Fright Night in Missouri Comes Early

Posted on by Avery Frank

Reviewing the recent release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is an ideal way to get into the spirit of Halloween. The falloff in student performance is enough to make your skin crawl; to take one example–the NAEP report features a six-point drop in Missouri fourth-grade mathematics and five-point drop in fourth-grade reading.

 Show-Me Institute writers have discussed this report in greater detail in previous posts, but here I want to draw attention to comments made by the Commissioner of Education.

In response to the release of these aforementioned test scores, the commissioner released two quotes:

  1. “The results serve as another indicator that high-quality instruction matters.”
  2. “It’s clear that the pandemic had an impact on student learning and that there is work to do. We must use this information, alongside state and local metrics, to continue accelerating post-pandemic learning with improved systems and processes to meet the needs of each student.”

I don’t disagree with the first statement, but what does it say about the quality of Missouri’s teachers? Is the commissioner suggesting that the teachers are to blame for the drop in test scores? And if so, what exactly does the commissioner propose to do about it?

How about this for starters: If high-quality instruction matters so much (and it does), maybe Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) should reconsider its policy of tying teacher salaries solely to experience and degree acquisition rather than student performance.

As to the second point: yes, the pandemic, or at least the response to the pandemic, did have an impact. Closing schools for months at a time does tend to impair the progress of our students. And yes, there is more work to do . . . but is there nothing more concrete to suggest than “improved systems and processes”? How about turning a critical eye toward DESE’s policy of blanket accreditation and the restrictions on open enrollment and school choice?

The response of our Department of Education to these test results tells us everything we need to know about why Missouri students are lagging behind their peers. Leadership is about a lot more than stating the obvious and then offering anodyne generalities as an excuse for doing nothing. Leadership is about taking real action, even if it means ruffling the feathers of entrenched interests.

What’s really horrifying about the NAEP results is that DESE clearly has no plans to do anything about them.

If Missouri education were a horror movie, we’d say that it’s time for the hero to stop looking outside for monsters to slay.

The calls are coming from inside the house.

FDA Hears the Need for Deregulation

Posted on by Maria Rivero

This past August, the FDA approved the sale of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids. Previously, a prescription for a hearing aid required a visit to a health care professional. Now, anyone with mild to moderate hearing loss can purchase an OTC hearing aid online or at their local pharmacy without needing a medical exam or prescription. Prescribed hearing aids cost the average American between $2,000 to $7,000, whereas OTC hearing aids can now be purchased for as low as $199 at your local CVS or Walgreens.

The FDA decision to loosen regulations has allowed a new market for OTC hearing aids to surface. As tends to happen when the free market is allowed to function, brands now have to compete for the customer if they want to succeed, which leads to much more affordable and better-quality products.

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), approximately one in three people between the ages of 65 and 74 and nearly half of adults over 75 suffer from some sort of hearing loss. It’s likely many people don’t want to admit they have trouble hearing and go through the hassle of visiting a specialist, so they don’t take any action to improve their hearing. Hopefully, this increased accessibility of hearing-loss solutions will prompt more Americans to do so. While this is a great step forward in enabling access to hearing aids for the millions of Americans who have mild to moderate hearing loss, those with severe hearing loss still have many barriers, including high costs, to overcome.

To become a hearing-aid specialist in Missouri, a degree in hearing instrument sciences is not enough. A Missouri law requires those who would like to become hearing-aid specialists to obtain and consistently renew a special license that allows them to diagnose, prescribe, and fit people with hearing aids. These sorts of occupational licenses in theory mitigate risks and improve overall quality of services, but they tend to hurt more than they help. A Princeton study demonstrated that even in health-related occupations, “such as dental hygienists, nurse practitioners and opticians . . . licensing restrictions raise the cost of services without improving quality.” The hearing-aid examiner license required by Missouri raises the educational costs and creates barriers for those seeking to become specialists in the field, and in turn likely results in higher healthcare costs for Missourians who need to visit a specialist to obtain their hearing aids.

Kudos to the federal government (something you don’t often hear Show-Me Institute analysts say) for removing an unnecessary healthcare regulation and making hearing aids more affordable and accessible for older Americans. If Missouri wants to help its residents receive more affordable and accessible care, it may want to consider doing the same.

Chesterfield and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Large TIF

Posted on by David Stokes

Chesterfield does not have a municipal property tax. There’s nothing wrong with that. It funds its local government primarily with sales taxes. Again, that’s all fine.

But now it wants to both subsidize and fund a major redevelopment of and around the Chesterfield Mall, and it wants to use property taxes to do so. How do you do that when you don’t have a property tax? Solution: you just take the property taxes from other governments. While that type of stealing would be illegal in many other situations, it is, unfortunately, perfectly legal under the tax-increment financing (TIF) laws of Missouri.

How much tax money is Chesterfield planning to take from other taxing districts should the development be approved and built (no guarantees on either of those)? $300 million. That’s right, $300 million.

The development proposal includes over 3,000 new residential units. Those residential units are going to have families with children. That is obviously wonderful, but what is not wonderful is that the school property taxes from those 3,000 units for the life of the TIF (around 30 years due to the phased in nature of it in this instance) will not go to the school districts (mostly Parkway, some in Rockwood). That tax money will go to Chesterfield and to the developer. The plan includes giving millions of dollars voluntarily to Parkway in an effort to buy the school district’s support, but the school districts have added up the money and concluded it will be short. How far short?

$220 million short. That’s right, $220 million. The school districts have calculated the probable number of extra children who will join the district because of the development, the need for an entirely new school building to educate them, the cost to educate those children on top of the new building, the length of the TIF project, and more, and concluded that they are short $220 million tax dollars in this deal. How are Parkway and Rockwood going to make up that estimated $220 million? They have only a few choices: cut school services in various ways or—more likely, in my opinion—request a tax increase on taxpayers outside of the TIF district.

So let’s be clear: in order for taxpayers to fund the demolition of Chesterfield Mall (instead of having the group that actually owns the mall take care of it) and hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of other amenities—including $23 million to pay the cost of lawyers, planners, and financiers—the residents of Parkway school district can almost certainly look forward to a tax increase on everyone who is not inside the TIF district. (To be clear, residents inside the TIF district will also pay the higher tax, it just won’t go to Parkway schools.)

Something is deeply wrong with how we fund local government in Missouri.

This Is Not How You Design a Survey, DESE

Posted on by James V. Shuls

Suppose your boss comes to you one day and asks you to take a survey. He or she asks you, “When considering the components of compensation, please indicate the level of priority you feel that management should give to each. Your choices are more pay (an increase in base salary), performance pay for certain metrics, better health care benefits, or other stipends such as loan forgiveness or housing allowances. What do you choose?”

If you are like most people, you’d choose more pay.

If this survey were conducted with everyone in your company, what would it tell you?

It would tell you compensation preferences among people currently employed by the company.

That’s it.

It would not tell you whether boosting compensation in these ways would increase retention. It wouldn’t tell you whether you’d get more candidates applying for jobs if you did these things.

Of course, you may infer those things . . . but you could be wrong.

If you wanted to know those things, you’d need to design a better survey and you may need to survey different people.

For instance, if you want to know why people are leaving or staying, then you should ask that question. You should ask people who left the job why they left and what would have enticed them to stay. You should ask current employees if they’ve thought about leaving the company and, if so, why? Those questions would help you better understand how to retain people within your company.

Similarly, if you want to know more about recruiting applicants, you’d need to ask different questions and ask questions of different people. You’d ask your employees, “What attracted you to this job?” You’d ask people not employed at your company if they ever thought about applying for a job at your company and what would entice them to work for your company.

The questions you ask matter, and poorly designed surveys do little to help us answer the questions we really want answered.

Now imagine you were going to base a $29.5 million decision on the results of this survey. You’d think you’d want to get the questions right.

Well, you would unless you were the state’s Blue Ribbon Commission looking at the state’s teacher shortage.

The figure below shows the question the commission asked teachers. As Gomer Pyle might say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise.” Teachers want what anyone asked this question might want—more money!

I’m not saying we shouldn’t pay teachers more money. Maybe we should. What I’m saying is that that the state should not base important and complex decisions on poorly constructed surveys that tell us what we should already know—people like being paid more.

The Obvious Question

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

My dad used to ask me: If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you do it too? The 2022 scores on the Nation’s Report Card were just released and the results in both reading and math were dreadful. And yet, I know that when Missourians read that 7 in 10 of our 8th graders are below grade level, they’ll ask, “But what about every other state?” Sure, we’ve gone off a cliff and are about to hit the rocky shore below, but presumably others are freefalling as well.

For the record, here is how Missouri’s scale score (a 0–500 scale for reading and a 0–300 scale for math) on each of the four assessments compares to the U.S. average. Missouri’s 4th-grade reading score dropped by 5 points between 2019 and 2022. The national 4th-grade reading score dropped by 3 points. Missouri’s 4th-grade math scores dropped by 6 points (nationally—5 point drop). Missouri’s 8th-grade reading scores dropped by 6 points (nationally—3 point drop). Finally, Missouri’s 8th-grade math scores dropped by a whopping 9 points, compared to a national drop of 8 points. In summary, Missouri’s decline was worse on all accounts.

Twenty five states had smaller declines in 4th-grade reading, and 28 did in math. The 8th-grade results are worse; 39 states had smaller declines in reading, and 30 did in math. A handful of states had score gains here or there or declines of just a point or two in their scale scores.

So, if it really matters whether Missouri did badly on its own or worse than other states—the answer is both.

Houston, We Have a Problem

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

The 2022 scores on the Nation’s Report Card (or NAEP), a test administered every other year by the U.S. Department of Education, are in—and the results are disastrous. Reading and math scores for 4th and 8th graders plummeted nationally and in every state.

Let’s be perfectly clear: Missouri has been heading toward a test score cliff for some time. The pandemic just punched the gas pedal like Thelma and Louise. In fact, Missouri’s NAEP scores peaked in about 2009, around the same time that enrollment in our public schools peaked. In 2009, nearly one third (36 percent) of Missouri 4th graders scored at the Proficient level or higher in reading and 41 percent did in math. Last year, just 30 percent hit the mark in reading and 34 percent did in math. The 8th-grade numbers are similar. Reading scores topped out in 2015 at 36 percent Proficient or higher and have been slowly declining ever since, reaching 28 percent last year. 8th-grade math scores, which reached a high of 35.5 percent in 2009, dropped like a rock in one year to 24 percent of students scoring Proficient or higher.

But here are the numbers that should really scare us. In 2022, a shocking 40 percent of 4th graders scored Below Basic in reading. On this test, “Basic” means a “partial mastery of the knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at a given grade.” Four in ten Missouri 4th graders do not even have a partial mastery of 4th-grade reading. How can these students be expected to read and understand a math or science book? A disturbing 39 percent of 8th graders scored Below Basic in math. How will these students navigate high school and become anything close to college or career ready?

Brace yourself for the excuses—much of the blame will be placed on the pandemic—and pleas for more money. The painful truth is that on somebody’s watch, Missouri went from having about 40 percent of their students on grade level to an equal percentage not having even a basic grasp of the material. Is a blue ribbon commission really going to get to the bottom of the problem? Should we expect a reversal of fortune without changing how we do business? I’m not holding my breath.

The Silver Lining on the Blue Ribbon Commission Report

Posted on by Avery Frank

I vividly remember the days when I would ask for a new video game or pair of basketball shoes, and my dad would respond with the classic, “Son, money doesn’t grow on trees.”

Well, I wish twelve-year-old me could show him the Missouri Teacher Recruitment and Retention Blue Ribbon Commission’s report on what needs to be done in order to solve Missouri’s “teaching shortage,” because apparently, a money tree has bloomed and is ripe for the picking.

The report recommended increasing the minimum starting salary for teachers to $38,000, funding the Career Ladder Program (which rewards teachers for extra work that contributes to students’ academic outcomes), establishing a fund to help local school districts pay for the recommended salary increase, adding more paid wellness days (which means hiring more substitute teachers), funding a tuition assistance program for teachers, and providing salary supplements for teachers with National Board Certification.

Funding the starting salary, Career Ladder, and tuition assistance alone would cost an additional $91.5 million—and that is not including the costs for raising other teachers’ salaries who reside above the new $38,000 floor.

While those on the commission were feeling generous endorsing the handout of government funds, similar to Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas (who would give $100 to the bartender just for keeping the ice cubes cold), they did recommend an additional salary supplement for teachers in “high-need” areas.

Show-Me Institute researchers have previously discussed how pay differentiation for teachers could help fix the shortage of specific teachers in the state. Missouri utilizes a “single salary schedule,” which sets a salary floor for teachers who are new and those with 10 years of experience and a master’s degree. The remainder of the salaries in the schedule are calculated by pay increases relating directly to experience and degree acquisition.

This type of schedule rewards teachers solely based on experience and college degrees while ignoring teacher quality, relative teacher supply, and alternative market options. A potential mathematics teacher, who would be in low supply, is therefore not offered her market equivalent wage, and may choose a higher paying vocation. If schools truly want to be competitive and recruit teachers in low-supply fields, then they must respond to competitive market forces.

Almost fifty percent of teachers said they would quit their job if differentiated pay or pay for performance was implemented. Mark Walker, the commission’s chairman, critiqued this stance, stating: “The biggest surprise to us businesspeople serving on the Blue Ribbon Commission is the lack of flexibility you all [the board] has for meeting high-need positions, it’s unbelievably inappropriate in today’s highly competitive market.”

The commission has been tasked with finding solutions to the teaching crisis, and this report could possibly be an impetus to put pay differentiation into practice. I’m glad that leaders of the commission acknowledged that the hostility to pay differentiation is fundamentally unreasonable, but I wish it had been the primary focus of a much less expensive report.

Resource Deployment Isn’t the Solution

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

“We have a problem with resource deployment.” Ya think? This quote from a member of the Missouri Teacher Recruitment and Retention Blue Ribbon Commission doesn’t even begin to address the problems facing public education in our state. The state board of education and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) are focused like lasers on making the job of teaching more attractive—more money, mental health services, tuition assistance, and bonuses, to name a few of the perks proposed by those on the commission that they think will solve the problem. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Missouri students have lost years of learning that they may never get back.

For decades, the state and the federal government have poured billions into the system to try to balance the disconnect between students living in wealthy neighborhoods and students living in poor neighborhoods. The wealth gap between neighborhoods was referred to as the “big white elephant” by the board member who provided the first quote. As it turns out, monopolistic bureaucracies are reliably terrible at solving this problem. Complicated funding formulas try to take into account how much residents of local districts could contribute to public education based on the value of all property in the district in an attempt to redistribute funds from wealthy districts to poor districts. The result is that some districts, such as Brentwood and Ladue, receive about $600 per student from the state, and others—mostly small rural districts—receive as much as $16,000 per student. The federal formula to redistribute resources to low-income districts, also known as Title I, is ridiculously Byzantine and political.

Here’s the problem with “resource deployment.” It hasn’t worked. The achievement gaps between low-income and non-low-income students in Missouri have only gotten wider. In 2019, 45 percent of non-low-income 8th graders scored Proficient or higher in reading on the Nation’s Report Card, compared to just 21 percent of low-income 8th graders. The gap in math was even larger–27 percentage points. In 2003, the gap in reading was 19 percentage points and the gap in math was 22.

We cannot equalize opportunity using a top-down approach. Resources should be deployed to families to spend at the school of their choice. I continue to assert that if low-income families were given the responsibility for choosing which schools received their children’s public education funding, four out of five families would not accept below grade level results.

WSJ Takes Aim at Illinois, Ignores Missouri

Posted on by Avery Frank

The Wall Street Journal recently published an editorial that expressed legitimate shock about the relationship between teacher ratings and rates of proficiency in reading and math on state assessments in Illinois.

The Journal analyzed the teacher ratings of schools in Decatur, Illinois, and found that in 2018, 99.7 percent of its teachers were rated as “excellent or proficient.” These ratings are extremely generous considering the fact that only 2 percent of Black third-grade students in Decatur could read at grade level, and only 1 percent performed at grade level in math. Additionally, only 5 percent of Decatur 11th graders could read at grade level and 4 percent were proficient in math.

While the Journal article focused on Illinois, the mismatch between educational stamps of approval and student performance is not exclusive to schools in that state. A similar jarring mismatch occurs in Missouri when looking at district accreditation and test scores. Accreditation is hard to define (due to its arbitrary nature), but I would define it as whether or not the government approves of the performance of an educational institution. Incredibly, Missouri’s Department of Secondary and Elementary Education (DESE) has granted full accreditation to 99 percent of Missouri school districts, even though rates of proficiency are dismally low in many districts.

For example, Ferguson-Florissant is fully accredited with proficiency rates of 20 percent in English and 7.6 percent in math. How can DESE approve and fully accredit this district’s performance if nine out of ten students are below grade level in math? What is the value in a grading scale if everyone gets an “A”?

As Show-Me Institute analysts have pointed out many times before, DESE’s accreditation granting has little to do with academic performance. Student performance should be the paramount benchmark for district accreditation in Missouri, and yet this has not been the case under both the Missouri School Improvement Plan (5) and the recently passed MSIP (6). MSIP 6 is built on regulatory adherence, financial status, and whether superintendents are certified. The new plan will have its first fully implemented cycle from spring 2023 to fall 2023, and academic indicators will only account for 48 percent of the total score used for granting accreditation.

District accreditation is treated as essentially a “completion assignment” in Missouri, and its perceived unimportance is exemplified by the fact that districts cannot be penalized for poor performance until 2024. Students will certainly be penalized for their performance in these schools, and it is ludicrous that adults cannot be held accountable for their errors.

Missouri may have snuck under the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page radar for now, but if the gap between reality and accountability continues to widen, it may not last forever.

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