APS Board Chair Martin Esquivel claims that we at the Rio Grande Foundation are all wrong about APS and that the school district is doing a great job. He also claims that the district’s buildings shouldn’t count as money spent per-pupil by the district. Sure, capital spending and annual appropriations are taken out of two different pots, but the fact is that money is money and in the real world, those dollars must be considered as part of what APS spends per pupil.

Esquivel does make one accurate claim and that is that the district must accept all kids that show up on their doorstep. Having disruptive “students” in the classroom is undoubtedly a problem for teachers in the classroom, but there are plenty of things APS could do differently and better. For starters, he should rent himself a copy of “Waiting for Superman” as I did this weekend. Esquivel could see in that movie how impoverished inner-city kids can learn and graduate at rates exceeding 90 percent. Compare that with APS where 23 of the 34 high schools are considered “dropout factories.”

Of course Esquivel does not mention exactly what APS’s graduation rate is, but according to the best information I have from the “Diplomas Count 2010,” New Mexico’s state graduation rate is 54.9%. I find it hard to believe that APS’s real graduation rate is much better.

Oh, and one important thing to note is that APS alone is not at fault. The federal government, state government, local school boards, teacher unions, and yes, even parents, all have a role to play in the ongoing failure. The problem is that the first step in solving a problem is recognizing that you have one. Esquivel clearly doesn’t think APS needs to change and improve.

Liberals love to say that Social Security is “the most popular government program.” There is an element of truth to this statement as the people who will be bearing the burden for the system and not receiving much in the way of “benefits” are either young or not born yet.

But, I’d love to see the folks who defend the popularity of the program show some confidence in their statement by making it optional. I would be thrilled to take them (and the federal government) up on this. I just received my “Social Security Statement.” According to the number crunchers over at SSA, I have paid more than $35,000 in Social Security taxes and more than $8,000 in Medicare taxes.

I have a grand bargain. I’ll allow the federal government to hold onto my $44,000 (actually it is more than that since the statement only covers earnings through 2009). I’ll sign a document stating that I’ll never take Social Security or Medicare if I can hold on to — and invest on my own — the money that my employer and I would pay for Social Security. Heck, I’ll even sign another document saying that I’ll invest the money and won’t touch it until I’m 65. The way I figure it, the feds are coming out way ahead.

Perhaps I am in the minority in my willingness to take such drastic action, but I’d rather control my own financial future than rely on the benevolence of the federal government. After all, my wonderful “statement” from the government also contains this fine line which states “Your estimated benefits are based on current law. Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time.” Not exactly reassuring.

If Social Security is so popular, let’s make it optional or let workers “buy out” of the system and invest for themselves.

After weeks of protest and unrest, Wisconsin is moving forward with Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to balance his state’s budget and eliminate collective bargaining for government workers. This is a win for Gov. Scott Walker and Wisconsin taxpayers.

Dealing with the unsustainable budgets and spending on government workers is important to making state budgets sustainable. It is also why other states are looking to reform their agreements with government workers.

As Thomas Sowell writes, “there is no such thing as a free lunch,” but in a competitive, free market economy, “government unions continue to thrive while private sector unions decline because taxpayers provide their free lunch.”

Only time will tell how the battles in Wisconsin and so many other states ultimately turns out, but Gov. Walker deserves credit for taking a difficult stand.

Today, a former APS teacher responded to Elisabeth Keen’s recent opinion piece on education and spending at APS. He said that comparing per pupil spending at The Academy and APS is not “apples to apples.” I tend to agree with him.

The Academy is one of the most expensive private schools in the nation and it has a large endowment including private donations and land. It also is selective in which students are allowed to enter. So, yes, the two are clearly different.

But, the Academy is not the only private school in the City. As Keen noted, there are other, much less-costly schools in town. Like the Academy, those schools also have graduation rates upwards of 90%. And, that is the biggest non apples-to-apples comparison of all: graduation rates and learning.

The private options succeed where APS fails, so comparing the two is really not fair. Of course, the Rio Grande Foundation and others have proposed initiatives that would allow kids currently trapped in failing public schools to attend private schools, but the education establishment has opposed them. As a writer from LULAC noted in a recent column, there are bills introduced in the session, but they face stiff opposition.

So, if and when kids in APS are allowed the choice of attending private schools, I think they’ll perform very well. If APS and their supporters are so confident that they are delivering a good product at a reasonable cost, they shouldn’t be worried about a little competition, should they?

The Rio Grande Foundation released a report on the costs to New Mexico utility customers of the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS).

Paul Chesser of the American Tradition Institute had an article in the Santa Fe New Mexican and Marita Noon of CARE had her own article in Energy Tribune.

If New Mexico’s elected leaders are serious about creating jobs and making our state more economically-competitive and ultimately wealthier, the RPS must be addressed.

The Rio Grande Foundation’s capitol reporter Rob Nikolewski has done a great deal of research over at Capitol Report New Mexico on the naming of public facilities after sitting elected officials. There are many reasons for NOT allowing this practice to continue including the need to remove Manny Aragon’s name from the Torreon at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

But, as Rob reports, legislation sponsored by Sen. Mark Boitano to stop the practice (at least at the state level), was recently killed. While it may or may not actually corrupt a lawmaker’s decision on a given project or piece of legislation, the fact is that these people are supposed to be public servants. Allowing them to name things after themselves leads to ego inflation and arrogance. That is the real problem with “Monuments to Me.”

It is great to see LULAC coming out in favor of school choice as they did in this recent opinion piece. School choice tax credits work and are popular with parents and students as the writer notes has happened in Utah.

New Mexico’s education system is failing ALL New Mexico kids and a majority of those kids are Hispanic. As the author notes, legislation is moving forward right now that would provide tax credit scholarships for low-income and special needs children. His organization “strongly supports HB 510 and HB 427, to give our special needs kids and lower-income students a chance at success.”

Before the legislative session, we at the Rio Grande Foundation recommended that spending on higher education be cut. The University of New Mexico has experienced some cuts (totaling approximately 12 percent) since the recession began, but that doesn’t mean they have a “lean and mean” operation by any stretch of the imagination.

For starters, there is the lobbying. While we have not previously commented on this specific issue, it seems rather unfair that taxpayers are paying the salaries of these officials who (at taxpayer expense) ply elected officials with drinks, and ultimately are lobbying for more of our taxpayer money. Where are the taxpayer-funded lobbyists for LESS government spending???

Oh, and, in what might be the worst idea since Michael Weiner advocated buying the County Line Restaurant and turning it into a community center, today the Albuquerque Journal reports that the University wants to spend $3 million on a new baseball stadium because Isotopes Park is “inadequate.” Complaints include “too many empty seats” and that the park “doesn’t feel like our home.”

Wow. Is this a university or a sports franchise? Certainly, there are efficiencies to be had throughout the UNM budget (including academics), but asking for a $3 million stadium when you have a perfectly fine (even professional grade) facility right next door takes some real gall. If UNM’s regents have any brains at all, they’ll turn this ridiculous proposal down.

Over at NMPolitics.net, I address some points made in a recent column by AFSCME’s Carter Bundy. I also explain that despite the lack of Wisconsin or Ohio-style unrest over government employee pensions, New Mexico still has a serious problem that must be dealt with sooner than later and that liberals should be at least as conservatives are about the problem.

It has been a big couple of days for the Rio Grande Foundation board. Elisabeth Keen took APS to task for its ineffectiveness and lack of transparency, now Board Member Deane Waldman and former Rep. Martin Heinrich health care town hall panelist Dr. John Vigil wrote an excellent article explaining why health care is not and should not be a “right.”

Trying to find out what is going on at APS can be quite a challenge. Rio Grande Foundation board member Elisabeth Keen takes on the education bureaucracy in this excellent opinion piece that appeared in the Albuquerque Journal.

I’m not sure where Leslie Linthicum was during the eight years of the Richardson Administration when education spending skyrocketed and graduation rates actually declined in New Mexico (while rising nationwide), but she has turned her “Upfront” column into a platform for attacking the Martinez Administration’s education reforms. Today’s represents her third straight column attacking either PED Secretary Skandera or some aspect of Florida’s successful education reforms.

Today’s column was an attack on Florida’s 3rd grade retention policy which is ONE COMPONENT of the comprehensive Florida model. She cites numerous studies on the topic and concludes that the retention model is a failure in Florida and will fail here in New Mexico. Of course, other studies suggest otherwise.

If the extent of Martinez’s plans for education reform was simply to expand retention, I’d be in agreement with Linthicum, but the Florida reforms took time (six or so years) to implement and start working and there were several facets to the program. We need to walk before we can run. Give Martinez and Skandera a chance to implement their agenda!

If you want to see the raw data that show Florida’s success in math, science, and reading, check out the NAEP score data here and compare them with New Mexico’s results over the same time period.

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had an article in the New York Times recently defending New Mexico’s economically-silly film subsidies. Liberal columnist Michael Kinsley, having more than enough of Richardson’s absurd ideas, lit into him in the Los Angeles Times.

Kinsley’s cites one of the many studies that have shown film subsidies to be bad policy, like this study on film subsidies put out by the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. But his most effective blow comes when he compares studies (like the one done by Ernst & Young) which have been used to justify the subsidies to Enron:

Even after our recent experience with gullible or mendacious accountants in financial scandals like Enron’s, it’s actually shocking that reputable accounting firms would pull some of these stunts, such as counting the allowances film crews get paid for expenses as a benefit to the state, then counting the same money again when it is spent. Or assuming without explanation that the average film crew member makes $82,400 a year, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics sets that figure at $35,000. The most outrageous double counting, of course, is telling one state after another that it can bring in billions by enticing the same movies away from other states.

Kudos to Kinsley for calling out Richardson and this wasteful program.

New Mexico’s maximum estimated pension liabilities are 59.8 percent of GDP. That may not mean much, but how about the fact that they are third greatest in the nation? How about the fact that only Wisconsin and Ohio have greater pension burdens as a percentage of GDP?

Bill Gates has an outstanding article in today’s Albuquerque Journal on education. Gates hits on many of the Rio Grande Foundation’s points on education reform, specifically the out of control spending of the last few decades with little in the way of results.

Gates then points out that the correlation between small class sizes and learning is very weak, that hiring, measuring, and keeping excellent teachers is key, and that money spent to get teachers additional certifications and degrees is largely wasted.

Oh, and even though he has probably spent more of his time and money on the issue than anyone else in America to look at education reform issues, if Gates miraculously wanted to come to New Mexico and become our PED Secretary, he couldn’t. He’s not an educator. Duh!

Along with RGF Board member Doug Turner, Rep. Conrad James, and Rep. Alonzo Baldonado, RGF President Paul Gessing debated the liberals on whether New Mexico should raise taxes or cut services. As Turner points out in his opening remarks, this is a false dichotomy, but the debate was fun and I look forward to participating in more of them. Total length is about an hour:

In today’s Albuquerque Journal, readers received a lesson in the “butterfly theory” and its application to K-12 education. I’m not sure if the author is simply an education bureaucrat and part of the establishment who views any and all reforms as harmful to his own power or if he has an alternative (unstated set of reforms), but his claims that Gov. Martinez’s proposed reforms “won’t work” are all wet.

For starters, he claims that the “A-F” grading mechanism is not useful because it is a “reductionist approach.” There is really nothing that can be said about that except that any and all tools used to measure success/failure found in this world are “reductionist” by definition. If your kid gets an “F” in a particular class, that doesn’t mean that they don’t know ANY of the material in that class. Instead, it means that on the whole, there is a major problem that must be addressed.

It’s the same thing with a movie’s rating. A movie may have had some nifty special effects or a really great plot, but if some aspect of the movie just didn’t make sense, it is not going to get a “5 star” rating. The “reductionist” approach is not perfect, but it is the only way to analyze the situation without having parents actually sit through every class with their child. That is the point.

Anyway, the fact is that the reforms making up the so-called “Florida Model” go far beyond the “A-F” grading system and stopping social promotion. Increased school choice, virtual schools, and an increased focus on literacy all contributed to its success. Rather than throwing stones, Mr. Bower should try proposing some specific reform ideas.

There was an excellent article on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the Albuquerque Journal today. The author mostly defends the safety of the project which is located between Hobbs and Carlsbad, but he also explains that “hot” nuclear waste is already stored at the facility.

The big question that is being asked now is whether another facility located near WIPP could serve as the nation’s primary storage site for waste from America’s nuclear power plants. With the Obama Administration having (unwisely in my opinion) shut down Yucca Mountain in Nevada, there is most definitely a need to get nuclear waste stored in a more secure location than is now available on-site at numerous nuclear facilities nationwide. It would seem that New Mexicans, particularly those from Southeastern New Mexico, have seen that nuclear waste can be contained effectively and that having it stored in their community is an economic boon that provides high-paying jobs.

So, it would seem that it is definitely worth looking into. The waste must be stored somewhere, why not here?

The meme on the left is that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and anyone supporting him is out to destroy labor unions. As Jonah Goldberg explains, nothing could be further from the truth. Private sector unions have a proud history of standing up to abusive business practices. Although even private sector unions are susceptible to their own abusive practices (as are businesses), as Goldberg makes clear:

Private-sector unions fight with management over an equitable distribution of profits. Government unions negotiate with friendly politicians over taxpayer money, putting the public interest at odds with union interests, and, as we’ve seen in states such as California and Wisconsin, exploding the cost of government. California’s pension costs soared 2,000 percent in a decade thanks to the unions.

And, while there is some controversy over whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt outright opposed public sector unions (he seems to contradict himself in this letter), he clearly felt that there were issues with allowing government workers to bargain collectively when he wrote:

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations.

So, understand that no one is trying to kill unions, but that allowing government workers whose bosses in government have no profit motive and are often less than careful about how they spend taxpayers’ money was a big mistake. It is time to resolve this problem and I applaud Gov. Walker for taking this courageous step.

Immediately prior to our debate on Wednesday night in Santa Fe, a man accosted me and told me that the Rio Grande Foundation was “bought and paid for” by the Koch brothers. I wish.

But it got me to thinking…”who is the biggest, most-powerful lobbying group in New Mexico?” Surprise, surprise, it is not the Koch’s or even the supposedly all-powerful oil and gas industries. Instead, it is the big-government lobbyists at AFSCME (American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees).

According to the Albuquerque Journal, AFSCME handed out $592,300 in contributions from last April through the end of 2010 while the “mighty” oil and gas industry handed out a mere $183,000 (30% of what AFSCME spent). While New Mexico has a disproportionately large government sector, AFSCME is a powerful force in almost all states (including Wisconsin where a major battle is now under way). It is worth noting that AFSCME members benefit from more government spending, the hiring of additional government workers (both of which create more dues and greater influence for the union), and they don’t necessarily care if government cannot pay its bills as long as they “get theirs.”

Before jumping to the conclusion that oil and gas exercise undue influence in New Mexico politics, it is important to realize who is writing the biggest checks and how they benefit from bigger government.

The Santa Fe New Mexican wrote up a post-mortem on our debate on government spending and taxes last night. Considering that the event was organized by the leftist Progressive Action Network and took place in Santa Fe, I’m pretty pleased with the vote. I was more pleased with the way two of our freshman legislators, Conrad James and Alonzo Baldonado (who was pulled from the crowd to replace Sen. Beffort who was tied up on the Senate floor).

The future is bright for these two and I think we haven’t heard the last from our fourth team member, Doug Turner, when it comes to New Mexico politics.

With all that is happening in Wisconsin (and now Ohio and other states) with regard to government workers, some observers are wondering how we arrived to this point.

Well, Hal Stratton, New Mexico’s former attorney general (and co-founder of the Rio Grande Foundation), has written an excellent history of government union collective bargaining. Now, more than ever, it is worth the read.

I’ll bet Hanna Skandera is wondering what she’s gotten herself into at this point. The point of view of New Mexico’s education establishment seems to be: we’re 49th and we’re proud, take your high-falutin’ reform ideas elsewhere….

The latest issue is the definition of “educator.” According to this morning’s Albuquerque Journal, the latest demand from the unions and their supporters is that Skandera prove that she is an “educator.” According to the article, Skandera “Skandera also was a lecturer and adjunct professor at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy in 2002 and 2003.” I’m not sure what further questions there might be on the topic.

Of course, our Constitutional requirement that the head of PED be an “educator” is ridiculous. It’s like demanding that every pro football coach or baseball manager have played in the NFL or major leagues (many coaches and managers do not). While both skills are important, the idea that teaching makes someone qualified to manage a $3 billion bureaucracy is silly (and vice-versa).

The unions are simply doing everything they can to frustrate and wear down Skandera and Gov. Martinez. For the good of New Mexico’s children, this cannot happen.

The Rio Grande Foundation and American Tradition Institute recently released a report showing that New Mexico’s renewable portfolio standard will cost rate-payers $2.3 billion over 10 years starting this year. RGF president Paul Gessing discussed the study and a variety of other issues with Mike Jaxson of KSVP Radio in Artesia. Listen here.

The full study is available here. A two page summary can be found here.

Legislation to limit the economic damage of New Mexico’s RPS has been introduced in this session.