May 24, 2013 

It’s Friday! 

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Quotes of Note

“We cannot continue to bombard the people in Washington, telling them they need to cut spending, they need to reduce the burden on taxpayers in this country by reducing their expenditures, and then when something like sequestration occurs, be the first to complain we’re not receiving as much federal money.” – Nathan Deal, Georgia governor

“The story of America’s quest for freedom is inscribed on her history in the blood of her patriots.” – Randy Vader

Events

June 6: Michael B. Horn, co-founder and executive director of the education practice at the Clayton Christensen Institute, keynotes the Foundation’s June 6 Leadership Breakfast, “Customize The Class.” 8 a.m. at Cobb County’s Georgian Club. Horn will share how innovation can disrupt the factory-based education system and transform learning into a student-centric approach where all students can achieve their full potential. ($25.) Register at http://tinyurl.com/7ldaqnk.

July 11: Education expert Jay Greene will be the keynote speaker at the Foundation’s annual Friedman Legacy for Freedom Day, which will be marked with a noon Policy Briefing Luncheon at the Athens Country Club. ($30.) Find out more at http://tinyurl.com/nz9at52; register at http://tinyurl.com/ojcs5fp.

Opportunity

Got students? The Foundation’s Student Outreach Scholarship (SOS) Program uses supporters’ tax-deductible contributions to cover the charge for qualified students to attend events, giving them an opportunity to hear national speakers on free-market ideas and to network with Georgia’s business, community and political leaders. Find out how to apply to attend events or to contribute to the Program at http://www.georgiapolicy.org/?p=9167.

Education

By the numbers:
$10,821: Georgia’s K-12 education revenues per student for Fiscal Year 2011, 37th highest among the states and higher than all our neighbors except South Carolina.
10th: Georgia’s rank among the states for K-12 education revenues as a percentage of personal income, which does a better job of adjusting for cost of living differences among the states. Source: U.S. Census Bureau

There are two basic types of innovations: those that sustain the status quo and those that disrupt it. But “hybrids” often emerge as a prelude to pure disruption in the category of a sustaining innovation, the Clayton Christensen Institute notes in a new study. Using a combination of both old and new technologies, hybrids are evident in a number of industries: cars that use both electric power and gasoline; banks with branches and online services; and retail stores with Web sites. Hybrids are also apparent in K–12 blended learning, and the new study classifies the models of blended learning and outlines the implications for education leaders. (Study co-author Michael Horn is the Foundation’s June 6 Leadership Breakfast keynote speaker.)

“The kind of disruption that the higher education industry has been expecting” and “a sonic boom rattling the windows in the offices of college administrators across the country” is how Forbes magazine describes Georgia Tech’s announcement of a $7,000 online graduate degree in computer science, a degree that would normally cost approximately $40,000.

Economy

When is a stimulus not a stimulus? In 2009, the federal government’s $831 billion stimulus package was put into place to stimulate the economy and increase spending in the economy. Economics Professor Andrew T. Young, argues, however that each dollar of stimulus increases total spending in the economy by less than one dollar, which means that the economic benefit associated with the stimulus is less than the stimulus itself.  Source: Cato Institute

Georgia ranks eighth in the American Legislative Exchange Council’s sixth annual economic competitiveness index, “Rich States, Poor States,” ahead of all other states in the Southeast.

By the numbers:
81,405 pages added to the Federal Register in 2010, a record amount.
78,961 pages added in 2012.
$14,768: estimated cost of regulations per household, which would be the second largest item in the typical family budget after housing. Source: Wall Street Journal

Social media

The Foundation’s Facebook page has more than 2,050 “likes” at facebook.com/GeorgiaPolicy and 970 Twitter followers at twitter.com/gppf. There’s a new Facebook page to like: The Foundation’s SOS Scholarship Page at facebook.com/GeorgiaPolicySOSProgram.

YouTube: Governor Nathan Deal’s policy staff met with community representatives this week in Atlanta. Go to the Foundation’s YouTube channel to view videos about Medicaid the state’s anti-obesity campaign for children; the school-to-prison pipeline focus in justice reform and online access to student academic records for teachers and families. Matchbook Learning’s CEO and founder, Sajan George, was the keynote speaker this week at the Leadership Breakfast. George, an Atlanta resident, shared Matchbook’s school turnaround successes;. view his speech on the YouTube channel. Kelly McCutchen discusses education innovation and announced upcoming events. Subscribe to the channel to make the best use of our resources: http://tinyurl.com/agkm5h5.

This Week in The Forum: Georgia, ranked eighth in ALEC’s “Rich States, Poor States” report, has not improved in five years. The report’s co-authors, Stephen Moore and Jonathan Williams, share their views with Foundation Editor Mike Klein on what the state could do to improve its competitiveness. In “Checking Up on Health,” Benita Dodd’s roundup focuses on higher premiums for young adults, the activist backlash against small businesses, a lawsuit alleging the IRS overstepped its boundaries, how ObamaCare is penalizing part-time professors, and more. Find these and other posts in The Forum, the Foundation’s blog, at georgiapolicy.org/category/the-forum/.

Visit www.georgiapolicy.org to read our latest commentary, “School Year Report Card: Room for Improvement,” by Eric Wearne.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend.

Kelly McCutchen and Benita Dodd  

FRIDAY FACTS is made possible by the generosity of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s donors. If you enjoy the FRIDAY FACTS, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to help advance our important mission by clicking here. Visit our Web site at www.georgiapolicy.org. Join The Forum at http://forum.georgiapolicy.org/. Become a fan of the Foundation on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/gppf.

Winston Churchill is credited with saying, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” Reflecting on the school year as it draws to a close, it’s clear that Georgia isn’t moving from “one failure to another.” There is some success, and there certainly is no lack of enthusiasm over school issues.

While it’s impossible to capture everything that happened in Georgia over the past school year, there are some highlights.

First, the obvious: Voters approved a constitutional amendment last fall, and so Georgia (again) has a statewide commission which may approve charter schools. While it has not set up any schools yet, the commission may provide some competition within the context of what is really a highly regulated government market. Absent the commission, seven new charter schools opened this year, three of which were startups.

One of those new startup schools, Latin Academy Charter School, is a middle school chartered by Atlanta Public Schools (APS) and located in the Anderson Park neighborhood of Atlanta. State- and system-level CRCT scores are not available yet, but Latin Academy has been successful in its first year so far (Latin Academy’s year actually continues for a week past most other schools). It saw 97 percent of scholars meet or exceed standards in reading and 78 percent in math. Both are great improvements for Latin Academy’s students and above the APS average for sixth-graders in 2011-12.

The average rank of Latin Academy scholars improved by 15 percentile points on the norm-referenced NWEA MAP test over the course of the school year. On this test, Latin scholars started the year, on average, ranked at about the bottom third nationally. They have finished the year – their first and only year at Latin Academy – at nearly the national average. Given a new choice, many parents have chosen Latin Academy, and their students are already showing new levels of success.

Second: the Common Core State Standards continue their long march toward implementation. Teachers are working with the standards already. But the Common Core rollout is far from complete. Some issues that will have to be addressed in the near future include:

• The new tests (Georgia’s versions of the new tests are scheduled to start in 2014-15). This will entail changes to Georgia’s existing testing schedules, changes to instructional calendars and other logistical issues;
• More data. These new tests will also generate new data, and states (and parents) need to be aware of how students’ privacy will be protected;
• New territory. The new reading lists for English include much more nonfiction; it will be interesting to see how far states and school systems are willing to deviate from the suggested reading lists. This also includes new common subject areas, like the Next Generation Science Standards.

Third and finally – lest higher education be ignored – Georgia Tech made major national news recently when it announced its partnership with the private company Udacity to offer a $7,000 online graduate degree in computer science. In a traditional setting, the degree would cost  approximately $40,000. And, considering the quality of the institution and the value this particular degree is likely to have on graduates’ future earning potential, this seems an especially good deal for motivated students.

Forbes magazine described the idea as “the kind of disruption that the higher education industry has been expecting,” and calls it “a sonic boom rattling the windows in the offices of college administrators across the country.”

Other notable events of the past school year include the ongoing indictments in the CRCT cheating scandal, DeKalb County’s new school board, and a (slowly) rising high school graduation rate.

As the school year closes, Georgia finds itself in an interesting place. Common Core is a national issue, but probably will not have a major impact on student achievement one way or the other in Georgia. The state finds itself on the cutting edge of some aspects of higher education. And while new charter schools are opening and have a new venue for approval, Georgia still trails some of our neighbors: Impressive projects like Tennessee’s Charter School Incubator are on our doorstep.

Eric Wearne, assistant professor at Georgia Gwinnett College’s School of Education, is board chairman of Latin Academy Charter School and a Senior Fellow with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. The Foundation is an independent, state-focused think tank that proposes market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.

©Georgia Public Policy Foundation (May 24, 2013). Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the author and his affiliations are cited.

Mike Klein
Editor
Georgia Public Policy Foundation

Georgia’s track record as a low-tax, pro-business, pro-growth state is absolute.  However, the state has been unable to enact an important threshold – elimination or at least a sizable reduction in the 6 percent maximum personal income tax rate – and that prevents Georgia from being considered at the top of states that have low-tax, pro-growth fiscal policies.

Today the American Legislative Council released its sixth annual “Rich States, Poor States” economic competitiveness index report that evaluates states on 15 fiscal policy sectors including tax rates, state regulations, right-to-work laws and size of the public workforce as a percentage of statewide population.  The ALEC formula rewards low-taxing, low-spending states, of which Georgia is one.

Georgia does well … ranked as the eighth best state nationally and up two spots from one year ago.  But therein is part of the challenge.  Georgia ranked eighth in the first ALEC report five years ago, then slipped several spots and only now has it reclaimed the eighth spot ranking.

To see that idea from another angle, ALEC does not consider Georgia has done enough with tax and regulation policies in five years to greatly improve its ranked position vs. other states.

“Georgia has become one of the most Republican states in the country and it’s also become a very fiscally conservative state over the last 10 and 20 years,” said co-author Stephen Moore, during an ALEC conference call this week.  “If there’s a state that could eliminate its income tax it would be Georgia.  The table is set for that.  We’ve been pushing it for a long time.”

The 2010 Georgia Special Council on Tax Reform recommended elimination of most personal income tax deductions and adoption of the lowest possible revenue neutral income tax rate with 4 percent as the target.  The Legislature has never come closer than almost voting on a bill that would have reduced the maximum personal income tax rate to 4.5 percent.  There was no personal income tax reform legislation during this year’s General Assembly.

Nine states do not collect personal income tax.  “I’ve always thought Georgia should be the next domino to fall especially because, who are your neighbors?” said Moore, who is a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board.  “You’ve got Florida and Tennessee, both which have no income tax.  You’re what we call an income tax sandwich.  You’re sandwiched between two states that don’t have (state personal income tax) so that puts you at a competitive disadvantage.”

Moore, ALEC’s Jonathan Williams and economist Arthur Laffer are the co-authors.  “Georgia can do some other things that would not necessarily cost from a revenue perspective,” said Williams,  who is director of ALEC’s Center for State Fiscal Reform.  He cited additional pension plan reform, requiring a super majority legislative vote for tax increases, and mandatory government spending limits, along with reduced state liability and workmen’s compensation costs.

The 2013 edition of ”Rich States, Poor States” also highlights funding and obligation problems posed by public sector pension plans, which the non-partisan State Budget Solutions says are underfunded by some $4.6 trillion.  Williams said the federal government recently filed suit against Illinois “for basically fraudulent pension accounting.  We find that issue in a lot of states.”

(Click here to read “Rich States, Poor States.”  Click here to watch Stephen Moore speak to the Georgia Public Policy Foundation 2013 annual dinner on the Foundation YouTube channel.)

Foundation Marks Friedman Legacy for Freedom Day July 11
In Athens with National School Choice Expert Jay Greene 

Atlanta – You are invited to join the Georgia Public Policy Foundation on Thursday, July 11, 2013, at the Athens Country Club for a noon Policy Briefing Luncheon keynoted by national school choice expert Jay P. Greene to celebrate Friedman Legacy for Freedom Day,  

Friedman Legacy for Freedom Day is an annual celebration marking the birthday of the late Milton Friedman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and a longtime contributor to free market causes who championed school choice. Friedman’s 101st birthday would have been July 31. In the six years since the first celebration, a wide variety of events have been held nationally and internationally; last year, more than 100 gatherings were held in 44 countries, all 50 states, and the District of Columbia.

This event will cost $30 to attend. Register online by Tuesday, July 9, at http://tinyurl.com/ojcs5fp.

The keynote speaker, Jay Greene, Ph.D., is department head and 21st Century Chair in Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. Greene conducts research and writes about education policy, including topics such as school choice, high school graduation rates, accountability and special education. Greene’s research was cited four times in the Supreme Court’s opinions in the landmark Zelman v. Simmons-Harris case on school vouchers and is the author of, “Education Myths.”

Greene has been a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Houston. He received his degree in history from Tufts University in 1988 and his Ph.D. from the Government Department at Harvard University in 1995.

Register online at http://tinyurl.com/ojcs5fp.  (Difficulty registering? Email benitadodd@georgiapolicy.org.)

Media interested in attending please contact Benita Dodd at benitadodd@georgiapolicy.org or 404-256-4050.

Who: Jay Greene
What: “Friedman Legacy for Freedom Day,” a Policy Briefing Luncheon
When: Noon, Thursday July 11, 2013 (Registration, networking begin at 11:30 a.m.)
Where: Athens Country Club, 2700 Jefferson Road, Athens, GA 30607
Directions: http://tinyurl.com/o9789at
Attire: Business, business casual

About the Georgia Public Policy Foundation: Established in 1991, the Foundation is an independent, state-focused think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. The Foundation’s regular events include Leadership Breakfasts and Policy Briefing Luncheons. Weekly publications are the Friday Facts and Friday Idea commentaries. Visit our Web site at georgiapolicy.org. Join The Forum at forum.georgiapolicy.org. Like the Foundation’s Facebook page at facebook.com/GeorgiaPolicy and follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/gppf.

Education Innovator Michael Horn Keynotes June 6 Foundation Event

Atlanta – When is disrupting class a good idea? When you’re trying to disrupt the current factory-based education system to transform learning into a student-centric approach where all students can achieve their full potential.

Michael B. Horn, co-founder and executive director of the education practice of the Clayton Christensen Institute, knows just how to do that. Horn will keynote, “Customize The Class,” a Georgia Public Policy Foundation Leadership Breakfast at 8 a.m. on Thursday, June 6, 2013, at Cobb County’s Georgian Club. The co-author of the book, “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns,” Horn will explain how to employ innovation in education that personalizes the learning experience and maximizes academic achievement.

This event is $25 to attend. Register by Tuesday, June 4, 2013, online at http://tinyurl.com/7ldaqnk.

Horn’s team at the Clayton Christensen Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank dedicated to improving the world through disruptive innovation, educates policy-makers and the public on how to encourage innovation in education based on its ongoing research.

Horn’s 2008 book, “Disrupting Class,” was co-authored with Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen, the father of disruptive innovation theory, and Curtis W. Johnson, president of the Citistates Group. BusinessWeek named the book one of the 10 Best Innovation & Design Books of 2008 and Newsweek declared it No. 14 of “Fifty Books for Our Times.”

Horn has written for numerous publications and outlets including Forbes, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Economist, the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for American Progress, and Education Week. Tech&Learning magazine named Horn to its list of the 100 most important people in the creation and advancement of the use of technology in education. He is an executive editor of Education Next.

He serves on the boards of Fidelis, inBloom and the Silicon Schools Fund, is a member of the Education Innovation Advisory Board at Arizona State University and is on the advisory committee for The Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Horn holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BA in history from Yale University.

This event is $25 to attend. Register by Tuesday, June 4, 2013, online at http://tinyurl.com/7ldaqnk.

Media interested in attending must contact Benita Dodd at benitadodd@georgiapolicy.org or 404-256-4050. (Difficulty registering? Contact Benita Dodd.)

Who: Michael B. Horn
What: “Customize The Class,” a Leadership Breakfast
When: 8 a.m., Thursday, June 6, 2013
Where: The Georgian Club, 100 Galleria Parkway, Suite 1700, Atlanta, GA 30339
Directions: http://tinyurl.com/4cf9yy2
Attire: Business, Business Casual. No jeans, cut-offs, tennis shoes, collarless sport shirts, shorts or athletic attire.

About the Georgia Public Policy Foundation: Established in 1991, the Foundation is an independent, state-focused think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. The Foundation’s regular events include Leadership Breakfasts and Policy Briefing Luncheons. Weekly publications are the Friday Facts and Friday Idea commentaries. Visit our Web site at georgiapolicy.org. Join The Forum at forum.georgiapolicy.org. Like the Foundation’s Facebook page at facebook.com/GeorgiaPolicy and follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/gppf.

Coverage doesn’t mean care: Jonathan Ingram, Illinois Policy Institute Senior Fellow, recalls in his blog that in 2010, medical researchers at the University of California analyzed a decade of emergency room visit data provided by the National Center for Health Statistics. ” They found that Medicaid patients were seven times as likely as privately insured patients to use emergency rooms for preventable conditions. In fact, Medicaid patients were nearly three times as likely as the uninsured to use emergency rooms for preventable conditions. During that decade, the odds of using emergency rooms for preventable conditions went down by 10 to 15 percent for both privately insured and uninsured patients, but went up by more than 25 percent for Medicaid patients.

More important, Ingram notes: “The simple fact is that expanding Medicaid eligibility won’t reduce unnecessary emergency room visits. It will simply overload a system already on the brink of collapse.”

The Left’s cost-benefit analysis: Apparently, healthy young adults shouldn’t gripe about how ObamaCare premiums will be higher for them. The Center for American Progress’ argument is that, “with increased premiums come far greater benefits and security. It is misleading to compare the cost of premiums before and after the Affordable Care Act. The value of the insurance that is available to purchase post-Affordable Care Act is as distant to prereform coverage as the self-powered Flintstone mobile is to a modern hybrid vehicle. Those concerned about the prospect of young people lacking access to affordable health care coverage should focus on Medicaid expansion instead of the risk of higher premiums in the nongroup market.”

Chalk it up to ObamaCare: Professor Clint Benjamin teaches English part-time at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania, according to a November report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Like fast-food workers, hotel employees and other service economy workers in industries that rely heavily on part-time labor, Benjamin and many professors like him are on the losing end of the Health Insurance Tax that is at the heart of the Affordable Care Act. The college is slashing the credit hours that part-time faculty may teach and cutting the hours of the school’s other part-time staffers to get them below the 30-hour weekly minimum standard that the ACA uses to define a “full time” worker. An employee working more than 30 hours at an institution the size of a public college will become eligible for the ACA’s health insurance mandate starting in 2014. Source: Job Creators Network

Is the FDA harmful to your health? American Enterprise Institute Fellow Dr. Scott Gottlieb and Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Peter Huber recently debated Dr. Jerry Avorn, a Harvard Medical School Professor and Dr. David R. Challoner, vice president emeritus for health affairs at the University of Florida.  Before the debate, just 24 percent of the audience agreed that the Food and Drug Administration’s caution is hazardous to Americans’ health, while 32 percent disagreed and 44 percent were undecided. Gottlieb and Huber won the debate: At the end, 53 percent of the audience agreed and 38 percent disagreed. Listen to the NPR debate here: http://tinyurl.com/n3wcgvb.

Cell Stem Cell news: Researchers from the University of California at San Francisco grew functioning human thymus tissue using stem cells and growth factors. Thymus tissue plays an important role in the immune system by fostering the growth of T cells. The tissue, grown in mice, may someday offer new treatment options for human patients with type-1 diabetes, as well as other autoimmune and immunodeficiency diseases. The technique has potential applications in the transplantation of stem cells, tissue and organs, according to the study in the journal Cell Stem Cell. My reaction: There’s a journal Cell Stem Cell?! MedicalDaily.com

Signs of the times I: Ask owners of Olive Garden and Denny’s chains about the backlash after speaking up about the costs of ObamaCare. Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus writes in the Christian Science Monitor about the backlash against small-business owners in what has “the marks of a professional operation:” telephone banks and e-mail campaigns that erupt moments after a business leader speaks out, all focused on pressuring the exact people who can effectively slap the offender down. Mike Ruffer is the most recent victim after he spoke out about President Obama’s agenda. Ruffer, who owns eight Five Guys burger franchises in North Carolina, is in the same tough spot most job creators are today: stuck in the limbo of uncertainty about the future of ObamaCare. Ruffer told an audience at the Heritage Foundation in Washington that he had to cancel expansion plans and may raise burger prices. Passing the cost to customers risks pricing his products beyond perceived value, so he will have to cut his expenses: employees, investments in new locations and more. When Ruffer’s comments hit the Internet, calls and emails from ObamaCare supporters rained into executives at Five Guys headquarters – Ruffer’s bosses. Social media started to turn against the popular brand, and progressive bloggers filed the first wave of negative stories. Within hours, corporate headquarters was distancing themselves from Ruffer, stating that his views did not reflect the corporate position. And Marcus points out: CEOs say they see disturbing parallels in the IRS and Department of Justice scandals, where the administration pursued political opponents and the press.

Signs of the times II: The IRS is the subject of a class action lawsuit alleging that it improperly seized more than 60 million medical records of more than 10 million Americans, according to the Courthouse News Service. A “John Doe Company” complaint alleges that 15 IRS agents seized the records, which were outside of the scope of the agents’ search warrant. “No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA [sic: recte HIPAA] facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records. The IRS agents ignored and discarded each of these warnings, ignored their own published and public-reliant rules and governing ethical requirements, and ignored the limitations of the court’s search warrant authorization, seizing the records under threat of destroying company property. The records may also contain the medical records of every state judge and court employee in California, and members of the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild, the complaint alleges. The class seeks $25,000 in compensatory damages — per violation per individual — as well as punitive damages for constitutional violations, according to the report. (Might as well get used to it.)

Yes, but … Buried in a report about the Congressional Budget Office’s revised and rosier federal budget deficit projection is this little gem: The total number of Americans who the CBO expects to be newly insured under the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges or optional Medicaid provision dropped from 27 million to 25 million. “Those 2 million people represent a potential loss of revenue because regulatory changes will now exempt more people and businesses from the law’s penalties for individuals who don’t obtain health coverage and employers that don’t provide it,” Becker’s Hospital Review notes.

In Brief

Kudos to Robert Bachman, CEO of Emory University Hospital, and Carol Burrell, President and CEO of Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, Ga., for being named to Becker’s Hospital Review’s list of 100 Leaders of Great Hospitals in America.
Not-so-independent opinion: More than half of physicians in the United States are employed by hospitals, including about 60 percent of family physicians, according to a Medscape report. Their top four complaints? Being bossed around by less educated administrators; not being able to make decisions about staff and personnel; less authority over billing and charge codes; and being forced to use new equipment and technology or wait longer for new equipment.
Autism advantage: Software giant SAP says it will employ hundreds of people with autism globally as software testers and programmers over the next seven years. The company, which has already launched pilot projects in India and Ireland, said the move aimed to find workers “who think differently,” leading to innovation. Source: IndustryWeek.com
High-cost health care: The most expensive hospital in the nation is Bayonne (N.J.) Medical Center, according to a New York Times analysis. The for-profit, privately held hospital billed Medicare the highest amounts in the country for nearly one-quarter of the most common hospital procedures. Bayonne typically charged $99,689 for treating each case of chronic lung disease – five times as much as other hospitals and 17 times as much as Medicare paid in reimbursement.
Transparency tool: On the tails of a recent report detailing wide variances in hospital pricing not explained by geography, insurance giant UnitedHealthcare has announced it will make its myHealthcareCost Estimator tool available to nearly all of its employer-sponsored health plans to compare prices and quality for services from different providers.
Physician salary vs. hospital revenue: On average, a family practice physician sees $1 of compensation for every $10.94 of generated revenue, the widest gap of any specialty. By contrast, for every $5.17 of revenue an orthopedic surgeon brings in, he or she receives $1 in compensation. Find out the ROI for other specialties here: http://tinyurl.com/l7qg92f.
Did you know? Yelp, a popular consumer reviews Web site, was created when co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman needed to find a health care provider.

Quotes of Note

“The federal government is probably the worst entity possible to design an exchange. One of the worst mistakes the federal government makes is the tendency to try to reinvent systems the private sector has already invented. The government has been true to form under the health reform law, completely ignoring private exchanges that are up and running.” – John Goodman

“New predictions claim that 42 percent of Americans will be obese by the year 2030. They say the only way to stop it is for government to step in. Oh, yeah, that will work. When it comes to trimming the fat and tightening your belt, who knows better than the U.S. government?” – Jay Leno

Turnaround Expert Sajan George Keynotes May 23 Leadership Breakfast

Atlanta – George Washington Carver said, “Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.” Register by Tuesday (May 21) to hear Sajan George, one of the nation’s leading experts in unlocking that door for struggling students. George discusses, ”The Future of Education,” the Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s Leadership Breakfast, 8 a.m. Thursday at Cobb County’s Georgian Club.

Sajan George

George is CEO and founder of Matchbook Learning, a unique blended model of school launched nationally in 2011 to initially target the bottom 5 percent of under-performing public schools and to eventually deliver blended learning solutions across a wide range of schools and students.

The education entrepreneur and turnaround expert was a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal (A&M), where he led the firm’s Education Practice. In that role, he led a diverse, nationwide group of talented turnaround professionals in assisting under-performing education institutions at the local, state and federal levels. He applied A&M’s industry-leading methodology for turning around troubled companies to turn around several of the nation’s largest urban K-12 public school districts including New York, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Providence, R.I., Detroit and St. Louis.

Driven by a passion to realize the dream that all students, regardless of background, can learn and succeed in our society, he has worked with governors, state and district superintendents, mayors and chancellors, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation.

The Leadership Breakfast takes place at 8 a.m. on Thursday, May 23, 2013, at Cobb County’s Georgian Club. This event is $25 to attend. Find out more at http://tinyurl.com/bno64sv; Register by close of business Tuesday, May 21, 2013, online at http://tinyurl.com/y27h3dk.

Media interested in attending must contact Benita Dodd at benitadodd@georgiapolicy.org or 404-256-4050. (Difficulty registering? Contact Benita Dodd.)

Who: Sajan George
What: “The Future of Education,” a Leadership Breakfast
When: 8 a.m., Thursday, May 23, 2013
Where: The Georgian Club, 100 Galleria Parkway, Suite 1700, Atlanta, GA 30339
Directions: http://tinyurl.com/4cf9yy2
Attire: Business, Business Casual. No jeans, cut-offs, tennis shoes, collarless sport shirts, shorts or athletic attire.

About the Georgia Public Policy Foundation: Established in 1991, the Foundation is an independent, state-focused think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. The Foundation’s regular events include Leadership Breakfasts and Policy Briefing Luncheons. Weekly publications are the Friday Facts and Friday Idea commentaries. Visit our Web site at georgiapolicy.org. Join The Forum at forum.georgiapolicy.org. Like the Foundation’s Facebook page at facebook.com/GeorgiaPolicy and follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/gppf.

By Mike Klein

Mike Klein
Editor
Georgia Public Policy Foundation

Imagine this scenario:  An automaker prepares to launch a new car amid much fanfare.  The car launches to modest immediate success and then it flops.  This is a real story.  The Ford Edsel was an epic failure because Ford was wearing blinders in its commitment to the Edsel.  Had the company listened to consumers it would have known that auto owner tastes were changing and the Edsel was no longer what people wanted.  Edsel was the wrong car at the wrong time.

It’s all about data.  Business has known for generations that the most successful launches and ongoing companies are those that constantly absorb data, intently study what it contains, reach unemotional conclusions about what it means, and establish a focus armed with knowledge.

You might think that would also be second nature to education but not so much.

“We use data in all other sectors.  It’s new in education,” says Paige Kowalski, director of state policy initiatives at the Data Quality Campaign, a non-profit education think tank in Washington, D.C.  Kowalski told an Atlanta conference this week that although some believe data is ‘the hammer, you’re going to get punished with it,” she prefers to think data is the “flashlight to really be able to shine a light on what we are doing well and where we need to improve.”

The Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education brought Kowalski to Atlanta for its spring forum, “Data Driven Decisions – Dynamic & Daunting.”  GPEE President Stephen Dolinger opened the conference with his observation that, “We have wallowed in a land of not having the data that we need but we are on the front now in Georgia and that’s a good thing.”

Bob Swiggum spent 27 years at Georgia-Pacific where he was VP of Information Technology.  Three years ago he crossed into public sector education to help the state rethink everything it knew – or at least whatever the state thought it knew – about how to use data analysis to produce better experiences for students both during and after their K-12 education years.

Swiggum received less than a warm reception from local public school systems who thought they had seen this horse ride into town before.  “We went out to the districts and said; what do you want?”  Swiggum told the GPEE conference.  “They wrote me what I call an eleven-page epistle.  It was ten pages of what they didn’t want and one page of what they did want.  Pretty much they didn’t want the state to get involved in their stuff.”

Today the state is very involved.  Swiggum has appeared before more than 150 groups to explain how a suite of new digital products will help learning professionals and parents more precisely understand what student groups and individual students need to achieve success.

Data that originates with local district annual reports is housed on state servers and can be recalled as fully collated information.  District leaders can recall data on schools, the schools on their classrooms, and teachers can sort individual student data.

Identity is protected where data needs to remain anonymous.  It is now possible to assemble and make easily accessible a student’s entire public school academic history in Georgia.  This is an enormous benefit in today’s mobile environment; for example, the annual student turnover is 30 percent in Atlanta schools.

“Data is an onion,” says Rubye Sullivan, Atlanta Public Schools director of research and evaluation for school improvement.  “A metric is just the number at the top.  Knowing a number does not give you action.  You have to begin to peel back the onion.”  Sullivan said that historically public schools have not been very good at having or interpreting their data.

“We now understand that students in the ninth grade who fail both math and English are nine times more likely to be a dropout,” Sullivan said at the GPEE conference.  “We didn’t have the data before to be able to unpack it in a way where we truly could pinpoint this group of students, where their risk factors were, provide that information back to counselors or graduation coaches to turn that data into action.  It is the power of big data and education coming together.”

The ability to track how students perform academically after high school, especially when they attend state universities and colleges, should have a positive impact on K-12 preparation.  “If students leave us and we don’t know what happens to them we’re not able to build our school goals,” said Brian Cook, head counselor at Morgan County High School.

Here is the challenge: Take any sample group of 100 Georgia high school students and just 67 will graduate.  One-third never graduate.  Eleven who enroll in higher education will graduate from four-year schools after four years and just two from technical colleges after two years.  “This is not what we wanted for our state,” said Mary Ann Charron, chief program officer at the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement.  GLISI managed a data pilot project that brought ten public school district teams and the technical college system together, focused on how to help students become better prepared for their post-secondary choices.  That’s what this is all about.

(Footnote: the Ford Edsel debuted in 1958. Production was canceled after 1960 when Ford manufactured fewer than 2,850 Edsels.  About 34,000 Edsels were never sold to anyone!)

Additional Resources:

YouTube Paige Kowalski Presentation

YouTube Bob Swiggum Presentation

YouTube Georgia Partnership Panel Conversation

Website for the State Department of Education Longitudinal Data Systems Project

 May 17, 2013 

It’s Friday! 

The Friday Facts is the Foundation’s most popular product, with more than 5,000 subscribers across the state. Have you shared the Friday Facts with YOUR friends and colleagues yet? Invite them to sign up on our home page for their own copy!

Quotes of Note

“[P]erhaps it would make more sense if our planners, and some developers, would awake from their dogmatic slumbers. Their job should be to facilitate the quality of life that people seek, not to tell them how to live. That means admitting that the future of both America and, particularly, Southern California, is likely to remain largely suburban for years to come.” – Joel Kotkin

“[White House Press Secretary] Jay Carney, whose unenviable job is not to explain but to explain away what his employers say, calls the IRS’ behavior ‘inappropriate.’ No, using the salad fork for the entrée is inappropriate. Using the IRS for political purposes is a criminal offense.” – George Will

“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.” – Winston Churchill

Events

The deadline is Tuesday to register for the Foundation’s May 23 Leadership Breakfast, “The Future of Education,” keynoted by education entrepreneur and turnaround expert Sajan George. 8 a.m at Cobb County’s Georgian Club. ($25.) For information and registration, go to www.georgiapolicy.org/?p=9155.

June 6: Michael B. Horn, co-founder and executive director of the education practice at the Clayton Christensen Institute, keynotes the Foundation’s June 6 Leadership Breakfast, “Customize The Class.” 8 a.m. at Cobb County’s Georgian Club. Horn will share how innovation can disrupt the factory-based education system and transform learning into a student-centric approach where all students can achieve their full potential. ($25.) Register at http://tinyurl.com/7ldaqnk.  

July 11: Mark your calendar! Education expert Jay Greene will be the keynote speaker for the Foundation’s annual Friedman Legacy event, which will take place in Athens this year. Details to follow.

Opportunity

Got students? The Foundation officially launched its Student Outreach Scholarship (SOS) Program at the April 23 Leadership Breakfast. Supporters’ tax-deductible contributions cover the charge for qualified students to attend events, giving them an opportunity to hear national speakers on free-market ideas and to network with Georgia’s business, community and political leaders. Find out how to apply to attend events or to contribute at http://www.georgiapolicy.org/?p=9167.

Education

More evidence school choice works. Participation in school choice programs increased the percentage of African-American students who enrolled part-time or full-time in college by 24 percent, according to a new study.

Pell melee I: From 1970 to 2010, the Federal Pell Grant Program expanded from 176,000 recipients to 9.6 million recipients. Some schools, like the Southern University of New Orleans, have 76 percent of students receiving Pell Grants despite a 4 percent four-year graduation rate. Only 12.9 percent of students with SAT scores below 700 finished school within six years, yet received roughly $5 billion in Pell Grants.

Pell melee II: About $40 billion is spent annually on the Pell Grant program, which awards a maximum of $5,550 to needy students.A huge proportion of this flows to people who simply aren’t prepared to do college-level work. In Bloomberg View, Michael Petrilli proposes solutions, including limiting the time that low-income college students can receive Pell Grants and reducing federal dollars so that universities and colleges become more selective in choosing prepared students.

Transportation

Autonomous autos: More than half of global consumers (57 percent) stated they would be likely to ride in a car controlled entirely by technology that does not require a human driver, according to a Cisco Customer Experience Report. The most trusting consumers were in Brazil (96 percent), India (86 percent) and China (70 percent), nations with some of the greatest traffic congestion.

Gaming the system: There’s been a massive decline in senior bus passengers in Luzerne County, Pa., after allegations that bus drivers were counting “ghost riders” to increase state funding. Drivers manually log senior riders, and each senior rider adds 30 cents in funds for the county transportation authority from the state lottery system. Senior ridership was counted at 71,754 in June 2012 but was 22,101 in April as automated counters were installed. Source: Mass Transit magazine

Energy and environment

Emission recession: Between 2000 and 2010, carbon dioxide emissions fell in 32 states and rose in 18 states, according to a report released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). However, from 2009 to 2010, only 14 states saw a decrease in emissions, as the United States rebounded from the recession and energy consumption increased in most states. 

Economy

Starting early: Millennials (ages 18 to 34) are starting to save for retirement earlier than any other generation, according to a new study. Many are investing by age 22, compared with baby boomers who started on average at age 35, according to USA Today. That’s a good thing, because the current U.S. “fiscal gap” – the present value difference between future projected spending (including servicing the official debt) and future taxes – grew to a mindboggling $222 trillion last year — the largest of any country in the world relative to the economy. Taxes on future generations would have to increase by 21.5 points to close the fiscal gap.

Health care

Government outreach overreach: Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute chronicles a plethora of missteps that target regulated industries as the Obama administration tries to implement the Affordable Care Act, the latest of them being a request for “donations” from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Facilitating medical volunteerism: The Missouri Legislature has passed the Volunteer Health Services Act, which, if signed into law, would allow out-of-state medical professionals to easily provide free, charitable care to Missouri’s neediest – an activity that the state’s licensing law currently complicates. States should let people help people, and in this case, the helpers are highly trained for the purpose. Source: Show-Me Institute

Social media

Join us! The Foundation’s Facebook page has more than 2,050 “likes” at facebook.com/GeorgiaPolicy and 960 Twitter followers at twitter.com/gppf. There’s a new Facebook page to like: The Foundation’s SOS Scholarship Page at facebook.com/GeorgiaPolicySOSProgram.

YouTube: You’re invited! The Foundation’s new and improved YouTube page has almost 90 new videos and nearly 10,000 new views this year alone. Organized to make it easier for you to find and use resources, the page will also offer new material in HD quality for a richer viewing experience. Subscribe to the channel to make the best use of our resources: http://tinyurl.com/agkm5h5.

This Week in The Forum: Business has been using sophisticated data to drive decisions for decades. Education is beginning to do the same, and it was showcased at a conference in this week. Paige Kowalski from the Data Quality Campaign discussed how states moved ahead with significant data investments, even during recent recession budgets, and Bob Swiggum, the state Department of Education’s chief information officer, demonstrated how the state can track the academic success of students after they finish high school and use that information to improve K-12 programs. In “Checking Up on Health,” Benita Dodd’s roundup includes reports on who’s teaming up against teeth whitening; the work on abuse-proof drugs; doctors’ misdiagnosis rates and lies about cause of death. Read Benita’s posts this week on owls and the federal government and Florida’s proposed commuter rail boondoggle. Find these and other posts in The Forum, the Foundation’s blog, at georgiapolicy.org/category/the-forum/.

Visit www.georgiapolicy.org to read our latest commentary, “Agencies’ Bias Reinforces the Case for Limiting Government,” by Benita M. Dodd.

Armed Forces Day is Saturday: Thank our troops!

Have a great weekend.

Kelly McCutchen and Benita Dodd  

FRIDAY FACTS is made possible by the generosity of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s donors. If you enjoy the FRIDAY FACTS, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to help advance our important mission by clicking here. Visit our Web site at www.georgiapolicy.org. Join The Forum at http://forum.georgiapolicy.org/. Become a fan of the Foundation on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/gppf.

Benita Dodd,
Vice President, Georgia Public
Policy Foundation

By Benita M. Dodd

This Foundation’s weekly commentaries usually focus on Georgia-specific issues, but May has been a month for wake-up calls from Washington to all liberty-minded Americans. Government employees testified they were punished for speaking out about the U.S. Embassy attack in Benghazi, Libya. The Internal Revenue Service admitted unfairly targeting conservative groups. The FBI is investigating the Justice Department’s unorthodox seizure of Associated Press phone records.

Latest out of the gate, and perhaps the least surprising of all, is that the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been giving preferential treatment to liberal and green organizations. Research by the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) reveals the EPA happily waived fees for Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from liberal organizations but denied similar fee waivers to pro-industry, free-market and government watchdog groups.

Government agencies are supposed to waive fees for groups disseminating information for public benefit. The FOIA fees paid vary based on how many documents are requested, what medium they are requested in and how much government research is involved. Waivers are considered on a case-by-case basis, according to the EPA.

Between January 2012 and the spring of 2013, the EPA granted fee waivers for 75 of 83 FOIA requests sent by liberal environmental groups, or 92 percent of the time. At the same time, records show, the EPA rejected or ignored similar requests from conservative or free-market groups 21 out of 26 times – an 81 percent rejection rate. Among them were the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Institute for Energy Research and Judicial Watch.

The “green” groups include EPA “frenemies” that routinely sue the agency, which is then “forced” to settle the case and “forced” in a court order to promulgate the tougher regulatory action the group sought. The government – the taxpayer – then also pays the group’s attorneys’ fees.

CEI Fellow Chris Horner (who was in Atlanta in 2010 to talk about climate change policy at a Foundation Leadership Breakfast), says the actions reveal “a clear pattern of favoritism for allied groups.” Horner is counsel for the American Tradition Institute, which also exposed former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson’s use of a false-identity e-mail account, apparently to hide certain sensitive correspondence.

The American Tradition Institute has highlighted the “close relationship” between the EPA and the Sierra Club and American Lung Association (ALA). The ALA “lobbies and litigates for greater authority for EPA, runs billboard campaigns against politicians who challenge EPA, and has received $20,405,655 from EPA in the last 10 years for its programs,” ATI noted. The Sierra Club employs a similar model, ATI said in a lawsuit in federal district court in Washington, D.C., seeking an end to EPA’s eight-month stonewall of two FOIA requests related to “EPA’s close working relationship with [the] two pressure groups with which EPA has uncomfortably close ties, at great taxpayer expense.” There are more.

The Georgia Public Policy Foundation, too, experienced the EPA’s bias two years ago. It’s no easy task to follow up with a valid scientific and economic case opposing tougher environmental regulations immediately after an emotional plea by a Native American boy to stop power plants’ mercury from poisoning his water and the eagles. The EPA panel accepted the boy’s exaggeration wordlessly but, in at least three instances, sought footnotes from the Foundation’s comments opposing the proposed Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) regulations for utilities.

Whether the IRS or EPA actions are ordered from higher up or not, it’s clear that they are more philosophically motivated than politically motivated. They are bureaucratically entrenched. Changing the agency leadership or political party in power does not change the self-preservation culture of public employees in government agencies. This is what promotes the mission creep that adds to the financial and regulatory burden on taxpayers and businesses while ensuring that the expanding pool of government workers remains taxpayer-funded.

Public policy groups such as the Georgia Public Policy Foundation work on behalf of voters and taxpayers to promote the principles of the U.S. Constitution, of limited government, free-market approaches and individual accountability. As the IRS scandal and EPA bias reveal, such policies make us natural enemies of an environment where unions and employee associations promote collective bargaining “agreements” and government overreach. These outrages, however, are no deterrent. In fact, they reinforce our commitment to champion sound public policies that put citizens and common sense in charge.

Benita Dodd is vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent, state-focused think tank  that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the  Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.
©Georgia Public Policy Foundation (May 17, 2013). Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the author and her affiliations are cited.