School Board District 1 candidate oddities and redux on the fraudulent USU tuition tax study commissioned by the legislature to cook the voucher #'s

When reviewing a Paul Rolly article column this weekend for my discussion of District 8, I saw another little detail I had forgotten. He said that one of the authors of the USU tuition tax study from 2004 was running for state school board in District 1. Checking the state election site shows that Roberta Herzberg was supposedly "eliminated," but Sara Brate's rundown of the committee votes shows that she dropped out sometime previous to the June 2 committee meeting. The Rolly column is from April 16th, so she was assumably still in the race then. (No guarantees with Rolly...) Does anyone know what happened or why she dropped out?

FYI paragraph: District 1 incumbent Teresa Theurer was given a low score by the voting committee, despite getting 64% of the public vote in 2006. As that last link explains, Governor Huntsman in June just cut the person scored lowest by his biased committee from the ballot. I don't personally know anything about Teresa Theurer. Tom at KVNU, whose commentary I valued even when I didn't agree with him, said "Teresa is one of the most brilliant public officials I’ve ever met." I think a public official should be able to stand for re-election. A politically appointed committee filtering the candidates has corrupted the process in my opinion. You can listen to a podcast of a KVNU interview with Theurer on June 3rd here--I think I remember it's in the 2nd hour. I'll try and listen again soon and find what minute the interview starts.

So I found the entire process in District 1 frustrating. I'm personally glad Roberta Herzberg dropped out, and I want to highlight her study again. Here's the link to the study, posted at the Parent's for Choice in Education website. The authoring information is on page 4. The Executive summary begins by explaining the fight over vouchers and tuition tax credits in 2003 and 2004. It argues the Legislative Fiscal Analyst's (LFA) estimates of "switch rates" and cost are faulty. They said the LFA set the variable or marginal cost per student in 2003 at $2,793.

The next paragraph reads:

While these estimates flowed from the best existing information available under the time constraints, they were deemed inadequate to inform debate on such a critical issue. Based on the desire to have a more complete measure of the impact of the proposed policy change, Utah’s Legislative Management Committee commissioned this study. Over the course of the last four months, a team of scholars from Utah State University and Southern Utah University designed an econometric simulation model and qualitative studies of the effects of implementing tuition tax credits (TTC) on Utah educational demand and supply decisions. This report contains the results of that effort.

Translation: The legislature didn't like the truth so casually stated by their own employees (the legislative fiscal analysts), so they found some professors willing to cook up something a little more complicated. I don't know what exactly an econometric simulation model is, but I do know "qualitative" studies are not appropriate measures of exact figures of dollars and cents. "Quantitative" studies, as you might guess from the name, are the types of studies that can measure exact numbers and figures.

Focusing just on the financial aspects of the study, here is the cost conclusion from the Executive Summary (I underlined two sentences for emphasis):

A second consideration critical to good decision making with respect to this policy is an estimate of the costs associated with a student coming into or leaving the public school system. The legislature needs to know how much will be saved, at the margin, if a student is induced to make an educational choice outside of the Utah public school system. This value is known to economists as marginal cost. We estimate marginal cost per weighted pupil unit (WPU) in 2002-2003 to be $8,675 for the typical Utah school district. All Utah school districts have estimated marginal costs in the range of $7,700 to $10,350. It is a testament to the worthiness of our schools that they invest so much in each additional student. But, this is then also the value that the state and local districts can be expected to save from public school appropriations if a single student leaves a publicly funded school. This figure significantly exceeds per student spending (which was about $6,500 in 2002) or spending per WPU which was just under $6,000 in 2003 (economists call these measures average total cost). This is to be expected and is a natural result of school district managers doing their job well. The principle behind marginal cost is the cost of producing one additional (or one less) unit of output from the current level of production. This is critical to decision making because all decisions are fundamentally about changing production from one level to another. In this case, Utah is concerned about how a tuition tax credit will change enrollments and costs from their current level. The cost of those changes is the basis for making decisions. Costs not related to that change are irrelevant to a decision about change; however, they may be important for evaluating overall business performance.

The authors throw around the term WPU very casually. To clarify, the Weighted Pupil Unit (WPU) is the amount the state government sends each district per student. (Be sure to read the 2nd paragraph of that link closely. In 2002, it was $2116 per student. Substantially more is sent for Special Ed. and ESL students. The $6500 per student spending figure above is calculated the same way the Utah Taxpayer’s Association calculated the $7200 per student for the voucher debate last year: it includes money not gathered by the state and costs spent on every imaginable expense related to education, including fixed costs such as those incurred by individual districts to build new schools. For example, they divide out the $20 million or so being spent to build the new high school in Saratoga Springs into a portion per student for the entire state and pretend that the state somehow saves that money by a kid from St. George going to private school.

So follow the logic. In 2002, the state of Utah sent each district $2116 for the average student. If you throw in all of the federal, district, and trustlands money NOT sent by the state, but spent on fixed cost programs throughout the entire state, you can get a total spent per student figure of $6200. (See the argument about school construction above, or think of this: when the school buys a computer for a lab, it does not get a pro-rated refund when one of the hundreds of kids who use that computer leaves the school. The money is spent.) This study actually claimed that when that same student left the district to attend private school, the district magically saved $8675. Wow. It’s easy!! Just enroll kids in the district and pay them $2116. Then take the kids back out and charge the district $8675. Budget crisis solved, plenty of money to fund vouchers, and public school system severely weakened or dissolved as this “magic money” keeps being deducted. If you want to see the abstracted figures the authors use to destroy logic, it starts around page 45 of the study.

I saw the $1 billion savings figure floated regularly in PCE ads and in letters from Senator Valentine and Representative Curtis. (The blog that had the copy of the letter deleted all of its voucher stuff. Does anyone have a link or copy of that letter lying around? The one in the last day or two before the vote.) They were based on these lies. Many voucher supporters believe them still today. Senator Dayton never read the study. I'm doubting many other legislators did either. I used a strong word in my title and I stand by it: educational fraud.

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New visitors--why the voucher "savings" are untrue AND Nuts and Bolts of Voucher Funding part 5

Hi. For a more concise summary of what this website is about, look at the Oct. 30th entry:

http://utahedu.blogspot.com/2007/10/flyer-distributed-late-oct-and-early.html


There are many voucher supporters who philosophically wouldn't mind hurting the public schools in a voucher program to spur competition or punish the teacher unions. While disagreeing with their reasons, I can respect these opinions as honest differences.

But the voucher program is being sold as something it isn't. Many voters believe it will actually increase student funding and help the schools. Organizations and letter writers berate the opposition for ignoring the “simple math.” The truth of voucher costs would dissuade many voters if known.

I'm holding a 16-inch long door hanger from VoteFor1 that claims in bright yellow to reduce class sizes, increase teacher pay, and add 1 billion dollars to public schools without raising taxes. The back claims The State of Utah spends $7500 per student, so a voucher leaves $5500 in the system, "adding" $1 billion dollars to public schools. VoteFor1 literature was also given to me at a meeting with most of the Orem legislature members on Thursday.

$7500 false
What they don't tell you is that the $7500 figure includes federal money, local district bonds, and trust lands money dispersed independently of the state. That money is almost completely devoted to school construction and maintenance, or strictly defined federal programs. To claim it as "savings" is dishonest and misleading. It cannot be redistributed.

The TRUE Utah Cookie Voucher Ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Kt-i4pmV0

The state uses a complicated formula to claim "savings”
The state funds districts through its headcount formula called MSP, which is an average of $3800 including all of the money for special ed., ESL, etc.
http://www.le.utah.gov/interim/2007/pdf/00000363.pdf

The WPU, which is all the money a district gets for a student who isn't in any of those categories, is only $2417. http://le.utah.gov/interim/2007/pdf/00000364.pdf

The state takes all of that funding, "mitigating" a bit during the first five years. That mitigation money provides the difference for five years--it does NOT leave all of the funding. Read the bill: http://le.utah.gov/%7E2007/bills/hbillenr/hb0148.pdf Lines 309-313

Lines 309-315 of the bill show the funding shell game at its finest. The cost of the voucher is allocated to the district, and then taken back out to the Uniform School Fund to sit until the next year. It counts as allocated public funding even though it doesn't go to a school and sits unused in a state account all year. See my Nov. 1 entry for the example of Timmy.

To sum up the voucher hustle -- For a first grade student next year who switches because of the voucher law HB 148, the state gives the districts an average of $1800 for five years in exchange for taking $3800 for twelve years. That money taken or withheld each year sits in the Uniform School Fund until the next year, NOT being redistributed or spent on classrooms, schools, or teachers, but still counted as education funds to fuel the deception of 1 BILLION DOLLAR SAVINGS!


Major Fiscal Untruth about Vouchers #5: Subsidizing the tuition for ALL private school students forever, but phasing in the implementation of that aspect of the bill over thirteen years to hide “what will become essentially a subsidy for students who would have attended private school in any case.” —Randy Raphael, Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst, 2-16-07

ALL private school students will be eligible once the law is fully implemented. AND they are estimated to be the ones who will principally use the vouchers. That means we will be giving a subsidy to all of the families who were already going to attend private schools—about 20,000 students in 2020. You can read this in the Impartial Legislative Fiscal Analysis of HB 148 provided as part of your official voter’s guide: http://elections.utah.gov/Impartial%20Analysis.2007.VIP.pdf


The Fiscal Analysis of HB 174, the amendment to the real bill, HB 148, is even more blunt. Read the bottom of page 1 where the analyst says that the bill will most likely be "essentially a subsidy for students who would have attended private school in any case."
http://www.schools.utah.gov/law/leg2007/FiscalNoteInput/HB174_VoucherAmendments.pdf

Then scroll down to pg. 3 of the fiscal analyis for HB 174, and check out the first two years of the program. In 2008, a bunch of kids use the new program. But in 2009, they estimate that only three--yes, you read correctly, three students will be able and desire to switch because of the voucher subsidy. But five lines below, we also see that 1224 new kindergarten students who would have attended private school in any case--at NO cost to the public--will also be eligible for a voucher. So in 2009, we "help" 3 students, and give a tax-funded handout to 1224 students.

This subsidy for the rich will cost taxpayers $71 million a year according to the legislature’s own analyst! NOT save a billion or “redistribute” $5500. They know this. They use the misleading figures anyway. Then they accuse everyone else of being misleading when they’re called on it.

Honesty counts for something. EVERY claim of savings for vouchers is false.

Tomorrow, I’ll post links to a few of the varied national organizations wanting to privatize education. It is not a myth—they’ve sent thousands of dollars to Utah through Parents for Choice in Education to further their agenda.

Part 5 preview -- The Legislative Fiscal Analyst comes clean

I haven't even begin to talk about how ALL private schoolers get vouchers as the program deceptively implements over 13 years. The Impartial Fiscal Analysis of HB 148 that appears in the official voting guide estimates they will cost $71 million a year once they all qualify. Various legislators have disputed that figure from their own office.
http://le.utah.gov/%7E2007/bills/hbillenr/hb0148.pdf

But most haven't seen the even more damning fiscal analysis of HB 174. Remember this amendment bill passes along with HB 148 if the referendum passes. The analyst is even more blunt here:

http://www.schools.utah.gov/law/leg2007/FiscalNoteInput/HB174_VoucherAmendments.pdf

The analyst actually says that even with the tuition help, this will become "essentially a subsidy for students who would have attended private school in any case." This is one more thing the legislators have seen and and disputed because of the number of applications for vouchers.