Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

THE LEGISLATURE:

Think tank’s Freedom Budget balances budget with deep cuts in education

The state’s libertarians advocate curing Nevada’s budget crisis without a tax increase.

For months all they’ve heard from Democrats and moderate Republicans is this: Well, what would you cut?

They would have to cut because the state faces a budget deficit approaching $3 billion. Now, when they get that irritating rejoinder, they can wave a copy of the “Freedom Budget,” a document by the right-leaning Nevada Policy Research Institute that purports to show that Nevada’s government can be shorn of excess and needs no new revenue.

For conservatives, the Freedom Budget is aptly named, a liberating shield from carping doubters, armor against the poison arrows of taxes and big government. But what about for everyone else? What’s in it?

The Sun gave the Freedom Budget a once-over.

Herewith, freedom:

•••

The Freedom Budget offers $5.1 billion for the next two years, which is more than $1 billion short of the budget of Gov. Jim Gibbons, the first-term Republican. Legislators in both parties attacked his budget for its 6 percent pay cut for teachers and state workers and 36 percent cut in higher education.

The Freedom Budget would slice the Gibbons budget by about 17 percent.

Chief among the cuts: Ending most state aid to the state’s four-year universities. Geoffrey Lawrence, a fiscal analyst for the Nevada Policy Research Institute, called it “devolving” the state universities, which he likened to privatizing them.

Unless the universities could find money in grants or donations to make up for the reduction by the state, tuition would increase to more than $15,000, Lawrence said.

By contrast, for the academic year beginning this fall, undergraduate tuition and fees at UNLV are expected to be about $5,000.

Lawrence said dropping state support for the universities “would force UNLV and UNR to elevate to a level the free market demands.”

This might be hard to do instantaneously and without money, he acknowledged, saying perhaps the plan should be phased in over a few years. (In the Freedom Budget, however, the freedom comes at once.)

Lawrence noted that some of the top public universities in the country, including the University of Virginia, thrive with very little state taxpayer support.

Jim Rogers, the outspoken chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education, is against the idea.

He noted that elite public universities have decades — in some cases centuries — on Nevada’s higher education system, during which time they’ve built up reputations that are — quite literally — priceless. They win more than $2 billion each in research grants every year, and donors give gifts in the millions that pile up and turn into billions for their endowments.

“We get our money from the state because we don’t have other sources,” Rogers said, referring to the difficulty of obtaining research grants and donations for the universities. “We haven’t engaged in investing in education, so we haven’t developed viable assets,” he said.

The steep tuition increase of the Freedom Budget would send Nevada’s best students to New Mexico, Utah, Arizona and California — all places where they could get a better education at a lower cost, Rogers said.

Then, once enrollment fell at Nevada’s universities, administrators would have to raise tuition again.

“It’s a death spiral,” Rogers said.

•••

The Freedom Budget would make deep cuts in Gibbons’ K-12 budget, to the tune of more than $450 million during the biennium from the Distributive School Account, the main statewide schools budget.

Where would the state’s schools cut $450 million?

“It would be up to the school districts as to how they would allocate that money,” Lawrence said.

The only real options would be bigger teacher pay cuts than Gibbons’ proposed 6 percent, or layoffs.

The state’s class-size reduction program would also be eliminated in the Freedom Budget, for a savings of more than $300 million during the biennium. Class-size limits “dilute the teacher talent pool and expose greater numbers of students to underperforming teachers,” according to the Freedom Budget.

Not true, Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes said.

It’s no coincidence that the district’s student achievement is highest in grades 1-4, which have the smallest classes, Rulffes said. Achievement begins to wane after that, dropping sharply at middle school and again at high school. Those are the tipping points when class sizes increase.

In a diverse district such as Clark County, larger class sizes mean more students with significant challenges, including nonnative English speakers, special education students and children from low-income households.

“Try taking care of 32 primary grade children with a litany of problems,” Rulffes said.

Removing the cap on class sizes would also hurt Clark County’s recruitment efforts, Rulffes said.

The jury is still out on the benefits of class-size reduction, said Kathy Christie, vice president of the Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit policy and research clearinghouse. Some studies have shown that good teachers and specialized programs are as valuable as reducing class size, she said.

The most definitive studies found no more than 20 students should be assigned to a teacher to get the most benefit from class-size reduction, Christie said.

As for the institute’s claim that such efforts dilute the teacher talent pool, Christie said that argument sounds like a spinoff from a study of California’s class-size reduction program.

When California implemented class-size limits, new teaching jobs were created. Some of the better and more experienced teachers at inner-city schools fled to new positions at suburban campuses. But there are ways to structure class-size reduction programs without creating similar inequities, Christie said.

The Freedom Budget would also cut all-day kindergarten, saving $56 million for the biennium. The institute’s Lawrence said there’s no evidence all-day kindergarten works.

On this score, Christie said the latest studies suggest that gains from full-day kindergarten are maintained when students move on to high-quality schools. If the quality of instruction is lacking, the gains fade, Christie said.

The Freedom Budget budget would restore funding for several programs slashed during the state’s fiscal crisis, including $7.7 million in grants to schools and districts for remediation and innovation. The popular grant program — which provides money for after-school tutoring, teacher training and other programs — was one of the first cuts in the state’s education budget this time around.

Lawrence said he didn’t have enough data to determine what the per-pupil spending would be in his budget. He acknowledged it would be significantly reduced.

Calculations by the Sun show the Freedom Budget would spend roughly $935 less per pupil than the $4,958 proposed in Gibbons’ budget.

Nevada is one of the lowest-ranked states in the country in this category. Student achievement, too, has been mediocre for years.

Lawrence said there’s not necessarily a connection: “Across the country there hasn’t been a strong correlation between spending and performance,” he said. “It comes down to how you’re spending the money. If you have a heavily bureaucratic system with a lot of overhead, you’re not spending the money effectively.”

He cited Florida as having enacted school choice and other reforms and improved performance markedly in the past 10 to 12 years without vast spending increases, while in Nevada, despite healthy increases, performance measures are still mixed.

“Spending is not necessarily a determinant of student performance,” he said.

•••

The Freedom Budget leaves the Health and Human Services Department largely unscathed, even adding some money to Gibbons’ budget.

But it slashes the Business and Industry Department, saving money by deregulating whole industries. For instance, the state would save $19 million during the biennium by eliminating insurance examiners.

So, someone could set up a storefront and start selling insurance, unregulated?

“Yeah, basically. The idea is sort of an ideological recommendation,” Lawrence said.

Same with mortgages. Lawrence said the preponderance of mortgage fraud and foreclosures only indicates the failure of the regulatory state.

Given that failure, Lawrence asked: “What’s the point of having it?”

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