Race to the Top - Statewide Longitudinal (Student) Data System

Reviewing some older blogs (not too hard since I've not posted in so long) I ran across an "orphan" - a blog promising a follow-up, but I never got around to writing. So I dug for updated info on the point I wanted to make in May 2011 about unfunded mandates in general, and Race To The Top specifically: Statewide Longitudinal Data System.

Ever heard of it? If your child has attended K-12 school in Rhode Island since around 2006, you child's information is in it.

It's now a pretty integral part of the Race To The Top (RTTT) education "grant" from the United Stated Department of Education. And it's been expanded since June 2011 to include Pre-K through 20. Yes, TWENTY - that's four years beyond college into the work force. RI Department of Education (RIDE), the RI Office of Higher Education RIOHE, and the RI Department of Labor and Training (RIDLT) are the three front organizations for this massive database.

Oh, by all means, review the grant narrative.

Now, if RIDE wanted to data-mine information about kids in K-12 and collect it in a grant-funded database, fine.

(Not fine, really - I hate government databases on people and really hate government databases on kids. But let's stick to the cost of government monitoring, not get sidetracked by the moral philosophy of government monitoring.)

But this is a longitudinal study. Meaning a study of the same subjects (cohort) over time. Meaning, for it to have meaning, it has to track the same kids - our kids - before, during, and after the "normal" education lifespan. From pre-Kindergarten to four-plus years after college graduation (or 8+ years after high school for kids who don't go to college). There's even a "Director of PK-20 Affairs" in the Rhode Island Office of Higher Education. (Janet Durfee-Hidalgo, with a 2011 salary listed at just under $90,000. Yup.)

My point? Several, actually. But for the purposes of this blog: Grants have a short life span. This database - by its very name and intention - does not.

So who do you think picks up the tab for the data mining, data entry, data security, data analysis, and data dissemination, not to mention equipment and software acquisition, media backup, maintenance, upgrades, and aaaaaaaaaaaaall those people, and the facilities to house it all for the other 15+ years after the grant money stops?

This Statewide Longitudinal (Student) Data System will become another unfunded mandate, along with all the other goodies tucked into the RTTT grant.

Knowledge gain? Oh, the government will know plenty about our kids. The real question is, how much fundamental knowledge will the kids gain?

Government finance 101: It's all your money.

Break the Cycle: Trimming RI Government One Grant at a Time, Part I

Have you ever wondered how so many states came to be in such debt? How has government grown so big and expensive? Do you believe politicians when they say there's no place left to cut?

One debt factor is the old trick and ugly trap of unfunded mandates.

What are they? 

Those in charge of the federal government have 2 motives: (1) they need to justify their own jobs, and (2) they want more control over you so they can justify their own jobs. Therefore, whatever hare-brained idea for more social engineering pops into the latest bureaucrat or czar's head, it gets proposed.

But because of that pesky 10th Amendment in the United States Constitution declaring state sovereignty, the federal government can't directly replace state authority.

Instead, Washington dangles the carrot of federal grants to successfully coerce compliance. Cash-strapped municipalities and states eagerly grab the "free" money. I'll avoid the obvious point that you and I are still the source of that "free" money, even if local politicians are too stupid or too sly to admit it. So, states willingly adopt policies, pass laws, create new or expand existing bureaucracies, and implement programs they would never consider of their own volition -- and usually step on your liberty in some way, but that's another topic. To politicians accepting the "free" money, tomorrow's strings are of little consequence in light of today's financial windfall.

Oops! Tomorrow is Today!  

However, federal grant monies dry up after a couple of years, and states and cities are left with more employees, more departments, more equipment, more office space, more mandates to perform more programs. But no more money.

So, it comes to a decision: scrap the program and lay off the workers (as if the unions would permit that nonsense!), or find a way to fund the whole thing through existing funds or - far more likely - borrowing money. Or raising taxes.

Can you name a government program that has been eliminated in the past 10 years? I can't either.

Now consider that what I describe is for one grant, one program. Realize that the pattern is repeated over and over. 


Did You Say, "Nothing Left to Cut"?

Is it becoming clearer how we got where we are? Local governments don't cut programs when federal money runs out; after all, the "new" program is now a couple of years old and has developed an expectation of a "service" that must continue, right?

I say, "Wrong!" Rethink those unfunded mandates. Better yet, don't even accept the federal money in the first place. But if local government does accept a grant, then have the testicular fortitude to end the program when the money ends.

And what about federal taxes? When the feds no longer fund a particular program and the cost shifts to local government, do your federal taxes go down to make up for hike in local taxes? Of course not. The feds dream up another liberty-clipping, social engineering project to propose and fund.

Current example for Rhode Island? The Race to the Top education grant. That's Part II.