Judge Raner Collins gets a well-deserved smackdown

The US Supreme Court has handed Arizona a victory in its battle with the federal judges over English Language Learner funding. Kudos to State School Superintendent Tom Horne and former House Speaker Jim Weiers, and to many others who fought the good fight over the last three years.

Here's the Republic write-up:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/06/25/20090625SCEnglish25-ON.html

Here was the op-ed piece we wrote on this subject for the Tucson Citizen, back in 2007:

Op-ed: Judge Collins joins the Arizona Legislature

By Chad Kirkpatrick and Tom Jenney

Normally the Arizona Federation of Taxpayers comments on the policy positions of Arizona legislators, not federal judges. But through his judicial decisions in recent years, Judge Raner Collins has effectively appointed himself to the Arizona Legislature.

Indeed, Judge Collins has become a very powerful legislator, able to single-handedly mandate an appropriation of $150 million—over one percent of the state’s General Fund budget—in additional spending on English-language learner (ELL) programs. When he doesn’t get his way, he can threaten the Legislature with sanctions, as he did last year when he attempted to impose fines of $21 million on the state.

Because Collins is such a powerful legislator, it is our duty to alert the public when we believe he is wrong about policy.

To begin with, we believe that Judge Collins has erred in his diagnosis of the problems facing Arizona’s ELL programs. He apparently believes that ELL programs do not perform well because Arizona’s funding for ELL is “insufficient” and “arbitrary.”

However, as the Goldwater Institute has documented, government schools in Arizona spend over $8,000 per child (including ELL students) per year. (Now that he is a legislator, we would advise Collins to get on the Goldwater mailing list.) The fact that many private schools in this state spend $5,000 per child per year to achieve better results (even with ELL students) suggests to us that government schools in Arizona may currently receive too much funding, rather than too little.

As the Arizona Tax Research Association pointed out in its most recent newsletter, using statistics from the National Education Association, Arizona ranks 11th in the nation for average instructional pay (that includes ELL instructors), and first in the nation for average instructional pay as a percent of per-capita state income. (As a legislator, Collins will find ATRA to be a great resource.)

Further, students in Arizona ELL programs already receive more than the average Arizona student—at least $383 more per year, according to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee (another great resource for legislators). In defense of the proposition that more funding is needed, Collins would no doubt cite the 2004 study conducted by the National Council of State Legislatures. But that study began with the premise that current spending is inadequate, and never bothered to question that premise.

Given how much money is spent on government schooling in Arizona, we have concluded that the problems with the government system (including the problems in ELL) are not due to a lack of adequate funds, but are entirely due to the systemic mismanagement that results from a lack of market incentives.

Collins also believes that more money for ELL will improve the performance of ELL students. But a quick look at the big picture casts serious doubts on that belief.

Between 1960 and 2000, America’s government school system increased per-pupil funding by over 400 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. Sadly, we have nothing to show for that explosion in school funding: during that same period, student performance as measured by NAEP scores has remained flat. The long-proven failure of increased funding to improve educational performance has driven much of the interest in school choice programs, which use market incentives to improve school management. If Collins is interested in learning more about school choice (as a legislator, he should be), we strongly suggest that he pick up a copy of Manhattan Institute scholar Jay P. Greene’s book, Education Myths.

Of course, the real root of Arizona’s ELL controversy is not policy, but jurisprudence. The Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments have conflicting language, and the Fourteenth Amendment—in combination with vague federal statutes—has sometimes been used by federal judges to assert and exercise dictatorial control over state and local policy matters. With so much interpretive and policymaking power at Collins’ disposal, we understand that it would be difficult to resist the temptation to toss federalism to the wind and override the (often questionable) collective wisdom of the Arizona Legislature.

While we earnestly hope that some higher court will overrule his ELL decisions, in the meantime we will offer to Judge Collins the same policy support we offer to all other Arizona legislators.

Welcome to the Legislature, Judge Collins!

--Chad Kirkpatrick is chairman, and Tom Jenney is executive director, of the Arizona Federation of Taxpayers (www.aztaxpayers.org), a state chapter of Americans for Prosperity (www.americansforprosperity.org).