Missouri Becomes an Education Island

A version of this commentary appeared in the Columbia Missourian.

How would your family feel if your entire neighborhood had 5G internet access and you were still using dial-up? I’m guessing the kids might complain. After all, 5G is simply better, and sticking with an obsolete system seems like a stubborn refusal to change. That’s the situation Missouri families with school-aged children face. Just about all our neighbors wrapped up their legislative sessions by finally giving up address-based school assignments and letting parents choose where to send their children to school. We’re the last one in the neighborhood sticking with the outdated system.

• Early in their session, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed the Students First Act, which will allow families to receive up to $7,600 per year to use toward private-school tuition. The law is phased in, but by 2025, every family in the state will be able to use the program.
• Heading west, Nebraska’s Governor Jim Pillen signed the Opportunity Scholarships Act. Although similar to Missouri’s Empowerment Scholarships program, this bill commits twice as much money and the scholarships are available to children statewide, not just in the largest cities as in Missouri.
• Over in Kansas, a robust public school choice bill passed last year will go into effect in fall 2024. No longer will Kansas school districts be able to opt out of accepting transfer students from other districts. Previously, each district set their own policies regarding whether or not to accept students. As of this fall, Kansas families can apply to transfer to a school of their choice.
• Oklahoma took an innovative approach to school choice in its session. All families in the state can now take a dollar-for-dollar credit against their state tax bill for up to $7,500 in private-school tuition. Homeschoolers can receive up to $1,000 off their state tax bill. And the tax credit is refundable, meaning that the state will pay families back if the tax credit is more than they owed in state taxes.
• Arkansas passed one of the most significant education reform acts this year. The Arkansas LEARNS Act, signed by Governor Sanders, gives families the option of having 90 percent of their state education funding deposited into an Education Freedom Account for private-school tuition and other education expenses. By 2025–26, all Arkansas families will be able to participate.

So, there you have it. School choice is not just happening in the far-flung states of Florida, West Virginia, and Arizona.  It is literally all around us. Our neighbors have figured out what Missouri hasn’t. School assignment by address is antiquated, it isn’t what families want, and it doesn’t work.

Imagine a school district as an ice cream shop that can only stock one flavor. They’re required to do their best to satisfy every student, so if most families want vanilla, vanilla it is. If some kids show up wanting pistachio, those can be tossed in. A couple of kids want chocolate? Add a chocolate ribbon. But now some kids want bubble gum in their ice cream. Does it really make sense to insist on offering a single flavor that turns out to be vanilla-pistachio-chocolate-bubble gum? No one wants that. There is no single, secret flavor that’s everyone’s favorite.

What our neighbors seem to understand is that it is better for the kids who need pistachio ice cream to get the very best pistachio out there. Parents are in the best position to know. And they may have a pistachio kid and a bubble gum kid in the same family. Try to please everyone at once, and you end up satisfying no one.

Over half of the 50 states now have mandatory open enrollment programs that allow families to choose any public school in the state. The number of states that include private schools among the options offered is growing fast. Missouri has neither. We allow charters only as interventions in our worst performing districts, rather than opportunities for districts to expand their portfolios. We have a scholarship program that addresses the needs of children in larger communities, but not rural children. Our legislature did not have the courage or determination to overcome their differences this year to bring even voluntary open enrollment to Missouri families.

Change can’t have been easy for policymakers in neighboring states, either. But they did it. Maybe it was out of a sense of fairness to children stuck in poor-performing schools, or maybe it was because they wanted their states to be attractive to growing companies and young families. It sure would be nice if such considerations would motivate lawmakers here.