Inside the Rail Texas

If we can put a man on the moon....

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:24:03 -0500

Over Easter weekend Crystal and I took our kids to Washington D.C. The highlight of the trip may have been the planetarium at the National Air and Space Museum. We watched a film about planets in far-away solar systems similar to ours.

Here’s what’s fascinating about those planets: it’s impossible to see them, no matter how powerful the telescope. The film said trying to observe a planet orbiting a distant sun is like trying to see a firefly hovering near the lights of a football stadium from a thousand miles away.

But scientists know these planets exist - and can even estimate their size, temperature, mass, and orbital paths - by drawing inferences from the refraction of starlight passing around these invisible planets. It’s really an amazing testament to human ingenuity.

And all I could think about watching that film was: then why can’t we figure out what works in education?

If your response to that question is, “We can,” then you haven’t sat through a hearing of the Public Education Committee. On nearly every major question in education policy, policymakers are presented with conflicting opinions from experts and practitioners who have far greater expertise than we have, and we are forced to pick a point of view based on which experts we trust.

While the data that swirls around education policy can be inscrutable, it is imperative that we understand it better to inform our policy choices. I’ve spent a lot of time the past couple of weeks writing what has turned out to be a very lengthy series of posts for this blog about what I think we should do to improve public education in Texas. I’ll be posting them over the next several days - if I posted them all at once, no one would read it all (not that I’m sure anyone will read them one at a time either).

But before diving in, I think it’s important to review some data that I think are critical to understanding the policy choices we must make.

Simpson’s Paradox

No, not that Simpson. Simpson’s paradox is something you have to understand to understand public education in Texas. Here’s why:

About a year ago I received a press release from the Texas Education Agency touting the outstanding performance of Texas students on the 4th grade science NAEP. The NAEP is a nationally-normed test taken by a statistical sample of students in all states, and is used to compare student performance from state to state.

On the fourth grade science NAEP, African American students in Texas scored 4th highest in the country among all African American students. Hispanic students in Texas scored 6th highest in the country among all Hispanic students. And Anglo students in Texas scored 8th highest in the country among all Anglo students.

And I thought, wow, thatis really good. Better than I expected. But then I saw another data point that didn’t seem to make sense. You know where we ranked as a state on the fourth grade science NAEP?

29th.

Now, how is it possible that the three student sub-populations comprising well over 90% of the students in Texas could each score in the top 10, but when you combine all of them, they’re 29th? I thought it was impossible, until Uri Treistman – a Ph.D. mathematician who happens to also be a global education policy expert – explained it to me.

Here’s how it works: nationally, and in Texas, African-American and Hispanic students underperform Anglo students on the NAEP. In Texas, however, African-American and Hispanic students comprise a much larger percentage of the total student population than in other states. Thus, even though each of our three major sub-groups ranks in the top 10within its sub-group, when you aggregate them, the fact that our lower-performing sub-groups constitute a larger percentage of the whole brings our overall average down to 29th. And this isn’t just true for 4th grade science NAEP scores - it’s generally the case that Texas minority and low-income students outperform their peer groups in other states, even as the state’s overall academic rankings range from mediocre to poor.

That’s Simpson’s Paradox. And it explains a lot about the Texas education system. If you want to evaluate the job that our schools and our teachers are doing, then judging by the disaggregated data we’re actually knocking the skin off the ball - and we’re doing it with significantly less per-pupil funding than most states. But if you want to know whether the public education system is fulfilling its mission to produce a workforce competent to the demands of a global economy and a citizenry competent to the complexities of a 21st century democracy - without regard to the color of their skin or the wealth of their families - by that measure, we are at best mediocre.

And this paradox - of a high-performing education system producing mediocre outcomes - will only grow worse with time if we don’t do something substantial to change course. The fastest growing segment of our student population is the segment that presents the greatest educational challenges. What that means is that even as our system operates more efficiently and effectively than nearly any other state, the educational hill our students must climb is steeper than in any other state, and will require even greater effort and investment.

I’ve been working on a lengthy post describing the education policies I believe it will take for us to achieve a system that truly lifts all students to reach their full potential. But first I want to post a bit more data that further highlights the issues presented by Simpson’s Paradox, and demonstrates the high performance of Texas schoolchildren on nationally normed tests.

Perhaps it should not be surprising that the source of this analysis is actually a physicist, given my analogy of the inscrutability of education data to the way astrophysicists infer the existence of planets orbiting distant suns. Michael Marder is a Physics professor at the University of Texas who co-founded the UTeach program and spends his spare time analyzing education data the way physicists analyze the behavior of particles. His analysis is fascinating, and I encourage everyone to review his detailed findings here. Below this post are some of the most interesting of his specific analyses.

This is a fascinating illustration of the performance of the...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:19:09 -0500

This is a fascinating illustration of the performance of the Texas education system relative to the amount we spend per pupil. More of Prof. Michael Marder’s visualizations of Texas student performance are available at http://uteachweb.cns.utexas.edu/Marder/Visualizations.

Here Dr. Marder illustrates what I think has become common...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:18:08 -0500

Here Dr. Marder illustrates what I think has become common knowledge among most education policymakers: while some high-performing charter schools have a record of uncommonly high levels of achievement, most do not.

You often hear progressives and educators argue that the problem...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:15:00 -0500

You often hear progressives and educators argue that the problem in the education system is really the growing concentrations of poverty in society. Interestingly, you also hear conservatives say that the problem is the failure of parents and child raising. They don’t seem to realize that they’re saying the same thing.

Dr. Marder illustrates the effects of poverty on the education system most effectively in these charts. Paul Tough’s book How Children Succeed addresses this issue in detail, and is excellent. But at the end of the day, the education system is the principal tool with which policymakers have an opportunity to remedy the inequities of poverty and parenting.

The poverty problem is only growing, especially in Texas. So even if Texas continues to outperform nearly every other state on a disaggregated basis, our overall performance will continue to decline if we don’t get better at closing the achievement gap that separates poorer students from their peers.

This video illustrates the performance of Texas students on the...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:14:00 -0500

This video illustrates the performance of Texas students on the 8th grade math NAEP. The chart was created and the video is narrated by UT physics professor Michael Marder. The NAEP is the National Assessment of Educational Progress - it tests a statistically valid sample of students in each state. It is not the same test as the state standardized test, so improvements on this test do not simply reflect improvements caused by teaching to the test. Even testing critic Diane Ravitch points to the NAEP as a valid assessment of student learning (she was previously a member of the governing board of the entity that administers the NAEP).

Missing the deadline

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 23:50:43 -0500

In yesterday’s blog post I promised that today I would post something much more important than why I’m against HB 5 - I promised to post what I am FOR. Unfortunately, I got sidetracked from writing that post because I’m trying to finish an op-ed solicited by the Dallas Morning News on HB 5, and it’s 12 minutes to midnight. Since family time for Easter starts tomorrow, the blog post will have to wait til next week. For those who can’t wait til then, there’s a sneak preview of my agenda for public education in the LBJ Future Forum video below. Happy Easter everyone!

Video

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 23:43:31 -0500

Why I voted against HB 5

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:17:50 -0500

I felt strongly enough about the shortcomings in HB 5 that I was one of only two members of the House voting against it yesterday. I felt strongly enough that normally I would have delivered a speech in opposition to the bill at the conclusion of the debate, but after 9 hours of debate, I don’t think anyone on the floor was interested in continuing the discussion, and it was clear it was not going to impact the outcome.

Still, I found that a lot of the floor discussion - and a lot of what I read online about testing - reflects a critical misunderstanding of testing’s track record in Texas. So I’ve decided to post here, for those who are interested, what I would have said if I’d given a floor speech against HB 5.

Illuminating the shadows

Six years ago, I had a discussion with a superintendent from an exurban school district that was rapidly growing and rapidly diversifying. This superintendent wanted me to know why school accountability - the system of evaluating student performance on standardized assessments and rating schools based on that performance - was such bad policy.

He told me how population growth in his community had transformed his previously rural, mostly middle-class, nearly all-white community so that now, on one campus, he had over 30 African American kids at one elementary school. The number 30 was significant because above 30 the accountability system required that the campus not only be evaluated on the achievement of all its students, but also specifically on the performance of the African American students on a disaggregated basis. And he said that the low test scores of these students put that campus, which had previously received very high ratings from the state, at risk of being labeled Academically Unacceptable. He told me that even though the rest of the students on the campus continued to do well, he was forced to marshal enormous resources to lift the performance of those African American students, to avoid a label that would jeopardize local property values, anger the local chamber of commerce, and provoke a major backlash from parents.

So I asked him, then what happened? Well, through enormous effort they had managed to lift the African American students’ scores up to avoid the label, he told me.

That’s supposed to be an argument against accountability? That seems like exactly the argument in favor of it. It’s not that this superintendent wouldn’t have wanted those kids to do well in the absence of accountability - it’s that he wouldn’t have had the same incentive to focus as much attention or resources on them without accountability.

And this is not an exceptional story; it’s the norm. I asked one of my colleagues on the floor yesterday, who I knew had a close relationship with a mutual friend of ours who works in special education, if he had discussed with our friend the possibility of weakening school accountability for the performance of special ed students on standardized tests. And he told me our friend had said “Don’t do that - it’s how I get the administration to support our department!”

Think of this phenomenon operating at scale. Now consider this: in Texas, since the implementation of accountability measured through disaggregated student data beginning in the early 1990’s, Texas 8^th grade Hispanic students have gained 38 points on the NAEP math test - 14 points more than Hispanic students in the rest of the country - reducing the achievement gap by 22% relative to Anglo students in Texas. African American 8th graders have gained 43 points on the NAEP math test - 17 points more than African American students in the rest of the country - reducing the achievement gap by 29% relative to Anglo students in Texas.

And no, the correlation between those academic gains and the implementation of standards-based accountability does not prove a causal effect. But if you look at the timing of those gains in Texas, and then look at similar gains achieved by minority students in the rest of the country the following decade after NCLB introduced accountability in other states, it stretches the imagination not to see a strong connection. Look at these charts and note the introduction of our accountability system in the 90’s, and NCLB in 2001:

Not to say that all is well with testing in Texas

I have said for some time that we have lots of problems with testing in Texas.

We administer so-called End of Course exams four weeks before the end of the course - sacrificing 15 or more days of instruction that could have been used to help students learn more and be better prepared for the test.
We’ve cloaked the tests in secrecy by not releasing them for parents and educators to review, causing many to question whether the test is a valid measurement of the things we want our kids to learn.
We’ve wrapped a nuclear missile launch level of security around the tests, creating a “lock down” environment on many campuses that prevents all students on the campus from learning anything on days where any students on the campus are testing - which is a lot of days.
We’ve attached such high stakes to the tests that we’ve created a culture of testing rather than learning in many schools, and we’ve put tens of thousands of students at risk of dropping out.

None of these problems are endemic to standards-based accountability; all could be solved through common-sense improvements in the way we administer tests - which I have proposed.

My specific concerns about HB 5

There are some good things in HB 5. It gets rid of this terrible designation - the “Minimum High School Diploma” - in current law for students who opt out of the recommended, college-prep high school curriculum, and it bolsters the offerings under the new “Foundation” plan with better career preparatory offerings. But it does two things that I believe are going to have very negative consequences for the state:

1. It eliminates the current law that presumes that all students entering high school are capable of and want to pursue the most rigorous curriculum path, the path that affords them the widest range of opportunities in the future. On a couple of occasions Chairman Aycock argued that this “Distinguished” diploma path (as newly renamed by HB 5) was not a “higher” or “better” plan, but the name “distinguished” belies this point, as does the fact that only students in the distinguished path are eligible for automatic college admission under the Top 10% rule.

So instead of defaulting students into the higher pathway, as current law does, HB 5 contemplates a process whereby every 9th grader, in collaboration with her family and school counselor, elects a pathway in the first year of high school - when some of them will still be 14 years old. For some students with strong parental involvement, I’m sure this will be fine. But for some students - who may be capable of greater things than their individual counselor, their parents, or even they themselves believe - there is a very high risk that this decision will constrain their future opportunities in a profound way.

There should be no stigma attached to families making an informed decision, perhaps halfway through a student’s high school career, to opt out of a college-prep curriculum and seek more career preparatory coursework. I’m not saying that defaulting every kid into a college prep program means all kids want or need college prep coursework. But when we presume all kids are capable of college level work, and start preparing them for it, there is no doubt in my mind we change the futures of some kids whose promise may not otherwise have been recognized.

60% of the students in Texas schools are eligible for free or reduced lunch. It is the fastest growing sector of our student population. If we do not find ways to steer increasing numbers of them toward higher education and knowledge-economy skills, we will pay a high price down the road.

2. HB 5 eliminates all standardized assessment of student achievement beyond freshman and sophomore level coursework, and reduces us down to one assessment per subject area.

As I said before, I believe testing needs to be reformed in Texas - by moving the tests to the end of the school year; by releasing the test for review by parents and educators; by reducing the stakes so they can be used diagnostically rather than punitively - but HB 5’s elimination of all assessments in reading and math beyond the level of English II and Algebra I is a mistake. We know we already have a huge problem with the cost of remedial classes in higher education. By not measuring achievement on a standardized basis beyond Alg I and Eng II, we will have an increasing challenge with students whose transcripts say they are prepared for college level work but who are forced to take costly remedial classes before beginning their higher education. This is a problem that impacts both students and the state adversely.

But I’m even more concerned about the effect of the reduced number of tests on the accountability ratings of campuses serving the most challenging student populations. On those campuses, we have long argued that they should get some recognition not just for the absolute achievement scores of their students, but also for the academic growth they achieve - recognizing that not all students enter high school at the same level. If we measured growth as well as absolute achievement, it would dramatically change the landscape of which schools we think are performing well, and which schools are not.

But under HB 5, we only administer one test in each subject. This makes it impossible to measure growth year-over-year. So a House that claims to want to reduce the burden of high stakes testing has instead concentrated those stakes into a smaller number of tests and focused their effect on the campuses serving our most at-risk students. I don’t get it.

Wisdom from the front lines

As we prepared for HB 5 to come to the floor, I visited with a number of educators who work directly with the standardized tests to find out what they thought. I was surprised at what I heard. I want to share some excerpts from Joy Harris Philpott, Director of Assessment and Accountability at Hays CISD (she’s given me permission to share, and this is reflective of the other opinions I heard):

I feel like the uproar generated by the move to a 4X4 required curriculum and end of course exams in 12 core classes (15 total tests) has resulted in (deliberately or not) the state clamoring for a return to mediocrity.  We’ve just graduated the first class on the 4X4 curriculum requirement.  We’ve just administered the first round of STAAR end of course tests—yet we’re going to throw a great deal of it out because people feel that we either can’t meet higher standards or don’t want to fund them…

Section 5 of HB5 removes the requirement for a 4X4 curriculum and returns us to three required courses in the core content areas.  This will have many students mostly “done” by their senior year in high school, and a “blow off” year during one’s last year of high school does not facilitate a successful transition to college.

…Are we really okay with saying that a student can graduate from high school having only demonstrated proficiency in the above courses (two freshman level, one sophomore level, and one junior level)?  In a global economy we’re saying that it’s okay for students to choose to take either world geography or world history and that we won’t assess them on either?  While this section of the bill will make my job as district test coordinator easier, it sends the message that we’ve lowered our standards.  I’d work twice as hard for higher standards and the resources to support them…

Regardless what the state accountability system ends up being, we’ll be reporting on lowered standards if we remove the 4x4 and say that it’s okay to graduate from high school having demonstrated proficiency in freshman and sophomore level classes.

My final complaint about HB 5 - and this one is admittedly a little unfair, since one bill can’t solve every problem - is that it doesn’t address what should be the most important question of this session: how are we going to improve education in Texas so that our student achievement improves? I have a lot of opinions on this, which I’ll share in another post tomorrow. I’m pretty sure I’ve violated every rule of blogging already with a post this long. Thank god I didn’t deliver it as a floor speech, right?

Gay marriage debate in Supreme Court

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 07:37:31 -0500

In the news coverage of yesterday’s oral argument in the Supreme Court, I’ve heard them play this clip of John Roberts saying that advocating for gay marriage - presumably in contrast to a civil union with full legal rights but without calling it marriage - is a debate about a label. And as the attorney (I guess Olson) begins to answer that “labels mean something,” Roberts interrupts:

“If you tell a child that somebody has to be their friend, I suppose you can force the child to say, ‘This is my friend.’ But it changes the definition of what it means to be a friend.”

That seems like exactly the wrong analogy. The correct analogy to this case would be: if two people insist that they very much want to be friends, the state cannot say: no, you can’t be friends. The state could try to define friendship in a way that those two people - who want to be friends - can’t be friends, but it changes the definition of friendship. And in a liberty-impeding, oppressive, unconstitutional way.

This will be my last session as a member of the Texas House

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 12:02:26 -0600

Before this legislative session began, Crystal and I decided that it would be my last. By the end of this term I’ll have served 10 years in the Texas House, and it’s been a truly wonderful experience, a great honor, and all that stuff. At the same time it’s been frustrating and at times disheartening, especially since the 2010 elections re-set the balance of power in the Texas Legislature in such a lopsided way.

The norm around here is that you don’t announce that you’re not coming back too early, because lame-duck status can reduce your effectiveness. See, for example, this guy.

So why am I announcing it now? The biggest reason is that there are a bunch of really talented folks interested in running to replace me, and I want them to be able to start introducing themselves to voters without having to tap dance around me.

Plus, I’ve noticed that I’m enjoying this session a lot more knowing that it’s my swan song in the Texas House - I’m enjoying my relationships with the members more, I’m enjoying studying the issues more, and I’m feeling a renewed sense of urgency to make progress on some issues I’ve been working on for several sessions. The expectation is that members will take you less seriously when you’re a lame duck, but I have a sense that it may actually lead to a deepening of the friendships I’ve formed here, which has been one of the most personally gratifying parts of this entire experience.

The floor of the Texas House has to be one of the 100 most interesting places in America. In a space the size of a basketball court, you have 150 people who are, by definition, representative of 150 distinct geographic regions of Texas. I remember being struck when I first got there how you could walk down the aisles of the Texas House and hear every single regional dialect from across the state (and a few from New York.)

If the Texas House didn’t exist for the purpose of democratic self-government, it would need to exist for the purpose of sociological research into what happens when you assemble the most diverse cast of characters imaginable, place them in a small chamber every day for long hours over a five month period, and force them to talk about all the things your grandmother taught you not to talk about in polite company - politics, religion, even sex. All in the context of a reality TV environment in which each action everyone takes has the potential to get them voted off the island. People complain about how unproductive the political system can be; the miracle is that anything ever gets done at all.

As diverse a group as it is, they all have one thing in common: they are all sufficiently sociable to have gotten themselves elected by tens of thousands of voters. There are not many places you can go where everyone greets you with (what at least seems like) genuine enthusiasm, gripping your hand, placing their left hand on your forearm, and looking straight into your eyes as if you are the most important person in the world. My first few days in the House back in 2005 I remember thinking “Holy cow, these are the nicest people in the world.” Then I realized, wait a minute, they’re just using their political mojo on me. I finally figured it out when I started recognizing some of my own BS coming back at me. The members of the Texas House have some pretty good BS.

I know you’re all assuming this means I’m running for mayor of Austin. It doesn’t. I still haven’t decided, and don’t intend to decide until after session is over. I’m very focused on getting the most out of my remaining time as a member of the House. I am thinking about running for mayor, but I’m also thinking about a lot of cool things I could do in the private sector once I’m freed up full time again. I’ve done a lot of work on renewable energy and on education technology, and both are areas where I believe I might have a greater impact through private entrepreneurship than I’m able to have in government.

In the meantime, I welcome all of your thoughts on it. And to the citizens of House District 50, thanks for the privilege of representing you; I’ll continue to do my best for you for the remainder of my term in office.

Things I learned in the Ways and Means Committee hearing today

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 22:01:55 -0600

There’s a headline that’s likely to go viral, right?

But there really were two very interesting things I learned today in the Ways and Means Committee. The first is that for some reason, we keep the billions of dollars in the Economic Stabilization Fund - better known as the Rainy Day Fund - in accounts bearing very low interest rates, presumably so the funds can be deployed quickly if they are suddenly needed to Stabilize the Economy. But we expect to be parking over $10 billion in the ESF in the coming years - it’s certainly not necessary for all of that money to be liquid at all times. If we could invest the money in the fund above the first couple of billion into higher yield accounts, it would be a much more efficient way to manage the money and would provide the state additional resources without a tax increase.

Second, we have an obvious problem with the way we calculate the constitutional spending cap. Each session we are provided a Biennial Revenue Estimate (BRE), which in recent years has been wrong to the tune of billions of dollars (over $8 billion dollars in the current biennium). We also are provided an estimate of the rate of growth in aggregate personal income during the biennium, and this estimate is used to determine the constitutional cap on state spending.

When we come back in session two years later, three quarters of the way through the biennium, we find out whether actual revenues are on track to match up with the BRE, and we enact a supplemental appropriations bill that trues up expenditures with revenues. But we never take another look at the estimate that was used to determine the personal income growth rate used to determine the spending cap. We adjust appropriations to match actual revenues if the BRE was wrong, but we never adjust the spending cap if the estimate upon which it was determined was wrong.

The effect of this is that in the current biennium, we are operating under an artificially low spending cap that prevents us from spending all the money in the surplus, and that, by artificially lowering the baseline upon which the spending cap for the next biennium is predicated, prevents us from spending all the anticipated revenues in the next biennium.

Why do I say the current spending cap is artificially low? Because the estimate of personal income growth was made at the same time - and presumably by the same people - that the BRE was developed, and the BRE wildly underestimated the growth in the Texas economy during the current biennium. If the estimate of growth in personal income was anywhere near as wrong as the BRE, then the spending cap is wrong by billions of dollars. And that has big consequences for the state budget.

Governor doubles down on no Medicaid expansion

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 12:05:22 -0600

The most noteworthy element of the Governor’s just-completed State of the State address was the refusal to expand Medicaid.

As a refresher, here’s the value proposition presented to Texas by the Affordable Care Act: states expand Medicaid to serve a larger share of their low-income population, and the federal government covers 100% of the cost of expanded eligibility for the first three years, and 90% in all the years after that.

Or, since the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot be compelled to expand Medicaid eligibility, Texans can send their federal income taxes to pay for other states to provide health insurance to their low-income populations, while we maintain the highest percentage of children without health insurance of any state in the country. And we can continue to absorb the cost of uncompensated care in our local hospital district taxes and in our private health insurance premiums.

I understand the Governor’s philosophical opposition to the ACA. But once it became law and was largely upheld by the Supreme Court, this refusal to participate in Medicaid expansion is incredibly harmful. The harm is not just to our uninsured population but also to our hospitals, our doctors, and our overall healthcare infrastructure - even as it causes Texans to become the biggest losers in the country in terms of the amount we pay to the federal government in taxes relative to the amount we get back from it.

I thought it was asinine when Texas made a similar decision to forego federal funding for the Women’s Health Program, which also had a 9:1 federal match (and saved the state millions of dollars in Medicaid costs by providing affordable contraception to low-income women). But this takes the stakes from the hundreds of millions to the tens of billions.

I’m really surprised the Governor would draw such an uncompromising line in the ground on this issue at this time.

Addicted to Morning Joe

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 23:27:44 -0600

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I’m a junkie for Morning Joe. So much so that I actually DVR it and watch it at night, because my kids don’t let me watch it in the morning.

One of the reasons I like the show is that a couple of friends of mine, both with connections to Rock the Vote, are involved with the show: Ann Edelberg and Madeline Peters. Another reason I like it is because it’s one of the last remaining programs on any news network that brings together people with different ideas (though sticking mostly to the center of the spectrum) and gives them time to thoroughly debate them (sometimes too much time). I give them a lot of credit for their format; I think it’s brilliant.

Right now I’m watching Paul Krugman arguing against the conventional wisdom about the need for deficit reduction, and it’s fascinating. I take Krugman with a grain of salt - if Obama had followed his advice to nationalize the banks instead of bailing them out, I can’t imagine what the political fallout would have been. And as it turned out, it wasn’t necessary.

But his argument on the show today is more nuanced than most of what I’ve read of his arguing against deficit reduction. He’s not saying we don’t need a long term debt strategy, he’s saying we don’t need it now. In fact, he’s not even saying we don’t need it now - all other things being equal, it’s clear he’d prefer a policy that is fiscally expansionary now and fiscally contractionary some time in the unspecified future, when the economy is healthy.

But his argument is, Washington isn’t capable of processing this cognitive dissonance - the notion that debt is a problem, but not yet - and therefore if you dignify the concerns about debt, you lose the argument for pro-growth policies in the short term. The most compelling evidence that he’s right comes when Ed Rendell cites the early drafts of Simpson-Bowles, which advocated short-term growth policies and long-term deficit reduction, including a gas tax increase to fund infrastructure spending. Krugman interrupts to point out this proves his point: they couldn’t even get their small commission to agree to that provision, in the context of long-term debt reduction, so how can anyone expect Congress to enact deficit-fueled expansionary policies while acknowledging and addressing the long-term debt?

But my point here wasn’t to live-blog a show I recorded this morning. What’s funny about the show is Krugman’s visible struggle not to just yell at Richard Haas and Rendell: ”What part of I-have-a-Nobel-Prize-in-economics-and-you-don’t do you not understand??!!”

The closest he gets is when Haas makes the argument about the bond vigilantes asserting themselves and Krugman cuts him off, saying people have been predicting the market would reject American debt issuances for years, and our borrowing costs keep going down: ”How many times do they have to be wrong and people like me have to be right before they believe us?”

Then Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn comes on the show and basically proves Krugman’s point. Scarborough asks her whether she could support expansionary policies in the short term if she could package it with long term debt reduction. And she proceeds to launch into her talking points about the debt, foreclosing any discussion of short-term growth.

I said at the beginning I like the show because it brings people together with differing views and gives them time to hash things out, but they should have kept Krugman on the set for Congresswoman Blackburn’s segment. Crazy to let these two talk past each other without clash.

Here’s the speech at the Texas Renewable Energy Industries...

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 17:59:10 -0600

Here’s the speech at the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association (TREIA) conference I referenced in the last post. By the way, props to TREIA for the high production value at this conference. Everyone looks a little bit smarter with one of those little TedTalks microphones wrapped around their ear, don’t you think?

The President's Inaugural speech

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 17:58:14 -0600

Haven’t had time to post in a week. Trying to be encouraging, someone said to me this week that “eventually you’ll find your voice.”

My problem isn’t finding my voice. My problem is finding the time.

I have been a bit amazed at the reaction to the President’s inaugural speech. Everyone is breathless at the fact that he now says he meant what he said when he was running for President. The idea that this speech represented some kind of departure for him ideologically is just bizarre to me. I really like James Fallows, but I saw nothing startling in the speech. At all.

I was very encouraged that he devoted more time to climate change than to any other policy area. But it’s not like he hasn’t held a consistent position on that issue throughout his Presidency. And there are pretty obvious reasons why the issue was on the back burner during the height of the recession, and why it might, hopefully, return to the front burner in his second term.

My next post will be a speech I gave back in December at the TREIA (Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association) conference suggesting that the coming year may see a renewed focus on carbon taxes, driven not just by environmental considerations but also by the role a carbon tax can play in the larger efforts at tax reform. If ever there were a time to be talking about a federal carbon tax, it is now.

Time to stop blogging about blogging

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:47:17 -0600

Time to stop blogging about blogging and start blogging about stuff. I’ll start talking policy soon but today I wanted to share a story I told a small group recently at a dinner celebrating the impending wedding of my good friend Patrick Rose.

When I first ran for the Legislature, and for the next 6 years, people I didn’t know would often start conversations with me as if they knew me. Sometimes it took more than 20 minutes of me faking as is if I knew what they were talking about before I figured out that they thought I was Patrick. At some point in the conversation they would finally mention Dripping Springs, or some bill he was carrying, and I would finally realize that it wasn’t a failure of my memory, I genuinely didn’t know this person.

I proudly admit there is a strong resemblance between us. I proudly admit it because he’s 11 years younger and a lot better looking than me, so every time people confused me for him I took it as a great compliment. (For the same reason, I’m pretty sure Patrick found it annoying every time someone confused him for me - though he was always a good sport about it.)

Shortly after I was first elected, a woman introduced herself to me at a reception and told me “All my friends have told me I need to meet you, that you’re the smartest member of the Texas Legislature.”

Easy for me to accept that statement at face value, so, I greedily asked to know who these admirers of mine were. She threw out some names I’d never heard before. Then she mentioned someone who really surprised me, because I’d known him for years and we had never liked each other. At all.

So I said, “Really? He said something nice about me?”

And she said, “Oh, yeah, his exact words were: Patrick Rose is the smartest member of the Texas Legislature.”

So I said, “Well you tell him, from me, Patrick Rose, I said he’s a no-good-S.O.B.”

Profoundly satisfying experience.

More thoughts on this blog...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:56:15 -0600

It’s been five days since my first post, which suggests I might not be up to this challenge I’ve set out for myself. Have had a thousand thoughts I’ve wanted to share on this blog in the intervening five days, but just never had the time to sit down and write them.

What makes it even harder to post consistently and frequently is my goal to keep this blog from being anodyne political blather. I said in my first post that the only guaranteed audience for this blog is the opposition researcher working for my next political opponent. That said, if this blog is worth doing (which it probably isn’t), it needs to be a forum for real political issues.

There’s a second way this blog could get me burned. I’m probably going to talk a lot about my family. Besides oppo researchers, the other likely reader of this blog is my wife. I’m sure I’ll write something here that gets me in trouble at home. Especially if I’m really committed to not being anodyne.

(That said, Happy Anniversary to my wife of seven years today!)

(And, so much for not being anodyne.)

But I appreciate the outpouring of supportive messages from those of you who have already become avid readers of this blog. I must have gotten at least two of them.

Today is our first day of real debate on the House floor. We’re adopting the rules that will govern procedure in the Texas House for the remainder of this session. I could probably post something not-anodyne about it, but not being anodyne does not necessarily mean it will be interesting.

This blog is a terrible idea

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:13:49 -0600

No one is more surprised than I am to find myself launching a blog.

Politicians keeping a blog – or tweeting, or otherwise oversharing their momentary musings – is a terrible idea, politically speaking.

I know there’s a lot of hype around social media and politics, and some if it is well-deserved (though not all of it). But if you’re not running for President, some of this stuff just doesn’t scale down very well. I’ve always said social media would destroy more political careers than it would enhance. Thus far, I’ve generally been proven right.

Reasons this blog is a terrible idea:

Probably no one will read it;
Scratch that - one person will definitely read it: the opposition researcher for my next political opponent;
I have not noticed that the Internet is generally lacking in content;
I don’t really have time for this;
I have always said politicians should talk less and listen more, and that is especially true in my case;
I will almost certainly say things I will later regret.

So why am I doing this?

Mostly, it’s an itch I kind of want to scratch. Plus it might be fun. If it’s not fun, I’ll probably let it die, so don’t get too attached to it. (As if…)

Being a member of the minority party in the lower house of the state legislature has all the frustrations one might imagine. So another purpose of this blog might be catharsis. We’ll see.

I’m tagging this post with all the topics I hope to write about - even though this initial post isn’t really about any of them. It’ll give you an idea of what I’ll be writing about, which will give you an idea of whether to come back. (How did you get here, anyway?) I’m sure it will evolve over time. Or just quietly disappear. I’m really not optimistic.

By the way, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m using Tumblr for the first time and have no idea what half of these buttons mean (like the box on my screen right now that says “let people photo reply”…what does that mean?) And why am I asking you questions? I don’t even think Tumblr allows you to post comments.

I’ll get this figured out eventually, but have some patience.

And no, I don’t need to be reminded of my derogatory opinions about Twitter. I still kind of think I’m right about that. But four years, billions of dollars, and trillions of tweets later, I’m open to the possibility that I might have been wr-wr-wr-wr….not exactly right.

We’ll see. Meanwhile, I think I’ve enabled this blogging platform to post stuff to twitter, so I guess now I’m tweeting. Who’d have thunk?