Municipal League Rates Maxwell and Litzow

It's dangerous to vote if you don't know what you're doing, and it can be hard to get facts if you're a normal person.  You can read the newspaper, or follow other mass media, but they don't often go in-depth on candidates--and they have their own biases whether they admit it or not.  Fortunately, and partly thanks to the Progressive Movement (started by my Wisconsin ancestors) in the early 1900s, you can get independent, objective evaluations of candidate qualifications from the Municipal League, which has a King County branch that is a 501(c)(4) non-profit that's been around since 1910.

They just published their evaluations of the candidates running for District 41 (Mercer Island, Bellevue, and Renton) and here are the results for my two favorites:

Candidate	Rating	Questionnaire	Web site
Marcie Maxwell	Good	Questionnaire	Campaign Website
Steve Litzow	Very Good	Questionnaire	Campaign Website

I was surprised at the League's thoroughness and objectivity.  Somebody from their org who saw my posts (Steve Litzow, Marcie Maxwell) contacted me directly to ask if I had more background information. At first I was skeptical about the League, thinking that if it's staffed by volunteers, it would no doubt be packed with partisans from one side or another.  But after talking to them, I think it would be hard to manipulate their results.  The decision-making process is pretty objective: they just want to know if the person is qualified.  The person who contacted me asked if I knew other facts about the candidates: things like criminal record, education, employment history, etc. -- basically a reference check to confirm that everything on the questionnaire was up to snuff. 

So why did Steve Litzow get a better rating?  I suspect it was the in-person interviews, which I bet he handled better.  Marcie's campaign depends on the lead in endorsements she enjoys from many well-organized groups--each of which has its own reasons for supporting her over Steve.  But endorsements represent a tricky calculation that takes into account many factors, including the likelihood that the candidate will win--and not necessarily whether the candidate is "best" for the district. Steve's campaign, perhaps of necessity, depends less on endorsements and more on one-on-one persuasion and how well he articulates his issues--all of which make for a better in-person interview.  "Vote for me because so-and-so endorsed me" works better on a questionnaire, but in-person you need to say persuasively "vote for me because I'll do X and Y".

Note that this does not mean Steve is necessarily better for you or for District 41.  You may not want X and Y.   But if you do, then I bet the League's ratings are accurate.

Does more funding help schools?

Washington state Governor Christine Gregoire poured huge amounts of new money into education in the past four years:  about $2.46 Billion.   Most of this (80%) went to pay increases for teachers (including the worst ones), but some also went to other education initiatives, such as training and all-day kindergarten.  If you think big jumps in education funding helps education quality, then it's just a matter of time before we start to see big improvements, right?

Stanford University's Eric Hanushek wants to know how money helps improve schools, but in spite of many years of searching, he can't find examples where additional money has made a clear difference.  You'd think it would be easy :  decide on some measure of school quality (e.g. WASL or other test scores, percentage of kids who graduate, etc.), find every school in the country where funding went up, and pick out those where your measure of quality also increased. 

He can't find any examples!  That's why this podcast I heard this week on Econtalk should be required listening for everyone interested in school funding.  So much of every discussion about education finances takes it for granted that schools need more money, and who could argue otherwise?  My local public school, for example,  is pathetically underfunded.  Overeager legislators are happy to pile on mandate after mandate (special education this, equality that) while allocating no additional money, and we are getting squeezed.  In 2005-6, before the full effects of Gregoire's increases, our state ranked 38th in the country on education funding, though interestingly that didn't stop us from out-performing the "best" state, New York.  Meanwhile, Utah finished dead last in per-pupil spending on education. At about $3400 they spend 40% less than we do, yet they score higher than the national average on math and reading. 

The problem, according to Hanushek's research,  is that money is almost completely irrelevant to education quality.

Hanushek describes the history of education and school finance and how dramatically it has changed just in the past 25 years from a system funded locally through property taxes, to today's system where state governments have a larger and growing role.  Much of the changes have resulted from lawsuits, starting with "equity lawsuits" that use state constitutional requirements to show huge disparities in spending by district, and force redistribution to poorer localities.  More recently, there has been a rise in  "adequacy lawsuits" that claim schools are not funded properly in the first place--usually resulting in judgments forcing additional money for education.

You'd think Hanushek could find the proof in one of these court cases.  Wouldn't the plaintiffs, somewhere, introduce evidence of an underfunded school that was turned around when a bag of money arrived?  Hanushek complains that in fact there are no such examples--the courts simply take it for granted that more funding equals better education.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of egregious counter-examples.  Take New Jersey, where courts forced 28 districts to increase their spending to $19,000/student/year (when the national average was closer to $8k/student).  Except for a single one-year blip in 4th grade reading scores, nothing else about those districts results changed.  This was in spite of lowered class sizes, pre-school education, after school programs -- the works.

An even better example was Kansas City, where courts told administrators that money was no object:  "dream your biggest dreams," they said and do whatever it takes to make your school district so attractive that  people from outside the district will try to get in there.  Result:  huge new facilities (a wonderful swimming pool, a "zoological garden") but no noticeable difference in education quality.

Why does funding, by itself, make no difference?  And if it makes no difference, why do we assume that politicians who want to "increase funding for education" are better for kids than those who don't? 

There are plenty of factors that are proven to make a difference in educational quality.  So why doesn't somebody run for office specifically pushing for things that matter (like better teachers)?  Unlike the simple push for "more funding", the data would be on your side.

Count me in

The new August 2008 issue of Wired describes the Personal Genome Project, an upcoming ambitious attempt to collect DNA and more from 100,000 individuals.  Of course I immediately signed up!  Funny to see that my hero, Steven Pinker, also signed up as one of the first 10.

Visiting Lithuania in Sixteen Years

Sixteen years ago this week, I was traveling in my family's ancestral home of Panevezys, Lithuania.  A New York Times travel writer visited there now, searching for his family roots, just like I did, only he was more successful.

What a difference sixteen years can make in the life of a country!  The place I visited was terribly poor, and although it was a free country, it had been liberated from the Soviets only six months before I arrived.  I saw Russian soldiers everywhere, people paid for everything in rubles, and absolutely nobody spoke any English whatsoever.

Of course, during the same period things have changed a lot in the U.S. as well.  Average Americans were much poorer back then (per capita incomes in the U.S. are up 77% in real terms in the past 16 years (15% in the past 4 years).  Almost nobody used the internet or email. Cell phones were called "car phones" because they were so bulky, and only rich people had them.  Although a lot of people had PCs, they were hard to use -- no Windows back then.  Digital cameras?  GPS?  none of that stuff existed. 

And what about sixteen years from now?  If anything, I'm sure the world will have changed by an even greater amount.  You'll be richer (probably at least by double).  There'll be new, impossible-to-imagine technologies as significant as the internet in common use.

It's so easy to take today's bad news out of its long-term context.  Step back a little, though, and you'll become an optimist like me.

Test Driving the Miles Electric Car

Mike Cero, always looking for cost-effective ways to help the environment,  invited me to help test drive an electric car now available for sale from MC Electric Vehicles, a local dealership that specializes in green vehicles.

We tried the ZX40S, a 4-seater hatchback from Miles Electric Vehicles, and the first street-legal Chinese-made auto sold in America.  Good Clean Tech rated them the "Electric Car Company of 2007", and they're getting some buzz among die-hards who want no-pollution cars.  This one is solidly-built, though very basic:  no power steering or air conditioning, and since it won't go faster than 35mph you can't use it on the freeway.  But it might be perfect as a fleet vehicle for organizations looking for short-range shuttle cars, or for people who do all short trips in a small community like Mercer Island.

In terms of performance and handling, the part I love about electrics is their quiet ride.  My Prius goes into silent all-electric mode too, but you hear the engine again when you accelerate.  Not so with the ZX40S: it's quiet all the time.  In fact, it's so quiet we joked that you might need to take extra measures to ensure bicyclists can hear you on the road--it really runs silently.

Of course the big advantage of an electric car is the complete lack of a gas tank.  It says it charges in about 8 hours (i.e. overnight), giving you a range of about 50 miles.  We didn't test it that far, but I think you'd want to be careful counting on it past 30 miles or so.  The range seems to depend on how hilly the area is and how much load you have in the car (i.e. total passenger and cargo weight).  Of course, if you run low on a charge it's a simple matter of plugging it into the closest electric outlet.  (But be careful: it has to be a 20 amp outlet--not the more typical 15A sockets you'd normally find in your house).

So how did it do?  I think in a flat area this car would be just fine, but there's not a lot of oomph for climbing.  We found it slow going up some of the more challenging Mercer Island areas (like Gallagher Hill), especially as the charge runs down.  And as I noted, it's only legal for road speeds under 35mph, so you're limited to neighborhood driving.

The price, about $23K including taxes and everything, is about what you'd pay for a basic Prius--which has a lot more power and flexibility.  Still, if you live in a flat area, don't need high speeds, and you want zero-pollution without the hassle or expense of going to a gas station, this car will do what it says.  Meanwhile I think I'll wait for MC Electric to start carrying the Miles XS500, the new Camry-sized 80MPH luxury model scheduled to go on sale later this year.

Who is Steve Litzow?

As I keep saying, local elections are more relevant than national ones, and for Mercer Island you need to know about the choices for 41st district state legislature, Marcie Maxwell and Steve Litzow. Since I already mentioned Marcie, I need to say a few words about Steve as well.  Or better yet, let Steve speak for himself.  I met him the other day at Tully's, where he talked to me about his background and some thoughts about how to improve education.

Both Marcie and Steve are easy (and eager!) to meet people in our district, so if you care about local issues, don't be shy: get to know them before you make up your mind.

Best place to watch fireworks

Surrounded by Water asks the best place to watch fireworks on Mercer Island and my answer is: your back yard!  Here's the view from my house on the Fourth evening:

 

Thankfully Mercer Island remains one of the last bastions of true July 4th Freedom in the area: residents (not visitors!) are allowed to purchase fireworks (in personal quantities only, of course) and discharge them on private property -- not parks or other public spaces, which are specially patrolled this week to prevent violations.  Every so often a busy-body will try to shut down our right to peaceably go pyro like this, so if you're a resident please, please don't be stupid or you'll ruin it for the rest of us.