Cascade CounterPoint

2023 is being called the “Year of Universal Education Choice,” and for good reason. According to the nonprofit organization EdChoice, policymakers in 40 states debated 111 bills to expand education options for K-12 students. Lawmakers in seven states enacted new choice programs, and ten states expanded already-existing ones. As of March 2024, eleven states now have universal or near-universal school choice laws. Approximately 20 million American children are eligible to participate in a private choice program.

Oregon parents should be able to choose the best education options for their students, so every child has a chance for an effective and motivating school experience. Education Freedom for Oregon, a school choice advocacy group, is making that its goal through two separate education ballot measures. One would create School Choice Accounts for Oregon families. Parents choosing a School Choice Account could direct a portion of the state funding for their children’s education to options that fit their needs, including tuition, homeschool curricula, tutoring, therapy, and more. The second ballot measure would offer statewide public school open enrollment, allowing families to choose any public schools that have available spaces. If enough voter signatures are received before June 30, Oregonians would be able to vote on these measures in 2024.

Different educational environments empower students to learn in the ways that are most beneficial for them. Educational choice programs—like those in 33 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico—increase students’ opportunities, improve outcomes, and help make schools accountable to the parents and students they serve.

This week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Johnson v. City of Grants Pass. The central question is whether local ordinances that prohibit people from camping on public property constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment.

Based on prior rulings in the 9th Circuit court of appeals, western states have been limited since 2018 in what they can do to prevent people from using parks, sidewalks and streets as campgrounds. A successful class action lawsuit against the City of Grants Pass on behalf of homeless people resulted in long-term camping in a city park, preventing residents from using the park for recreational purposes.

Although some people have criticized Grants Pass for allegedly making it illegal to be homeless, that is not the issue. Cities and counties simply need clear authority to prohibit camping in certain public spaces, while designating other spaces as legal places to sleep for people who lack permanent shelter.

Enforcing those rules is not cruel; it’s essential to the livability of our communities. The sooner the Supreme Court clarifies this matter, the sooner we can implement real solutions to the problem of public spaces being permanently converted to unsanitary campgrounds.

This month, Cascade Policy Institute is releasing a new report explaining why government-mandated “affordable housing” doesn’t actually make housing more affordable.

In The Affordable Housing Scam, author Randal O’Toole writes that while “U.S. taxpayers spend tens of billions of dollars a year subsidizing housing for low-income households,” those units cost “about 20 percent more per square foot than unsubsidized homes.” Developers, not low-income households, capture most of the benefits of taxpayer-funded subsidies. O’Toole recommends that “[i]nstead of wasting money on high-cost housing, project-based affordable housing funds should be abandoned in favor of tenant-based voucher subsidies.”

Most families want to live in single-family homes, not apartments or small attached units. Yet, state and local government planners impose growth policies on their constituents that restrict supply of what their communities really want. The supply of land available for new homes is artificially constrained by urban growth boundaries, which drive up the costs both of existing housing and new construction within UGBs.

Oregon can bring down housing costs at all price points by increasing the supply of land available for new homes. In a state that is 98% open space, building neighborhoods that people want to live in should not be a problem.

Last week, Cascade Policy Institute provided suggestions to the Board of Portland Public Schools to reduce costs on the Jefferson High School modernization project. The project is paused due to the budget ballooning from $311 million (approved by voters in a 2020 bond issue) to $491 million.

Cascade’s primary advice for the PPS Board can be applied to all publicly funded projects: practice common sense prudence.

The prudent person principle provides perspective on three cost-prohibitive aspects of public projects:

To meet building code requirements for seismic resilience, Jefferson must be designed as a risk category III structure. Current plans call for building to the costly and unnecessary standard of risk category IV.

The state mandates 1.5% of most public buildings’ budgets be allocated to green energy technology. Agency managers of four other Oregon school districts have refused to comply due to the excessive length of the pay-back period.

Finally, building realistically sized projects is key. Jefferson’s current enrollment is below 500 students yet the rebuild is planned for 1,700, a flagrantly excessive size in a school district with declining enrollment.

The areas of excess in the Jefferson High School re-build are common in public projects. A prudent person would rein in this spending.

This month, Alabama became the most recent state to increase education options for students through Education Savings Accounts. Alabama’s CHOOSE Act gives families access to up to $7,000 per child to use at participating private schools or for other education expenses. Families who homeschool may receive up to $2,000. Low-income students have first priority, with eligibility expanding to all children by the 2027-28 school year.

Finding the right fit for their children’s education is increasingly important to families. According to nationwide polling, seventy-one percent of voters say parents should “have the right to use tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school which best serves their needs.” Counting Alabama, eleven states now have universal or near-universal school choice laws.

Different educational environments help students learn in the ways that are most beneficial for them. Oregon should give parents the power to choose the best education options for their students, so every child has a chance for an effective and motivating school experience.

The Oregonian recently reported that “Oregon students as a whole have failed to regain either math or reading skills” lost during the COVID-19 pandemic, unlike students in 29 other states included in an analysis published in January.

The article points out that, despite $1.6 billion in federal pandemic aid being spent in Oregon schools, Oregon students are experiencing three to four times the learning deficit of other states. Each school district spent the money differently, but whether it was to hire teachers, renovate buildings, or create programs, the outcome was the same.

Oregon students are struggling, and they need different choices in their education if they are going to catch up. Whether it is a voucher system, a tax credit, or an education savings account, school choice needs to be implemented so that we can expand learning options and meet the needs of our students.

Thirty-two states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have private school choice programs, and ten of those have universal school choice. Oregon education policies are well behind the curve, and so are their students. When it comes to educational success, money is not the problem, and in this case, more money is not the solution.

Joshua Schutte is the Development Coordinator at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.

On February 22, the Joint Committee on Transportation of the Oregon Legislature unanimously approved SB 1572, which would appropriate $250,000 to ODOT to study the feasibility of extending TriMet’s Westside Express Service (WES) train from Wilsonville to Salem.

The committee did this despite the fact that average daily ridership on WES was down to 370 in January. With so few riders, the average operations cost per ride was $118.

By comparison, the average operations cost per ride for TriMet’s frequent bus service in January was $6.68, and $9.35 for light rail.

WES opened in 2009 and runs from Beaverton to Wilsonville. Service is limited to weekdays, and only during peak hours. Trains arrive every 45 minutes.

The peak year for WES ridership was 2014, when it averaged 2,010 boardings in January. Since then, ridership has dropped by 82%.

SB 1572 now sits in the Legislative Ways and Means Committee, awaiting approval of the $250,000 budget request. We don’t need a 10-month study to decide that extending commuter rail to Salem is a poor use of taxpayer funds. Lawmakers should let the bill die a quiet death.

Full-text: The 35-day session of the Oregon Legislature opened last week, and a hearing was held on the Governor’s top priority, Senate Bill 1537. Her goal is to increase the supply of housing.

Unfortunately, this goal is undercut by Oregon’s Urban Growth Boundaries, which are designed to limit urban growth. Under SB 1537, cities will be allowed to add tiny amounts of new land inside the boundary, but only if the proposed development meets stringent criteria.

In the Portland region, new neighborhoods will have to have at least 17 housing units per acre. That means most residents will be living in apartments.

The majority of Oregonians aspire to live in single family homes with a yard. Providing a housing solution that most people don’t want is not a solution.

There is no policy reason for density mandates. Oregon is 98% open space and 2% developed. More than half the state is owned by the federal government, and those lands will remain open space. There is plenty of room for the kind of low-density housing that most people prefer.

Oregon’s Urban Growth Boundaries have essentially created land cartels run by the government. The effect of any cartel is to make commodities both scarce and expensive. That certainly describes Oregon housing, and SB 1537 doesn’t solve the problem.

Full text: The last segment of Oregon’s Interstate Highway system opened in 1982. One would think that since Oregon has a nationally prominent planning system, there would be efforts underway to plan for the next generation of great roads.

But that is not the case. Planners almost universally hate highways, so they have made sure that the Interstate system remains stagnant. Even where changes are being contemplated, such as a new I-5 bridge over the Columbia River, they are not designed to address growth.

The Interstate Bridge Replacement Project, now in its 26th year of planning, will have no effect on traffic congestion because it doesn’t add capacity. We will still have only two bridges over the Columbia River in the Portland region.

What we need is several new bridges, with at least one providing a direct, high-speed connection to HWY 26 on the west side. We need new bridges and highways for the same reasons that cities eventually need new streets – you can’t pack every urban activity into one small area.

The Oregon Transportation Commission is determined to impose highway tolls without providing motorists with new highways. This is the wrong approach. If the Commission wants public support, it should start planning for the new roads the public wants.

Full-text: The National School Choice Awareness Foundation conducted a survey of parents of school-aged children in early January. The results indicate that parents “increasingly see school choice as the ‘new normal’ in a post-pandemic world.” The survey report, New Year, New Schools: U.S. Parents View K-12 School Choice as the “New Normal” in 2024, shows 72% of parents said they considered new schools for their children last year.

According to Andrew Campanella, President and CEO of National School Choice Awareness Foundation, the survey reveals three important things about parents today:

National School Choice Week (January 21-27, 2024) celebrates all the ways children learn, including district public schools, charter and magnet schools, private schools, home schools, online schools, and hybrid options. Empowering parents to choose the best educational environments for their children as individuals helps each student have effective opportunities to succeed.