Andy Smarick for the American Enterprise Institute: The final Institute of Education Sciences report on the School Improvement Grant program is devastating to Arne Duncan’s and the Obama administration’s education legacy. A major evaluation commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education and conducted by two highly respected research institutions delivered a crushing verdict: The program failed and failed badly…
Despite its gargantuan price tag, $7 billion, the grant program generated no academic gains for the students it was meant to help. Failing schools that received multi-year grants from the program to “turn around” ended up with results no better than similar schools that received zero dollars from the program. To be clear: Billions spent had no effect.
When Washington spends billions of dollars on something, it’s reasonable to assume it will do some good, especially when the Secretary of Education promises “transformation, not tinkering.” But not with the School Improvement Grant program.
No matter how the researchers crunched the numbers, the abysmal results were the same. The program didn’t improve math scores. Or reading scores. Or high school graduation rates. Or college enrollment. It didn’t improve elementary or secondary schools. It didn’t help schools in Race-to-the-Top states or non-Race-to-the-Top states. …
Probably the only thing more remarkable than the scope of this program’s failure is that this outcome was absolutely, positively, unavoidably predictable.
Some advice for Ben Carson
Josh Leopold and Mary Cunningham for the Urban Institute: During the first 10 days of 2017, four people living on the streets in Portland, Ore., died from exposure to freezing temperatures. Effectively responding to homelessness is a matter of life and death.
One of Ben Carson’s most important responsibilities as secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will be to prevent future tragedies by continuing the nation’s progress in preventing and ending homelessness. To do so, he should follow the evidence-based Housing First approach.
The Housing First approach’s first priority is to help people find and maintain their own housing. Under Housing First programs, additional services (e.g., job training, health care and substance abuse treatment) are provided on a voluntary basis and not as a precondition for housing. Every effort is made to provide the services and flexibility to keep people in housing. …
The George W. Bush administration’s adoption of Housing First helped spur a 30 percent reduction in chronic homelessness from 2005 to 2007. The Obama administration continued this support for Housing First when it released its Federal Strategic Plan to End Homelessness in 2010, and HUD and other agencies have made adopting Housing First practices a priority. Since 2010, 87,000 fewer people experience homelessness, nearly 35,000 fewer veterans experience homelessness, and there are 28,500 fewer chronically homeless people…
During the HUD secretary nomination hearing, when Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii asked Carson if he supported the Housing First approach to homelessness, Carson replied that Housing First is one of the programs he wants to study, and then he cited an anecdote about a homeless family that had benefited from a Housing First program and later went on to purchase a house.
When Carson looks at the data, he will find that randomized clinical trials, the gold standard for social science research, find that the Housing First approach has demonstrated its superiority in reducing homelessness. People given the opportunity to live independently under the Housing First approach remain stably housed, while those in programs that require sobriety and adherence to a treatment plan tend to cycle among homeless programs, treatment facilities, psychiatric facilities, prisons and jails.
Privatize Metro
Chris Edwards for Downsizing Government: Some members of Congress are considering restructuring the Washington Metro system’s management and oversight. Big reforms are needed given the disastrous service, safety and financial performance of the system in recent years.
Why not privatize Metro? …
Hong Kong privatized its subway system in 2000. In a recent study on infrastructure, McKinsey reported: Hong Kong’s MTR Corp. has defied the odds and delivered significant financial and social benefits: excellent transit, new and vibrant neighborhoods, opportunities for real estate developers and small businesses, and the conservation of open space. The whole system operates on a self-sustaining basis, without direct taxpayer subsidies.
MTR’s railway system covers 137 miles and is used by more than five million people each weekday. It not only performs well — trains run on schedule 99.9 percent of the time — but actually makes a profit: $1.5 billion in 2014. MTR fares are also relatively low compared with those of metro systems in other developed cities. The average fare for an MTR trip in 2014 was less than $1, well under base fares in Tokyo (about $1.50), New York ($2.75) and Stockholm (about $4).
That sounds pretty darn good. The average fare on the Washington Metro is about $3. The on-time record of Metro is not clear, but in technical terms I think “crappy” best describes it. Note that Hong Kong’s 99.9 percent on-time record means that “of the average 5.2 million passenger trips made on the MTR heavy rail and light rail networks on each normal weekday, 5.195 million passengers safely reach their destinations within five minutes of their scheduled arrival times.” In 2014, “the system ran for 120 consecutive days without a single delay over eight minutes.” Wow.
Compiled by Joseph Lawler from reports published by the various think tanks.
