A new online application created by Justin Hauke, a policy analyst with the Show-Me Institute, provides Missouri families with a series of free and useful tools for comparing public schools across the state. Students, parents, school administrators, teachers, legislators, and other citizens now have a resource for better understanding academic performance in Missouri.
Some municipalities in Saint Louis County have filed suit to overturn a state law granting counties more tax increment financing (TIF) authority. However, counties are better positioned than municipalities to make good decisions about the use of TIF, and have a history of using these and other tax incentives more selectively.
Although the economic growth benefits of tax credits are easy to see, it’s harder to see their drawbacks. Looking more carefully at the evidence and applying basic economics shows that lowering tax rates across the board is much more efficient at encouraging growth than singling out a few credit recipients at the expense of everybody else.
On October 4, 2007, a trial level court in New Jersey dismissed Crawford v. Davy, a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of 60,000 schoolchildren throughout the state seeking the court's authority to leave schools that fail to educate their students. By filing suit, plaintiff schoolchildren had hoped to be transferred to an alternative successful public or private school utilizing their pro rata share of state and local school funds to subsidize the transfer. Now, the dismissal of Crawford consigns these children to poor inadequate neighborhood schools indefinitely. If the dismissal of Crawford v. Davy is not reversed on appeal, it will not only extinguish the hope of plaintiff schoolchildren to receive an equal and adequate educational opportunity, but could threaten the right of a thorough and efficient education guaranteed by the State Constitution and reverse gains achieved over the past 40 years in New Jersey's education jurisprudence. This article places Crawford in the context of the state's enduring legal struggle to equalize educational opportunities and discusses its claims and purposes in relation to that history. The article then addresses the significance of the Crawford dismissal on the state's legal precedents, especially rulings in the on-going Abbott v. Burke equity funding litigation. Finally, the article concludes with a prediction of the impact that Crawford's dismissal may pose for the larger equity/adequacy litigation movement playing out across the country. For the moment, the hope of 60,000 plaintiff schoolchildren is diminished. Only time and New Jersey's appellate courts will dictate whether their hope for an equal and adequate education shall survive.
Although school choice proponents have generally been on the offensive in legislative arenas over the past 2 decades, they have played almost constant defense in the judiciary, seeking to prevent courts from undoing school choice programs. Opponents typically wield state constitutional provisions against school choice programs. Properly construed, such provisions often are intended not to thwart but to secure educational opportunities. School choice supporters should consider taking the offensive, applying such provisions toward their intended ends by challenging defective schools and seeking meaningful remedies for children trapped in them. Choice remedy litigation can provide an effective complement to legislative efforts in the larger campaign to secure for disadvantaged children the precious educational opportunities that are their constitutional right.
This article asserts that although there has been a consistently increasing demand on both the national and state levels for alignment of resources (inputs) to improved student outcomes (outputs), the lack of a systematic and well-defined policy portfolio has limited reform effectiveness. This article specifically examines the overreliance on standards and curriculum as reform mechanisms and the often distracting and unproductive judicial interventions connected to equity and adequacy litigation.
Public school funding in the United States is not a product of intelligent design. Funding programs have grown willy-nilly based on political entrepreneurship, interest group pressure, and intergovernmental competition. Consequently, now that Americans feel the need to educate all children to high standards, no one knows for sure how money is used or how it might be used more effectively. This article shows that Americans can learn how to make more effective use of the money available for public schools. But to do so, states and localities must keep careful track of how money is spent; how children are taught and by whom; and what programs, schools, and teachers are most and less productive. Foundations should sponsor rigorous development and testing of new instructional programs, and every level of government should permit experimentation with alternative uses of funds, reproduce effective schools and programs, and abandon ineffective ones.
Over the last 3 decades student achievement has remained essentially unchanged in the United States, but not for a lack of spending. Over the same period a myriad of education reforms have been suggested and per-pupil spending has more than doubled. Since the 1990s the education reform attempts have frequently included judicial decisions to revise state school finance systems. Invoking general clauses about the need for an adequate education found in every state constitution, judges in more than half of the states waded into the development of finely tuned reform strategies. This article empirically estimates the effect of judicial intervention on student achievement using standardized test scores and graduation rates in 48 states from 1992 to 2005. We find no evidence that court-ordered school spending improves student achievement.
Econometric cost functions have begun to appear in education adequacy cases with greater frequency. Cost functions are superficially attractive because they give the impression of objectivity, holding out the promise of scientifically estimating the cost of achieving specified levels of performance from actual data on spending. By contrast, the opinions of educators form the basis of the most common approach to estimating the cost of adequacy, the professional judgment method. The problem is that education cost functions do not in fact tell us the cost of achieving any specified level of performance. Instead, they provide estimates of average spending for districts of given characteristics and current performance. It is a huge and unwarranted stretch to go from this interpretation of regression results to the claim that they provide estimates of the minimum cost of achieving current performance levels, and it is even more problematic to extrapolate the cost of achieving at higher levels. In this article we review the cost-function technique and provide evidence that draws into question the usefulness of the cost-function approach for estimating the cost of an adequate education.
Like many other states, Missouri has gone through several rounds of school finance litigation. However, the trial just concluded was unusual in two respects. First, three taxpayers were allowed to intervene for the defense and, in the process, raise important questions concerning the efficiency of school spending and broader questions of school reform. Second, the outcome at the circuit court level, which focused nearly entirely on points of law, was a complete victory for the defense. This article provides an overview of disputes of Missouri school finance and evidence pertaining to some of the points in dispute at the trial. These lessons generalize to other states facing school finance litigation. The authors conclude that changes in school funding formulas, and the seemingly interminable litigation about those formulas, are not an effective vehicle for addressing achievement gaps or the overall level of school performance.
Tuition tax credits are the most effective policy solution for parents with autistic children. Insurance mandates wouldn’t provide sufficient coverage for specialized education, and most public schools aren’t set up to treat autism. Tax credits would help all autistic kids without placing excessive burdens on individual school districts.
David Stokes, a Show-Me Institute policy analyst, makes recommendations for provisions that should be included in the proposed Jefferson County charter.
Tax credits may seem like a great idea to encourage growth by enticing firms to relocate to Missouri, but the reasoning used to support this type of development is almost certainly wrong. The higher marginal tax rates created by targeted credits actually eliminate more jobs than are created by the tax credit beneficiaries.
Counties in Missouri have for decades had the power to levy annual license fees on any public establishment that hosts a pool table. A holdover from earlier times when pool halls were seen as social ills, the tax remains in many areas today. This amounts to an endorsement of some types of recreational activities, and a punishment of others.
The Show-Me Institute has opened a satellite office in Columbia, Mo., allowing it to expand its operations in central Missouri. The close proximity of the Columbia office to the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City will make the Show-Me Institute's studies and other research much more accessible to policymakers and other leaders who want to stay informed about market solutions for Missouri public policy.
Officials who use tax credits as a plan to spur economic development tend to rely on discredited economic models. SB 1234 is one such bill, designed to attract “mega-projects” and spur related job creation. Such tax credits will cost taxpayers millions of dollars, without any reliable way of predicting relevant economic growth.
Earnings taxes may seem small, but 1 percent can add up to a significant amount over time. This is one reason suburbs have flourished near large urban centers in Missouri. Nearby towns may offer a similar range of living and employment opportunities, but with a much lower long-term aggregate tax burden.
Local taxes tend to vary significantly throughout Missouri, but most people don’t have the resources to compare tax rates for cities and counties throughout the state. The Show-Me Institute has created a new tax estimator that provides users with the ability to make more informed decisions about where to work and live.
The Show-Me Institute created "Show-Me: The Taxes" — a Missouri state and local tax estimator. We collected local tax rates from across the state in order to help Missourians better understand the taxes they pay. The estimator can be downloaded from www.ShowMeLiving.org.
Arnold v. Tourkakis was a rare opportunity for Missouri to protect its citizens property rights, but the state’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of eminent domain for private development — letting that chance sail by. Other property owners throughout the state must now face the sad reality that everybody’s homes and businesses are at risk.
