The Value of the Threat of Grade Retention

Posted on by Mike Ederer

As we look ahead to Missouri’s 2027 legislative session, literacy reform is likely to be one of the top education issues. States like Mississippi and Louisiana have surged past Missouri on national reading assessments, particularly in the early grades. While these states have adopted several important reforms, two have been central to their success: improving literacy instruction and requiring students to demonstrate reading proficiency before advancing beyond the third grade.

Many states are considering whether to follow their path, including Missouri.

The retention component of these literacy policies is often controversial. Critics worry that it amounts to “punishing children.” But it is no kindness to promote a child through school who cannot read. Indeed, research shows that, at least in the early grades, retained students benefit tremendously in terms of on-grade academic performance when they are held back.

The debate also tends to focus narrowly on the students who are retained. However, new research in several states (including Michigan and Ohio) suggests that these policies produce broader benefits by affecting the much larger group of students who are ultimately promoted. This is because it turns out that students benefit from just the threat of retention, even if retention doesn’t actually occur.

Why? The answer is a bit uncomfortable: Weak reading skills alone do not seem to motivate schools and parents to make literacy a top priority. The possibility of retention, however, creates a clear incentive for everyone to intervene earlier and more intensively.

Writing on recent changes that weakened Ohio’s grade retention policy at the Fordham Institute’s Gadfly Daily, Vladimir Kogan provides a nice discussion of the value of the grade-retention threat. He writes: “Although much of the debate about retention laws has focused on impacts on students, the new evidence suggests that benefits come primarily from changing the behavior of two sets of adults—parents and educators.”

The evidence that early-grade retention can benefit retained students is already strong. This newly emerging evidence that these policies also improve outcomes for many students who are never retained only strengthens the case for reform.

Missouri lawmakers should consider such evidence as they consider literacy reform during the 2027 legislative session. During the 2026 session, they failed to pass literacy reform. Another year of inaction would mean that another cohort of children will pay the price for Missouri’s weak literacy policies.

Update on Flock Cameras in Missouri

Posted on by Mike Ederer

I first wrote about the use of Flock license-plate readers in Missouri in early 2025. Then and now, the use of the license-plate readers to track cars on public roads and elsewhere was expanding across the nation.

As I stressed in my first piece on Flock, there may be no clear “right to privacy” on public roads, but that doesn’t mean average American citizens should be tracked as we simply move around doing our daily business. Police have abused and will likely continue to abuse these systems. One police officer was recently fired in Joplin for doing so.

The risk, however, goes beyond bad law enforcement actors misusing the system. Concerns about constant government surveillance are legitimate. Surveillance equipment such as this was used by police around the world to enforce authoritarian restrictions during COVID. We shouldn’t have to give up our personal liberty—and that liberty includes the right not to be tracked by the government without a warrant—under the guise of safety.

Thankfully, people are starting to push back against Flock and similar police surveillance equipment. I don’t believe our state or our country should become a vast surveillance society (assuming we are not already there), even if it makes us “safer” in some ways.

The pushback against Flock has come in many forms. There are websites devoted to exposing and opposing it. John Oliver’s HBO show just released an episode dedicated to the issue. There have also been numerous acts of vandalism against Flock equipment. (Note: I do not support vandalism.)

Several Missouri communities have recently ended their Flock camera contracts. The towns of Weston, Seneca, Louisiana, and Bolivar have cancelled, or are in the process of cancelling, their Flock contracts. The Dutchtown CID in St. Louis did the same. I hope that this is the start of a major policy shift against the cameras.

Much more to come from me on this topic. The solution to crime in Missouri does not have to be a vast surveillance system watching every person in the state.

 

Midtown St. Louis TIF Deal Is as Bad as It Gets

Posted on by Mike Ederer

A version of the following commentary appeared in the St. Louis Business Journal.

There is a proposal for a $39 million tax-increment financing (TIF) district in the Midtown area of the City of St. Louis. The forces behind the TIF proposal include the area’s commercial and artistic associations. The backers are claiming that because the redirected taxes will go toward “public” items such as infrastructure improvements for sidewalks, crosswalks, and streets, that this is a responsible use of TIF. They could not be more wrong.

This TIF plan will work just like all the others do. If the appointed TIF commission approves it, up to $39 million in future increases in property, sales, and earnings taxes within the boundaries of the Midtown TIF district will be redirected away from City Hall. The funds will be given to the TIF district itself to privately allocate towards the projects that it chooses. The St. Louis school district, the city itself, and other taxing districts will still collect what they do now, plus a portion of increased taxes over the next 23 years. But most of the increased revenues will go toward projects chosen by the leadership of the TIF district.

Before you think that this sounds fair, please do a mental exercise with me. What if the residents of the wealthiest neighborhoods in St. Louis city, let’s say the area roughly surrounded by Lindell, Skinker, the Forest Park Parkway/Waterman, and Kingshighway, put together their own TIF district. Those residents could make the same argument. The city and the other taxing districts can keep what they get now, we just want the increased revenues for the next 23 years to come under our control, not the control of the various elected boards. We promise to spend it on better sidewalks, private security, public art along Lindell, and more. It’s only fair that we get to keep the increased revenue for our own community. Who are you to oppose this request?

I would hope that one would look at a request by the owners of the beautiful mansions along Lindell to keep their own taxes for their own, preferred purposes to be a ridiculous proposal. We pay taxes (at least we should) for public purposes and in a manner determined by elected officials who are responsible to voters. The request by the backers of the Midtown TIF proposal—including the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, Grand Center Inc., and the Locust Central Business District—is every bit as absurd as the theoretical example I gave for Lindell Boulevard.

This is not to defend, in any way, the other TIF arrangements used throughout the City of St. Louis and the rest of the region. They have been a failure from top to bottom. But at least the other TIF plans attempt to grow the overall economy through the tax incentives. This Midtown TIF proposal doesn’t even bother with that. The Midtown TIF district’s proponents just want to keep more of their own taxes for their own uses. I can’t blame them for wanting that; don’t we all wish to do so? But the idea that an unelected group would get to privately decide how its future taxes are going to be used makes a mockery of democracy itself.

Investments in the infrastructure serving the theatres and restaurants along Grand may well be necessary and beneficial investments. More police in North St. Louis may also be a good investment. A new fire house in South St. Louis may be a good investment. We elect people to make these decisions and answer to voters for the outcomes. Turning the entire process over to a private group is the exact opposite of everything we are supposed to be celebrating on this 250th anniversary of our nation.

Declining School Enrollment with Susan Pendergrass

Posted on by Zach Lawhorn

On July 30, 2026, while guest hosting Mundo in the Morning on KCMO Talk Radio, Patrick Tuohey, senior fellow at the Show-Me Institute, spoke with Susan Pendergrass, the Institute’s Director of Research, about declining school enrollment in Missouri. Pendergrass walks through the demographic data behind the decline, why it isn’t a pandemic-related blip, and what it means for school funding, staffing, and building use going forward.

Listen to more from KCMO Talk Radio here.

Does Kansas City Still Need Race- and Sex-Conscious Contracting Preferences?

Posted on by Zach Lawhorn

Listen to the full segment here. 

On July 30, 2026, while guest hosting Mundo in the Morning on KCMO Talk Radio, Patrick Tuohey spoke with Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas about the city’s race- and sex-conscious contracting program. The city’s own consultants recently told the council it lacks the factual basis to continue the program.

We Need to Reconsider How We Pay Teachers

Posted on by Scott Tanner

As part of a recent paper on moderation in politics, the authors conducted polling on a variety of issues. On the issue of teacher pay, respondents picked from the following options:

#1: It should be difficult to fire teachers, and their pay should primarily depend on how long they have worked.

#2: It should be difficult to fire teachers, but better teachers should get paid more than worse teachers.

#3: Being a teacher should be like any other job, where better teachers get paid more and worse teachers can be easily fired or get paid less.

Sixty percent of participants agreed with position three—teachers should be paid like any other job. This is surprising because of the outcry usually associated with weakening teacher labor protections and awarding teachers merit pay.

However, paying teachers like other professionals is reasonable, and this type of pay structure could be beneficial to students, teachers, and principals alike.

How could Missouri move toward a pay structure that most voters prefer? An initial challenge is measuring teacher quality—if better teachers are to be paid more, we must be able to identify them. There have been plenty of teacher evaluation systems where the evaluations are unhelpful; nearly all teachers are rated as exceeding expectations, and there is not meaningful differentiation. But there are also exceptions. A notable example is right next door in Tennessee: The Tennessee Educator Accelerator Model (TEAM).

TEAM calculates a rating for each teacher on a 1–5 scale based on announced and unannounced in-class observations, academic growth data, and student performance data. A holistic system like TEAM would be a fair way to rate teachers, and principals could use the ratings to inform teacher pay in their schools.

Twelve years ago, a ballot initiative in Missouri on this topic was soundly defeated (the initiative did have other controversial items attached to it). But two years ago, the Missouri Legislature passed Senate Bill 727, which allows for pay differentiation for teachers in hard-to-staff subject areas, like special education or physics, and those teaching in hard-to-staff schools.

This was a big step in the right direction, as noted by the blue ribbon commission assembled to tackle Missouri’s perceived teacher shortage. One member of the commission stated:

The biggest surprise to us businesspeople serving on the Blue Ribbon Commission is the lack of flexibility you all [the board] have for meeting high-need positions, it’s unbelievably inappropriate in today’s highly competitive market.

Paying all teachers the same, regardless of subject or school, was a longstanding policy that Missouri policymakers were right to reconsider and change. We need to continue that momentum and consider merit pay next.

Teacher Preparation in Missouri Is Getting a Failing Grade

Posted on by Mike Ederer

A version of the following commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Test data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that 42 percent of Missouri fourth graders can barely read. Some of these children are functionally illiterate; others can read written words but have little to no comprehension. Missouri’s fourth-grade reading scores rank 38th out of the 50 states on NAEP reading, far from our ranking of 14th in 2003.

There are several reasons for our decline, but a key problem is that teachers in Missouri still use scientifically unproven practices to teach reading.

Decades of research show clearly that phonics-based reading instruction is what works. In states that have emphasized phonics-based reading instruction, like Mississippi and Louisiana, fourth-grade reading scores have taken off.

Truly fluent readers perceive each and every letter of print. Ideally, skilled readers come to read every letter rapidly and fluently as they connect the letters’ sounds with their oral vocabulary. In contrast, an alternative practice known as the three-cueing system encourages students to rely more on memorization, on contextual clues, or on how the “whole word” looks.

We should teach students to practice reading using the foundations effective readers rely on. All teachers in Missouri should be teaching reading using phonics-based instructions, which is scientifically proven and field-tested.

However, many are not. There are various reasons for this (some claim it’s boring to teach, drives the “love of reading” out of students, etc.). But one system-level reason is that numerous teacher-preparation programs in Missouri have not bought into the science of reading.

The misalignment of our teacher-preparation programs is on display in a new 2026 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). The report evaluates colleges and universities across the United States on how effectively their curriculum addresses the five core components of the science of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. It also considers whether programs teach practices contrary to the science of reading, like the three-cueing method.

In the report, Missouri ranks 44th in its coverage of the core components of the science of reading, with an average score of just 2.3 out of 5.0 components. Half of states scored 4.0 or higher, while often-praised Mississippi scored 4.7.

Even more alarming, Missouri ranks second in the nation, behind only Maine, in teaching practices contrary to the science of reading. Teacher-preparation programs in Missouri taught, on average, almost four times more contrary practices than the national average.

Nearly half of the universities in Missouri evaluated by NCTQ received an F in teaching the science of reading, including Northwest Missouri State University, Truman State University, and Missouri Southern State University. By comparison, 73 percent of Mississippi’s programs received an A, and none earned an F.

Also concerning is that 52 percent of Missouri’s programs either refused to participate in the NCTQ survey, provided heavily redacted materials, or were otherwise unresponsive. These institutions are approved by the state to prepare future teachers; they should be transparent about how they train our teachers.

While there were some bright spots, most Missouri teacher-preparation programs remain poorly aligned with what works. The states with the largest reading gains—Mississippi, Louisiana, and Indiana—all rank among the best in alignment with the science of reading. Teacher-preparation reform is not a silver bullet, but it’s part of a comprehensive early literacy policy.

Until our teacher-preparation programs correct their practices, we’re going to continue to infuse our teaching workforce with new cohorts of teachers each year who are unprepared to follow the science of reading.

What can be done? The good news is that at least in principle, this is easy to fix.

In 2023, Indiana required teacher-preparation programs to align their curricula with the science of reading and prohibited them from teaching the three-cueing method, which NCTQ identifies as a contrary practice. If a program refuses to comply, it loses state accreditation. In a previous NCTQ report from 2023 based on data from before its reform, 33 percent of Indiana’s programs received an A+ or an A. In 2026, 96 percent received an A+ or A.

Missouri lawmakers must work together to prevent teacher-preparation programs in Missouri from licensing teachers if they teach methods of reading instruction that are known to be ineffective. This simple step would help address the growing reading crisis in our state.

How Missouri Communities Can Keep Data Centers from Raising Utility Bills

Posted on by Mike Ederer

A version of the following commentary appeared in the Kansas City Star.

Many communities are unsure how to respond to data-center proposals.

The upside is real. Data centers have multi-billion-dollar assessed valuations that can bring significant tax revenue, expand the tax base, and allow for lowering tax rates for everyone. Loudoun County, Virgina—part of “Data Center Alley” —is a clear example. There, data centers account for almost half of property tax revenues, enough to fund every county function outside the school system.

But there are costs, too. A single 100-megawatt data center can use 80,000 households’ worth of electricity and consume, on average, 2,600 households’ worth of water. Hyperscale facilities push that further, and can have power draws of 1,000 megawatts, which is comparable to the output of the Callaway Nuclear Energy Center, one of Missouri’s most powerful generators. That kind of load can seriously strain infrastructure.

Further complicating matters is the fact that technology can change quickly, especially when billions of dollars and national security interests are at stake. Computing power that once required hardware that filled warehouses can now fit in a pocket or be worn on a wrist. A decision that originally seemed reasonable when a proposal was first presented might not age well if the costs or benefits of a data center change as a result of technological advances.

Missouri has already taken some action to limit ratepayer costs resulting from new data centers by requiring large data centers to pay their share of costs for connecting to the grid, such as for transmission lines. But Ameren recently stated:

All Ameren customers, including residential customers, pay for expanding the grid through building new power plants through rate increases, and that may be needed to accommodate large-load customers.

This means that average ratepayers would likely pay for new power plants constructed to meet data center demand if Ameren or Evergy does indeed need new power plants. But this possibility is also in question based on how major technology companies implement their recently signed “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” with President Trump.

One promising state-level solution are private electricity grids, also called consumer regulated electricity (CRE). This could create a parallel path for energy generation, and help protect ratepayers from risk, accelerate capacity buildout and innovation for both data centers and power plants, and alleviate pressure on the government to meet every aspect of this complex challenge. New Hampshire became the first state to allow it, and the U.S. Congress is considering a federal CRE policy. Similar solutions can be implemented for water usage.

Locally, the most important thing communities can do is resist handing out large tax incentives. Beyond the digital services they support, the primary local benefit data centers provide is tax revenue. Unlike many other industries, data centers generally do not create large numbers of long-term jobs, generate substantial secondary development, or attract tourists.

If local governments heavily reduce tax collections through incentive packages, they ask residents to absorb many of the significant costs while receiving little benefit.

Besides, developers are scrambling to find suitable locations. We don’t need to bribe them to come here. At Missouri’s Nuclear Energy Summit at the University of Missouri, numerous development experts noted how electricity availability and speed-to-operation had moved to the very top of many industrial corporations’ priority lists. Communities with reliable electricity, water, and advantageous locations are already attractive. Reforms like CRE could make Missouri even more competitive while keeping risk on investors rather than ratepayers.

The better answer is patience. If communities resist handing out tax incentives, ensure additional revenues turn into broad tax cuts, and focus on removing barriers that could hinder timely development, then data centers could become a genuine opportunity rather than a threat.

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