This is one of those times when it’s not pleasant to say I told you so. But, as I’ve been predicting, Saint John a/k/a Governor Lynch has "proposed using New Hampshire’s school approval standards and curriculum frameworks to define the constitutionally adequate education that the state must provide schoolchildren." You can also read about it here and here.
Having correctly predicted what the definition would look like, I will now predict its cost and what Lynch’s constitutional amendment will look like, and how he is going to get it passed. I will also explain how Lynch has inoculated himself against an income tax, if the amendment doesn’t pass.
Start looking for property down South, my dear conservative friends; 2007 marks the year that New Hampshire, as we know it, died.
THE COST: The minimum standards and curriculum frameworks are, essentially, everything that the public schools provide. While Lynch’s "definition" leaves out things like driver’s ed and guidance counselors and vocational education, that won’t make much difference.
In order to put a price tag on this "definition," Lynch will use what is called the "successful schools" model of determining the price of an adequate education. In a nutshell, you identify the "successful schools" — for example, schools where between W% and X% of the students score between Y% and Z% on whatever standardized test or tests turn you on. Then you tweak that sample to come up with a cost — for example, excluding a certain number of high spending schools and/or a certain number of low spending schools or excluding the cost of this or that course or service. Then, drum roll please, you have the cost of an adequate education.
In other words, the "successful schools" model, like every other method that has been developed to determine the cost of an adequate education, is thoroughly manipulable and allows one to set the cost of an adequate education at whatever he wants the cost to be. It will be at least the $8,290.00 per pupil that the education funding scheme concocted by Saint John in 2005 cost.
Assuming about 200,000 students that’s at least $1.6 billion. My prediction is that the cost will be somewhere between $1.6 billion and $1.9 billion.
$2 billion in state funding!!!! — that’s an i-i-i-i-i-i-income t-t-t-t-t-t-tax (lots of boos here). But here comes St. John to the rescue (can you hear the William Tell Overture?)!
THE AMENDMENT: St. John unveils an amendment that allows targeted aid but doesn’t allow the State "to walk away from its obligations to public education" (cheers, cheers and more cheers — as the William Tell Overture climaxes)! That is St. John’s amendment writes Claremont into the Constitution sans the requirement that the entire cost of an adequate education be funded with State taxes.
Will the center-right Republicans support it? For sure. Lynch will portray the choice as you’re either for my amendment or you’re for an income tax. And the tongue-tied, intellectually enervated Republicans will come on board so fast that it will make your head spin.
What about the Dem’s and the Rinos who want an income tax; will they support it too? For sure. Because they know that writing Claremont into the Constitution will allow them to spend their way to an income tax in a few years. Here’s how:
The Lynch amendment is a one-way ratchet. Assume there are three "successful schools" that are used to set minimum spending for the State. In Year One, school district A spends $6,000 per student according to our "successful schools" cost study, while school district B spends $8,000 per student, and school district C spends $10,000 per student. The average, which is the cost of an adequate education, is $8,000 per student, which means that school district A must increase its spending to $8,000 per student. But that drives the cost of an adequate education to $8,667 per student. The year after that, the cost is $9,100 per student. The year after $9,400. And all this assumes that school district C, which likes to spend more than the average (like, Hopkinton, for example), doesn’t raise its spending. If it, and other successful school districts (in real life the sample would be greater than just the three school districts in this example), continue to spend more than the average, which is likely, the cost of an adequate education grows even faster.
Pretty soon –sooner than you think– the pressure on property taxes will make enough voters fall for the sirens’ song that we need an income tax to reduce taxes.
But what if the amendment fails either to make it out of the Legislature, or at the polls in 2008? Doesn’t that leave Lynch, who proposed the definition, holding the bag?
LYNCH ONCE AGAIN SCHOOLS THE REPUBLICANS: As noted above, Lynch will portray the choice as between his amendment and an income tax. It is a false choice. But can the tongue-tied intellectually enervated Republicans make the case? Doubtful. Advantage Lynch.
Assuming the amendment makes it to the ballot, but fails, Lynch will be quick to remind everyone that the definition was a "bi-partisan" effort. If a majority of Republicans, or even a sizable majority back Lynch’s definition, then Republicans will be seen by the voters as much to blame as Lynch if the amendment doesn’t pass in 2008 and the Court says raise $2 billion in state taxes or else.
