Why the high demand? In short, parents have diverse goals and students have diverse needs—it should be no surprise that the locally zoned public school isn’t the best fit for every student. MOScholars permits families to seek alternatives that better align with their children’s individual needs and family values.

Predictably, the MOScholars expansion has faced resistance, most notably from teachers’ unions. The largest teachers’ union in Missouri—the approximately 45,000-member Missouri National Education Association (MNEA)—attempted to delay the allocation of the funds in June. The attempt was unsuccessful, but the organization remains undeterred: A representative of the MNEA, attorney Loretta Haggard, acknowledged that while efforts to block the spending this year are effectively over, they will try again next year.

The union’s legal arguments against MOScholars are procedural, but the deeper concern is that MOScholars will divert revenue from public schools. Specifically, the fear is that enrollment-driven state funding for MOScholars students will not go to public schools. However, local funding will still be available, and of course, the public schools will no longer bear the cost of educating students who use MOScholars to exercise choice.

The outcome of this legal battle could set an important precedent for Missouri’s school choice landscape. Even with the $50 million MOScholars appropriation, the choice environment in Missouri is more restrictive than in many other states. Take Texas as an example—it passed legislation this year providing $1 billion in public funds for its own version of MOScholars.

Despite the MNEA’s predictable efforts to undo recent progress, our lawmakers should continue to push for school choice for more Missouri families.

The post MOScholars Scholarships Are in High Demand appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For my take on why equitable grading policies are illogical and misguided, see my previous post about San Francisco’s recent bid to introduce a sweeping Grading for Equity policy. It ultimately failed under intense public pressure once families understood what was happening, because most people do not support these ideas.

It turns out most teachers don’t support them either. That’s the main conclusion from a new report by David Griffith and Adam Tyner at the Fordham Institute. The report draws on a nationally representative survey of teachers to examine their views. Key findings include:

• Equitable grading practices are widespread: About half of teachers say their school or district has adopted at least one “equitable” grading practice, and a third report multiple such policies.
• Most teachers believe these practices are harmful to academic engagement.
• Most teachers want high standards for students but feel pressured to inflate grades.

I encourage interested readers to take a look at the full report. Among other things, it’s a good reminder that teachers aren’t so different from everyone else, and they’re also frustrated by policies that lower expectations.

(Note: In a previous post about the San Francisco policy, I indicated that I hadn’t heard of any “Grading for Equity” policies in Missouri, but a reader reached out to explain that many Missouri districts have adopted them. It is hard to know how many, but their widespread use nationally—as documented in the Fordham report—suggests it could be a lot.)

The post Most Teachers Don’t Like Equitable Grading Practices Either appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I live in the Central West End neighborhood of the city, and my street (to the best of my knowledge) was never plowed. For the better part of two weeks, I was not able to move my car. As of this writing, the trash in the dumpster in my alley has not been picked up since before the storm—a storm that began on January 5.

For one thing, the inability to clear the roads created much more serious problems. Some people have had to rely on friends or family just to get groceries. Mail delivery in the city has essentially ground to a halt. Most pressingly, impassable streets create difficult scenarios for emergency services. There are stories of people who need medical help and live on streets that ambulances can’t currently reach.

It is fair to point out that this was a big storm, and probably an unusually difficult storm to deal with. Freezing rain falling right before a lot of snow is a headache. But this was also not some once-in-a-century storm. We had about 10 inches of snow and some ice—Midwest cities ought to be prepared to deal with storms like that occasionally.

A KSDK story noted that $600,000 was cut from the city streets department for snow removal, but city officials have explained that this money was mostly for salt, and that the city already had stockpiles of extra salt because of recent mild winters.

This isn’t a story about resources. It’s a story about incompetence.

Predictably, we’re beginning to see finger-pointing and recriminations. The mayor blamed residents for leaving parked cars in the path of snow plows. The director of the streets department claimed she was getting “incorrect information” regarding the situation. Leaving aside the morality of throwing your staff under the bus, this claim does not pass the smell test. Figuring out street conditions is not a difficult feat of intelligence gathering—this is not like trying to gain information about a nuclear program in a rogue nation. If you step outside pretty much anywhere in the city, it’s apparent. Or you could check any of the hundreds (maybe thousands?) of posts on social media detailing the situation.

The city seems to be conceding that it screwed up, and that something needs to change. Officials have signaled that the longstanding policy of not plowing side streets might be changing. The city also resorted to hiring outside contractors to help clear the ice.

This is a great example of the wisdom in my colleague Patrick Tuohey’s pleas that Missouri cities focus on providing basic services. Instead of addressing crime or maintaining infrastructure, the City of St. Louis seems eternally fixated on shiny objects like economic development subsidies that don’t work or expanding train service that very few people use. People don’t want to live in a place that can’t provide an adequate level of essential services—and residents are voting with their feet. How long is it going to take city leaders to figure this out?

The post The Gang that Couldn’t Plow Straight appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This is a weak argument for several reasons. The first is that people rise out of adverse circumstances and attain success all the time. Human beings are resourceful and resilient. We’re all familiar with numerous stories of people who grew up in less-than-ideal situations and still achieved great things. The relevant question with public schools is whether kids are growing up and thriving because of their public schools, or in spite of them.

There’s also the question of how far isolated examples take you. The plural of anecdote is never data. And the data about Missouri public schools do not paint a rosy picture. Per the most recent Nation’s Report Card, 40 percent of Missouri 4th-graders scored Below Basic in reading, and 39 percent of 8th graders scored Below Basic in math. Below Basic indicates that a given student doesn’t even have a “partial mastery of the knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work.”

The fact that vast swathes of Missouri students don’t even have partial understanding of the work at their grade level ought to be deeply concerning. Thousands of kids in Missouri are being left behind, and I don’t imagine that the families of those kids would be comforted to know that some kids in some other places around the state ended up doing alright. How many personal success stories does it take to make it okay that huge numbers of Missouri children can’t do math or read at grade level?

There are other holes to poke in this argument—the people who are success stories as adults today went to Missouri public schools decades ago in many cases, and our schools, per the numbers, are getting worse, not better. There’s also a perception that public schools in Missouri are only struggling in certain pockets of the state—particularly in our big cities. But even a cursory tour of the Institute’s school rankings website reveals that this isn’t true; there are underperforming schools in every corner of Missouri.

There’s nothing wrong with pointing out success stories from Missouri public schools. But one shouldn’t miss the forest for the trees and mistake these stories as an important indicator of the overall health of Missouri’s education system. Our standards simply need to be higher. Some kids doing okay isn’t anywhere close to good enough. We shouldn’t be content until all Missouri kids have a chance at a quality education. And I don’t see how you could argue that we’re anywhere close to that right now.

The post Anecdotes Are Not Data appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The plan is for the trolley to resume services on August 4 under the new leadership of the Bi-State Development Agency, with a few tweaks. The trolley will only operate Thursday through Sunday, and in addition, it won’t run year round. Per the St. Louis Post-Dispatch story linked above:

But in a change, Bi-State CEO Taulby Roach said plans now call for the 2.2-mile line to operate only in warmer-weather months. It will shut down Oct. 15 and probably crank up again next April, he said. “We have made the professional opinion that it will run better on a compressed schedule,” Roach said. “We’ve really tried to make a realistic and nonflinching assessment of these assets.” He said it’s more likely that people will ride the trolley cars, which he described as a tourist attraction, during good weather conditions. Moreover, he said, “the equipment simply doesn’t work well” during colder times of the year.

A ”realistic and nonflinching assessment of these assets” is certainly long overdue—it remains to be seen if that’s actually what’s happening here. It is disconcerting to read that this equipment doesn’t work well in the colder months. The original plan was for the trolley to run all the time.

Projects of this size are complicated, and we should be understanding when things that can’t be controlled or predicted cause problems. But “cold winter months in St. Louis” does not qualify as an unpredictable obstacle, and the lack of foresight here is a perfect distillation of the lack of care or seriousness with which this entire process has unfolded.

While describing the Loop Trolley an ill-conceived boondoggle seems like an understatement, it is possible that resurrecting the trolley might be the least bad solution right now. The federal government is threatening to claw back $37 million in grant money (as a reminder, the total price tag so far is $51 million) if the trolley doesn’t operate again. But there are still more questions than answers at this point.

Even with a new schedule, can the trolley function without repeated breakdowns? Will the projected August 4 re-opening date actually happen, or will it be delayed, as so often happens with trolley-related matters? How long does the trolley need to operate going forward to satisfy the federal grant requirements and avoid any financial claw backs? And what happens if East-West Council of Governments declines to give the $1.26 million in grant money that trolley leaders are requesting and claiming they need in order to keep the lights on?

There’s only thing we can say for sure right now: Given the track record of this project, nobody involved should be given the benefit of the doubt.

The post Once More unto the Loop Trolley Breach appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The number of people who live in the city of St. Louis fell below 300,000 in 2021 and the metropolitan area also saw a decline in population as the region for the first time recorded more deaths than births. That puts it among just a handful of large urban areas hit by outmigration and a negative birth rate. . . .

As of July 1, the Census Bureau estimated that just 293,310 people resided in the region’s core city of St. Louis, down from the 301,578 people counted in the 2020 census.

St. Louis City had a population of more than 850,000 in the 1950 census. That means today’s population is about a third of what it once was. Deaths outpacing births for the first time in recorded history does not seem like great news, either.

Not all of this is the fault of the city’s leadership. Structural factors are certainly at play here; there are many reasons St. Louis’s population has been in precipitous freefall for more than half a century. And COVID deaths across the country did depress population gains. But that does not mean decline is inevitable.

As noted in the Post-Dispatch article, several peer cities in the Midwest, including Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati, experienced population increases over this period. Those cities have many similarities to St. Louis. And St. Louis retains many key advantages, including its central location as a transportation hub and a low cost of living. To quote the late Charles Krauthammer: Decline is a choice.

So what now? A few quotes from the Post-Dispatch article hint at one possible way forward:

The numbers drew another call from the St. Louis metro’s new business and civic booster group for regional unity and a redoubling of efforts by area leaders to draw residents and focus on “inclusive economic growth.” . . .

“At the start of last year, we established Greater St. Louis Inc. out of the core belief that growth must be a top civic priority for the St. Louis metro,” said Greater St. Louis Inc. CEO Jason Hall. “These numbers tell us what we expected and underscore the urgency of focusing this metro on growth and more opportunities for all. Stagnation is the existential threat to everything we love about the place we call home.”

I’m not exactly certain what “inclusive growth” means—I would think that a region that has been hemorrhaging population since the Eisenhower administration should just be focusing on any growth, absent qualifiers. I am not mentioning this phrase just to be snarky, but instead because it is indicative of how St. Louis leaders have approached this problem.

Greater St. Louis, to much fanfare, introduced a plan at the end of 2020 (revised and improved in early 2021, but without significant changes) that was intended to fix what ailed the St. Louis region. Show-Me Institute analysts pointed out the inadequacies of that plan at the time. One of the major problems with the report is that it’s long on buzzwords and jargon like “inclusive growth” and short on actual concrete policy prescriptions or solutions.

I don’t want to belabor the shortcomings of this one report from two years ago. But that report illustrates how many civic leaders in the St. Louis region think, and it represents a well-trod path: Use taxpayer dollars to bribe companies to move here, use even more taxpayer dollars to pay for splashy but economically dubious projects like aquariums or soccer stadiums or trolleys, and bend to the whims and demands of social justice activists when making key decisions.

It’s not that hard to think of a better way to try and make St. Louis a more attractive place to live and work. St. Louis City still has an economically destructive earnings tax. The city also has massive problems with crime. The city could also focus on reducing regulations to improve its ease-of-doing-business rankings. The region as a whole could stop giving away tax subsidies at every available opportunity and use some of that money to fund critical public services or cut taxes.

It would be easy to keep listing examples of what the St. Louis region could or should be doing. But maybe the best argument for trying something else is a simple one: The old approach is what got St. Louis into its current atrophied state. If we keep trying the same things, why would anyone expect things to change?

The post Honey, I Shrunk the City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Or maybe not, depending on who you ask. A recent Post-Dispatch story highlighted some who seem skeptical about schools reopening. A superintended in a Texas school district is quoted as saying: “As far as 2021–22, at least some part of that school year is likely still going to be pandemic response-related on the assumption that children won’t have access to the vaccine, or at least many won’t.” The article also quotes Michael Mulgrew, head of the United Federation of Teachers in New York, who says it’s impossible to commit to in-person schooling in the fall because it’s theoretically possible that those who get vaccinated might still spread the virus.

In Fairfax, Virginia teachers jumped to the front of the line to get vaccinated, but the district isn’t reopening in-person schooling even though a large majority of teachers have now been vaccinated—and the union won’t even commit to in-person schooling in the fall. The union also said that schools shouldn’t be reopened until all students have been vaccinated (never mind that no vaccine has been approved for kids under 16 yet).

In Chicago, teachers went on strike in the fall, and then the union issued a laundry list of demands for reopening in December. This list including some untenable items like outlawing simultaneous teaching—where teachers both instruct in-person and remotely—and reducing remote learning screen time. The union then defied an order from Chicago Public Schools to return to classrooms in late January, and narrowly avoided a strike by recently agreeing to a partial reopening of schools.

Similar stories have played out in San Francisco and Baltimore, among many other places. Obviously, everyone wants teachers and other school staff to be safe when returning to schools. But one begins to wonder what’s really happening here when it feels like the goalposts are constantly moving and the pretexts for avoiding reopening are so flimsy. Excessive caution about reopening schools also appears to fly in the face of the available evidence on the subject.

There’s simply very little evidence that schools are significant sources of COVID spread. Based on available data, COVID rates for students and teachers mirror the rates in the surrounding community (this doesn’t even include elementary and middle school students, whose rates are predictably lower than the population at large). The CDC director recently said that schools do not need to wait for all teachers to be vaccinated before safely reopening. The CDC also published its own study in late January, and concluded: “There has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission.”

Meanwhile, this process is taking an unbearable toll on students. Very few people seem to think remote learning works particularly well; more than a quarter of Missouri parents rated their children’s remote learning experience as a D or F. Remote learning has also left many students and families behind, and has exacerbated existing achievement gaps. We’re still early in the process, but early projections indicate the overall learning loss could be enormous and long-lasting. And it’s not just about learning; research suggests kids are suffering socially and psychologically.

So what does this mean for Missouri? The point isn’t that every school across the state has to fully open tomorrow. Not every district has to have the same plan, as the variables in districts across the state vary dramatically. But we should be listening to what experts have to say and paying attention to the data. And since experts indicate that schools can be reopened safely, it seems that Missouri schools should be planning to do just that as soon as possible. The concerns and needs of parents ought to come before those of special-interest groups.

The post Who’s Driving the Bus on School Openings? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

St. Louis County Executive Sam Page has proposed an $848.5 million county budget for 2021 that includes $4.3 million in pay raises for county employees, a big funding boost for the police department and no job reductions or cuts to services.

The plan called for pulling back spending just 2% from this year’s budget despite a projected 9.5% shortfall in revenue this year from the coronavirus and an abundance of uncertainty about the county’s ability to recover.

But wait—how is the county going to account for the 9.5 percent shortfall in revenue mentioned in the article? Tax increases, of course:

Page told the council in a four-page letter on Friday that the county needed to “identify additional revenues” to sustain existing programs, including increasing the property tax rate either by a council vote or a ballot initiative.

The county could also see a $10 million annual boost in sales taxes, he wrote, if the state Legislature were to pass legislation allowing the state and its municipalities to begin collecting taxes on sales in the state from out-of-state vendors.

Why raise taxes on citizens already struggling in the midst of an economic calamity instead of looking carefully for cuts? In the Post-Dispatch story, a county official is quoted saying that cuts “generated a whole bunch of bad outcomes. So, ultimately, none of those were accepted.”

It’s possible that some service cuts aren’t feasible and really would harm citizens. But the idea that there’s simply nothing in the budget that can be cut doesn’t pass the smell test. We already know one area where the county misuses gobs of taxpayer money: economic development policy.

One does not need to strain to find examples of the county wasting money in this fashion.

Just a few years ago, in a plan to revitalize part of North County, St. Louis County negotiated a lease for the former Northwest Plaza mall that could cost the county up to $77 million. Serious questions were raised about the negotiation process, which led to ethics hearings. A member of the county council has since called the lease “obscenely long and overpriced,” and the county is now enmeshed in litigation while trying to break the lease.

The county also contributed millions to the farcical, doomed-from-the-start Loop Trolley project, which last December financially imploded after barely a year of operation. And the county regularly subsidizes smaller projects that don’t make headlines. Last year, the county and the City of Hazelwood together spent millions in a scheme to redevelop the decaying St. Louis Outlet Mall. Late last year, St. Louis County doled out more than $4 million to HVAC company Johnstone Supply to help it build a new headquarters in Earth City.

Institute analysts have spent years documenting the problems with these projects, which often lack accountability and oversight, allow government to pick winners and losers, and shift risk from private investors to taxpayers. But most importantly: They simply don’t work, frequently failing to deliver promised benefits.

While those mistakes have already been made and the money already spent, the county is taking the wrong approach here. Why should taxpayers entrust a government that has been a poor steward of their dollars with more money? St. Louis County should work harder and more transparently to find opportunities for budget savings before asking its citizens to pony up additional taxes.

The post St. Louis County Should Find Budget Cuts Before Hiking Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Typically, a gift doesn’t require a contribution from the person on the receiving end. But St. Louis taxpayers are ponying up for nearly half the cost of the aquarium, as described in a St. Louis Post Dispatch article:

[Twenty] million of the St. Louis Aquarium’s construction costs will come from an existing tax-increment financing agreement and two special tax districts that carry a 1 percent tax on sales at Union Station. Included is LHM’s intent to use $5 million in historic preservation tax credits to help restore the 11-acre shed.

Show-Me Institute analysts have spent years documenting the failures and abuses of tax-increment financing (TIF), special taxing districts, and historic preservation tax credits. These programs take public dollars and shift investment risk to taxpayers, while allowing private investors to reap the benefits.

If the aquarium is a good idea, why aren’t there private investors lining up to fund the project?

Maybe it’s because aquariums are a pretty risky bet financially. A recent article in The Atlantic outlined the financial struggles of aquariums in big cities across the United States:

The stress of acquisition and maintenance often leads to financial struggle . . . In this century, the Denver aquarium, which opened to much fanfare in 1999, declared bankruptcy in 2002 because of defaults on building loans. (It was purchased by Landry’s, a hospitality company, and reopened in 2003.) More recently, the newly opened Shreveport Aquarium has struggled with almost $500,000 in unpaid construction debt. Many of these spaces are subsidized by tax breaks and bonds, to be paid back when an aquarium becomes profitable. But too often, this goal is not realized. As economic-development projects, aquariums are risky.

The South County Times reports that the St. Louis Aquarium expects 1.5 to 2 million visitors per year. That seems like a curiously optimistic projection. The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago gets just over 2 million visitors per year, and it has 5 million gallons in total volume for tanks and exhibits; the St. Louis Aquarium will have just 1.3 million total gallons.

It’s not clear why planners project the St. Louis Aquarium to nearly the match the Shedd Aquarium in total attendance with a much smaller aquarium in a much smaller city. But if visitor numbers don’t match expectations and revenue lags as a result, (the aquarium is not free; a ticket price of around $24 is expected for adults) will taxpayers be asked to chip in again to cover the shortfall?

If all of this sounds familiar, it should. In 1985, Union Station was renovated in a massive $150 million project that included generous tax breaks. And what was the city left with? A mall in Union Station that was largely abandoned after barely more than 20 years. And thus the cycle begins anew: The mall was sold, was bought by a new developer, and is being renovated with the help of taxpayer dollars.

We all want what’s best for St. Louis, and it’s exciting to see big new projects generate enthusiasm. But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That seems to perfectly describe economic development policy in St. Louis.

The post Aquarium Project Repeats Familiar Mistakes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Recent news is unlikely to reassure those skeptical about the project. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch article from last week shared some alarming numbers about the Loop Trolley:

Statistics released Tuesday showed the trolley sold 2,210 tickets in June, producing $4,062 in revenue. That’s up from 1,744 tickets and $3,861 in revenue in May but less than the line’s peak month of March, when 2,421 tickets were sold.

Overall since the trolley opened last Nov. 16, 11,364 tickets have been sold, producing farebox revenue of $22,283.

These are not particularly impressive totals. They’re nowhere close to what the public was promised when the project was being sold years ago. As the Post-Dispatch article mentions, back in 2015 trolley officials predicted 394,000 riders a year. In 2017, officials claimed the first year of operation (which was supposed to be 2018) would generate nearly $400,000 in revenue. The year isn’t over yet, but you don’t need a degree in math to see that things are off track. 

However, Kevin Barbeau, the executive director of the Loop Trolley Co., told the Post-Dispatch there are important caveats to keep in mind. The trolley has only been running four days a week, and the initial projections were based on a full seven-day-a-week schedule. The plan was to have three cars running, but because of delays, there are only two cars in service.

I’m sure that missing a car and only operating four days a week is hurting business. But whose fault is that? The extensive delays in acquiring and renovating the third trolley car can’t be blamed on anyone but the Loop Trolley Co.

Even with optimistic projections, future revenue and ridership with three cars fully operational for seven days a week looks grim. If the trolley saw a fifteen-fold increase in revenue in the second half of the year, it would still fall short of its annual revenue goal. Barbeau claims secondary revenue sources from things like advertising and fundraising will pick up once the trolley is running on a daily basis. But based on all the broken promises and delays, it’s hard to take trolley boosters at their word.

Keep in mind that most of the trolley’s $1.3 million annual operating budget comes from a special sales tax levied on Loop customers, which has raised on average $780,000 a year since 2016. Taxpayers have been paying full freight for this project, despite the missing car and part-time operating schedule. If operating at half capacity is a valid excuse for missing ridership and revenue targets, shouldn’t taxpayers get half their money back?

The post Trolley Folly appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Workforce development wasn’t just mentioned in the speech—it was singled out as one of the two most important policy priorities moving forward. Patrick Ishmael has been out in front of this issue, writing on the importance of workforce development, particularly in the area of vocational training. Readers of this blog may also have seen posts by Emily Stahly on the potential for charter schools to help give Missouri a more skilled workforce, and by Abigail Burrola on how a focus on industry-recognized credentials could better prepare our high-school graduates for good jobs after graduation.
• Infrastructure was the other issue designated as a top priority, particularly the pressing need to fund necessary repairs and improvements to Missouri’s highway system. Back in 2016, Joe Miller wrote a comprehensive paper on options for funding the Missouri Department of Transportation. More recently, Graham Renz and Patrick Tuohey have advocated for user fees as the best way to fund our state’s transportation needs, whether through a gas tax or some form of tolling.
• The Governor noted the drain on the state’s finances caused by Missouri’s high incarceration rate and his desire to avoid building more prisons. Ways to help keep prison populations down include reform of laws governing mandatory minimum sentencing and efforts to help ex-offenders enter the workforce, as Patrick Tuohey has written.
• The need to control the growth in the cost of the state’s Medicaid program was also discussed. Elias Tsapelas has not only written on this topic, but has also looked at measures being taken in other states to address the problem

Even topics mentioned only in passing during the speech have been covered by Show-Me Institute analysts, including telemedicine, tax credit reform, and educational challenges facing children with autism and other disabilities.

It’s encouraging to hear that so many long-overdue reforms may be on the docket during the current legislative session. As we watch to see if 2019 will bring important changes to Missouri policy, we’ll continue to research and advocate free-market solutions that will help move our state forward.

The post State of the State Highlights Show-Me Research appeared first on Show-Me Institute.