It’s a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack.*
There’s no question that Oregon’s children have suffered from learning losses before and during covid.
The Oregon Capitol Chronicle reported last week that Oregon school districts and community-based organizations such as the YMCA and Boys & Girls Club have received millions in public funding for summer learning programs from the Legislature in the past two years: a record high of $240 million in 2021 and $150 million in 2022.
This year — not a penny in additional funding. The result? Districts across the state have had to cut back their summer offerings. That has school leaders and concerned parents furious.
At the same time, effective July 1, Oregon expanded free health insurance that mirrors Medicaid to immigrants in the country illegally.
House Bill 3352 (2021) put into law a program called “Cover All People.” The program is now known as “Healthier Oregon.” According to the Oregon Health Authority, thanks to Healthier Oregon, people may now qualify for OHP if they live in Oregon and meet income and other criteria.
The bill passed the State Senate with 17 ayes and 11 nays – Anderson, Boquist, Findley, Girod, Hansell, Kennemer, Knopp, Linthicum, Robinson, Thatcher, Thomsen.
The federal government largely funds Medicaid, paying about two-thirds of the cost, leaving the balance to the state. But the federal government won’t pay anything for coverage of undocumented immigrants, so Oregon taxpayers will pick up the entire tab for them.
“We don’t get any help from the federal government because the folks who are on it don’t have papers,” Rep. Rob Nosse, D-Portland, told the Capital Chronicle.
On July 9, 2023, The New York Times ran a 4,314-word story about Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas’s connections with an exclusive club, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans Inc..
“His friendships forged through Horatio Alger have brought him proximity to a lifestyle of unimaginable material privilege,” the reporters wrote, leading into multiple examples of benefits he received from a broad cohort of wealthy and powerful friends and insinuations that Thomas had been compromised.
Citing the Association’s website, the story said the non-profit group, portrayed as a group of wealthy and influential believers in meritocratic success, has awarded more than $245 million in college scholarships to roughly 35,000 students since its founding in 1947. The Association has been tax-exempt since Oct. 1952.
What the reporters didn’t do was look deeper at the Association. It has quite a dubious history.
In 1988, while a business reporter at The Oregonian newspaper, I researched and wrote a story about the Association, which had inducted two prominent Oregonians. The story (which won plaudits from the Columbia Journalism Review) noted that from 1985 through 1987 — the latest period for which tax records were available at the time — the Association raised $2.1 million. During those three years, The organization spent $1.7 million. Just $315,000 of that went to scholarships.
Rather than funding scholarships, most of the association’s outlays went to executive salaries, office expenses, books devoted largely to laudatory stories of the members’ lives, annual banquets at places such as New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel and the Westin Galleria Hotel in Houston and contracts with a New York public relations firm.
The amount of salary and benefits going to the association’s executive director alone, which increased from $98,126 in 1985 to $120,154 in 1987, exceeded or almost equaled the amount of scholarships awarded in each of the past three years. Those scholarships totaled $100,000 in both 1985 and 1986 and $115,000 in 1987.
In 1987 the Association spent more on printing and publications than on scholarships. Its principal annual publication was a hard-cover book titled “Only in America Opportunity Still Knocks.” The book devoted 132 of its 192 pages to a membership list and biographies featuring informal snapshots of the members and outlines of their paths to success.
A review of the Association’s recent federal tax filings reveals it still engages in questionable financial behavior.
The IRS requires that tax-exempt organizations, nonexempt charitable trusts, and section 527 political organizations file an annual Form 990 to provide the IRS with the information required by 26 U.S. Code § 6033. In its recent filings it stated its purpose as: “(1) To provide scholarship assistance to help promising high school students (who fit the Horatio Alger profile) attend college, and (2) to spread the message that America’s free enterprise system provides the greatest opportunities in the world for personal achievement and success.”
The Alexandria, VA-based Association’s recent Form 990s (2020,2021) reveal it has grown substantially since I wrote about it in 1988, reporting total revenue of $27,092,429 in 2020 and $20,322,852 in 2021. But its scholarship distributions still fall far short of its annual revenue.
In 2020, its scholarship grants totaled $11,223,951, just 41% of its revenue. In 2021, grants totaled $12,287,913, 60% of its revenue, which was at least better than in 2010, when its revenue totaled $19,682,336 and its grants to individuals totaled just $4,721,307.
Where has all the rest of its revenue gone?
In 2021, a whopping $2,446,876 went to salaries, other compensation and employee benefits, including $1,348,080 to Executive Director Terrence J. Giroux. Another $318,936 went to a Philadelphia, PA public relations firm, Brian Communications. A total of $552,717 was spent on “event management”, slightly less than the $1,062,380 spent on event management and production in 2020. (The Association’s Form 990s say some of that money went to Linder & Associates, but that is a property management company in Los Angeles, California. The money probably went, instead, to Linder Global Events, an event management agency based in Washington, D.C.)
The Red Bank Film Factory of Red Bank, NJ was paid $471,271 and Destin Productions LLC of Limassol, Cyprus took in $330,000 for a television marketing campaign in 2021
Another $8,527,523 went to “Other Expenses”, including legal, accounting, advertising, office expenses, travel, conferences, conventions and meetings.
According to the Association’s 2021 Form 990, $2,739,296 went just to “Member support and meetings, including the annual board of directors meeting, annual awards week in Washington, D.C. and specialized forums.”
In other words, given the amount of its revenue, the Association falls far short of expectations in its scholarship handouts, while spending extravagant sums on compensation and other functions, such as public relations and fancy dinners for its mostly wealthy members.
Media coverage of the Association, while frequently citing its distinguished members, such as author Maya Angelou, former Intel CEO Craig Barrett, Michael Bloomberg and NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, also has failed to mention that its ranks include some questionable characters, such as:
Roger Ailes, who resigned as chairman and CEO of Fox News after being accused of sexual harassment by several female Fox employees, including on-air hosts
Elizabeth Holmes, former CEO of Theranos. Holmes was convicted in 2022 on four counts of wire fraud for swindling doctors and patients to use her company’s blood-testing services while knowing that Theranos was incapable of producing accurate results, according to the indictment. She was also accused of defrauding investors of more than $700 million with the fabricated claims.
Joe Allbritton, a Washington, D.C. power-broker who turned a blind eye to evidence that Riggs Bank, of which he was chairman and chief executive officer, was “handling the proceeds of foreign corruption and paid paid a $16 million criminal fine over charges the bank had failed to report suspicious transactions with foreign account holders.” The judge who imposed the fine described the bank as “a greedy corporate henchman of dictators and their corrupt regimes.”
America loves stories about someone picking themselves up by their bootstraps, as in Horatio Alger’s books about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of success, although, truth be told, you can’t really do that. Truth be told, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans Inc. isn’t all it’s stacked up to be either.
NOTE: This is a reprint of a story that appeared in The Oregonian newspaper.
December 30, 1988 | Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
Author/Byline: BILL MacKENZIE – of the Oregonian Staff | Page: A02 |
Some of the nation’s most prominent business executives, politicians and entertainers have been donating thousands of dollars each year to an organization dedicated to providing scholarships to underprivileged young people. But most of the money has been going elsewhere.
From 1985 through 1987 — the latest period for which tax records are available — $2.1 million was raised by the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans Inc., an organization that purports to motivate young people and provide college scholarships to high school students from around the country.
The organization, which is based in Alexandria, Va., spent $1.7 million during those three years, $315,000 of that going to scholarships.
Rather than funding scholarships, most of the association’s outlays went to executive salaries, office expenses, books devoted largely to laudatory stories of the members’ lives, annual banquets at places such as New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel and the Westin Galleria Hotel in Houston and contracts with a New York public relations firm.
The amount of salary and benefits going to the association’s executive director alone, which increased from $98,126 in 1985 to $120,154 in 1987, has exceeded or almost equaled the amount of scholarships awarded in each of the past three years. Those scholarships totaled $100,000 in both 1985 and 1986 and $115,000 in 1987.
The association, which was founded in 1947, was named after Horatio Alger, who in the late 1800s wrote more than 100 books chronicling the adventures of boys who triumphed over adversity to achieve success.
The association was based in New York until its headquarters was moved earlier this year to Alexandria, a suburb of Washington, D.C.
The membership roster of the organization, consisting of people nominated for the Horatio Alger Award by current members, reads like a “Who’s Who in Politics, Business and Entertainment.
Oregon is represented by two members, Robert Farrell, operator of the Newport Bay Seafood Broiler restaurants; and Harry Merlo, chairman and president of Louisiana- Pacific Corp.
Also among the association’s living members — numbering about 250 — are President Reagan; former President Ford; Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.; and New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.
The association’s diverse membership also includes H. Ross Perot, president of Perot Systems Corp.; Allen Neuharth, chairman and chief executive officer of Gannett Co.; Sam Walton, chairman of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.; Tom Landry, coach of the pro football Dallas Cowboys; entertainers Ed McMahon and Bob Hope; the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale; and evangelist Billy Graham.
The association has declined to provide information on its income and expenditures, despite being contacted by a reporter from The Oregonian twice by telephone and twice by certified letter during the past seven months.
A call in early December to the executive director was referred to the association’s director of education, Pat Brown. Brown, who acknowledged receipt of earlier letters, declined to provide any detailed information concerning the association’s operations.
Love Smith, who served as the association’s executive director until earlier this year, also declined last week in a telephone conversation to answer questions concerning the association’s finances or general operations. “Since I’m no longer with the association, I really wouldn’t care to comment,” Smith said.
Peale, 90, who served as national chairman of the association for more than 25 years, could not be reached for comment. His wife, Ruth Stafford Peale, who has served on the association’s board of directors, spoke last week, however, on her own and her husband’s behalf.
Ruth Peale attributed the allocation of a limited proportion of the association’s annual income to scholarships to the association’s desire to raise an endowment. When she was advised that the association’s tax returns indicated that an average of 80 percent of annual income in the past three years had been spent, and only 20 percent of that on scholarships, Peale said she could not explain the discrepancy.
By not responding to requests for detailed financial information, the association has failed to comply with standards published by the New York-based National Charities Information Bureau Inc. and the Council of Better Business Bureaus Inc. of Arlington, Va., regarding financial disclosure by philanthropic organizations.
The Information Bureau says in its “Standards of Philanthropy”: “Descriptive and financial information for all substantive income and for all revenue-generating activities conducted by the organization should be disclosed upon request.”
Information on the association was obtained from Form 990 returns required to be filed with the Internal Revenue Service by organizations exempt from federal income tax and from annual financial reports submitted by the association to the New York Department of State.
According to the association, its good work is tied to inspiring young people to follow the Horatio Alger ideal and awarding $5,000 college scholarships to “underprivileged but promising” high school students from around the country who exemplify that ideal.
The New York-based National Charities Information Bureau, a national organization that monitors charitable giving, recommends that philanthropic organizations devote at least 60 percent of their annual expenses to their basic program and no more than 40 percent to management, general expenses and fund raising. Less than 20 percent of the Alger association’s annual expenditures have been going to scholarships in recent years.
The inspirational element of the association’s program consists largely of Horatio Alger Day programs at high schools around the country, during which association members share their success stories and offer advice before student assemblies.
According to Farrell, speakers usually live near the school sponsoring the event, so there is little expense involved. The association’s tax records do not break out expenses associated with the school visits; but the records show less than $16,000 annually devoted to travel, conferences, conventions and meetings from 1985 through 1987.
Scholarship expenses are more clearly defined in the association’s tax records.
During the 1985-1987 period, about $1 of every $7 of association income and $1 of every $5 of association spending went to scholarships.
The spending patterns of the San Francisco-based National Hispanic Scholarship Fund Inc., which also raises and distributes money to assist deserving college students, stand in sharp contrast to those of the HoratioAlger Association. In 1987, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund devoted 80 percent of its expenditures to scholarships and only 20 percent to administrative and fund-raising expenses.
Similarly, the Los Angeles-based Hugh O’Brian Youth Foundation, which also seeks to motivate high school students through sponsorship of leadership seminars and career fairs around the country, devoted 61 percent of its $1.5 million in expenditures directly to those activities in 1987; 39 percent of its budget went to administration and fund raising.
In 1987 the Alger association spent more on printing and publications than on scholarships. Its principal annual publication is a hard-cover book titled “Only in America Opportunity Still Knocks.” The 1987 book devoted 132 of its 192 pages to a membership list and biographies featuring informal snapshots of the members and outlines of their paths to success.
“Maybe that’s just being a little ego trip for a lot of people in there,” Ruth Peale said.
The records obtained from the IRS show that some young people are benefiting from the association’s programs. During 1985-87, for example, each of 63 students received $5,000 college scholarships from the association.
There is a question, however, as to whether the members of the association are benefiting financially from their connection to the association more than the students are.
Because the association is a non-profit organization exempt from federal income tax, contributions to it are tax-deductible. Maximum marginal tax rates were 38.5 percent in 1987 and 50 percent in 1985 and 1986. If all the contributors to the Horatio Alger Association paid federal income taxes at the highest marginal income tax rates during 1985-1987, the total tax burden of the contributors could have been reduced by $732,246.
In other words, the tax loss to the federal government could have been more than double the $315,000 in scholarship awards made by the association during 1985-1987.
When told of the association’s spending patterns: Farrell said, “That’s shameful not to give out more. It sounds like they are mismanaged.”
Farrell said he had little to do with the association other than winning an award and knew little of the association’s “inner workings.”
When I sought clarification from Portland Public Schools, the District said its per pupil expenditure is actually closer to $11,000.
“If you include services like transportation, nutrition, SpEd, English as a Second Language Programs (ESL), other central office supports and operations, from a whole system perspective the budgeted per pupil expenditure number doubles and is closer to $22,000, including both GenFund and Special Revenue, but not bond dollars,” the District said.
But that’s not really the whole story, either.
In fact, considering all funds available to the District in the 2022-23 school year, totaling $1.9 billion, per student expenditures came out to $45,533.
That’s right, an astounding $45,533 per student for what can only be described as abysmal academic performance by the District’s students.
Where’s the anger?
Look at the situation with all that spending in the 2021-2022 school year:
3rd grade students who failed to meet state grade-level expectations in English Language Arts: 44%
8th grade students who failed to meet state grade-level expectations in mathematics: 62%
Students failing to earn a high school diploma within 4 years: 16%
Students with chronic absenteeism (in attendance less than 90% of school days): 33.5%
– African Americans chronically absent: 55%
-Hispanic Latino students chronically absent: 48.1%
-American Indian/Alaska Native students chronically absent: 68.8%
-White students chronically absent: 27.1%
-English learners chronically absent: 42.5%
-Grade 12 students chronically absent: 64.7%
And these numbers are for the Portland Public Schools System as a whole. Some individual schools did appreciably worse.
At Cesar Chavez K-8 School, for example, only 17% met state grade level expectations in English Language Arts and only 11% met state grade level expectations in mathematics and science. At Kellogg Middle School, 34% of students met grade level expectations in English Language Arts, 25% met state grade level expectations in mathematics and 18% met state grade level expectations in science.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as The Nation’s Report Card, provides additional information about student achievement and learning experiences in various subjects by state and 27 urban districts. Although the district-specific analyses do not separate out Portland Public Schools, the state reports are illuminating as a supplement to the data noted above.
NAEP is a congressionally mandated program that is overseen and administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences.
NCES reports results at the state level, most often in grades 4 and 8, in four subjects—mathematics, reading, science, and writing.
In 1922, NAES tested in mathematics, reading and writing. Oregon students performed poorly in all three areas:
Just 28.61% of Oregon 4th graders performed at or above the NAEP Proficientlevel in mathematics, lower than in 2019.
Just 27.99% of Oregon 4th graders performed at or above the NAEP Proficientlevel in reading, lower than in 2019.
Just 22.31% of Oregon 4th graders performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level in writing.
Just 22.03% of Oregon 8th graders performed at or above the NAEP Proficientlevel in mathematics, lower than in 2019.
Just 27.79% of Oregon 8th graders performed at or above the NAEP Proficientlevel in reading, lower than in 2019.
Just 33.15% of Oregon 8th graders performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level in writing.
I raise all this not as an act of self-flagellation by a disenchanted Oregonian, but as a concerned citizen. Oregons political and business leaders say they want the state to be a magnet for investment, particularly in technology. With this kind of academic malfeasance, it’s not going to happen. More broadly, we cannot sustain American freedom and prosperity if the abysmal academic performance of our children, including low-income communities and communities of color, is not righted.
“…gaps between the highest and lowest scoring students, already growing before the pandemic, are widening into chasms,” warns the Brookings Institution, —. “At the pace of recovery we are seeing today, too many students of all races and income levels will graduate in the coming years without the skills and knowledge needed for college and careers.”
How much does Portland Public Schools spend per student?
It’s complicated.
Is it 14,829? That’s what the National Center for Education Statistics estimates was the per pupil expenditure in Oregon’s K-12 public schools for 2019-20, their most recent figure.[1]
I asked the district if that number still holds.
The district said the average of budgeted per pupil expenditures for next year (2023-2024) is $11,000 per student.
“This represents standardized site services. (teachers, principals, counselors, etc,” the district explained. “It does not include services like transportation, nutrition, SpEd, ESL or other central office supports and operations. “
The district did not clarify further.
So, is $11,000 the answer, then?
Nope.
“Once you include services like transportation, nutrition, SpEd, English as a Second Language Programs (ESL), other central office supports and operations, from a whole system perspective the budgeted per pupil expenditure number doubles and is closer to $22k/student (this is both GenFund and Special Revenue and does not include bond dollars).,” the District said..
So, is $22,000 the answer, then?
Nope.
It’s not so much a lie as an obfuscation, a deceit, an exercise in willful ignorance. People just don’t want to think about the massive amount of money going to public education that is producing such abysmal academic results.
A lot of things PPS spends money on are not counted in calculating spending per student. When all spending is thrown into the pot, the spending per student jumps up substantially.
Let’s look at the 2022-2023 school year.
PPS served 41,470 students that year. At $22,000 per student, that would translate to total spending of $912.3 million. But the District’s 2022-2023 budget is actually $1.883 billion.
Why the huge difference?
Put simply, the $22,000 doesn’t take into account all funds that support the District each year. The table below, provided boy the District, shows all resources available to the district for the school years 2018-19 through 2022-23.
This table shows that all funds available to the District in the 2022-23 school year actually totaled $1.9 billion. divide that by 41,470 students and per student expenditures comes out to $45,533. That’s right, $45,533.
And that was more than the District spent per student in the 2021-22 school year, even though the number of students served declined.
In the fall 2021, the District enrolled 45,005 students in grades K-12, a decrease of 1,932 students from fall 2020. The net loss was even greater than the previous year’s loss of 1,716 students.
A recent “Portland Public Schools Enrollment Forecast” by Portland State University’s Population Research Center projected that the District’s enrollment will likely continue to fall throughout most of the forecast’s horizon, declining to a low of 39,123 in 2035-36.
In the meantime, the story will likely be more money for fewer students who are unaware of their rights and obligations as Americans, can’t read, and don’t know how to calculate the square footage of a room, comprehend the ebb and flow of American history or write a coherent and compelling story.
And the beat goes on.
[1] According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the $14,829 of per student expenditures comprise expenditures for the day-to-day operation of schools and school districts for public elementary and secondary education, including expenditures for staff salaries and benefits, supplies, and purchased services. General administration expenditures and school administration expenditures are also included in current expenditures.
Expenditures associated with repaying debts and capital outlays (e.g., purchases of land, school construction, and equipment) are excluded from current expenditures. Programs outside the scope of public prekindergarten through grade 12 education, such as community services and adult education, are not included in current expenditures. Payments to private schools and payments to charter schools outside of the school district are also excluded from current expenditures. The Center says researchers generally use current expenditures instead of total expenditures when comparing education spending between states or across districts because current expenditures exclude expenditures for capital outlay, which tend to have dramatic increases and decreases from year to year. Also, many school districts support community services, adult education, private education, and other nonelementary-secondary programs, which are included in total expenditures. These programs and the extent to which they are funded by school districts vary greatly both across and within states and school districts.
SB 5506 – $100,000 to the Criminal Justice Commission to study the advantages and disadvantages of decriminalizing the crime of prostitution and provide a report on the study to the Emergency Board and relevant interim committees related to judiciary, no later than September 2024.
HB 2757 – A new tax that Salem politicians want added to Oregonians’ phone bills to fund the state’s new 9-8-8 suicide prevention hotline. Establishes 9-8-8 Trust Fund for improving the statewide coordinated crisis system. Imposes tax of 40 cents per line per month on consumers and retail subscribers who have telecommunications service or interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service and 40 cents per transaction for prepaid telecommunications services, to pay for crisis services system. At least 44 other states have thus far funded their call centers without adding a new tax on consumers. A tax of $.03, not $.50, should suffice to cover basic costs of the 9-8-8 hotline.
SB 611 – Caps cap rent increases at no more than 10% annually, Oregon’s current rent cap limits yearly rent increases to a base of 7% plus consumer price index (CPI), which is set annually by the state’s Office of Economic Analysis. Because of inflation, the 2023 CPI was set at 7.6% which brought the total allowed increase to 14.6%. Bill would only be effective in years where CPI increases more than 3%.
HB 2426 – Would allow gas stations to make half of their pump units to be self-serve so Oregonians could stand out in the rain, wind and sun to pump their own gas.
HB 2004 – Would create a statewide ranked choice voting scheme for Oregon. Establishes ranked choice voting as voting method for selecting winner of nomination for and election to offices of President of United States, United States Senator, Representative in Congress, Governor, Secretary of State, State Treasurer and Attorney General. Would require all voters to have a high level of information about all the candidates in order to choose preferences. If you only vote for the candidate you prefer and don’t rank all the rest, you are effectively disenfranchised if your candidate doesn’t come in first in the initial ballot count. Jeff Jacoby, an award-winning columnist for the Boston Globe, calls the RCV process “democracy on the Rube Goldberg model”, where ideas that supposedly simplify people’s lives wreak havoc instead.
HB 2049 – Allocates just $4.9 million for a proposed Cybersecurity Center of Excellence – about one-third of the original request from a joint legislative technology committee, intended to help government agencies monitor cybersecurity, train specialists and respond to data breaches like the one at Oregon’s Department of Motor Vehicles affecting 3.5 million Oregonians. The League of Oregon Cities, which represents municipalities of all sizes in the state, is concerned about the limited funding.
Only Mississippi lost a larger share of K-12 public school students in the 2022-2023 school year than Oregon.
Oregon’s public schools have lost 30,000 students since the fall of 2019. lowering total enrollment by 5% to 552,000 students in the fall of 2022.
Ethan Sharygin, director of Portland State University’s Population Research Center, told The Oregonian a switch from public school to private school represents about one-quarter of the “missing” students, many left to be homeschooled and some simply dropped out or weren’t enrolled in kindergarten when they reached the age of 5. Smaller slices of the loss are due to families moving out of state and to a gently declining birth rate.
Portland Public Schools (PPS) have been hit particularly hard by declining enrollment. The PPS website says “…With more than 49,000 students in 81 schools, it is one of the largest school districts in the Pacific Northwest.” But that’s far from reality.
Under a “low growth scenario” enrollment could go down further to 37,350 in 2035-36. The difference is primarily due to different assumptions about the levels of net migration (the net movement into and out of the District) of the District’s population.
Every single one of the missing children will represent a loss of revenue to the school district. That’s because Oregon school districts receive (in combined state and local funds) an allocation per student, plus an additional amount for each student enrolled in more costly programs such as Special Education or English Language Learners.
If a departing student shifts to homeschooling, there is no money transfer to families at this point, but the student’s school still loses that student’s funding allocation.
If a student shifts to one of Oregon’s 132 public charter schools, whether a brick-and-mortar institution or an online entity, the money the traditional school got for that student goes to the district sponsoring the charter school. Oregon law then provides that a sponsoring district must pass on to its charter school at least 80 percent of its per-pupil grant for K-8 students and 95 percent of its per pupil grant for grade 9-12 students.
Charter school enrollment in Oregon rose steadily from 1.7 percent of total public school enrollment in 2006-07 to 8.2% (46,275 students) in 2020-2021, then slipped slightly to 7.7% (42,668 students) 2021-2022. Charter school enrollment rose again in the 2022-2023 school year, however, to 11.9% (46,278 students) with 30,578 attending brick-and -mortar schools and 15,700 attending virtual public charter schools.
Right now in Oregon, once a school district has 3% or more of its students enrolled in a virtual public charter school outside the district, it can generally start denying requests. But school choice advocates have been pushing to eliminate that cap. Legislative efforts to remove the cap have failed to date, but that may not hold.
The outflow of students to charters may also accelerate if a movement in Oklahoma is replicated in Oregon. Many parents abandon traditional public schools because they want a more religious-oriented environment for their children. In early June, Oklahoma approved America’s first religious charter school. The Archdiocese of Oklahoma won approval to launch an online charter school that would embrace Catholic doctrine.
Some advocates of religious schooling have been suggesting that any effort to stop charter schools from being religious is a form of discrimination against religion. Ultimately, this issue will end up in court, perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court.
Another potential problem could come from the increasing public pressure for more school choice.
The Cascade Policy Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Oregon, is at the forefront of Oregon’s school choice movement. “Oregon’s public schools, largely controlled by teachers’ unions, are a one-size-fits-all system that leaves many students behind,” the Institute argues. “Traditional public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, online learning, private and parochial schools, homeschooling, and tutoring are all paths to success for students. All options should be valued, and parents should be empowered to choose among them to help their children succeed.”
Cascade is particularly enamored of Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), where a percentage of the funds that the state otherwise would spend to educate a student in a public school is deposited into accounts associated with the student’s family. The family may use the funds to spend on private school tuition or other educational expenses.
There are currently voucher and similar programs in 32 states and the District of Columbia, according to EdChoice, a free-market organization that promotes public money for private education. Voucher programs often are characterized in state legislation as “scholarship programs,” but whatever the name, the policies result in a transfer of public money to private institutions. Some even subsidize home-schooling.
In Arizona, the school choice movement has secured a school voucher program which has exploded since it was signed into law in 2022.
Arizona’s voucher program allows any child in the state to receive roughly $7,000 each year of their K-12 education while getting instruction at home or attending private school. The Arizona Department of Education recently estimated that enrollment in the program would continue to skyrocket and cost $900 million next year, nearly $300 million more than expected, Public school funding would have to go down to pay for it.
More students have applied for Iowa’s state-funded education savings accounts than expected as well, meaning the cost of paying for the private school scholarships could exceed what the state budgeted.
As of June 13, 2023, 17,520 applications had been submitted for the program, which will provide eligible families with $7,600 per child in state money to be used solely to pay for private school costs such as tuition and fees. A nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency had earlier estimated that 14,068 students would be approved to receive education savings accounts in the program’s first year. Families still have until June 30 to apply for the program, meaning the number of applications is likely to increase further.
Imagine the hit to traditional public school funding if similar programs were enacted in Oregon.
Regardless of the specific school choice options adopted, the prognosis for public school enrollment in Oregon is grim. How Oregon adapts in managing the enrollment decay is going to be a challenge.
Former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao an Asian American, thinks Asian Americans don’t get enough attention and respect.
“Our story is inextricably linked to America’s story,” she said in a May 30 Washington Post column.. “Yet our history is too often overlooked, our contributions to this nation are sometimes forgotten, and our right to be here is too often questioned. Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) history is American history. And it is time for it to be recognized as such. “
Her solution? Yet another museum on the national mall in Washington, D.C., a National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture.
It used to be that the national mall, the public lands around and between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol, was a place to celebrate the nation as a whole. Its initial structures included the Smithsonian “Castle” (1855), the Washington Monument (1884), the National Museum of Natural History (1910), the Lincoln Memorial (1922), the National Gallery of Art West Building (1941), the National Museum of American History (1964) and the National Air and Space Museum (1976).
The mall began to turn to celebrating specific segments of the national population when the National Museum of the American Indian opened in 2004. Then came the National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016.
President Biden set in motion Elaine Chao’s vision on June 13, 2022, when he signed into law a bill (H.R.3525) authorizing a commission to examine how to make a National Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Museum a reality and whether to make it part of the Smithsonian Institution.
One problem is that Asian Americans are far from a monolith. Instead, they have a complex history and cultures. Even the term encompasses dozens of ethnic groups of Asian descent. Just Southeast Asians, for example, includes Filipino, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai, Hmong, Laotian, Burmese, Indonesian and Malaysian.
An analysis from Common App, a nonprofit that allows prospective students to apply to more than 1,000 member colleges using one application, noted that the term Asian American can refer to around 50 ethnic groups. “While Asian American was a term established by activists in the 1960s as a means to build political power, it’s also been criticized for obscuring the immense diversity among those it purports to cover…,” notes a Vox article, part of an Asian American identity series.
If built, it would supplement the National Museum of the American Latino. Legislation calling for the Smithsonian to establish that museum passed in Dec. 2020.
“The new museum will be the cornerstone for visitors to learn how Latinos have contributed and continue to contribute to U.S. art, history, culture, and science.,” according to the Smithsonian. “Additionally, it will serve as a gateway to exhibitions, collections, and programming at other Smithsonian museums, research centers, and traveling exhibition services.”
The next battle is likely to be whether to call the new structure the Latino, Hispanic or Latinx Museum.
Then, of course, where all these museums will be planted in in an already crowded mall is unknown.
Some might argue that recognition of America’s diversity through such museums is a good thing. I’d offer a “Yes, but”. There’s no question that education about our multifaceted country can combat stereotypes and misconceptions, but excessive focus on identity is not such a good thing when it exacerbates divisiveness and encourage a splintering of the populace.
All this identify politics also leads to even more minority designations. As Amy Chua says in Political Tribes. “Once identity politics gains momentum, it inevitably subdivides, giving rise to ever-proliferating group identities demanding recognition.”
What are craven politicians going to endorse next? A German Museum, an Irish Museum, a Hungarian Museum? The high immigration numbers in the 1800s were largely fueled by German and Irish immigrants. The Hungarian revolution in 1956 led to a burst of Hungarian refugees coming to the United States.
The 1959 Cuban revolution drove hundreds of thousands of Cubans to the United States. Given their concentration in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis and other politicians seeking the Cuban vote could probably be counted on to endorse a Cuban Museum on the National Mall.
At the rate things are going, today’s pandering politicians, who, as Blake Smith, says, eagerly “offer cultural victories instead of substantive ones,” will eventually advocate the creation of museums for every single racial or ethnic group in America. We’ll need another National Mall.
Jesse Albert Currey (1873-1927), founder of the International Rose Test Garden in Portland, OR.
One of the most persistent myths about big special events is that they all generate enormous economic returns for communities.
Event sponsors frequently try to reinforce that perception with much-ballyhooed economic impact analyses. The problem, as the Journal of Travel Research has pointed out, is that “Most economic impact studies are commissioned to legitimize a political position rather than to search for economic truth.”
A special interest group that stands to benefit from the project funds an economic impact study that purports to provide hard numbers on the number of jobs, the increase in wages, and the additional output that will be generated by the project or subsidy. It makes grandiose claims about how much overall economic growth will be enhanced for the state or region generally.
Once the report is completed, the special interest group that paid for the study will tout these results in press releases that will be picked up by the largely uncritical media establishment, ensuring that the political decision makers and others who determine the fate of the project receive political cover.
Current negotiations over how much the Nevada will contribute to construction of a new $1.5 billion Las Vegas ballpark for the now Oakland Athletics are typical for how the economic impact process works.
Advocates for the project, who want the state to kick in up to 25% of the cost, argue that public money is justified because of the positive economic impact of the project.
The Athletics and Las Vegas saythey are hoping to draw from the nearly 40 million tourists who visit Las Vegas annually to help fill the stadium, an inadvertent admission that the project is likely to draw from tourists the city already pulls in, not new out-of-state visitors, thus limiting any economic boost.
State lawmakers are questioning whether the stadium is worth it., according to the Associated Press. They cite a major league team with the worst record in baseball, financed in-part by a county and state struggling to fund public services including schools, which rank toward the bottom in per-pupil funding.
Economists are also questioning proposed state assistance. “Most spending that happens in and around stadiums is just reallocated local spending, so there doesn’t seem to be much net positive economic impact from the stadium,” J.C. Bradbury, a sports economics researcher and professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia who authored The Baseball Economist, said in an interview with The Nevada Independent.“Anyone who is telling you that there is an economic benefit to a stadium deal is [lying] … I’ve studied this to death. There’s universal agreement.”
The Portland Rose Festival Foundation has been putting out a lot of economic impact numbers, too.
The foundation has been proclaiming for years that the event has a multimillion-dollar economic impact on Portland., throwing out numbers that are all over the map.
A 2001 economic impact study concluded the Festival had an economic impact of $79 million annually.
An internal, informal study in 2006 showed an economic impact of $50-60 million.
In 2009, Rose Festival Executive Director Jeff Curtis estimated the local economic impact of all the Rose Festival events that year would be $60 million.
A study that examined the festival’s economic impact in 2011 (The 2012 Portland Rose Festival Overall Economic Impact Assessment) concluded that the 2011 Festival injected $75.6 million into the local economy.
In comments about the 2023 Festival, the organization has been saying it will have a $65 million economic impact.
“Our current statement…regarding the impact, takes into account that older information, but is an internally conservative downgraded estimate because the changes that have taken place since then, including; the loss of the Rock n Roll Marathon partnership, the pandemic and other factors like the end of the Rose Cup Races at PIR and frankly, the changing weather patterns,” Rich Jarvis, Public Relations Manager at the Portland Rose Festival Foundation, said in an email.
The fact is it’s difficult to know whether any of the various economic impact numbers that have been put out with great fanfare, and repeated without question by the media, are reliable because the Portland Rose Festival keeps a tight grip on all the reports produced over the years.
“Our attendance numbers and financial information are proprietary and we don’t, as a policy, release those to the public,” Jarvis said.
This despite the fact the foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with higher public disclosure responsibilities, and benefits from a subsidy from the city under which it pays just $1 a year for its offices in the former McCall’s restaurant building on the waterfront. A cherished institution, yes, but not one entitled to reject scrutiny.
The foundation’s resistance to disclosure is in stark contrast to the openness of major businesses such as Intel that has made public several analyses of the company’s economic impact on Oregon. It also runs counter to the Rose Festival’s efforts to position itself as a responsible, public-spirited organization.
Of course, even if the Foundation makes the reports public, there’s no guarantee they will be reliable. Economists who study the actual impact of big events often dismiss the economic impact estimates by event promoters as wildly inflated.
First, in many cases, variations in the estimates of benefits alone, as has been the case with the Rose Festival, raise questions about the validity of economic impact studies.
Then there’s the phenomenon known as the crowding-out effect. Tourists tend to avoid cities where a big event like the Super Bowl is taking place because those events drive up prices on everything from air travel to hotel rooms.
Some common assumptions may also not be valid. For example, it’s often assumed that mega events stimulate a big jump in out-of -town visitors. But that’s not always the case. Typically, for example, fewer than 20% of the Tournament of Roses Parade watchers in Pasadena, CA come from out of the area.
Data compiled by STR, a global hospitality data and analytics company, do show an 85.5% and 91.8% hotel occupancy rate in Portland the night before and the night of the 2017 Grand Floral Parade. However, the occupancy rate during the entire 17-day Festival averaged only 75.25%, which was actually lower than the 87.25% rate in the 17 days following the Festival.
Similarly, STR data shows the hotel occupancy rates during the 2018 and 2019 Festivals averaged just 74.1% and 75.6%.
Many studies also exaggerate the multiplier effect from event-related spending, assuming that it represents additional economic spending, when it may be simply spending by locals who end up spending less elsewhere. In other words, leisure spending is simply shifted from one segment of the marketplace to another, sending the misleading signal that the event is an economic boon.
This is often referred to as the substitution effect,with attendees at an event spending their money on that event instead of on other activities in the local economy. The event simply results in reallocation of expenditures in the economy, rather than in real net increases in economic activity.
Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the Rose Festival’s economic impact analyses, they are unknown to the public if the studies are kept under wraps. The Portland Rose Festival Foundation should do better.
Activist groups are on the warpath against Florida.
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Latino civil rights organization; Equality Florida, a gay rights advocacy group; and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) have all issued advisories warning against travel to Florida.
“Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals,” the NAACP said. “Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”
The wisdom of their censure? Nil. It’s likely impact? Minimal.
The experiences of San Francisco and California with ill-considered travel bans are instructive.
San Francisco has already repealed its ban on city business with conservative states. The state may soon rescind its travel ban as well.
In 2016, California decided to restrict state employees from traveling to any state that has enacted a law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identify, or gender expression. It also prohibited state-funded and state-sponsored travel to states on a list.
In the beginning, four states (Kansas, Mississippi, N. Carolina, Tennessee) were on the list of states affected by the travel ban. Eventually the list swelled to almost half the states in the union.
California’s misguided feel-good effort at virtue signaling was stimulated by North Carolina acting to ban transgender people from using the bathroom of their gender identity in public buildings. California retaliated by banning state-funded travel to that state and any other state with laws it deemed discriminatory against LGBTQ people.
The travel ban played well with California’s leftists,but as the list of penalized states expanded, the ban grew unwieldy.
The prohibition meant sports teams at public colleges and universities had to find other ways to pay for road games in some states, university researchers found it difficult to pursue projects that required trips to states on the banned list and it complicated some of the state’s other policy goals, such as the use of money to pay for people in other states to travel to California for abortions.
In March 2023, state Senate leader Toni Atkins announced legislation that would end the ban and create in its place a program to create inclusive messaging, discourage discrimination, and help members of the LGBTQ+ community feel less isolated.
“While we recognize what the travel ban accomplished when it was passed, we also must address the unintended consequences and diminished utility that has become its legacy,” said John A. Pérez, UC Regent and Speaker Emeritus of the Assembly.
“But while the arguments for repeal are all legitimate, they miss what to me is the single biggest problem with the ban: Imposing a boycott on nearly half the states in the union further divides us as a country. It exacerbates political polarization and creates obstacles to communication with the very people we need to be persuading,” wrote Los Angeles Times columnist, Nicholas Goldberg.
The activist groups issuing advisories warning against travel to Florida are equally misguided. While there are clearly divided views on some bills passed by the Florida Legislature and signed by Gov. DeSantis, accusing the state as a whole of racism and discouraging travel there is divisive, overreaching and undercuts minority-owned businesses in the state.
In a country with 50 states and more than 332 million people, there are bound to be multiple areas of disagreement. Many might say the diversity of opinions, and the willingness to hear and debate them, is one of our country’s strengths. Different viewpoints, after all, serve as a gateway for discovery.
Activists trying to carve up the country into segments with which they agree or disagree are headed down the wrong path.That kind of thinking just encourages people like the unhinged far-right U.S. Representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA.
On Feb. 20, Presidents’ Day, Greene tweeted: “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”
Thankfully, there is little evidence that travel advisories by activist groups of any stripe have chilled interest in travel to chastised states in the past. Florida reported a record tourism year, with an estimated 137.6 million visitors in 2022 — up nearly 13% from 2021. That trend is likely to continue, despite the activist travel warnings.
As Stacy Ritter, CEO and president of Visit Lauderdale, has said, “…we welcome everyone under the sun.”
ThinkingOregon 