We understand why it’s common for citizens to give government leaders grief – we do that ourselves from time to time – but we also recognize that public officials often do noble things that go unnoticed and deserve a pat on the back.

For example, last Tuesday, a number of our local officials shared a nice, quiet lunch with 36 area students participating in Youth Leadership Tallahassee’s Government and Education Day (which JMI had the privilege of sponsoring).  

There were no political speeches.  No television cameras.  No votes to gain in next year’s elections – the students aren’t yet old enough to vote – just a friendly conversation at a small table with three or four students eager to learn about the inner workings of government. 

For giving their lunch hour to these high school students, we’d like to recognize Gil Ziffer, Michelle Rehwinkel Vasalinda, Nina Ashenafi Richardson, John Marks, Terry Lewis, and Maggie Lewis-Butler.  We’d also like to recognize several public officials that spoke to the students during the day:  Charles Canady, John Dailey, Kristen Dozier, Marvin Henderson, John Marks, and Alan Williams. 

We appreciate these officials’ service to our community.

Lt. Governor Jennifer Carroll, Rep. Marti Coley, Sec. Cindy O'Connell and Judge Nina Ashenafi Richardson (left to right) participate in an annual JMI Women in Government panel for the delegates at Florida Girls State.

By Dana Edwards
Jennifer Carroll told more than 300 Girls State delegates that being Florida’s first African-American Lt. Governor was “never part of my personal plan – but, sometimes, you have to be open to higher plans.”<
Speaking on a panel organized by the James Madison Institute (JMI), Carroll retraced the steps that led to her election last November. She described her years serving in the Florida House, and how her early experience in the Navy helped prepare her to head the Florida agency in charge of veterans’ affairs. 

She also admitted that public speaking came easily to her – after she had practiced in front of a mirror! 

Carroll’s remarks highlighted the James Madison Institute’s annual “Women in Government” panel at Florida Girls’ State. This year’s forum took place at FSU’s Moore Auditorium and also featured Rep. Marti Coley of Blountstown, Florida Lottery Secretary Cindy O’Connell and Leon County Judge Nina Ashenafi Richardson.         

Rep. Coley advised the young women to recognize that being a mother can aid one’s experience rather than stifle opportunities. 

And Rep. Coley admitted that she, too, had never imagined running for public office – until the unfortunate death of her newly-elected husband in 2005 propelled her to run for his House seat.

Secretary O’Connell noted that the diverse backgrounds of the JMI panelists – military, education, business, law – showed that there are many different routes to public service. She also shared her time-management techniques and how she weighs commitments in her personal and public lives.

Similarly, Judge Richardson encouraged the students to invest time in something besides their future careers, offering her participation on the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra Board as an example. She said the key to a successful career is choosing something you enjoy doing every day.

Each panelist advised the girls to take time for themselves each day, whether that is prayer, exercise or something else. Taking time for yourself, they said, helps you to be at your best for all the people in your life.

Dana Edwards is a sophomore majoring in journalism and history at the University of Florida and an intern at The James Madison Institute, a non-partisan think tank based in Tallahassee.

Could it be school cafeterias’ managers? After all, they’re presumably informed about nutrition and aware of the pupils’ tastes as reflected in how much of what’s served ends up in the kids’ tummies and how much in the garbage.

They’re also aware of how ethnic and regional preferences play a role in what kids eat or toss. In this large and diverse nation, tastes may range from ham, grits, and turnips to salmon, brown rice, and broccoli.

As it turns out, however, all wisdom on what our kids should eat evidently resides in Washington, D.C. That’s where Congress passed “The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act” rewriting the rules for the meals that millions of kids are served each day. Consider just a few of the details, as reported in Education Week:

Breakfast: Every day all students must be offered a full cup of fruit and a meat or meat substitute, but no tofu or starchy vegetables – potatoes, corn, peas, or lima beans. The feds also decree a calorie range: 350-500 for elementary schools, 400-550 for middle schools, and 450-600 for high school kids, whether they’re willowy would-be ballerinas or stocky aspiring linebackers.

Lunch: High school pupils must be offered a full cup of fruit and a full cup of veggies every day. And, the feds stipulate, at least once a week they must be offered a half cup of dark green veggies, a half cup of orange veggies, and a half cup of legumes.

The projected additional cost to school districts over the next five years is $6.8 billion – an estimate concocted by the federal government, which is not known for accurate forecasts.

Then there’s the lingering question of whether kids all over this diverse land will actually consume what the feds prescribe. As Education Week reported, some food  supervisors doubt it.

Said one: “Bok choy? Watercress? That’s going to be different. When we think of kids trying new vegetables, the first time, they just look at it. The second time, they smell it. And the third or fourth time, maybe, they eat it.” Added another: “I think much of the additional produce will end up in the garbage instead of students’ stomachs.”

Worse, whenever decisions shift to Washington from the levels closest to the people, lobbyists for large special interests get more involved. Consider, for instance, a revealing reaction from the National Potato Council.

The Council naturally hates the rule limiting starches. Mind you, the spud folks have no principled objection to federal mandates. Indeed, they want the feds to require four half-cup servings of potatoes a week at lunchtime and to allow them at breakfast, too.

This bill passed the Senate on August 5, arguably as an election-year lifeline for its sole sponsor, the politically vulnerable Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-AR. Evidently it didn’t help; she lost in November, 58 percent to 37 percent.

Undaunted, the House passed her bill on December 2 — during the lame duck session after an election in which voters arguably had rejected this kind of federal meddling. House Democrats supported it 247 to 17; House Republicans opposed it 153 to 4. President Obama signed it into law on December 13.

What this bill illustrates is how the feds parlay a bit of financial aid into a lot of federal control. That’s not unusual; a new Government Accountability Office report lists 151 K-12 programs housed in 20 different federal agencies at an annual cost of $55.6 billion.

Yet federal aid – at least that portion not borrowed abroad — is simply money taken from within the 50 states, sent to Washington’s money laundry to be shrunk, then returned with strings – or chains — attached.

Now, as President Obama often says, “Let me be clear.” Nobody wants children to go hungry — although it could be noted that feeding children should be primarily a parental responsibility and that low-income families receive food stamps to help.

Nor are these nutritional standards bad per se – especially given the epidemic of childhood obesity. Rather, as the feds’ flirtations with gridlock show, it’s simply folly to believe that all wisdom emanates from Washington or that local folks can’t devise sensible standards themselves — without the mandates from congressional lame ducks.

Part I: Moving to China 
Part II: Free Enterprise and Communism:Education, Health Care, and Internet Access
Part III: China’s Future and the U.S./China Trade Imbalance 
Part IV: Economic Growth in China: Pollution, Human Rights, Capital Investments and Foreigners

One idea circulating through the Capitol is the implementation of a national value-added tax, or VAT. This truly harmful tax would have a significant negative impact on all states, but the pain would be even greater for places like Florida.

With the federal debt now topping $14 trillion – almost 100 percent of the country’s economic output – Washington is searching the couch cushions for spare change and new sources of revenue to make it easier to balance the federal books. • One idea circulating through the Capitol is the implementation of a national value-added tax, or VAT. This truly harmful tax would have a significant negative impact on all states, but the pain would be even greater for places like Florida.

A VAT works much like a sales tax, except instead of levying a tax when a good is sold to its final user, a tax is collected on the “value added” at every stage of the production process. In theory, a VAT would have the same economic effect as a national sales tax, except that it would be more expensive and complex to administer.

One problem with a VAT is that it competes with the same sales tax base that states rely on for much of their revenue. As a result, states will take in less revenue through their sales taxes.

Indeed, Florida would be one of the states hardest hit by a national VAT. As one of just a handful of states that do not levy personal income taxes, Florida relies on sales tax revenue for about 60 percent of total revenue – almost double the national average. Only Tennessee and Washington rely more heavily on sales tax revenue than Florida.

Because taxes discourage consumers from spending money by raising the costs of products, even at a modest rate a VAT would reduce consumption and hence sales tax collections in Florida. Consumers and businesses alike would immediately lose out. This is the same logic by which public health advocates, for instance, have called for sharply higher cigarette taxes in the previous decade: taxing a product reduces its consumption.

The longer-term effects would be even more pernicious. Because the federal government would set the VAT rate and Florida would still set its sales tax rate, we would likely see a struggle between Washington and Tallahassee to move rates higher and higher to make up for decreasing revenue wrought by the other government’s taxes.

The result would be an arms race as the federal VAT and state sales tax rates climb in an attempt to boost persistently falling revenue – falling precisely because of rising tax rates. As a result, Floridians would end up seeing higher overall taxes, lower state revenue, and less purchasing power for consumers.

Within about 20 years of its introduction, the effect of a federal VAT on revenue would be largely to shift revenue from states – particularly states like Florida that rely on the sales tax for a majority of revenue – to the federal government.

A VAT would chiefly serve to give Washington revenue that otherwise would have gone to Tallahassee. It would serve to make Florida even more dependent on the federal government for revenue and decrease the state’s independence in policymaking.

Moreover, a VAT would slow economic growth, both in Florida and nationwide. Compounded over two decades, even a seemingly small tax would reduce economic output by about 2.6 percent, decreasing national income by almost a trillion dollars. That is an enormous amount of lost economic productivity for a tax that will generate only a trivial amount of additional revenue.

Proponents of a national VAT suggest that enacting such a tax is virtually the only thing Washington can do to fix our increasingly spendthrift federal budget. This is false. Spending cuts, tax reform, and fixing entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are critical. Inventing new ways to tax consumers is the last thing we should consider, particularly in the midst of a weak recovery.

A decade ago, at the end of the Clinton administration, federal expenditures were 18.4 percent of economic output. Today they are around 25 percent. Evidence indicating government spending has made us better off today than we were back then is hard to find.

The economic evidence we do have, however, suggests that the effects of a federal VAT on Florida would be sharply decreased revenue, increased fiscal dependence on Washington and slower economic growth. It would raise little revenue and mostly shift funds from the statehouse to Congress. In other words, a VAT is simply too costly for

Florida.

Randall G. Holcombe is the author of “The Value Added Tax: Too Costly for the United States,” published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is also a professor of economics at Florida State University and senior fellow at the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee.

Yet, as I’ve listened to the debate over merit pay in Florida and around the country, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about how these proposals would affect two teachers that I greatly admire (even though one of them greatly annoyed me at first).  Let me see if I can explain.

Portrait of a Teacher as a Young Woman
Ms. Laura Simmons came to my high school to teach AP English my senior year.  A young teacher in her mid-20s, she had been hired during the summer, after our school’s legendary AP English teacher – a leather-pants-wearing hippie – decided to “sell out” and became part of The Establishment (Assistant Principal). 

Ms. Simmons initially came across as an earnest, no-nonsense, persnickety fussbudget.  But one day early in the school year, she made the mistake of telling our first-period class that she was very self-conscious about a temporary black spot on her chin (where a dermatologist had just burned off a mole).

Upon hearing this, I did what any mischievous teenage boy might do.  I came to school early the next day, armed with a sheet of black construction paper, a hole punch, and some glue, and proceeded to paste a black spot on the chins of all my first-period classmates before school.  We then covered our chins with our hands, propping our elbows atop our desks, until Ms. Simmons arrived and began writing the day’s assignment on the chalkboard. 

When Ms. Simmons turned around and saw all of us staring back at her with black chin spots, she shrieked!  And I feared that I was in a heap of trouble.  But after a long pause, Ms. Simmons punctured the nervous silence that had fallen over our classroom with a deep, cathartic laugh.  Apparently, she recognized that our prank was meant to be something of an initiation – her initiation as Elder into our Tribe of Precocious Learners.

For the next nine months, Ms. Simmons poured herself into our lives, teaching us everything we could absorb about alliteration, and parallel structure, and rhetorical questions, and kernel sentences.  She taught us to hear The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and to see The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.  And she assured us that it was okay to break writing rules occasionally for effect . . . so long as we remembered to avoid clichés like the plague!   

When Ms. Simmons had finished her magic that year, she blew out town, Mary Poppins-like, taking her supercalifragilisticexpialidocious teaching skills to some new place, with her new husband, and her new name:  Mrs. Hunter.

I only saw her once after that – when we had a reunion of our yearbook staff (which she oversaw) to celebrate winning First Place in a national competition.

But I never forgot Ms. Simmons-Hunter-Whatever-I’m-Supposed-to-Call-Her.  Because she had a more profound impact on me than any schoolteacher I ever had.  

Ode to a Meritorious Teacher
I write this Ode to a Meritorious Teacher — hey, it beats writing odes about Grecian urns! – to point out  that the very best teacher I ever had ranked among the lowest paid in the entire profession.  And the reason I know this is because the pay structure for teachers hasn’t changed much over the last 30 years. 

Then, as now, teachers got brownie points for having lots of classroom experience.  And then, as now, little payday consideration was given to the amount of progress a teacher’s students actually made under her tutelage.

At first blush, the age-old emphasis on rewarding training and experience appears reasonable.  More classroom time and training ought to make one a better teacher . . . and it usually does.

Yet, sometimes veteran teachers with advanced degrees turn out to be complete duds in the classroom.  And sometimes promising young instructors bring so much natural teaching talent to the table that they manage to prod their pupils to progress far more than anyone could have possibly predicted. 

Given that annual end-of-year assessments can now measure students’ learning gains under a particular teacher, President Obama and many education reformers in both parties believe these objective measurements ought to become a major factor in determining the length and size of teacher contracts.  Not the only factor, surely, since some significant aspects of education defy objective measurement, but a very important factor.   

Nevertheless, the National Education Association opposes legislative efforts to link pay and tenure to performance.  And their affiliate in Florida has displayed a close-minded vigor that has surprised – and disappointed – many Floridians.        

As Bill Cotterell, a columnist for The Tallahassee Democrat, observed, “The teachers unions’ position on merit pay and tenure has been about as negotiable as the National Rifle Association’s approach to gun control:  First, we start with no bill.  Then, we’re done.”  

What Gym Coaches Can Teach Us
Regrettably, failure to tie pay to performance undermines the professionalism of the teachers’ profession.  It makes it more difficult to attract top-tier talent to teaching.  And this, in turn, fuels despicable put-downs like, “Those who can’t, teach,” and the even meaner, “Those who can’t teach, teach gym.”

Ironically, the folks who teach gym – and coach sports – know something about the legitimacy of tying the pay of leaders to the performance of those under their leadership.  As George Allen notes in his book, What Washington Can Learn from the World of Sports, college and professional coaches tend to be judged by the won-loss records their teams amass. 

Thus, young coaches that take underachieving programs to new heights (like Florida’s Urban Meyer) rightly earn more than experienced veterans whose talented teams frequently fall short (like Illinois’ Ron Zook).  And even though coaches who’ve experienced lots of success get “a long leash” – appropriately – they are still expected to get results from their current players. 

Indeed, if one wants a vivid picture of just how absurd Florida’s current teacher tenure system is, consider this: a public school teacher with years of nothing-but-mediocre performance had far more job security during the 2009-10 school year than Bobby Bowden, the second-winningest coach in college football history. 

Déjà vu All Over Again
In addition to their opposition to performance-based pay, something else has bothered me about the teachers unions’ campaign against merit pay.  And the best way for me to relay this concern is by telling a story that’ll seem like “déjà vu all over again” (to borrow Yogi Berra’s memorable phrase).  

One recent summer, the neo-hippie teacher that was slated to teach my son Richard’s AP English class got busted for possession of marijuana.  So, the school principal asked a promising young teacher named Mrs. Jennifer Roady-Lawson to take her place.

Early in the school year, Richard told me that everyone in AP English was wigging out because Mrs. Roady-Lawson seemed like an earnest, no-nonsense, persnickety fussbudget.  (Or something to that effect.)  But a month or two later, Richard reported that students were adjusting to Mrs. Roady-Lawson’s high standards.  And, at some point, Richard apparently determined that it might even be possible to goad Mrs. Roady-Lawson in a good-natured way. 

So, when Mrs. Roady-Lawson assigned her students to write an argumentative essay that used humor, Richard did what any mischievous teenage boy might do.  He picked a polarizing topic that no sane person would consider amusing, staked out a position diametrically opposite the one his teacher holds, and wrote the most persuasive paper he could write. 

To her great credit, Mrs. Roady-Lawson did not penalize my un-toady son for playfully poking fun at her political point of view.  And when Richard came home proudly displaying a top score on that assignment, I told him he had special reason to be pleased – because a person who disagrees with your position is more apt to see the weaknesses in your argument (and the pitfalls of your humor) than someone who agrees with you.

Needless to say, AP English ended up being one of Richard’s favorite classes this year – thanks in no small part to his open-minded, even-handed, intellectually-challenging teacher with the hyphenated last name.  

Pass/Fail Pay or Excellent Pay?
I write this second Ode to a Meritorious Teacher – hey, it still beats writing odes about Grecian urns! – because Mrs. Roady-Lawson’s willingness to let her students wrestle with both sides of a controversial issue stood in marked contrast to what some more-experienced and better-paid teachers in other parts of the state did during the S.B. 6 debate.

In the weeks leading up to the vote on S.B. 6, members of the Florida Legislature received an avalanche of phone calls, e-mails, and letters urging them to oppose merit pay.    Most of these communiques came from teachers themselves.  But some came from students who appear to have been coached by their teachers to spout the FEA’s party line.  (See sidebar.)   

Now, it would be grossly unfair to suggest that these unscrupulous teachers were somehow representative of all those who opposed S.B. 6.  But it would be equally misleading for someone to claim that the FEA actually represented the interests of all Florida teachers – or, especially, all of Florida’s best teachers – when it lobbied against merit pay.

Indeed, in a fascinating survey of more than 20,000 Florida teachers, the respondents divided evenly when asked: “Do you think all teachers with the same number of years in the profession should be paid the same, regardless of their skill level?”  Forty percent of the teachers answered yes, 39 percent said no, and the rest were undecided or gave no response.

Interestingly, these numbers might actually understate teachers’ support for merit pay – or at least their potential support.  Here’s why I say that . . .

Suppose Florida teachers were asked:   In what classes are your students more motivated to excel – those in which they simply pass or fail . . . or those in which they can earn an A?

I suspect almost every Florida teacher would say that students typically strive for excellence more in classes where they can earn an A than in pass/fail classes. 

And, yet, if this is true of students, would it not also be true of teachers?  Human nature being what it is, wouldn’t teachers be more apt to go the extra mile (or to keep going the extra mile) if they knew that they would earn more if their students learned more?

Some people resent this line of argument because they think it diminishes the nobility of people who “didn’t choose to be teachers for the money” and who “don’t need to be treated like Pavlov’s dog” to do a good job.  I understand these objections, because I know a number of teachers who have a relentless intrinsic drive to excel that seems unfazed by external factors.  

Yet, the fact that there are such noble teachers only increases my support for merit pay.  Because teachers who constantly challenge their students to soar higher and dig deeper deserve to be well compensated for the success they inspire.  Moreover, we need such teachers to be well compensated, lest they find it tempting to “sell out” and leave the classroom when their household budgets get squeezed.     

Not in Kansas Anymore
Sadly, the people who claim to represent teachers appear to have little use for thinking outside the box – for looking at teacher compensation issues in new ways and entertaining the possibility that teachers might actually fare better under a new system. 

Instead, the unions’ reflexive resistance to merit pay reminds one of their opposition to other educational reforms that have been adopted in Florida over the last decade.

Look, our family came late to the party.  We’ve only been in Florida three years.  And we don’t know everything about what went on here under the banner of “educational reform” prior to our arrival. 

All we know is that we aren’t in Kansas anymore.  Instead of being trapped in a sepia-colored educational landscape where all the kids get a plain vanilla education, we’ve landed in a yellow-brick Sunshine State well down the road to adopting some of the most forward-looking, student-friendly educational policies anywhere in the country.

And these innovative reforms aren’t just giving white kids like my son a chance to learn from extraordinary teachers like Mrs. Roady-Lawson.  But these reforms are helping kids of every race and economic background and learning style get a chance to pursue an educational plan tailored to their unique needs. 

In fact, I like to boast to my progressive friends in other states that Florida is well on its way to becoming the first state where poor kids can routinely get a private school education if they want one.  And I hope soon to be able to boast that Florida not only compensates its teachers on merit (the way athletes, coaches, and other professionals are compensated) but is the first state to reverse the upside-down practice of having the union “agents” who represent teachers earn way more than the star teachers receive. 

For these things to happen, more and more Floridians will need to see that the twin pillars of reform – higher standards and more choices – aren’t just good for students, but good for teachers as well. 

Indeed, many of the FEA’s worst fears about merit pay only hold true in a monopolistic system where teachers have but one prospective employer.  In an educational landscape where there are many potential employers, robotic administrators who fail to take into consideration the extenuating circumstances that might explain a good teacher’s “off year” will find themselves losing talented teachers to other schools.

Pride and Prejudice
Look, I know these issues are complicated – and that reformers need to proceed prudently, not cavalierly.  But when I hear the teachers’ unions cast aspersions on the folks working to reward excellent teachers, it reminds me of the way Lt. Wickham slyly impugned the character of Mr. Darcy in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.  

And while I recognize that teachers are understandably predisposed to trust the unions that claim to represent them – just as Elizabeth Bennet was predisposed to trust Lt. Wickham – I hope that good teachers throughout the state of Florida will give the educational reformers a chance to prove that they have honorable intentions in promoting merit pay. 

For if there is any truth that might help to allay the concerns of those in the noble Tribe of Great Teachers Who Aren’t In It for the Money but Still Deserve to be Well Compensated, it is this:

Sometimes a “foe” who seems at first to be an earnest, no-nonsense, persnickety, fussbudget proves to be a friend who’s been seeking your best interest all along.  

I’m sure that probably sounds suspicious to some.  But it’s the lesson Elizabeth Bennet learned in Pride and Prejudice.  And it’s the lesson my son and I each learned . . . from two extraordinary English teachers with four last names.

Sidebar:
“Prompting Pupils to Parrot the Party Line”
Using public records law, JMI staff obtained copies of student phone messages, letters, and e-mails to Florida elected officials about S.B. 6.  Curiously, many student calls were made during school hours and followed a familiar script.  In some, the voice of an adult “prompter” could be heard in the background when students struggled to remember their “lines.”

Similarly, a political science instructor at East Ridge High School in Clermont sent a packet of nearly 100 letters that his students wrote to the Senate President as a class assignment.  The teacher claimed he presented the bill with “a neutral connotation” – and expressed “total amazement” when all of his students opposed S.B. 6. 

Yet, included in the packet – no doubt by accident – was the teacher’s actual assignment, which included “talking points” against S.B. 6 that had been copied from a memo (also enclosed) written from teachers unions’ perspective.  No arguments in support of S.B. 6 were included with the assignment.

Not surprisingly, the students’ letters echo arguments found in the “talking points” memo – sometimes word-for-word.  To review these letters and the teacher’s assignment, go to http://www.jamesmadison.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/materials/Journal_Summer2010_SB6StudentLetters.pdf.