruments for the promotion of human flourishing.  There is a created moral order to which we all belong.

Where I hesitate is endorsing the call for global political institutions to regulate that universal moral order.  Perhaps it’s my Protestant emphasis on our sinfulness and fallibility that leads me to worry about giving power to institutions that are so distant from the ordinary levers of human control.  Or perhaps it’s my experience of the United Nations, hardly an encouraging example of political and fiscal self-restraint and modulated moral judgment.

To be sure, the Vatican document is replete with calls for gradualism in the establishment of this new international institution and invocations of the traditional Roman Catholic principle of subsidiarity, of leaving responsibility to the level of authority that is closest to the people who are to be served.  Perhaps in practice there’s no difference between the Vatican’s recommendations and my hesitations.

But, considering this passage, I doubt it:

Paul VI emphasized the revolutionary power of “forward-looking imagination” that can perceive the possibilities inscribed in the present and guide people towards a new future. By freeing his imagination, man frees his existence. Through an effort of community imagination, it is possible to transform not only institutions but also lifestyles and encourage a better future for all peoples.Modern States became structured wholes over time and reinforced sovereignty within their own territory. But social, cultural and political conditions have gradually changed. Their interdependence has grown – so it has become natural to think of an international community that is integrated and increasingly ruled by a shared system – but a worse form of nationalism has lingered on, according to which the State feels it can achieve the good of its own citizens in a self-sufficient way.

Today all of this seems anachronistic and surreal, and all the nations, great or small, together with their governments, are called to go beyond the “state of nature” which would keep States in a never-ending struggle with one another. Globalization, despite some of its negative aspects, is unifying peoples more and prompting them to move towards a new “rule of law” on the supranational level, supported by a more intense and fruitful collaboration. With dynamics similar to those that put an end in the past to the “anarchical” struggle between rival clans and kingdoms with regard to the creation of national states, today humanity needs to be committed to the transition from a situation of archaic struggles between national entities, to a new model of a more cohesive, polyarchic international society that respects every people’s identity within the multifaceted riches of a single humanity. Such a passage, which is already timidly under way, would ensure the citizens of all countries – regardless of their size or power – peace and security, development, and free, stable and transparent markets. As John Paul II warns us, “Just as the time has finally come when in individual States a system of private vendetta and reprisal has given way to the rule of law, so too a similar step forward is now urgently needed in the international community.”Time has come to conceive of institutions with universal competence, now that vital goods shared by the entire human family are at stake, goods which the individual States cannot promote and protect by themselves.

My worry about these supranational institutions is that they are irresponsible in both the political and the moral sense.  The “masters of the universe” (Tom Wolfe’s phrase) who populate them are little different from the Wall Street financiers it is so easy now to deprecate.  And, I fear, the more cosmopolitan they are, the less rooted they will be in any genuine community that can call them to account.  If we genuinely care about character, virtue, and responsibility, we have to ask which institutions are most likely to serve as their seedbeds.

The answer, I’d bet, is that there’s generally an inverse relationship between size and scope, on the one side, and success in cultivating character, on the other.  Edmund Burke’s little platoons would be likeliest to be the most morally salubrious.  We should look to families, churches, and local communities to promote human decency and, with it, human flourishing.  Perhaps if we got that right, we could begin to have some confidence in the supranational institutions.  Or perhaps if we got that right, we’d have less need of them.

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Religious Freedom and the Regulatory State

October 13th, 2011 by Joseph M. Knippenberg
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As we ask (to put it perhaps too nicely) more and more of our governments, their regulatory reach extends further and further.  When we insist that governments care for the needy, for example, they almost inevitably do so on their terms, with instrumentalities suited for their purposes.  At some point it becomes a matter of governmental grace that faith-based charitable organizations that may seek to cooperate with public authorities in fulfilling their missions are permitted to do so in a manner faithful to those missions.  The same consideration might apply to the tax-exempt status that enables these organizations to solicit contributions from private donors.  (If you think this concern is far-fetched, just consider the arguments of the dissenters in the recent Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization decision.)

Of course, our Constitution does have a First Amendment that guarantees the free exercise of religion, but there are real questions as to where free exercise begins and government regulation ends.  The Supreme Court will consider one area of limitation when it hears oral arguments this Wednesday (October 5th) in the Hosanna-Tabor case, about which I blogged a few months ago.

At issue here is the scope of the ministerial exception from otherwise generally applicable laws, an exemption carved out by courts in recognition of the Free Exercise clause.  If governments can supervise and second-guess the terms on which churches and other religious organizations employ their ministers (or those who exercise ministerial functions), and if governments can decide who does and does not qualify as a minister, then religious freedom has been very seriously abridged.

Particularly troubling in this context is the position taken by the Obama Administration, which argues, against the position taken by virtually every major religious denomination, that, in the words of one scholar, “there is no general ministerial exception.”  As he puts it, ”the Administration takes a position more hostile to religious freedom than the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which acknowledge the ministerial exception in their amicus brief but argue that it should not apply to cases in which the alleged discrimination or retaliation is unrelated to religion.”  The Obama Administration seems to think that the freedom of religious organizations is adequately protected by our associational rights under the First Amendment.  Religion, in other words, is not special, but merely a form of association.  And associations are subject to all sorts of governmental regulation.

In conclusion, I’ll again quote the aforementioned scholar, law professor Michael Moreland:

[I]nstead of a constitutional limitation on the power of the state to interfere in the ministerial employment decisions of religious bodies and rooted in nine centuries of Western political theory, the Administration’s view implies that such freedom–in those rare instances where it exists at all–is merely the provisional outcome of weighing the state’s anti-discrimination interest against a religious institution’s right to expressive association.

Stay tuned.  I’ll have more to say after the oral arguments and then again after the Court hands down its decision.

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Professorial Salaries Too High?

September 9th, 2011 by Joseph M. Knippenberg
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In a rather breathless article in the Sunday paper, the AJC informs us that lots and lots of faculty and administrators in the University System of Georgia make lots and lots of money.  The implication is that while everyone else in the state is tightening their belts, folks in the colleges and universities are continuing to act as if they hadn’t heard of the Great Recession(s).

From where I sit (nowhere near my well-paid colleagues in the University System), the AJC reporters write as if they had never taken ECON 101.

While there may be some faculty and administrators who are underworked and overpaid, there’s a whole lot more to the story than that simple and simplistic implication.  Consider, for example, the list of the top ten best paid University System employees (unfortunately not available in the online version of the story): three are college presidents (two of whom make it because of deferred compensation), six teach at Georgia Health Sciences University (the former Medical College of Georgia), and one is a business professor.  Stated another way, seven of the top ten best-paid people in the University System teach in fields where there is a very competitive job market outside of higher education.  If you’re going to attract and retain the talented people needed to train the very good people who work in those fields, you have to offer salaries roughly comparable to what they’d make in private industry.  I say “roughly comparable,” because—obviously—there are some elements of life in a university setting that might compensate for a somewhat lower salary.  But, still, when you have people who can command extremely high salaries on the other side of the ivy-covered walls, you may have to pay a premium to keep them.

This argument covers professors in business, engineering, information technology, law, and medicine, and perhaps a few other fields.  The rest of us, especially in the humanities and social sciences, don’t have as obvious a market for our skills outside the university setting.  (I jokingly tell my students that, but for the required courses I teach, I’d be otherwise unemployable.  And my wife sometimes jokingly tells me that she wishes I were a “real doctor.”)

And then there are the college and university presidents.  Do you think that CEOs of institutions with billion dollar budgets ought to make significantly less than $600 or $700 thousand dollars a year?  If so, then the presidents of Georgia Tech and UGA are overpaid.  Other $100 million plus budgets in the University System include Georgia State, Georgia Health Sciences University, Georgia Southern, Valdosta State, Kennesaw State, University of West Georgia, and Georgia Perimeter College.  Surely some of these budgets are too high and contain some proverbial, waste, fraud, and mismanagement, but I wouldn’t pay good CEOs of such big institutions peanuts.

But let me make something else very clear.  Over the past few decades, a significant portion of the growth in higher education has been on the administrative, as opposed to the faculty, side of things.   The teeth to tail ratio hasn’t changed for the better (at least from the vantage point of every faculty member with whom I have ever interacted).  There are many reasons for this—the increasing costs that follow from complying with increasingly intrusive regulations; the growth in the “university relations” (PR and fundraising) offices; the ever more elaborate student affairs divisions; and, generally, the self-perpetuating nature of bureaucracies, to name just a few.  As these branches of college and university administrations grow, it becomes more and more plausible that those who supervise ever larger numbers of “direct reports” should claim six-figure salaries for themselves.

Returning to the article that occasioned these reflections, I’d want a lot more information before I jumped to any conclusions.  For example, how many of the 4,300 people in the University System earning over $100,000 are professors in the aforementioned “expensive” fields?  How many occupy administrative positions that didn’t exist a decade or two ago?  One could obviously ask the same questions about the almost 600 University System employees who earn more than $200,000.

Do we have a problem?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  From the reporting in the AJC, I can’t tell.

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Another Battle in the War over School Choice

August 19th, 2011 by Joseph M. Knippenberg
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Earlier this year, the Douglas County (Colorado) School Board enacted an exciting new school choice program, offering  scholarships worth approximately $4,600 (75% of state funding) to 500 fortunate students.  Additional scholarship applicants were put on a waiting list.

Unlike other voucher programs, aimed at low-income children attending substandard schools, the Douglas County program was offered to families in an affluent, successful school district.  The idea in this case was to control the skyrocketing cost of public education by “outsourcing” it to private providers.  While this rationale ought to be familiar to Georgians, who have for years enjoyed Tuition Equalization Grants to help defray (albeit in an increasingly small way) the cost of attending college, it is relatively novel in elementary and secondary education.   But novelty is certainly not an argument against it, as anything in these straitened times that keeps a lid on public costs ought at least to be considered.

Of course, the usual suspects have filed suit against this innovative and long-overdue program.  Oral arguments in the case were heard last week, with the ACLU and the Americans United for Separation of Church and State on one side, and the school board, the state of Colorado, and (as intervenors on behalf of several families) the Institute for Justice on the other.

The plaintiffs’ brief alleges several complaints mostly connected with the fact that families are free to spend the scholarship money at church-affiliated schools.  While this matter has been settled as a question of federal law (see Zelman v. Simmons-Harris and the recent Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization decision), at issue here are provisions of the Colorado constitution, above all this one:

Section 7. Aid to private schools, churches, sectarian purpose, forbidden.

Neither the general assembly, nor any county, city, town, township, school district or other public corporation, shall ever make any appropriation, or pay from any public fund or moneys whatever, anything in aid of any church or sectarian society, or for any sectarian purpose, or to help support or sustain  any school, academy, seminary, college, university or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any church or sectarian denomination whatsoever; nor shall any grant or donation of land, money or other personal property, ever be made by the state, or any such public corporation to any church, or for any sectarian purpose.

The courts could be guided by the arguments that have commanded majorities in the federal cases—that the money goes to the parents, not to the schools, and hence that the appropriation in question aids families, not schools.  But, needless to say, there have been plenty of judges who have been persuaded by the claim that, regardless of how it gets there, public money ends up financing religious education.

We’ll have to see how the judge rules in this case, and then await the inevitable appellate decisions.

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Faith-Based Hiring: Religious Freedom or Religious Discrimination?

August 15th, 2011 by Joseph M. Knippenberg
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President Obama has recently been under some pressure to live up to a promise he made during the 2008 campaign.  Back then, he made the following statement:

“First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help, and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion.”

As in the case of many of his other campaign statements, then-Senator Obama went for the easy soundbite rather than try to offer the kind of nuance that such an issue deserves.  His statement was popular with the secularist Left in his party and appealed to a reflexive antipathy to discrimination that many of us have.

Fortunately, however, defenders of religious hiring rights have (more than once) offered a compelling response.

Religious hiring by religious organizations is not a deviation from the great civil rights legacy of the United States but rather a distinctive and vital feature of it—vital because it protects the religious freedom of religious organizations. And religious organizations are a vital means by which religious individuals exercise their religious faith. To deny religious organizations the ability to be distinctively religious is to deny millions of Americans their unique religious voice. Religious diversity is enhanced when religious groups speak in distinctive religious voices, rather than in a coerced monotone.

To my mind, this gets matters exactly right.

Well, the President has finally spoken, albeit not in a perfectly satisfying way.

“I think that the balance we’ve tried to strike is to say that if you are offering – if you have set up a nonprofit that is disassociated from your core religious functions and is out there in the public doing all kinds of work, then you have to abide generally with the non-discrimination hiring practices,” he said. “If, on the other hand, it is closer to your core functions as a synagogue or a mosque or a church, then there may be more leeway for you to hire somebody who is a believer of that particular religious faith.”

While he has rightly declined to rescind George W. Bush’s executive order guaranteeing that faith-based government contractors have the right to take mission into account when they hire, he has muddied the waters by suggesting that there may be a distinction between “core” and peripheral (?) functions, with hiring rights guaranteed in the one case, but not in the other.  As our friend Stanley Carlson-Thies points out, this distinction is misleading and dangerous.

It is always dangerous to let the legislature or the courts decide whether some activity is closer or further from a religion’s “core functions,” so the law instead says that if the organization actually is a religious organization, then it can consider religion in hiring for any and all of its job positions, even when, as is common with faith-based social services, the organization and its employees are “out there in the public doing all kinds of work.”

If you let government decide what’s religious and what’s not, or what’s really religious and what’s only sort of religious, then your “religious freedom” is always held hostage to a decision made by a bureaucrat or a judge.

Let’s applaud the President for retaining yet another Bush-era policy that did some good, and call him to account when he waffles so as to appease his political base.

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Tuition Tax Credits and the Future of School Choice

June 6th, 2011 by Joseph M. Knippenberg
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Some time ago, I posted a quick and dirty analysis of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn.  My own longer account—presented in preliminary form as a public lecture—will have to wait until I can find the time to buff it up.  In the meantime, Notre Dame law professor Nicole Stelle Garnett has done us a tremendous service by offering an extended reflection on the importance of the decision.

Here’s the core of her argument:

The Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris should have eliminated all doubts about the constitutionality of scholarship tax credits. Indeed, the underlying claim in Winn—that Arizona’s scholarship tax credit program violated the Establishment Clause because the scholarship-distribution policies of private recipients of charitable contributions were not religion-neutral—bordered on frivolous. The claim, if taken seriously, would call into question the constitutionality of large portions of the Internal Revenue Code (as well as numerous state income tax codes) since undoubtedly the activities of many recipients of tax-free charitable donations are not religion-neutral. (Consider, for example, whether the Hillel Foundation violates the Establishment Clause by focusing its efforts on Jewish students.) The Ninth Circuit’s opinion taking the claim seriously was therefore both lawless and utterly befuddling.

Opponents of school choice undoubtedly relished the Ninth Circuit’s adventure, but their victory proved a pyrrhic one. In fact, the Winn plaintiffs’ decision to challenge Arizona’s scholarship tax credit program may well be one of the great tactical blunders in constitutional litigation history. While the defendants surely would have welcomed a clear statement rejecting the underlying Establishment Clause argument in Winn, the decision rejecting the claim on standing grounds represents a far more sweeping victory for educational choice. The Supreme Court’s holding—that Flast v. Cohen’s exception to the no-taxpayer-standing rule is inapplicable in the tax-credit context—forecloses many of the Establishment Clause nuisance suits that inevitably follow the enactment of a new school choice program. Winn also may embolden litigation-phobic state legislators to embrace scholarship tax credits. And it most certainly provides ammunition for school choice proponents who constantly face political opponents insistent on convincing policy makers and courts that school choice is unconstitutional. In other words, Winn clears a constitutional path for a dramatic expansion in school choice in the United States, a path likely to be paved in many states by scholarship tax credits.

If she’s right—and I think she is—we could see an explosion of pro-school choice legislation across the land.  While readers of this blog probably don’t need to be reminded of benefits of such programs, please indulge me as I mention a few.

First and foremost, they empower parents to live up their responsibilities.  Parents are above all responsible for the education of their children.  The more resources that are available to them, the more choices they have, the better able they’ll be to carry out these responsibilities.

Second, there’s some good evidence that the students assisted by these programs attend schools that add tremendously to the social capital in the communities in which they’re located.  A government school or program may or may not enlist the loyalties of those who participate in it.  A school where parents choose to send their children is quite likely to be the locus of family and community involvement.

Finally, there’s the argument regarding competition.  Without a captive audience, any school will have to be more responsive to the needs and wishes of parents.  I realize that one aspect of education is that there’s a massive difference between students and consumers.  By definition, students can’t always be right.  But, all things being equal, parents care more about the good of their children than teachers do of their students.  (I mean no disrespect to teachers in saying this: if I didn’t care more about the good of my two children than about that of the 75 or so students I teach each semester, I’d be a monster.)  And in the elementary and secondary setting, there’s a pretty good case to be made that parents can be good judges of whether and what their children are learning.  If they can’t be, if they lack the ability to judge what schools are doing for or to their children, then I weep for the future of our democratic republic.

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Georgia Supreme Court Wrongly Rejects Charter School Law

May 16th, 2011 by Eric Cochling
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Today, a slim majority of Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled (in a 4 to 3 decision) that the law creating the Georgia Charter Schools Commission (Commission) is unconstitutional.

At stake in the ruling are no less than 16 charter schools serving approximately 15,000 children across the state.

The majority opinion, authored by Chief Justice Carol Hunstein, rests upon the assertion – wrongly, we believe — that local control is the paramount consideration under the Georgia Constitution relative to creating new public schools, despite the fact that the same constitution provides the Georgia General Assembly with broad and relatively unfettered power to create special schools as it deems necessary.

The Court’s action sets aside a lower court ruling just last year that found the law establishing the Commission constitutional in all respects.

Georgia Family Council is a supporter of all forms of school choice and was a strong proponent of the law creating the Commission. Before the creation of the Commission, new charter schools often met with unwarranted hostility by local boards of education when seeking approval, as those school boards acted to fend off competition and maintain the status quo. The Commission was created to give those charter schools a fighting chance at approval and the children near those charter schools a fighting chance at choice.

In his powerful dissent, Justice Nahmias points out that the majority’s opinion is so “overbroad” and “illogical” it can effectively be used to strike down any type of special school that the General Assembly might decide to create – including those already in existence before the creation of the Commission (i.e. like those charter schools created by the Charter Schools Act of 1998).

The other disturbing aspect of the majority’s opinion, beyond it essentially ignoring the constitutional power given the General Assembly relative to creating special schools, is the fact that it defers to the history of public education in Georgia so much that it is difficult to imagine any constitutional amendment (much less a statute) that would allow the General Assembly to authorize special schools not primarily under local control.

Absurdly, such an interpretation of the constitution would mean that we would be forever “locked” into doing things the way we have always done them, regardless of the desires of the citizens of our state as expressed in their duly enacted laws. Can we imagine a similar rationale being applied to other settled issues, such as the right to vote or gains made during the Civil Rights Era? Where would we be if our history alone had been used successfully as justification for stifling necessary and positive change on those issues?

Yet, here we are, seeing gains made on the civil rights issue of our time – education choice – being stopped because history somehow requires it.

Georgia Family Council is saddened by the Court’s decision because of the thousands of children who now face the prospects of returning to schools that were not serving their needs – the very problem the Commission was created to remedy in the first place.

While we are heartened by the announcement today from the State School Superintendent that attempts will be made to minimize the impact of this ruling on the students in Commission schools, we call upon our elected leaders in the General Assembly to act quickly to counter this horrible decision. With so many students at risk, immediate action is in order.

Georgia Family Council will do all that it can to continue to increase school choice opportunities for all of Georgia’s children, including increasing access to quality charter schools.

Tomorrow, we will be partnering with others in hosting a rally in support of the Georgia Charter Schools Commission and all of the students affected by this decision. We ask you to voice your support by taking part in the rally and asking your representatives to take action NOW.

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Exploring HOPE’s New Look

May 9th, 2011 by Toby Tatum
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*This is part three in a eight-part series on Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship*

In March of 2011, Georgia lawmakers voted to revise the HOPE program in light of several factors affecting college tuition, lottery revenues, and the number of students eligible for the merit-based scholarship. The final bill, Enduring HOPE, was signed by Governor Deal on March 15.

The scholarship will now take on two different forms – the Zell Miller Scholarship and the General (or Partial) HOPE Scholarship. The following sections and chart explains the changes.

Zell Miller Scholarship

Benefit: Each recipient’s full tuition, books, and fees are covered.

To be eligible, a recipient must:

1) Be a valedictorian or salutatorian (i.e. second highest GPA) from his/her high school AND/OR
2) A minimum high school GPA of 3.7 AND
3) Possess a minimum SAT score of 1200 (combined math and critical reading sections) OR
4) A minimum ACT score of 26.

To keep the scholarship, a recipient must maintain a minimum college GPA of 3.3.

Note: Students currently enrolled in college who have a GPA of 3.3 or higher, but do not possess the appropriate test score and high school GPA or valedictorian/salutatorian status are not eligible for the Zell Miller Scholarship (University System of Georgia).

General (or Partial) HOPE Scholarship

Benefit: Each recipient’s books and fees are not covered. For the 2011-2012 school year, each recipient will receive an award covering 90% of full tuition costs. This 90% tuition-rate is variable and subject to change in subsequent years.

To be eligible, a recipient must possess a minimum high school GPA of 3.0.

To keep the scholarship, a recipient must maintain a minimum college GPA of 3.0.

For ease of use, here’s a chart listing the requirements:

Zell Miller Scholarship[1] General HOPE Scholarship
High School GPA 3.7 3.0
SAT score/ACT score 1200/26 N/A
Percent tuition covered 100% 90%  in 2011-2012, varies after
Books and fees covered? No No
College GPA needed to keep 3.3 3.0

[1] If a student is either a high school valedictorian or salutatorian, the high school GPA and test score requirements are not necessary.

The Future of HOPE

Additionally, scholarship money will be tied to Georgia Lottery revenues, which will help keep demand for HOPE consistent with the supply of HOPE money in future years. Unfortunately for students, variability in lottery revenue means unpredictability in the funds available for scholarships.

Changes become active on July 1st, 2011, and there are no grandfather clauses allowing students to stay on or potentially earn the HOPE Scholarship under old, unrevised guidelines.

Stay tuned for the fourth installment, which will analyze the source of HOPE’s funding and its effect on poorer families.

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