Pun Salad

John Shea is back in the pages of my dreadful local newspaper with a broadside against New Hampshire's ongoing efforts to expand school choice for parents and their kids. He's not a fan: 'Education freedom' vouchers bill is a step toward giving up on NH public schools.

You will note the scare quotes around "Education freedom". The current program is called "Education Freedom Accounts", or EFAs.

Background: Shea is superintendent of the Somersworth (NH) School District, and for this year, superintendent of the Rollinsford (NH) School District. Rollinsford is where Pun Salad Manor sits, and it is the governmental entity to which Your Blogger dutifully has sent off thousands of dollars twice-yearly, for the past 38 years. Although both Pun Son and Pun Daughter went to K-12 schools whose names started with "Saint".

The paper says this is the "second in a series of commentaries on the future of universal public education." Shea's first effort can be read here; my commentary, such as it was, is here.

His current effort begins:

Style notes: Reader, if you think the phrase "universal public education" (UPE) is overused in these two paragraphs, be warned that it appears seven times in his column. There must be an NEA writing guide that urges this repetition, right? I hope Shea has a hotkey programmed to emit it, the better to save his typing fingers. I'll just say "UPE" from here on out.

Another word Shea beats into the ground: "voucher". Which I assume that NEA writing guide says has a negative connotation. Shea uses it as a swear word thirteen times.

OK, those are stylistic quibbles. Going to the substance: Shea waxes eloquent on the ideals of UPE. Which are, of course, noble. What he doesn't mention: if UPE schools even approximately implemented those ideals, they would have nothing whatsoever to fear from those dreaded vouchers. Nobody would bother seeking out a private school or homeschooling. Parents would be assured the kiddos were getting a "quality education" for "free", without dealing with EFA paperwork.

Shea should simply admit: the reason he sees EFAs as a threat to UPE is due to the mere fact if parents had the financial wherewithal to escape UPE as it actually exists, a significant fraction would leap at the chance.

I also wanted to point out a bit of stat-picking:

No state government does less for its public schools than ours. We are dead last, 50th out of 50, in a ranking of U.S. states by percentage of public school funding contributed by the state itself.

That's kind of an odd choice of statistic, isn't it? Is there some study somewhere that shows that a higher percentage of UPE funding coming from the state results in superior education outcomes?

Well, I doubt it. I'm willing to be proved wrong.

And, in any case, I don't think the situation is as dire as Shea's trying to imply. Table 235.20 in Your Federal Government's "Digest of Education Statistics, says in column 7, that New Hampshire state funding for public elementary and secondary schools was 30.9% of the total in 2020-21. That's not the lowest (that's Missouri: 29.8%), but it's close. But it's far from a sore thumb: there are 14 states with percentages in the 30%-39.9% range.

And so what? There's nothing magic about money coming from the state. Even if we bought the (implied) assumption that more money shoved in the UPE school doors causes smarter kids coming out, it turns out that NH does shove a lot of money into UPE. World Population Review says NH's Per Pupil Spending by State 2025 was a cool $17,456. And that's not "dead last". In fact, it's the ninth-highest among the states (and D.C.)

Countepoints: Drew Cline of the Josiah Bartlett Center notes the mediocre results:

New Hampshire’s own state test scores show majorities of students failing to reach proficiency in science and math, and bare majorities performing at a proficient level in English, despite massive increases in school spending in the past quarter century.

In addition, NHJournal notes that Shea's fearmongering drivel was spectacularly ineffective at defeating the legislation that had him so upset: EFA Expansion Gets Backing in NH House, Senate.

Also of note:

• OK, Uncle Stupid isn't funding human appendixes. George Will notes other similarities though: How the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is like the human appendix.

  If there are any actual, as distinct from merely rhetorical, fiscal hawks in Washington, they should be calling attention to the dismal fact that the government added $838 billion to the national debt in just the first four months of fiscal 2025 (October through January). The lowest of the low-hanging fruit for budget-cutters is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an ornamental entity, decorative but inessential.

  Last year’s appropriation of $535 million brought spending on the CPB to over $15 billion since its 1967 founding. It was then a late piece in Lyndon Johnson’s mosaic of national perfection called the Great Society.

  The CPB’s Public Broadcasting Service, launched 55 years ago, at least increased many Americans’ network television choices from three (CBS, NBC, ABC) to four. Thirty years ago, however, PBS improvidently adopted the slogan “If PBS doesn’t do it, who will?” Today, the antecedent of “it” can be almost anything, and the “who” will be many of the hundreds of channels available even on smartphones in scores of millions of Americans’ pockets.

  And I have to include this bit as well:

  Actually, CPB is like the human appendix — vestigial, purposeless and susceptible to unhealthy episodes. In 2025, it is a cultural redundancy whose remaining rationale is, amusingly, that government should subsidize its program[m]ing because so few want it. Commercial broadcasters cater to the vulgar multitude, so the refined few are left out, orphans with nothing to do but pout and reread Proust.

  GFW is a far more valuable resource than the CPB.

• Apparently there are people who need to be told this. And Kevin D. Williamson is the guy to do so: Canada Is an Ally, Not an Enemy.

  When the United States was attacked by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) did something it had never done before and has not done since: It invoked Article 5, the collective-defense provision at the core of the alliance. With Manhattan burning and the Pentagon in ruins, thousands of Americans dead, and the future uncertain, our allies came to our aid. 

  And that included our nearest ally, Canada.

  Canada did not send a bloodied and wounded United States thoughts and prayers via social media: When it came time to go after Osama bin Laden et al. in Afghanistan, more than 40,000 members of the Canadian armed forces served in what was not, narrowly speaking, a Canadian cause. And 159 Canadian soldiers died there.

  That may not seem like a very large number, but it is 159 more than the Trump family has sent to fight for the American cause in the century and a half since that family’s first draft-dodging ancestor fled military service in Germany. Frederick Trump, the horse-butchering Yukon pimp who brought the Trump family to the United States, had no plans to stay in the country long term, but was expelled ignominiously from his homeland for his cowardly evasion of military service. During the Trump family’s time in the United States, Americans have fought in conflicts ranging from the Spanish-American War to the two world wars to Korea to Vietnam to the Gulf War to Afghanistan and Iraq. None of Trump’s ancestors served in any of those conflicts, and none of his progeny has, either. The president has occasionally, however, taken the time to sneer at figures such as John McCain, whose service was—whatever you think of his politics—genuinely heroic.

  OK, KDW's kind of rough on horse-butchering Yukon pimps. Sins of the fathers and all that.

• Something to think about during a boring sermon. Jeff Maurer asks: Should We Take the Machete Away From the Toddler?

  I’ve lived through a few recessions. One was caused by a pandemic. One was caused by a housing bubble. One was caused by people suddenly realizing that it’s insane to give massive checks to any Stanford dropout who puts “Internet = future = profits” on a slide deck. If we’re headed towards a recession — and it increasingly looks like we might be — this will be the first one in my lifetime caused by a president having economic beliefs that are a weird mix of mercantilism, nationalism, and shoving a chopstick up your nose until it punctures your brain.

  The odds of a recession would be even higher if people thought that Trump was actually going to follow through on his insane trade war threats. Of course, the stock market plunge this week indicates that investors increasingly think that Trump might actually be dumb enough to do what he says he’s going to do. And really: Would you want to bet that Trump isn’t sufficiently dumb? Surely, the three worst things in the world to bet on are: 1) The Washington Generals, 2) Stock in The Amalgamated Asbestos and VHS Video Rental Company of Eastern Ukraine, and 3) Trump’s intelligence.

  This self-inflicted proto-recession isn’t just maddening; it’s probably illegal. The Wall Street Journal recently ran an op-ed describing how Trump is stretching the phrase “unusual and extraordinary threat” beyond the limits of spacetime. I agree with every word that the Journal wrote, and let’s pause for a moment to marvel at the state of things: You have me — and also basically every left-leaning economist with a “SHE PERSISTED” t-shirt collecting dust in their closet — in perfect alignment with the Wall Street Journal editorial page. That only happens when the question at hand is really basic, and I mean astoundingly basic, like “pants or underwear: which goes on the outside?”

  I think I'm still getting that question right.

Well, I was going to dazzle the readership with my penetrating analysis of the Mahmoud Khalil situation. But it's getting kind of late in the day for that. Maybe tomorrow?

Recently on the book blog:

This is another book from my "Reread Robert Crais" mini-project. My report on my original read is here. My rereading observations in no particular order:

If anything, I liked it better this time around.

My report notes that the cover has a silhouette of Maggie, a heroic German Shepard. That is no longer true for the Kindle version. There's a dog on the cover, but is that supposed to be a German Shepard? I don't think so.

Back then, I asserted that you may never read a more heartbreaking scene than the one that opens the book. That remains true twelve years later, even though I knew what was coming.

Another thing remains true is my 2013 observation: "Dogs: we don't really deserve them."