Selectivity Matters Only Some Of The Time

Does attending an elite college increase your lifetime earnings?

No, says a new study, but applying to one does, whether or not you are accepted.

The implication is that the sorting process that causes rational students to choose to apply to particular colleges, rather than the quality of the educational experiences that take place in an educational institution, is what drives lifetime success, and that implications that flow from a belief held by students that admissions officers can sort the wheat from the chaff is more accurate than the actual accuracy of admissions officers in choosing the students most likely to succeed.

Methods:

The study by Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger used looked at 19,000 students, entering college in either 1976 or 1989, controlling for SAT scores, high school grades, college applied to, college accepted by, college attended, and looking at their incomes after college based on Social Security administration records, for the graduates, some of whom were in their 40s or 50s when the study was conducted. I may even be in the study as all of the colleges and universities that I have attended are included in the study. In short, this is a very large study with very accurate data, and as explained below, a quite clever research design.

Results:

It turns out that attending an elite college (measured by selectivity) does not increase lifetime earnings for middle class second or later generation college students (who make up the bulk of all college students).

The starting point is the obvious fact that graduates of elite colleges make more money than graduates of less elite colleges. This pattern holds even when you control for the SAT scores and grades of graduates. By themselves, these patterns seem to suggest that the college is a major reason for the earnings difference. . . . They also controlled for the colleges that students applied to and were accepted by. . . . Someone who applies to Duke, Williams or Yale may be signaling that he or she is more confident and ambitious than someone with similar scores and grades who does not apply. Someone who is accepted by a highly selective school may have other skills that their scores didn’t pick up, but that the admissions officers noticed.

Once the two economists added these new variables, the earnings difference disappeared. In fact, it went away merely by including the colleges that students had applied to — and not taking into account whether they were accepted. A student with a 1,400 SAT score who went to Penn State but applied to Penn earned as much, on average, as a student with a 1,400 who went to Penn. . . .

[A] few major groups did not fit the pattern: black students, Latino students, low-income students and students whose parents did not graduate from college. “For them, attending a more selective school increased earnings significantly,” Mr. Krueger has written. Why? Perhaps they benefit from professional connections they would not otherwise have. Perhaps they acquire habits or skills that middle-class and affluent students have already acquired in high school or at home.

This finding is especially noteworthy because the new study included several historically black colleges, like Howard, Morehouse and Spelman, which are not as selective as Penn, Williams or other elite colleges. Students who choose a historically black college over an elite college may be hurting their future earnings potential.

Put another way, this study demonstrates that affirmative action in college admission benefits the intended beneficiaries without harming the individuals who end up at less selective institutions of higher education as a result.

I've seen similar results of this kind of study applied to law school admissions and career success with similar results.

Selectivity and Graduation Rates In General

Then again, these findings may only have validity among middle class, second generation or later college students at colleges that are at least somewhat selective who are basically playing the game of trying to go to a college that is close to the most selective one they can attend, even if this goal isn't the only factor in their decisions. At less selective institutions, where financial limitations and genuinely negative campus cultures can intervene, a college environment can drag a student down, even though any acceptable environment seems to allow students to reach their full potentials.

A "large study . . . has found that students who attend colleges with lower graduation rates are less likely to graduate — which does indeed have a huge effect on their earnings." The results of that study, set forth in “Crossing the Finish Line” by William Bowen (an economist and former Princeton president), Michael McPherson (an economist and former Macalester College president), and Matthew Chingos, a doctoral candidate, looked at records of 200,000 students at 68 colleges, including a much richer selection of less selective schools than the ones studied by Dale and Krueger show selectivity does matter. The study notes that "Among rich countries, only Italy is worse" in terms of graduation rates for enrolled college students, although in fairness, this is in part because the United States has one of the highest rate of college attendance and one of the largest share of adults earning degrees of any country in the world.

The first problem that . . . [they] diagnose is something they call under-matching. It refers to students who choose not to attend the best college they can get into. They instead go to a less selective one, perhaps one that’s closer to home or, given the torturous financial aid process, less expensive.

About half of low-income students with a high school grade-point average of at least 3.5 and an SAT score of at least 1,200 do not attend the best college they could have. Many don’t even apply. Some apply but don’t enroll. “I was really astonished by the degree to which presumptively well-qualified students from poor families under-matched,” . . . They could have been admitted to Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus (graduation rate: 88 percent, according to College Results Online) or Michigan State (74 percent), but they went, say, to Eastern Michigan (39 percent) or Western Michigan (54 percent). If they graduate, it would be hard to get upset about their choice. But large numbers do not. . . .

In effect, well-off students — many of whom will graduate no matter where they go — attend the colleges that do the best job of producing graduates. These are the places where many students live on campus (which raises graduation rates) and graduation is the norm. Meanwhile, lower-income students — even when they are better qualified — often go to colleges that excel in producing dropouts. . . .

[T]he only way to lift the college graduation rate significantly is to lift it among poor and working-class students. . . . it appears to have fallen somewhat since the 1970s. . . . Money is clearly part of the answer. Tellingly, net tuition has no impact on the graduation rates of high-income students. Yet it does affect low-income students. All else equal, they are less likely to make it through a more expensive state college than a less expensive one, the book shows.

The data are illustrated in the following chart:



Students with better grades and GPAs are far more likely to graduate at schools that are more selective than at those with high dropout rates.

A culture that accepts failure at less selective institutions may also be part of the problem, conveying the impression that dropping out is normal, rather than an outcome to be strenuously avoided.

A few colleges, like the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, have intensive programs that have raised graduation rates. The State of West Virginia has begun tying student aid to academic progress, and graduation rates there have risen. . . . When students fill out an online form for federal financial aid, the Obama Education Department now informs them of the graduation rate at any college in which they express interest.

Graduation Rates And Selectivity In Colorado

Colorado specific data are consistent with this general conclusion. As I noted in a blog post that I made a week ago:

For the 2003 cohort at 4 year Colorado institutions, 62.9% of students who did not need remediation graduates in six years, while 29.5% who did need remediation graduated in six years. Students requiring remedial instruction at schools with higher overall graduation rates were more likely to graduate that students requiring remedial instruction at schools with lower graduation rates. For example, 65.0% of students at the Colorado School of Mines who needed remedial classes graduated in six years, while only 19.6% of students at Metro State who needed remedial classes graduated in six years.

The question is begs, of course, is how much of the difference is due to sorting and how much of it is due to the culture of the institutions themselves. It could be that students at the Colorado School of Mines who need remedial classes are more affluent than those at Metro State, and are thus less prone to worry about whether their family's hard earned money should be spent on them when they seem themselves a marginal students who need remedial study. Or, it could be that Colorado School of Mines students need remedial work because the courses they needed to get them on track weren't available despite their strong talent for the material that they didn't study, or that many students who need remedial work there are academically talented students who lag in reading or writing because English is not their native language, who quickly recover from gaps in instruction, while remedial students at Metro State may generally lack academic moxie.

There are indications that this is happening at the high school level, as well as the higher educational level. Students who have been identified as gifted and talented who attend West High School or Lincoln High School in Denver, for example, both of which a high poverty, predominantly minority traditional high school programs are much less likely to attend college and not require remedial education than gifted and talented students who attend North High School in Denver, about a mile away from West, despite the fact that it is also a high poverty, predominantly minority traditional high school with a similar sized pool of gifted and talented students. North is doing something right, while West and Lincoln are doing something wrong. It may not be the fault of the principals and teachers involved who are simply dealing with the situation that has been created for them as well as they can. It may simply be that students at West and Lincoln are even more financially pressed than those at North, something that a simple free and reduced lunch program eligibility rate may not reveal. But, whatever the reason, high school environments do seem to have an impact on outcomes for comparable students in Denver.

Implications

Taken together, and in light of previous blogging of educational research that I've done here, these findings suggest the kind of priorities that we should have in public higher education.

* Subsidizing middle class students who want to attend highly selective private colleges and universities rather than the most selective public colleges and universities doesn't provide much value. Yet, a large share of college students are from affluent families.

* Tuition rates have little impact on the likelihood the children in affluent families will attend college or graduate from college.

* Affirmative action in higher education creates significant benefits without causing significant harm for African-American students, Hispanic students, low income students and first generation college students. These students benefit the most from attending more selective colleges and universities in lifetime earnings and in likelihood of graduation.

* The easiest way to increase the number of students who graduate from college in the short term is to increase financial aid support to academically qualified low and medium income students.

* Non-selective admissions policies that produce high college dropout rates undermine the likelihood that academically qualified students at those colleges will fail, and students who would otherwise be admitted by some level of selectivity in admissions have very high rates of academic failure and are more prone to not learn very much while they are in college even if they do graduate.

* Students who are not academically ready for college are more likely to fail at all levels. For example, the standards to determine that a student needs remedial education are basically the same at two year and four year institutions. For the 2006 cohort at 2 year Colorado institutions, 52.7% of students who did not need remediation graduated, while 19.3% of those who did need remediation graduated (from a two year program or with a certificate or after transferring to a new institution). For the 2003 cohort at 4 year Colorado institutions, 62.9% of students who did not need remediation graduates in six years, while 29.5% who did need remediation graduated in six years. But, at four year institutions with some level of selectivity, there is a graduation rate effect on the effectiveness of remedial education.

* Colorado has a system in which every high school graduate or high school dropout with a GED, no matter how academically unprepared will be admitted to some open admissions institution of higher education, and every student attending a public college or university (or one of three private colleges or universities in the state) receives an equal per student state subsidy simply for being from Colorado. This isn't unusual. Almost every state in the United States has this system.

The open admissions, universal equal subsidy system of Colorado and most state's higher education system has expensive flaws. This is a poor model despite it universality.

1. It subsidizes the very large share of college students, particularly at more selective colleges and universities, who are affluent and can afford to pay the full cost of their college education without a state subsidy. Reducing this subsidy would not significant reduce college graduation rates for upper middle class high school graduates students who are not first generation college students.

2. It admits large numbers of unqualified students who have little chance of earning a degree, who also tend to benefit least academically from their experience on average. About half of two year college students and about one in five four year college students at public colleges and universities need remedial education, and significant numbers of students who don't need remedial classes are still marginally qualified academically and likely to not graduate as a result.

3. Admitting large numbers of unqualified students devotes significant state funds to sending students who won't benefit much on average from their education (usually because they don't graduate), this also means that the state helping to create non-discharagable student loan debts for large numbers of students who won't even have the assistance of a degree earned to help pay for those debts making those students worse off than they were when they started. And, this means that a culture of failure is created that reduces the likelihood that academically qualified students will graduate.

4. This system under funds working class and middle class students who are academically ready for college. As a result, these students are much more likely to drop out for financial reasons and are much more likely to attend a college with a high dropout rate where the institutional culture makes it more likely for them to drop out.

Action Items

First, to restate a couple of conclusions from my post last week:

1. We need to change the culture at high school that are doing a poor job of sending a large share of well prepared entering high school students (such as students identified as gifted and talented), or simply to remove students with reasonable prospects of going to college from these high schools all together and remake these schools as non-traditional programs. We are doing these students a grave disservice by sending them to high schools like West High School and Lincoln High School as they exist today in Denver where their opportunities are greatly diminished.

2. We need to have something to offer its non-college bound students besides a watered down college preparatory curriculum that makes it worth the student's time and effort to stay in school and graduate, because the expectation that all students will go to and graduate from college is profoundly unrealistic for a large share of all students by the time that they enter high school, whatever prospects there may have been for this to happen earlier in the educational process. This should probably be focused on vocational programs, but this is a place where school choice among non-traditional programs may be particularly appropriate until there is consensus on what kinds of programs are most beneficial for non-college bound students. Realistically, students who enter high school well below grade level in multiple subjects or with a history of poor academic performance in middle school and earlier will not miraculously catch up in high school.

3. The dominant reason that students need remedial courses when they show up at colleges and universities in the state is weak preparation in math. The good news is that math is much more self-contained as a subject than reading and writing, and much more a product of the educational process than reading and writing which are part of language skills developed every waking hour (and many dreaming hours) for a student's entire lifetime. Beefing up the curriculum and our expectations of our students in math can reasonably be expected to make a dent in this problem.

To these I add these action items for public higher education in Colorado:

4. The best way to serve the goal of increasing access to higher education is to devote most scarce public higher education funds to scholarships that are based on both financial need and academic merit.

5. The state should greatly reduce subsidies for college students who are not in financial need, although perhaps a token subsidy (e.g. $2,000 per year) could be made as a reward to the academically highest achieving students (e.g. students whose grades and test scores put them in the top 10% of high school students) without regard to financial need.

6. The state should set a minimum floor of academic achievement that should apply as a prerequisite to admission for a large share (perhaps 90%) of students at any institution of higher education in the state (e.g. a student has graduated from high school, does not require remedial education, had at combined GPA/test score performance comparable to least a 2.7 GPA in high school/900 SAT/19 ACT, the standard at Mesa State College where about a third of students graduate). While there may be some room for exceptions in exceptional cases, the general rule should be that students who need remedial coursework, or who had a high school GPA and test score combination below the threshold level should not be admitted to any public colleges and universities, even two year programs at community colleges.

7. The state should set a standard of academic achievement significantly higher than the standard that applies to admission to any institution of higher education to achieve a scholarship covering 100% of financial need in grant form to those students whose academic preparation suggests that apart from financial need they have a very high likelihood of graduating roughly similar to the standard for admission to a selective institution of higher education (for example, a high school GPA of 3.3 and combined SAT score of 1100 equivalent). Students eligible for admission but not meeting the higher standard might receive only 50% of their financial need in grant form and the remainder in student loan form.

8. The state should fund, from its K-12 education budget, separate remedial programs for former high school students at little or minimal cost that could make them eligible for admission to a higher educational institution.

9. The state should support, perhaps through community recreation centers, educational and vocational programs designed for former high school students who aren't academically prepared for a college education and for whom going to college is not their goal.

10. The state should stop subsidizing private college and university educations.

Meanwhile at the federal level:

11. We should cease to make non-dischargable federal subsidized higher educational funds available to for profit colleges in programs with low graduation rates. One way to address that would be to set minimum academic standards for odinary student loans and Pell Grants similar to those proposed for public colleges and universities - with eligibility reopened for those who manage to show satisfactory academic performance for a year or two without dropping out. A much more closely monitored program serving a much smaller number of students might be developed for perhaps 10% of all student loan and grant recipients, which would be rationed so that they would remain a small share of all federal higher education assistance at any given institution.

Alternately, some portion of federal student aid held might be held in trust for for profit colleges, and for any institution with a low graduation rate, until a student graduated, with colleges forfeiting and not allowed to charge students for any amounts incurred for students who don't graduate.

Egypt and Wisconsin

We live in a small world.

Intervention. Why not?

I am watching Aljazeera Arabic, which is calling people in Tripoli on the telephone and asking them what is going on in the capital. The replies are poignant in their raw emotion, bordering on hysteria. The residents are alleging that the Qaddafi regime has scrambled fighter jets to strafe civilian crowds, has deployed heavy artillery against them, and has occupied the streets with armored vehicles and strategically-placed snipers. One man is shouting that “the gates of Hell have opened” in the capital and that “this is Halabja!” (where Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered helicopter gunships to hit a Kurdish city with sarin gas, killing 5000 in 1988).

Two defecting Libyan pilots who flew to Malta confirmed the orders to strafe the crowds from the air and said that they declined to obey the order. Other pilots appear to have been more loyal.

From here.

The U.S. has the capability to deploy fighter aircraft in the region and stop this from happening. It also has a deep history of disrespect for Libyan sovereignty from the Marines sent to Tripolli in the Revolutionary era to the bombing of a Libyan chemical plant in mine. Does Ghadaffi deserve sovereign respect vis-a-vis democratic protesters from a nation like the United States that was founded on revolutionary overthrow of tyrrany? Would a single show of force in this instance establish a credible threat that would influence the behavior of dicators elsewhere even without its actual exercise? We could tell nervous monarches that we distinguish between legitimate monarchies and dicatorships.

Why not? Unlike leaders of regimes in Egypt and Bahrain, we have no history of Libyan cooperation with the U.S. We wouldn't necessarily have to take down the entire regime. There are locals on the ground who could do that. We could simply shut down one military tactic of the regime in order to show disrespect and emasculate that regime in a case where it is clearly engaging in a gross, mass violation of human rights of the worse magnitude. Perhaps we could bomb Ghadaffi's house while we were at it.

It isn't as if the U.S. has some long tradition of non-intervention in Middle Eastern affairs to defend after two U.S. initiated wars in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Also, the extingency of an unfolding situation could justify not seeking a broad diplomatic coalition. The War Powers Act permits U.S. Presidents to make brief military interventions without Congressional approval.

Mexico Still Deep In Drug War

Police in drug violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, say more than 50 people have been killed in a three-day span. The El Paso Times reported Monday that the 53 victims, between Thursday and Saturday, included a police officer, a municipal patrolman and a state investigator.

From here.

12 taxi drivers have been killed in attacks in Acapulco, Mexico. Acapulco also recently saw four men bound and tossed off a six hundred foot bridge:

Four men with their hands and feet tied and heads covered in duct tape were thrown 600 feet to their deaths from a bridge Friday, authorities said as Mexico's increasingly bloody drug battles reached a new level of cruelty and intimidation.

The four were among 13 people slain Friday in Guerrero, which has seen a spike in violence since rival factions of the Beltran Leyva cartel began fighting over territory after leader Arturo Beltran Leyva died in a battle with Mexican marines in December 2009.

The other nine were killed in the resort city of Acapulco. In the most gruesome of those killings, police found a severed head that had been scalped and whose face had been skinned. . . .

Nationwide, nearly 35,000 people have been killed in drug-gang violence since President Felipe Calderon deployed troops and federal police four years ago to crush the cartels in their strongholds.

Just the thing to get you excited about a vacation in a Mexican resort on the beach, where an international tennis tournament is currently underway.

Jefferson Davis On The Cause of The Civil War

Jefferson Davis unequivocally stated in 1861 that the cause of his state’s secession was that “she had heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races.” Other Confederate leaders also emphasized that slavery was the reason for secession.

From here, with links to multiple sources.

Jefferson Davis's inauguration as President of the Confederate State of America was re-enacted on its 150th anniversary on February 19th in Alabama in an event organized by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group of men, mostly in the American South, who have wide political support, who are proud that their ancestors were traitors who fought to defend slavery.

Ironically, most of them now favor the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln.

Monarchy Still Popular

In Libya:

Security forces in Benghazi opened fire on Sunday on protesters storming police stations and government buildings. But in several instances, units of the military turned against them and sided with protesters.

By Monday, protesters had claimed control of the city, overrunning its main security headquarters, called the Katiba.

Celebrating protesters raised the flag of the country's old monarchy, toppled in 1969 by a Gadhafi-led military coup, over Benghazi's main courthouse and on tanks around the city.

"Gadhafi needs one more push and he is gone," said Amal Roqaqie, a lawyer at the Benghazi court, saying protesters are "imposing a new reality. ... Tripoli will be our capital. We are imposing a new order and new state, a civil constitutional and with transitional government."

From here.

The possibility of a restored monarchy in Libya is not hypothetical. There are monarchist factions who favor that approach and men who have claims to be the legitimate heir to the throne of Libya. The man who was the King of Libya when the monarchy was ended in 1969 (King Idris I), and his son, the then crown prince, his nephew Hasan as-Senussi, have died. Idris abdicated the thrown, but the deal in which he did so was not honored by the successor government of Libya. There are two living claimants to the Libyan throne, should the Libyan people want to reinstate the dynasty that was in place before the 1969 revolution: Muhammad as-Senussi, a son of Hasan as-Senussi whom was named as heir by his father shortly before his father's death in 1992, and Prince Idris al-Senussi, a relative of the late King Idris who took up arms against the regime in 1991 with U.S. backing and is an investment banker.

The Senussi royal family is the same one that produced the Mahdi who became a model for Frank Herbert's Dune series. King Idris I took formal power as Emir of Cyrenaica at the behest of the British in 1917, and was in exile presiding over insurgents from 1922 until 1951.

In Morocco, protests have been relatively muted as a result of reforms relative to his predecessor from the nation's king. Protesters in Jordan want governmental reforms, but don't want to oust the king, who has been seens as a reformer who advocated for the average person.

The coming royal wedding in Britain still attracts interest.

And, in Bahrain, a monarchy that has had a violent attack on protesters. It may be possible to convince the the people that there was a power struggle:

The situation in Bahrain is further complicated by a palace feud between the country's prime minister and his nephew, the country's king.

The police involved in Thursday's violence are answerable to the prime minister, and the force's reliance on Pakistanis and other foreign recruits has long been a source of tension in the country.

What remains unknown is whether King Hamad agreed to the action - he had apologized publicly for earlier police violence - and whether the crackdown would continue.

One possible resolution in Bahrain would be for the young king to overrule the country's prime minister of forty-one years in favor of the people and the Crown Prince appears to be positioning himself to step into that role:

On Saturday, it was Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the son of the king and deputy commander of the military, who ordered troops to leave the square.

"I stress, once more, that our duty is to preserve security and stability, to ensure that there is no discord and that the situation does not worsen," the prince said in a statement on Bahrain's national news agency. "Join us to calm the situation, so that we can announce a day of mourning for our lost sons."

(Although the apparent injection of Saudi Arabian forces into the situation casts doubt on this scenario). The tiny Arab island nation has a population and land area similar to Denver, and a large U.S. Navy presence. The U.S. has so far not involved itself on ongoing events there. The Crown Prince has been designated as the King's liason with Shiite opposition leaders.

SUSY Cornered

Large Hadron Collider results have narrowed the possible mass range for supersymmetric particles with QCD color charge (squarks and gluinos) to an increasingly narrow range (about half of the pre-LHC range), in discoveries recounted at Résonaances, in two recent blog posts (here and here) particularly in the version known as mSUGRA (minimal supergravity).

mSUGRA is often seen as one of the best theoretically explored possible low energy limits of string theory and is a minimal extension of the MSSM (minimal supersymmetric model), the simpliest version of supersymmetry (SUSY), that incorporates gravity.

In the same way, LHC has very much narrowed the potential mass range of the hypothesized Higgs boson, although two and three sigma anomolies in the mass range where the Higgs boson mass should be give researchers stronger hope that it will be found.

Of course, if you find a squark or gluino in the itty bitty bit of the parameter space that is left, this becomes a matter of mere historical importance. And, there are lots of ways that one can modify SUSY theories to make them fit the data. But, suffice it to say that SUSY is proving very elusive experimentally.

Wisconsin and 2012

Democratic partisans are fond of saying that anti-immigrant measures advanced by Republicans are good for Democrats because they alienate a large Latino population that would otherwise be inclined to vote Republican (see e.g. "Even More Opportunities for GOP Latino Alienation").

The Republican anti-union showdown with public employees unions playing out at the moment in Wisconsin (and the Denver Post's AP story advises me in other states across the country like Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Nevada and Florida) may have a similar effect.

One of the crucial sources of the big Tea Party wins in 2010 was union member ambivalence about voting for Democrats. While Democrats have near unanimous support from the leadership of organized labor, union members themselves barely favored Democrats more often than Republicans in 2010 election in many key races.

But, the current multi-state Republican jihad against labor unions, whether or not it is successful, may change that in 2012. By reminding the public that the Republican brand hates unions and favors making deep spending budget cuts substantially on the back of union member compensation, the Tea Party union members of 2010 may return to the Democratic fold in 2012.

Half of union members in the United States are public employees who are directly affected by the stance Republicans have taken in Wisconsin, and the other half don't have to be particularly prescient to see Republican attacks on public sector unions translating into attacks on their economic interests should Republicans gain control of the federal government as well.

Political Economy Quote of the Day

In short, what the economy could use is a debate over medium-term entitlement and tax changes. Instead what it's getting is a debate over near-term non-security discretionary spending.

From Tom Gallagher via Brad DeLong.

I also think we need a debate over the medium-term defense budget and note that while some entitlements are out of whack, that Social Security is not one of them. Medicare and Medicaid are the principal out of control entitlement programs. But, at any rate, it is clear that Republicans Congress and the President aren't addressing the real causes of the deficit, and that the voters don't really care.

A case in point, the R&D tax credit, a dreadfully complex part of our tax code that costs about $7 billion a year.

I was dismayed, for example, to learn today that the President's budget proposed a 20% increase in the research and development tax credit which he also proposes to make permanent. I was once a fan of it (who doesn't like new technology), but increasingly clear evidence from media accounts makes clear that it is a key factor driving the low effective corporate tax rates of some of the nation's biggest businesses, and an important cause of disparities across industries in effective corporate tax rates, is the R&D tax credit.

The R&D tax credit is at the heart of what is wrong with our corporate income tax; it is not a solution to be touted as a success and expanded. The immense tax expenditure of the R&D tax credit would be better spent as grant money than on the research ventures it is devoted to now. We already have a market driven government incentive for research and development. It's called intellectual property rights.

The R&D that needs government subsidies in a world with strong intellectual property rights is the kind that is not now and will not in the short run be profitable, like basic research and medicines that help those who can't afford to pay for them.

Something Works For The Common Cold

Zinc supplements taken within one day after the onset of a cold have been shown to be effective at treating it by shortening the duration of symptoms and their severity in a meta-analysis of fifteen trials involving 1,360 people in all. So often, it seems, herbal or non-traditional remedies placed under the microscope of scientific examination of their effectiveness turn out to be mere placebos. But, this is an exception that applies to an exceptionally common condition. How common?

The common cold places a heavy burden on society, accounting for approximately 40% of time taken off work and millions of days of school missed by children each year.

The Showdown In Wisconsin

Republican Governor [of Wisconsin] Scott Walker . . . is pushing a proposal that would eliminate collective bargaining rights for public workers and make them pay half the costs of their pensions and at least 12.6 percent of their health care coverage. The changes amount to about a seven percent salary cut.

From here.

The budget shortfall that is being used to justify the step cuts to state employee pay and denying unions their collective bargaining rights, of course, is a crisis of Governor Walker's own making created by tax cuts that he backed. Unions are willing to discuss compensation custs, but not the loss of their collective bargaining rights.

A core principle of American political conservatives is that unions are bad and should be busted at every available opportunity. As I've noted before at this blog, one of the key points in the Republican playbook at the moment is that public employees, particularly unionized ones, are overpaid relative to private sector workers (despite evidence to the contrary) and that they employees should bear a large share of the public spending cuts that Republicans campaigned on in the 2012 election.

In Wisconsin, where the 2012 election left Republicans in charge of both houses of the state legislature and the Governor's office, they have the votes to put that ideology into action. While private sector union-management relations are governed by the federal government's National Labor Relations Board, states have considerable freedom to adopt laws concerning the rights of their public sector unions.

Since they don't have the votes to win this battle in the legislative process, Wisconsin union members have marched in force (25,000 strong) on the state capital as the legislature considers the bill and state senate Democrats have removed themselves to an undisclosed location to deny Republicans in the state senate the quorum they need to pass the bill, echoing a similar tactic used in Texas redistricting battles within the last few years. Wisconsin also lacks the citizen's initiative process present in states like California and Colorado, that might have given public sector union members in Wisconsin an end run around the normal legislative process. The unions have President Obama's support, but he has little power when it comes to labor relations in state and local government, an area where even the expansive commerce clause power of Congress probably does not extend.

America's private sector union movement in the United States is close to moribund. Maybe this is due to legislative changes, like labor laws that permit the permanent replacement of striking workers and tolerate significant management misconduct in organizing elections. Maybe it is due to the changing character of the economy that has reduced employment in traditionally unionized industries. Maybe labor is a victim of its own success. The causes are a matter of great debate and controversy. The result, however, is not. American private sector unions haven't been so impotent in numbers or as disinclined to cause work stoppages since long before the United States passed its first national labor laws during the Great Depression.

But, public sector unionization has soared and continues to grow in most states. (Colorado is an exception to the trend.) In part, this is because public sector unions, unlike private sector unions, have employees who can't easily be offshored and employers who can't convincing argue that their wages must be kept low in order to prevent them from losing their business to the competition. Civil service protections that public employees hold to protect them from politically motivated corrupt patronage systems have also made it safer to public employees to organize without fear of losing their jobs than comparable private sector employees. Recall that:

In 1950 . . .the unionized workforce of 14.3 million workers . . . made up 31.5% of the total work force.

In 2008 . . . the unionized workforce of 16.1 million workers who made up 12.4% of the total workforce. The public sector which is 36.8% unionized, is as unionized as the private sector was at its peak. The private sector, which is 7.2% unionized, has the lowest level of unionization in the private sector since the 1920s, if not earlier.

This is a huge deal. As I've noted before, policy more often changes through widespread imitation at historic moments than it does through isolated case by case rational analysis. If Wisconsin is successful in breaking its public employees unions and slashing public employee compensation, the trend will almost surely spread to almost every Republican controlled state in the United States. If public unions lose big in Wisconsin it could mean the end of organized labor unions as a potent force in the American economy and political system entirely for much of the United States.

While looming labor-management disputes in the NFL have attracted lots of attention, public sector unions at the state and local government level in places like Wisconsin are the bread and butter of the labor movement in the United States today. This dispute alone involves hundreds of thousands of middle class workers and their families losing three and a half weeks of pay a year.

Public sector unionization is a different animal than private sector unionization. Protection from unfair unemployment termination has generally been a secondary issue for them because they already have civil service protections. Some public sector unions are legally prohibited from going on strike. While private sector unions can organize politically for labor laws and other laws favorable to their members, public sector unions can organize politically to put union friendly politicians in direct control of their employer.

But, the potential for strikes by public employees to rise to the level of general strikes and to bring vital government services to a halt, whether or not it is legal for them to do so, has always loomed in the background, and covert "sick outs" and work to rule slowdowns remind negotiators of that fact. Denver's police (who publicly deny that this was the case) recently carried out just such a slowdown last year over dissatisfaction with the vigor with which the City of Denver had finally decided to apply to cracking down on instances of police misconduct. Wisconsin is experiencing its own sick outs right now.

Assuming that the political process will eventually prevail in Wisconsin and result in public sector union crushing legislation being passed there, the question is how Democrats and labor unions will respond. With the next election almost two years away, working through the normal political process may not seem like a sufficient response to a powerful political player that is facing deep pay cuts for every single one of its members without any opportunity to collectively bargain the matter and is also facing something close to their very extermination as a means by which the economic cause of state workers can be advanced.

If anything can produce a high profile showdown that could shut down the government of the State of Wisconsin entirely through a work stoppage, legal or otherwise, this frontal assault on public employees unions seems to be a good candidate for it. If public employees' unions in Wisconsin lose this fight, they may be gone for good, and may see much of the rest of the public sector labor movement follow them.

Can they win? There is really no way to know until it happens. The last general strike in the United States outside Puerto Rico was in 1934. But, if public sector unions in Wisconsin manage to inflict decisive political pain on the Republican party in the state, even if they lose on the legislative front for the time being, they may have a real shot at remaining a relevant force in American politics.

Ethnicity, Language and Religion In Modern Egypt

A nice analysis of the ethnic and linguistic make up of the eighty million people Egypt is found here, and its religious diversity is analyzed here.

Linguistically, most Egyptians speak one of two dialects of Arabic which are described as being roughly as similar a Spanish and Portuguese, one of which (Sa'idi) is spoken in Upper Egypt (the Southern part of the Nile Valley) and the other of which (Egyptian Arabic) is spoken in Lower Egypt (the Northern part of the Nile Valley). A Libyan dialect of Arabic is spoken on the Mediterranean coast beyond the Nile Delta region. And, Bedouin dialect of Arabic is spoken in the Sinai.

There is also a pocket of the Nile Delta where Greek is spoken, a small community on the Southern Red Sea Coast that speaks the Cushitic Beja language, and an oasis community in the Western Desert that speaks the Berber Siwi language. In the far South of the Nile Valley of Upper Egypt two Nubian (Nilo-Saharan) languages are spoken.

In addition to these linguistic minorities there are communities of Abazas, Turks, and Dom (Gypsies). "The Abazas . . . are a Circassian/Abkhazian people whose ancestors fled Russian assaults in the Caucasus in the 19th century; although they have long maintained a distinct identity in Egypt[.]" Estimates of the Dom population range from tens of thousands to a million, an estimate complicated by the apparently common practice of Dom publicly identifying as Palestinian to avoid discrimination. Egyptians who are not part of one of these minorities speaking one of the two main Egyptian Arabic dialects make up about 91% of the Egyptian population.

There are significant Christian minorities in Egypt, perhaps ten percent of the total in many Nile Valley and Northern Red Sea coastal areas, mostly Coptic Christian (perhaps seven or eight million in all), but perhaps a quarter million of whom are many other types of Christians (they seem to be concentrated around the Nile Delta), and there is apparently a Shi'ite minority in parts of the Nile Valley of Upper Egypt whose numbers are a matter of great dispute but may make up as many as a million people. Most Egyptians, of course, are Sunni Muslims and are generally not a part of the Wahhabi sect that dominates in Saudi Arabia and is evangelized by the Taliban.

In an international context, Egyptian Sunni Muslims are on the conservative/traditionalist end of the the scale on "social issues," although not necesarily as extreme as Wahhabi sect Muslims. Gender segregation in the workplace is favored by a narrow majority and most Egyptians favor the use of harsh Islamic law punishments for offenses like adultery and theft.

Still, despite pockets of diversity, the overall picture is of a relatively homogeneous core Egyptian population in the Nile Valley split mostly between Upper and Lower Egypt, with small, mostly geographically compact minority populations on its periphery. Upper Egyptians and Lower Egyptians, Sunni Muslims, Shi'ite Muslims and Coptic Christian alike, all have a strong Egyptian national identity, muted somewhat by a sense of also belonging to larger Muslim and Pan-Arab communities.

Any reasonably democratic process will produce a parliament in Egypt dominated by Sunni Muslims who speak one of the two main Arabic dialects of Egypt, with the more urban Lower Egyptian Sunni Muslims probably making up a majority or close to a majority.

Mutations and Mental Retardation and IQ

The genetic forces that make people smart turn out to be quite different from the genetic forces that cause extremely low IQ, i.e. mental retardation.

As of 2008, the cause of about 20% of mental retardation cases was understood, some environmental (e.g. shortage of oxygen at birth, lead exposure) and sometimes genetic:

Scientists estimate that, in about 30% of the patients, a defect on the X-chromosome is the underlying cause. This is called X-linked mental retardation (XLMR). In over half of the XLMR patients, the gene responsible has not yet been identified.

But, the generalized source for about three-quarters of the remaining cases appears to be new mutations appearing for the first time in the child.

The majority of mental retardation is caused by spontaneous mutations in paternal sperm or maternal egg cells. . . . The researchers read the genetic code of all 20,000 genes for 10 patients with mental retardation. A similar analysis was performed for their healthy parents. By comparing the genetic codes obtained, differences in genes between parents and child could be precisely determined.

For nine out of ten children, the researchers indeed found such changes, each time in a different gene. For three children, the change identified was irrelevant to their disorder. But more important, for the remaining six children, they found two changes that are definitely relevant to their disorder and the four other changes are most likely related to their disorder. Geneticist Joris Veltman: "Apparently, the mental retardation observed in six of these ten children can be explained by a novel genetic change, a de novo mutation. . . .

In the world of medical genetics, mental retardation reflects an intriguing paradox. Individuals with mental retardation seldom have children themselves; as such, they do not pass their impairment on to the next generation. Nonetheless, the frequency of mental retardation in the general population balances and remains around two percent. How can this be possible? . . .

Veltman and Brunner now offer a surprising resolution for this paradox. A majority of mental retardation occurred by chance; by novel mutations in the genetic code of the children. It is expected that approximately 1,000 of all 20,000 genes can cause mental retardation. When a de novo mutation hits one of these genes, it will result in mental retardation. . . .

In addition, we can now determine the recurrence risk for those families in which a de novo mutation caused the mental retardation. This risk will be only marginally increased compared to the general population. For many parents this is a reassuring message which may play a role in their decision making process for additional children. . . .

On average, one new mutation will appear during the process that copies all parental genes to their child. With 1,000 of all 20,000 genes potentially playing a role in mental retardation, the chance of having a child with mental retardation is relatively high. A similar scenario is likely to be true for other diseases in which a large number of genes play a role, such as schizophrenia and autism. The concept of de novo mutations might be equally important for these diseases. . . .

Veltman: "So far, mental retardation was thought to be caused by an interaction of multiple genes. We describe this as complex genetics. Indeed, in the general population mental retardation can be caused by as many as thousand genes. But on an individual level, each case -- as we now found -- is caused by a mutation in a single gene. This newly generated mutation can be readily identified by reading the genetic code of the parents and their child, because there is only one distinguishing factor, which is the causative mutation.

From Science Daily (December 7, 2010).

The genes involved appears to be, unsurprisingly, a subset of genes associated with the nervous system that are increasingly well defined.

Obviously, a ten person sample is too small to produce a statistically significant estimate that the percentage of severe mental retardation cases caused by spontaneous mutations is precisely 60% (the margin of error is roughly +/- 31%). But, simply knowing that this accounts for a very large share of all cases is itself a breakthough.

One way to imagine the situation is that the baseline set of genetic allelles necessary to produce an IQ within the normal range are fixed in human populations. Almost every allelle present in the gene pool for at least a couple of generations is consistent with IQ within the normal range. It takes a whole set of genes to produce a normal range IQ phenotype and a single mutation is enough to bring the entire system tumbling down. Overwhelmingly, new mutations anywhere in this group of genes are bad news.

This also suggests that the notion of mental retardation as simply the low end of a Bell Curve distribution of IQ may be fundamentally flawed. Instead, there is a normal range that includes 97%-98% of the population (perhaps a very few high IQ people are outside it as well), and then a chasm between people within the normal range and the 2% who are mentally retarded.

Does Intellectual Property Promote Growth?

The historical case that strong intellectual property laws promote economic growth is a weak one.

Talking about Chinese industrial growth, Americans are in the position of 19th-century Europeans who acted as if America’s industrial rise could be explained simply by its vast natural resources and its exploitation of immigrant and slave labor, plus its very casual attitude toward copyright and patent laws protecting foreign, mainly British, books and inventions. (Today, Americans walk the streets of China and see their movies, music, software, and books sold everywhere in cheap pirate versions. A century and a half ago, Charles Dickens walked the streets of young America and fumed to see his novels in cheap pirate versions.)

From here.

Cohabitation Agreements

39 percent [of divorce lawyers] report an increase in the number of cohabitation agreements that protect property and other assets for partners living outside the perimeters of legally recognized marriages.

Rare in some areas of the country as recently as 15 or 20 years ago, such contracts are coming into their own, said Ken Altshuler, the group's president-elect in Portland, Maine. "They're really on the cutting edge of relationships today as more people move in together." The elite organization of divorce lawyers strongly advises cohabitation agreements for unmarried heterosexual couples along with same-sex partners whose unions are not legally recognized, especially when children are adopted by one but not both partners.

"To go to court to enforce your rights is just very expensive," said Susan Bender, a Manhattan lawyer who routinely handles cohabitation agreements for same-sex couples.

"Otherwise there's litigation, the hiring of an attorney," she said. "It's dispiriting to young couples to come into my office to begin their romantic relationship with figuring out who gets the IRA, but it makes so much sense." . . . cohabitation agreements can protect an unmarried person's stake in jointly owned property like a house or a condo and guard against seizure for payment of spousal debt.

"If we break up and there's no agreement, I don't have a claim," Viken said. "The litigation between two people who own a house together and aren't married is much more difficult than two married people who are getting divorced." About 30 percent of the attorneys who responded to the survey said a majority of cohabitation agreements they draw up are for same-sex couples. With only a handful of states recognizing gay marriage, the agreements can spell out legal rights both in and out of state.

From here.

Colorado doesn't recognize gay marriage and while the Colorado General Assembly is considering a civil unions bill this session, which I support, it doesn't have one yet.

I tend to call them domestic partnership agreements, but I prepare them and taught financial planners about the circumstances when they are useful and the terms they should contain when I was a professor.

Hick's Budget

Governor Hickenlooper has released his first state budget proposal. Some notable points:

* "Sixty-three percent of this budget is handled by less than 900 [state] employees." (For example K-12 and Medicaid.)

* K-12 is cut $375 million through $257 million in reduced general fund support and a decision not to backfill $117 million of local funding declines due to falling property values. The impact is $497 per student. It isn't clear what loophole in school finance laws in Colorado, which generally mandate no K-12 categorial spending cuts, is involved to authorize this step. It may be that there is a negative inflation adjustment and that some K-12 education funding is not "categorial."

* State funding of higher ed is reduced by $36 million from $555 million to $519 million. Higher education is also losing $89 million of federal stimulus funds for a total cut of $125 million, which is $877 per college student.

* Closing Fort Lyon Correctional Facility with 485 elderly prisoners who will be relocated that cuts 149 jobs and $3 million a year.

* Closing Closing Bonny Lake State Park near Burlington, Sweitzer Lake State Park near Delta, Harvey Gap State Park near Rifle and Paonia State Park near Paonia.

* The budget increases payroll deductions for PERA (public employees retirement) by 2.5 percentage points of take home pay saving $15.7 million on top of prior COLA-less years with prior increases in PERA contributions. Furloughs, which saved little general fund money, will not be repeated this year.

* Other general fund cuts of $376 million and 114 jobs are made.

* $42.3 million in revenues and cash fund transfers are used.

Colorado is in a very hard spot, with a $1 billion shortfall in a $7 billion general fund budget. It isn't even obvious that this round of cuts is big enough to balance the budget and this is on top of multiple rounds of past deep budget cuts in the Great Recession.

TABOR limits the availablity of tax increases to make up the shortfall without a vote of the people which is always too late for the current year's budget.

Much of state government is financed with users fees or other dedictated funds so cuts to those programs don't solve the state's general fund deficit.

Prison sentences already imposed make it hard to cut the corrections budget in the short term.

Medicaid already pays providers considerably less than market rates or the cost of the services provided and Medicaid beneficiaries have great difficulty finding providers willing to take new patients.

Colorado's funding for both K-12 and higher education is very near the bottom nationally. The state constitution puts limits on K-12 education cuts.

Medicaid, higher education, K-12 education and the corrections budget are the dominant components of the state general fund budget.

Graduation Rate And Remedial Education Data

Last week, the Colorado Department of Education released the latest detailed data on high school graduation rates in Colorado, and the Colorado Commission on Higher Education released reports on Remedial Education and Enrollments of high school graduates at Colorado colleges and universities that receive state funding (including three private institutions of higher education: Regis, DU and Colorado Christian University).

Executive Summary of Denver Public Schools Analysis

I look at the detailed data for the Denver Public Schools below. About 9.6%* of students who start high school in DPS graduate from high school and start college without needing remedial work, and about 6% of DPS students who start college will eventually earn a two or four year college degree (the percentage of DPS students who start high school who earn a four year college degree within six year of starting college is between 4% and 5%).

DPS greatly underperforms the rest of the state mostly because it has a student body that is dealing with an immense load of problems from poverty, to homelessness, to lack of English language proficiency, to disabilities. In part, this is because Denver is a central city where these issues are concentrated. In part, this is because affluent students who grow up in Denver choose private school, have families that move to the suburbs, or exercise rights in the state school choice system to leave the District and this happens disproportionately at the high school level, where DPS performance by absolute measures is worst. The Denver Public Schools fails to enroll more than one in four of the students who live in the District and that measure itself fails to capture the continuing tendency of families with older school aged children to move to the suburbs. DPS has made great gains in the post-desegregation order era, first at the elementary school level, and in the past few years, at the middle school level, at increasing the share of resident children who attend DPS. But, progress at the high school level in increasing the share of resident children who attend DPS continues to be quite low. (Note, much of the factual support for this paragraph is in prior posts at this blog.)

In many of Denver's high schools, the collection of personal stresses and schools where academically well prepared students coming into high school are too rare for the school to be sufficiently geared towards meeting their needs, combine to pose very poor odds of earning college degrees even for students who have been identified as gifted and talented and do well in other districts in the state. The very low college attendance rate of students at Lincoln High School and West High School, relative to the number of gifted and talented students at those schools is particularly distressing.

Meanwhile, the District is failing the roughly half of its students who drop out, and we have few good ways of measuring how well the District is meeting the needs of the students, who make up a larger share of its student body than all but one or two other districts in the state, for whom graduating from college is an unrealistic goal by the time that they enter high school.

This isn't all the high school's fault. Overwhelmingly, students who are well below grade level in elementary school academic performance stay there, having academic troubles in middle school, often flunking classes there, and then drop out of high school only after the public schools have shown them one profound academic failure after another for a decade. It is rare for a students whose "at risk" status has not been obvious for many years to suddenly drop out of high school. But, high schools, despite a wide variety of non-traditional programs, are still failing to show students that they have something to offer them as they are now about half of the time.

Graduation Rates

The statewide high school graduation rate in Colorado is 72.4%.

In the Denver Public Schools the high school graduation rate is 51.8% (2,623/5,083). This isn't necessarily a product of the Denver Public Schools doing a poor job. Its students come to school with lots of problems. Of the 5,083 students who start high school in Denver, 655 have disabilities, 633 have limited English language proficiency, 3,488 are "economically disadvantaged," 188 are "migrant" students, 3,171 are in Title 1 programs, and 209 are homeless. On the other hand, 699 have been identified as gifted and talented. More than one category can apply to a single students - a gifted and talented student can be economically disadvantaged and homeless for example.

There is great variation in high school graduation rates from school to school.

Denver has twenty dropouts from its incoming cohort before they start their freshman year.

Graduation rates by high school in the Denver Public Schools are as follows;

Abraham Lincoln High School 51.7% (208/402)
Ridge View Academy Charter School 5.1% (13/255)
Academy Of Urban Learning 31.0% (13/42)
Amandla Charter Academy 0.0% (0/6)
Emerson Street School 0.0% (0/13)
Fred N Thomas Career Education Center 85.7% (72/84)
Challenges, Choices & Images Charter School 0.0% (0/2)
Colorado High School 19.5% (22/113)
Ace Community Challenge Charter School 0.0% (0/29)
Connections Academy 28.6% (16/56)
Denver Center For International Studies 92.5% (37/40)
Denver School Of The Arts (96.8% (120/124)
Denver School Of Science And Technology 80.7% (67/83)
Denver Venture Charter School 0.0% (0/1)
East High School 80.7% (405/502)
Emily Griffith Opportunity School 3.2% (9/277)
D P S Night High School 0.0% (0/1)
Escuela Tlatelolco School 33.3% (4/12)
Florence Crittenton High School 2.6% (2/77)
George Washington High School 80.9% (313/387)
John F Kennedy High School 77.0% (207/269)
Justice High School Denver 26.9% (7/26)
Life Skills Center Of Denver 0.5% (1/216)
Manual High School 0.0% (0/2)
Martin Luther King Middle College 89.6% (69/77)
Contemporary Learning Academy High School 0.0% (0/106)
Montbello High School 56.2% (221/393)
North High School 63.8% (155/243)
Bruce Randolph School 85.9% (73/85)
Online High School 42.6% (20/47)
Prep Assessment Center 0.0% (0/40)
P.S.1 Charter School 10.5% (8/76)
Skyland Community High School 29.4% (10/34)
South High School 61.8% (215/348)
Southwest Early College Charter School 32.2% (29/90)
Thomas Jefferson High School 78.0% (199/255)
West High School 47.6% (119/250)

Remediation In Higher Education

At the two-year institutions the overall remediation rate in FY2010 was 52.8%. . . . At the four-year institutions the overall remediation rate was 18.3%. . . . When examining remediation by discipline, most Colorado students required remediation in mathematics, followed by writing and then reading. At both two-year and four institutions, mathematics is by far the subject with the highest number of students assigned to remedial study (Figures 1 & 2). Approximately 41% of total two-year students and 14.5% of total four-year students were assessed math remediation.

The remediation report notes that about $19 million a year of Colorado General Fund dollars are devoted to remedial education for public college matriculants. Of this, $18.1 million is spent at the community college level, while $1 million is spent at Adams State and Mesa State Colleges (several other four year colleges failed to produce detailed cost estimates). About 60% of students taking remedial education courts at higher education institutions passed those courses, about a quarter failed, and most of the rest withdrew.

For the 2006 cohort at 2 year Colorado institutions, 52.7% of students who did not need remediation graduated, while 19.3% of those who did need remediation graduated (from a two year program or with a certificate or after transferring to a new institution). Half of students (49.9%) at two year colleges assigned to remedial classes were retained a year later.

For the 2003 cohort at 4 year Colorado institutions, 62.9% of students who did not need remediation graduates in six years, while 29.5% who did need remediation graduated in six years. Students requiring remedial instruction at schools with higher overall graduation rates were more likely to graduate that students requiring remedial instruction at schools with lower graduation rates. For example, 65.0% of students at the Colorado School of Mines who needed remedial classes graduated in six years, while only 19.6% of students at Metro State who needed remedial classes graduated in six years. Six out of ten students (60.1%) at four years colleges assigned to remedial classes were retained a year later.

Within the Denver Public Schools, many non-traditional high school programs sent no students to public college at all in the Fall 2010 year covered by the study (Challenges, Choices and Images; Colorado High School; Contemporary Learning Academy; Emily Griffth Opportunity School; Florence Crittendon High School; Fred N. Thomas Career Education; Life Skills Center of Denver, P.S. 1). Those schools that did have student starting public colleges in the fall of 2010 had remediation rates as follows:

Lincoln 78.6% (55/70) Prepared Graduates Starting College: 15
Denver School of the Arts 19.0% (8/42) Prepared Graduates Starting College: 34
East 38.5% (79/205) Prepared Graduates Starting College: 126
George Washington 60.0% (84/140) Prepared Graduates Starting College: 56
John F. Kennedy 62.7% (74/118) Prepared Graduates Starting College: 44
Montbello 71.8% (61/85) Prepared Graduates Starting College: 24
North 72.1% (44/61) Prepared Graduates Starting College: 17
South 68.8% (66/96) Prepared Graduates Starting College: 30
Thomas Jefferson 57.3% (71/124) Prepared Graduates Starting College: 53
West 90.7% (39/43) Prepared Graduates Starting College: 4

DPS Total 59.0% (581/984) Prepared Graduates Starting College: 403

Matriculation

The last report shows, for example, that in the fall of 2009, a total of 1,196 students from the Denver Public Schools (about 46% of its high school graduates) enrolled at the following institutions of higher education in Colorado:

Community College of Denver 313
Metropolitan State College 169
University of Colorado Boulder 159
University of Colorado Denver 106
University of Northern Colorado 85
Colorado State University 65
University of Denver 44
Community College of Aurora 42
Arapahoe Community College 33
Red Rocks Community College 28
Colorado State University Pueblo 26
Mesa State College 26
Northeatern Junior College 26
Adams State College 15
Fort Lewis College 13
Colorado School of Mines 9
University of Colorado Colorado Springs 6
Front Range Community College 6
Western State College 5
Colorado Northwestern Community College 4
Regis University 3
Trinidad State Junior College 3
Pikes Peak Community College 3
Colorado Christian University 2
Colorado Mountain College 2
Aims Community College 1
Otero Junior College 1
Pueblo Community College 1
Lamar Community College 0
Morgan Community College 0

Thus, 733 DPS graduates went on to publicly funded four year colleges in Colorado and 463 DPS graduates went to publicly funded two year colleges in Colorado.

The data are also broken out by individual high schools. For example, the University of Colorado Boulder matriculants from the Denver Public Schools were graduates of East High School (69), George Washington (31), South (16), Thomas Jefferson (13), Denver School of the Arts (12), Denver School of Science and Technology (10), Montebello (3), North (2), P.S. 1 (2), and Lincoln (1).

Rate of Prepared College Student Production

What percentage of students do DPS high schools graduate who enter college and don't need remedial work when they get there?

The numbers are approximate, because two new turnaround schools (Martin Luther King Jr. Early College and Bruce Randolph) are excluded from the data which precedes their first graduating classes. The understatements are likely to be greatest at high schools like East, George Washington, South, Thomas Jefferson, DSA and DSST that send significant numbers of students to the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Also, keep in mind that these numbers also understate the number of prepared college students by omitting students who go to college outside of Colorado or to private colleges that receive no state support (e.g. Harvard, the University of Colorado, or Colorado College).

But, for older schools the numbers (in rank order) are as follows:

Denver School of the Arts 27.4% (34/124)
East 25.1% (126/502)
Thomas Jefferson 20.8% (53/255)
John F. Kennedy 16.4% (44/269)
George Washington 14.5% (56/387)
South 7.8% (30/384)
North 7.0% (17/243)
Montbello 6.1% (24/393)
Lincoln 3.7% (15/402)
West 1.6% (4/250)

DPS Total 7.9% (403/5,083)*

* The 9.6% figure cited above in this post is more accurate for DPS as a whole as this 7.9% figure and the per high school figures use data from inconsistent years which is adjusted for in the estimate earlier in this post, but for comparative purposes between high schools this adjustment has not been made; the absolute numbers for high schools understate the total but are still comparable relative to each other).

Even these school by school figures fail to tell the whole story. George Washington's numbers would look very different if they were broken out between a high performing IB program and a lower performing traditional program. East High School is very strongly tracked into what amounts to separate high and low achieving programs (academically). Other schools may make similar divisions.

One interesting comparison in the number of prepared college students a high school produces and the number of students identified as gifted and talented that it has in the cohort used for the high school graduation rate numbers above.

But, for older schools the numbers (in rank order) are as follows:

Denver School of the Arts 68.0% (34/50)
East 88.7% (126/142)
Thomas Jefferson 110.4% (53/48)
John F. Kennedy 93.6% (44/47)
George Washington 56.0% (56/100)
South 75.0% (30/40)
North 77.3% (17/22)
Montbello 80.0% (24/30)
Lincoln 36.6% (15/41)
West 18.2% (4/22)

DPS Total 57.7% (403/699)*

At DSA, East, GW and South there may be meaningful distortion in the numbers due to significant numbers of graduates attending private colleges, while a larger share of talented students from Thomas Jefferson, JFK and North are probably attending public colleges in Colorado, as they have less affluent student bodies.

But, by any measure, it is clear that the most talented students at Lincoln High School and West High School are disproportionately not graduating from high school and then going to college, presumably due to some combination of financial stress and inadequate college advising and peer support. This may also be happening a GW and DSA where financial stress along may be at work.

Implications

There are several big picture points that the data drive home for me:

1. The detailed high school data in Denver confirms that national data on a key point. A large number of low income kids in poor neighborhoods who are very talented academically are not going on to college, despite the fact that they have what it takes to succeed there. To recap the slogan of the United Negro College Fund, "a mind is a terrible thing to waste." This reaches a particularly distressing level at West High School and Lincoln High School in Denver. It is imperative that our society do more to help these kids achieve their potential. We have to overcome the financial barriers to meritocracy which are demonstrably still very present today.

2. The dominant reason that students need remedial courses when they show up at colleges and universities in the state is weak preparation in math. The good news is that math is much more self-contained as a subject than reading and writing, and much more a product of the educational process than reading and writing which are part of language skills developed every waking hour (and many dreaming hours) for a student's entire lifetime. Beefing up the curriculum and our expectations of our students in math can reasonably be expected to make a dent in this problem.

3. Graduation rates, college matriculation rates, remedial education rates, and college retention rates are exceedingly sticky and are decades in the making. There is room for improvement. The performance of the Denver Public Schools as measures by factors like graduation rates is poor even when factors like poverty, lack of English proficiency and other concerns are taken into account. DPS has poor graduation rates not just overall, but for specific demographic and individualized need based subgroups. But, the realistic goal for DPS should be to bring its performance up to or above par for the course considering its student body's needs, which even if it overperforms state averages somewhat for every category of student will still be far below the state averages.

4. The Denver Public Schools has not yet succeeded in making itself attractive enough for affluent families with academically talented kids to keep them in its high schools. Previous successes at the elementary and middle school level have shown that making attractive options available can bring these students back into the system, but the crunch time is approaching as a cohort of families who have stuck with DPS for elementary school and middle school when a few years ago similar families were not doing so have to decided if they will stay in DPS for high school. DPS needs those students to have the critical mass of students that it needs for academically rigorous programs that can be made available to all students, and to make economical use of its ample excess of infrastructure resources like empty schools.

5. Half of students who begin high school at the Denver Public Schools won't graduate from high school, half of those who graduate from high school will never go to college, and well over half of those graduates who go to college will never earn a degree with many dropping out of college in the first year or two. Only about five percent of students who start high school at DPS will ever earn a four year college degree. By the time they enter high school it is possible to predict with considerable accuracy how likely it is for a particular student to graduate from high school and to earn a college degree.

The only high profile measure of how successful DPS high schools are at equipping non-college bound students for life after high school is the dropout rate, and that is a crude measure indeed. DPS has many non-traditional programs for non-college bound students. Some, like the Fred N Thomas Career Education Center, appear at least to be doing a successful job of convincing students who are not college bound that it is worth their while to stay in school and graduate. Others may or may not be making a difference, but there is no way for the public to know if these programs fit that bill - dismal graduation rates in many of these programs aren't encouraging.

DPS needs to have something to offer its non-college bound students besides a watered down college prepatory curriculum that makes it worth student's time and effort to stay in school and graduate. It may as well have these students out pounding rocks all day for all the benefit they will get from that approach - that might at least do something about obesity and improve their lifetime fitness. Indeed, many teachers and counselors encourage these students to sign up for the Army and enter basic training if they can graduate, which has a certain amount of similarity to it. These students have spent more than eight years trying traditional academic classroom instruction aimed at getting them ready for a college prepatory high school curriculum and that approach crashed and burned. Four more years of the same won't make a difference for them. We need to find something more fruitful to offer the students who have failed with this approach.

Since students are the consumers here and are voting with their feet, figuring out which programs matter to them is more important than what college admissions officers or state politicians think that these students should be learning. What kind of educational opportunties would these students have purchased with the $6,000+ per year per head that the district is given to spend on them if they had more of a say in devising it? My intuition is that what most of these students want is to be ready for a career that will support them in life, while having the same high school experiences extracurricularly that their college bound peers do. Vocational education is an attractive possibility for a lot of students that has been neglected for too long.

DPS also needs to devote resources to develop useful, high profile measures of its success with non-college bound students that go beyond graduation rates, college matriculation rates and remedial education rates. It needs these measures much more than most districts in the state. For example, there should be good individual high school and individual high school program data on unemployment rates, criminal conviction rates, earnings, voter registration, poverty, and teen/out of wedlock parenting rates for non-college bound DPS graduates and dropouts. Schools that produce good results on these measures with students who have little realistic chance of graduating from college should be recognized for their achievements.

Is Collateral Damage Old News?

Accuracy, Assassination, Apples and Oranges

Kenneth Anderson at The Volokh Conspiracy (in a characteristic comment free post), argues that the law and ethics of war is shifting from "proportionality" to "necessity" because with drone deployed missiles, "the technology is getting more and more precise, and when Panetta says the drone targeted kiling technology is the most precise thing in the history of warfare, I think it is basically right and getting more so with new technological developments. That is relative, however — relative to the realistic alternative uses of force, not by comparison to zero."

Certainly, in a very narrow technological sense, guided weapons, be they smart bombs, guided missiles or guided artillery shells are much more accurate than the long range unguided bombs and unguided artillery shells that preceded them. The new weapons can hit smaller targets at greater distances. Bombers and artillery do not destroy adjacent neighborhoods when trying to destroy military targets, nearly as often as they once did.

But, the problem is how these weapons are used, which creates an apples and oranges issue. Traditionally, unguided bombs and artillery rounds were used in the context of pitched military v. military battles, or attacks on the industrial capacity of cities. Assassination, a tool of war and terrorism whose polite name is now "targeted killing" was historically carried out by individuals, face to face, with small firearms or other personal weapons.

Civilized countries mostly didn't admit to engaging in assassination in past eras, and collateral damage in an assassination generally involved a handful of people in the same public place of the target at a time chosen because it was the only time when the assassin not privy to the inner sanctum of the target could get a shot at the target.

Now, drones are used by the CIA to assassinate targets in their homes, and this produces far more collateral damage than traditional methods of assassination, and the individuals killed in collateral damage are far more likely to be completely innocent children, spouses, extended family members and household servants than they are to be professional colleagues of the target who may not be so innocent themselves in the eyes of the entity directing targeted killing, as was the case in traditional assassinations.

Thus, the same technology that has reduced collateral damage in conventional military conflicts has increased the collateral damage associated with assassinations, which have become increasingly common.

Assassination of a particular enemy combatant during an active and declared war is presumably encompassed in the larger notion that killing enemy combatants during war is justified. But, since assassination has historically been a fairly minor tool of warfare and is increasingly becoming an important one, re-examination of that tactic as it presents itself in modern conflicts is in order.

Distinguishing War From Crime

Related is the larger problem with using a "warfare" frame to address conduct that would traditionally be viewed as "crime." In a "war" context, we demand far less certainty of culpability, and far less individual culpability to kill than we do in a "crime" context where we require "probable cause" to search or seize someone, allow the use of force only when exigent circmstances or defiance of announced legitimate legal authority makes it necessary, and view an individual as eligible to be killed only when individually culpable.

The whole notion of "lawfare" is based upon the implicit notion that the courts are an inappropriate place to adjudicate matters of "warfare."

But, of course, the real legal issue is not whether courts should run wars, but when activities that the government chooses to describe as "war" in an opportunistic way for the express purposes of circumventing legal limitations of the use of force and government authority really are "war." Can Congress dispense will all of the constitutional criminal procedure rights simply by declaring war on common criminals?

When war is declared, as it was by Congress in the Authorization to Use Military Force in 2001, on non-state groups and those who aid them, rather than on a foreign state, it becomes far less trivial to determine who is an enemy, and who is a combatant. Critics of "lawfare" argue for a very broad deferrence to the government as it seeks to determine who is an "enemy" and who is a "combatant," with the de facto sole arbiter of the decision in most cases being some CIA employee with little or not practical accountability to anyone, not even the accountability inherent in a military chain of command.

The British MI6 may have personal licenses to kill from the Queen, but generally, the U.S. theory by which our spies are authorized to kill is not so absolute.

The Dormant Treason Clause

Yet, we have reached the point when even a Democrat who was critical on the campaign trail of the war on terror tactics used by President George W. Bush, asserts the right to determine without any due process that a U.S. citizen is to be assassinated on the grounds that the government views him as an enemy combatant.

This seems to cross a line. Traditionally, an enemy is a citizen or subject of a state upon which you have declared war, and once you determine that someone is an enemy, you then determine if he is a combatant. In contrast, your own citizens or subjects are never "enemies" per se, in the law of war sense. Instead, they are loyal citizens or traitors who are engaged in treason. But, the U.S. Constitution defines treason as a criminal, rather than law of war matter, defines the crime, and sets forth the means by which it can be proved.

The line created by the constitution seems a sensible one. Citizens or subjects of enemies in declared wars are subject to the laws of war applicable to combatants and non-combatants respectively. One's own citizens and subjects are not enemies and are subject to criminal laws subject to due process. The place where a person happens to be is irrelevant, and the "dormant treason clause" implicitly forbids the United States from declaring war on U.S. citizens, even if they provide aid and comfort to an enemy on whom war has been declared.

This clear bright line may be complicated in cases of rebellion and insurrections, such as the secession of the civil war, or a genuinely domestic insurgency that must be countered. But, there is no good reason that the more difficult questions of a domestic insurgency need to be addressed under the constitution at this point, because there is no indication that the United States has a genuinely domestic insurgency. The War on Terror authorized by the 2001 AUMF is a foreign war just like any other except that it was declared on a non-state foreign terrorist organization (the 9-11 organization) in addition to an aspirant claimant to state actor status (the Taliban), not a domestic insurgency.

The notion that U.S. citizens abroad should have fewer constitutional protections from action by the U.S. government than they do at home doesn't seem to have any solid legal basis. It is a convenient invention out of whole cloth.

Certainly, the U.S. military can be forgiven for treating a U.S. citizen as an "enemy combatant" when they did not in fact know that the person was a U.S. citizen and had no reason to suspect that this was the case. The odds that some random individual involved in an anti-U.S. terrorist group in Yemen or Afghanistan just happens to have been born in the United States and is a U.S. citizen are very low and there is no scientific test one can do to determine U.S. citizenship. It depends on events that may be remote in time and place and unknowable to a casual observer. But, when the U.S. government actually knows that someone is a U.S. citizen, applying the laws of war seems inherently unconstitutional.

Who Should Be Denver's Next Mayor?

Among the candidates running for Mayor in Denver, which will have a non-partisan election in May, followed by a runoff between the top two candidates if no one candidate gets a majority in the first round are:

City Council President Michael Hancock,
Councilwoman At Large Carol Boigon,
Denver Pre-School Program Director James Mejia
Councilman At Large Doug Linkhart,
State Senator Chris Romer (who stepped down to run for the post), and
almost a dozen other candidates with no serious chance of winning.

The election that ultimate put Mayor John Hickenlooper featured strong ethnically driven voting in the first round with Latinos mostly favoring the leading Latino candidate, African-Americans mostly favoring the leading African-American candidate, and whites mostly favoring the leading white candidate.

A similar outcome with Hancock capturing the African-American vote, Mejia capturing the Latino vote, and Romer probably emerging as the leading white candidate, seems possible this time around, although perhaps this time around the voting will be less ethnically driven, particularly in light of the fact that Denver Republicans seem to be converging around support for Hancock, in the absence of any actual Republican candidates in the race in an overwhelmingly Democratic jurisdiction.

I have some familiarity with, or have done some preliminary research on each of the top five candidates at this point, but would very much welcome input from readers and campaigns on the virtues of one candidate over any other in the comments.

Monday Miscellany

* Last week, Glendale's animal rights terrorist, thirty-four year old Walter Edmund Bond, got five years in prison for burning down the sheepskin factory (and a $1.2 million restitution judgment together with three years of supervised release) following a guilty plea, despite the fact that he was utterly unapologetic and taunted the victims as he spoke prior to receiving his sentence. No physical injuries to people were caused by this or her other fires, but the business, which was not insured, was destroyed.

"In a society that honors money over life, I am honored to be a prisoner of war," Bond said. As Bond raged in the heavily guarded courtroom — at one point saying he wanted Livaditis to "choke on everything you earned" — a member of Livaditis' family cried in the audience. . . . [He] told Judge Christine Arguello that he has no remorse for the fire, which he has said he lit under the banner of the radical Animal Liberation Front, or ALF. . . . [The judge said] he would face additional prison time if he didn't keep up with restitution payments. Bond told Arguello he would not willingly make the payments. . . . Bond also has prior arson convictions that had nothing to do with animal-rights issues. Holloway said Bond was convicted in Iowa in 1996 for lighting a pentagram on fire inside a church convicted again in 1997 in Iowa for setting fire to a building, an incident that killed a family's pet. . . .

Bond's speech today stood in contrast to statements his lawyer made on his behalf last month in a court filing seeking to get Bond a reduced sentence of less than four years. In that filing, attorney Edward Harris wrote that Bond had renounced "burning the businesses of those who offend his principles. . . . Mr. Bond ... now believes that the better course of action is to limit his advocacy to speech and writing," Harris wrote.

That sentiment was not evident during Bond's speech, as he called affiliating with the ALF, "the proudest and most powerful thing I have ever done." Bond, who has identified himself at times in online writings as "ALF Lone Wolf," addressed part of his speech to "my vegan sisters and brothers" and encouraged them to keep up their campaign.

About a dozen of Bond's supporters sat in the courtroom for the sentencing hearing. . . After the hearing, many of the activists, some of whom traveled from across the country to attend, said they supported Bond's statement.

The willingness of federal prosecutors to accept such a lenient plea bargain may have something to do with the fact that he faces two more counts in Utah that will add to the total time served before his release. This conviction will impact his criminal history for the next convictions under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. U.S. Attorneys in Utah will also, no doubt, consider his statements at this sentencing in considering what plea agreements they are willing to reach with him.

Still, it is hard to imagine someone who claimed that he did this in the name of Islam, instead of animal rights, receiving a similarly light sentence. When someone who is deeply repentant can be sentenced to 30 years in prison for sending $3,500 to an Islamic organization that engaged in both terrorist and non-terrorist activities funded by petty fraud under a law that had never before been enforced, it is hard to see why someone with a prior criminal arson record he burns down a shop and has no remorse for the act should receive a lighter sentence.

* There seems to be some evidence that fructose (one type of dietary sugar) encourages obesity more the glucose (another type of dietary sugar).

* Genetic evidence has led biologists to reclassify a few species of worms called Acoels and Xenoturbella, that had previously been seen as a missing link between invertebrates with radial symmetry (anemones, jellyfish and sponges, for example) that use the same body opening to ingest food and excrete waste, and animals with bilateral symmetry that have a separate mouth and anus (earthworms, snails, insects, sea urchins and vertebrates, for example), since these worms have bilateral symmetry but a single body opening to ingest food and excrete waste. The genetic evidence suggests that rather than being a missing link, the Acoels had an ancestor that has bilateral symmetry and both a mouth and anus, but lost the anus in later convergent evolution. They turn out to be more closely related to the vertebrates and sea urchins than to other bilateral animals by several different genetic measures.

* Old teeth found at an archeological site in Israel suggest that there may have been modern humans in the Levant much earlier than prior finds have indicated, perhaps even shortly after the evolution of modern humans in Africa:

Excavated at Qesem cave, a pre-historic site that was uncovered in 2000, the size and shape of the teeth are very similar to those of modern humans, Homo sapiens, which have been found at other sites is Israel, such as Oafzeh and Skhul -- but they're a lot older than any previously discovered remains.

"The Qesem teeth come from a time period between 200,000 -- 400,000 years ago when human remains from the Middle East are very scarce," Quam said. "We have numerous remains of Neandertals and Homo sapiens from more recent times, that is around 60,00 -- 150,000 years ago, but fossils from earlier time periods are rare. So these teeth are providing us with some new information about who the earlier occupants of this region were as well as their potential evolutionary relationships with the later fossils from this same region."

Teeth are the prime sources for ancient DNA because the enamel shields them from outside conditions, leaving open the possibility that it might be possible to analyze the DNA of hominins much older than any other ancient DNA ever recovered. Even results limited to mtDNA could shed light on whether the modern humans finds in the Levant are ancestral to modern Eurasian, or a "dead end" as their apparent absence from the Levant for tens of thousands of year suggests might be the case. But, the rare teeth have value whole, and the ancient DNA inside could easy be degraded and provide no useful information, so the decision on whether scientists should try to analyze them in destructive testing for ancient DNA is a difficult one.

* One feature that is surprising absent from library cataloging software (at least in Denver) and online book purchasing sites (like Amazon) is an easy way to bring up all of the books and other media that are part of the same series and arrange them in order. This is particularly annoying when several volumns of a series are written by different authors (common in non-fiction and sometimes seen in tribute works to deceased authors). Even more annoying, however, is the effort of publishers like Little, Brown and Company's paperback offerings, where I have seen it done, to deliberately obscure the fact that a book which is one of the middle books of a series has books that come before it in the series on the book cover. I understand the desire to sell more books, but in general have a low opinion of marketing approaches that seek to capitalize on consumer ignorance rather than by letting them know more about the product.

* Marginal Revolution is a blog that is increasingly attracting my attention as a source of interesting and timely tidbits. So is Truth on the Market (which is more academic).

* Most recently, the latter blog brings the sad news that Borders, I book store that I saw rise from its humble beginnings as a wonderful independent bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan while I was in law school, is going bankrupt. Borders was acquired by Detroit area based Kmart to revive its Walden Books chain, one that I liked to describe as a book store for people who don't really like books that based on shopping malls. The book stores were spun off from Kmart, which went bankrupt and was merged in the same group with Sears, another retail chain that had jumped the shark but had valuable real estate holdings. Borders was a delightful book store, but expanded too fast with non-bookstore exeecutives, failed to gain a strong foothold into the online world, and tried to hard to meld a chain oriented towards intellectuals and one oriented towards non-intellectuals that was ill fated. I personally think that the role of a lack of online initiatives at Borders which has been played as a "death of books" scenario distorts what really went wrong with Borders, which can just as easily be understood as a lesson in the limits of the economies of scale.

* The Democratic Leadership Council (and its deceptively named think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute), a conservative leaning organization within the Democratic Party, is dead. It has run out of money and is suspending its operations. While the DLC has been more Clintonian than outright Blue Dog conservative, it has earned a great deal of ire from the progressive elements in the Democratic party anyway. The 2012 election was a blow to its core constitutency, as right leaning Democrats favored Republicans over Democrats, although the Democratic party still has a much bigger tend than the Republicans politically at the moment. Also, the DLC has simply lacked much of a coherent vision.

* Arizona is talking about bringing counterclaims in the federal suit to invalidate its anti-immigration law on pre-emption grounds alleging that Arizona has incurred fiscal harms as a result of non-enforcement of federal law by federal officials. The claim is frivilous as a matter of law and a nearly identical suit was promptly defeated in the courts in Colorado when Attorney General Suthers was directed by the legislature in a special session to bring such a suit. But, the political grandstanding continues to outweigh the legal good judgment of the officials making the legal move.

Happy Valentine's Day

This is the twenty-second consecutive year that I've had the same Valentine with whom I have celebrated Valentine's Day. At first, we were only newly made acquaintances and friends with no one else to be a Valentine (she got me peanut butter chocholates, which I actually terribly dislike :(), but apparently, this day works its magic. By the fourth time around, we were engaged. By the sixth, we were married. :)