The Audacity of HOPE

By: Brandon Dutcher

"There's a tradition in education," former New York City school chancellor Frank Macchiarola once observed, "that if you spend a dollar and it doesn't work, you should spend two dollars; and not only that, you should give those two dollars to the same person who couldn't do the job with only one."

As this graphic illustrates, spending more money is no guarantee of success. Nevertheless, the state's most powerful labor union is spearheading a petition drive called HOPE (Helping Oklahoma Public Education) in an effort to get a constitutional amendment requiring Oklahoma to meet or exceed the regional average in per-pupil expenditures.

You may recall that a recent report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce gave Oklahoma's public school system an F. The report said "student performance in Oklahoma is very poor -- the state ranks among the lowest in the nation." And this is a school system on which Oklahoma taxpayers are already spending a small fortune.

In 2005, I teamed up with accountant Steve Anderson, formerly a public school teacher with 17 teaching certifications, to determine how much Oklahomans are paying for their schools. Not content with the "official" government reports, we computed all the expenditures that would be included on a regular financial statement. We discovered that Oklahoma's per-pupil cost in 2003 -- the latest year for which data were available -- was $11,250. Read MORE!

Light Bulb Lunacy

By: David Deming

OCPA Research Fellow

How many persons does it take to change a light bulb? Four hundred, if the people in question are members of the United States Congress. Four hundred is the number of representatives and senators who voted last December to ban incandescent light bulbs.

Full awareness of this idiocy has not really manifested itself in the public consciousness yet. When it does, there will be an outrage. Beginning in 2012, the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs, starting with the 100-watt bulb, will become illegal. Instead of paying less than 20 cents for a standard incandescent bulb, we will all be forced to purchase compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) for about $3 each or more.

I'm a frugal person. Like other sensible people, I'm interested in saving energy. But I'm skeptical of the exaggerated claims made for CFLs. When these devices were first introduced several years ago, I bought one, anxious to reap the benefits of the claimed energy savings. I was amazed to find that my new 10,000-hour light bulb burned out in a week. The replacement CFL lasted for three months. READ MORE!