Let’s Privatize the Post Office

Posted on by David Stokes

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

I will admit that calling for the privatization of the United States Postal Service (USPS) by free-market, limited-government policy people like me is hardly new. It’s a pretty standard viewpoint for people in positions like mine, sort of the libertarian equivalent of progressives calling for the government to fully fund public schools. But having said that, it really is time to privatize the post office.

In 1934, a federal law was passed that banned any entity except the USPS from placing items in any mailbox. That is the law that limited UPS and, later, FedEx, to parcel delivery. Even your neighbor is not allowed to put that party invitation in your mailbox. (If you are the type of person who reports neighbors who do so to the USPS, you probably don’t receive many party invitations in the first place.)

Until recently, the best defense of the post office monopoly was that, in all honesty, it worked fairly well. Sure, it was a monopoly that somehow managed to lose money each year, but at least the post office did a good job at its primary job of delivering the mail. You put a stamp on a piece of mail and it was delivered the next day if it was going nearby; two days later if it was going a little further; and three days if it was going a long distance. Big-picture concerns about USPS finances could be overlooked because stamps were cheap and the mail reliably went where it was supposed to go. That is, unfortunately, no longer the case.

A recent report on the post office by federal inspectors general found that, on average, on-time delivery of first-class mail has dropped 16 percent over the past year in the exact areas the post office has targeted for improvements. In St. Louis, over just two days in June at the downtown mail processing center, 2.6 million pieces of mail were delayed. There was no weather or mechanical reason for the delays, just bad operational management. Worst of all, sending mail in St. Louis puts your personal finances at risk. There have been multiple federal court convictions in the past year of St. Louis-area postal workers for stealing checks from the mail. The author knows two people who have had their identity stolen and finances ruined in this manner.

If the post office is no longer doing its main job well but is continuing to lose money, the entire system should be opened to competition. I’m well aware that FedEx won’t deliver a Christmas card for 78 cents (the current USPS rate), but if someone wants to pay more to make sure their Christmas card reaches Grandma before Christmas Day, why shouldn’t they be able to? UPS and FedEx should absolutely have a right to deliver first-class mail and place it into a mailbox where it will be better protected from rain and theft. (A reminder that you buy your own mailbox—the government doesn’t give it to you.)

USPS has long had a less-promoted role as a jobs program for political supporters and interest groups. When he was serving as a presidential advisor in the 1960s, former U.S. Senator Patrick Moynihan famously recommended changing to twice-a-day mail delivery, for the sole reason that it would allow the federal government to double the number of mail carriers.

It seems that, at present, the purpose of USPS is to deliver mostly junk mail in order to fund over $400 billion in postal-retiree pension and healthcare costs. Maintaining a failing monopoly to benefit those retirees may be politically popular, but it’s hardly good public policy. As the use of mail continues to decline, hard choices have to be made. Rural post offices shouldn’t be kept open just to appease rural interest groups, and urban post offices shouldn’t be protected against competition just to appease federal employee unions.

I would favor an attempt to sell the entire post office off to private operators. In 2025, the mail is no longer a necessary function of government (I will agree that it used to be). However, simply allowing other operators to compete against USPS by removing the mailbox monopoly would be a great step, too. You get to choose which phone, television, and internet services you use. You should have choice for your mail delivery, too.

We Shouldn’t Pay Teachers for Master’s Degrees

Posted on by Mike Ederer

One of the most consistent findings in education research is that teachers with master’s degrees are no more effective than those without them. This finding has been replicated again and again. Some clever studies have even looked “within teachers” to see if teachers who start teaching without a master’s degree, then get one, improve afterward—they do not.

Paying teachers to get master’s degrees that do not make them more effective is inefficient. Most obviously, it misdirects school district resources—why privilege teachers who get a credential that does not make them better at their jobs when we could use metrics tied to actual performance, or just pay all teachers more? The master’s pay premium also incentivizes teachers to invest tuition money, time, and energy in degrees with no measurable value. And the artificial demand fueled by these policies encourages universities to expand the degree programs themselves. All around, it is a tremendous waste of resources.

A new report released by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) describes the current national policy landscape with respect to the master’s degree premium. The report identifies Missouri as one of just 15 states that require districts to pay a master’s degree premium. In fact, we just re-upped the policy in 2024 with Senate Bill 727, which raised minimum teacher pay and maintained a new, higher minimum pay standard for teachers with master’s degrees (and at least 10 years of experience).

The NCTQ report also looked at salary schedules in 140 large districts in the United States, including three in Missouri: Kansas City, Springfield, and St. Louis. All three have large pay premiums for teachers with master’s degrees, especially highly experienced teachers. For example, with 20 or more years of experience the premium exceeds $10,000 annually in all three districts, and it gets as high as $18,600 in Kansas City.

This is a steep price to pay for a credential that has been demonstrated repeatedly to have no connection to classroom effectiveness. It’s time to end this practice.

Hy-Vee Wants to Give the Heave-Ho to a CID

Posted on by Scott Tanner

The grocery chain Hy-Vee is suing the city of Lee’s Summit over the creation of a Community Improvement District (CID). Good for the company for fighting back against these special taxing districts and their abuses. In this case, the abuse is including Hy-Vee in the district at all. The store did not want to be included in the district, but Lee’s Summit and the developers included it anyway. Hy-Vee contends that it was included against its will because a large grocery store generates an enormous amount of sales taxes that the board of the new CID district wants. (I am not going to give the CID board any credit by writing “needs”; I’m going with “wants.”) Is Hy-Vee correct?

Almost certainly. (And I’m only adding the “almost” because it is being litigated over and you never know how it will turn out.)

This isn’t the first time grocery stores have been targeted by special taxing districts simply because developers want the significant money they generate. In Wentzville, a Schnucks store was forcibly included in a CID that was used to help fund a Walmart development. If that sounds insane, it is. One grocery company, Schnucks, was forced to levy a special tax against its will to benefit one of its main competitors.

In St. Louis, an existing CID board tried to expand the CID’s boundaries to include another  Schnucks, primarily to get access to all of the money it generated. Schnucks opposed that one, too, and good for the company. As the company explained in a letter to elected officials:

It is our position that addressing the problem goes beyond additional cleaning, and we would encourage the City to tap into funds available to address these issues, rather than institute an additional tax on citizens who are buying their needed groceries for their families.

Grocery stores are not large ATMs with food in them that special taxing districts can extort whenever they feel like it. Good for Hy-Vee for fighting back in Lee’s Summit, and good for Schnucks to have opposed these ideas previously. Special taxing districts like CIDs and TDDs are, in the vast majority of cases, nothing more than vehicles for corporate welfare. They are bad enough even when all the property owners agree. But compelling grocery chains to participate in them against the will of the stores is just the sour cherry on top.

The EPA Continues to Review Carbon Emissions Standards

Posted on by Scott Tanner

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released a proposal to rescind its own 2009 Endangerment Finding that has been used to justify some federal greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations. The outcome could reshape national climate policy, impact the automobile industry, and carry significant implications for Missouri.

Brief Background of the Endangerment Finding

To oversimplify, the Endangerment Finding declares that a mix of six greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare, primarily because they contribute to climate change. These six gases are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). In the finding, the EPA observed that U.S. motor vehicles and engines emitted four of those greenhouse gases, which collectively amounted to 4.3 percent of global GHG emissions in 2005.

Thus, the agency concluded that vehicle GHG emissions also endanger public health and that “contributors must do their part even if their contributions to the global climate change problem, measured in terms of percentage, are smaller than typically encountered when tackling solely regional or local environmental issues.” Prior to this, the EPA did not regulate greenhouse gases.

As a result, the Endangerment Finding has been crucial for allowing the EPA to regulate vehicle GHG emissions and reduce them, which in part has paved the way for electric vehicles (EVs).

The EPA’s 2025 Proposal and Potential Impacts

The recent proposal to rescind the Endangerment Finding leans on a few key arguments:

(1) The authors of the proposal argue that the EPA exceeded its statutory authority under the Clean Air Act, which was designed to regulate “criteria pollutants” that include nitrogen oxides (NOₓ), sulfur oxides (SOₓ), particulate matter, carbon monoxide, ozone (O3), and lead (Pb).

These criteria pollutants have direct effects on human health—eye, nose, throat irritation; aggravation of respiratory diseases such as asthma, coughing and difficulty breathing, cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, chest pain, and more. The proposal argues the effects of GHGs on human health through climate change are indirect, and should not be regulated under the same directive.

(2) The authors of the proposal claim that the Endangerment Finding’s measures of harm, such as more frequent heat waves and extreme weather events, have not borne out despite increases in GHG concentrations (driven primarily by increased emissions from foreign sources).

(3) The authors question whether federal mandates regulating vehicle GHG emissions can meaningfully address climate change as they claim there is no existing technology capable of making a “measurable” impact.

One excerpt from the EPA’s proposal conveys the potential impact on the automobile industry, if finalized:

“In connection with the proposed rescission of the Endangerment Finding, if finalized, this action would remove all existing regulations that require new motor vehicle and new motor vehicle engine manufacturers to measure, report, or comply with GHG emission standards . . .

. . . As a result of these proposed changes, motor vehicle and engine manufacturers would no longer have future or current obligations for the measurement, control, or reporting of GHG emissions for any vehicle or engine, including for previously manufactured [model years] MYs. However, we [EPA] are not proposing to reopen or modify any regulations necessary for criteria pollutant and air toxic measurement and standards, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) testing, and associated fuel economy labeling requirements.”

In theory, if the finding is rescinded, we could see lower car prices. (However, this is not  guaranteed because car companies have priorities of their own). Repealing the Endangerment Finding, along with the One Big Beautiful Bill’s (OBBB) phase-out of EV tax credits, could bring significant shifts to the transportation sector.

 

Missouri’s Nuclear Opportunity with Avery Frank

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Show-Me Institute policy analyst Avery Frank about his new report, Connecting Nuclear Energy’s Past and Present: Guiding Missouri’s Future. They discuss why electricity demand is rising again, why major companies are turning back to nuclear, and how Missouri can position itself to benefit. From data centers and AI to regulatory hurdles and smart policy steps like a state nuclear advisory council, Avery explains how Missouri could play a leading role in America’s nuclear resurgence.

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Timestamps

00:00 The Resurgence of Nuclear Energy
03:37 Challenges and Historical Context
07:30 Missouri’s Nuclear Potential
12:06 Future of Nuclear Energy and Policy
16:09 Conclusion and Future Outlook

Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:00)
This morning we’re joined on the podcast by Avery Frank, policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute. You’ve got a paper out, and I’m really looking forward to talking to you about it because I have a lot of questions. You’ve done a lot of research and analysis around nuclear energy, and I see a lot in the media these days about the resurgence of nuclear energy.

Number one, why does nuclear energy seem to be back, bigger and better than ever? And secondly—well, I’ll start with that. Why is nuclear energy back in the news so much?

Avery Frank (00:34)

Nuclear power surged in the United States during the Cold War. Electricity demand was soaring—it kept going up and up. Nuclear energy is clean, reliable, and powerful. Just in Missouri, we have one nuclear power plant and it supplies 14% of the entire state’s electricity. So when you need a lot of electricity, nuclear power is something you can turn to.

Since 2007, electricity demand has pretty much flatlined as we’ve become more efficient. But with data centers, artificial intelligence, and electric manufacturing, electricity demand is back on the rise, looking similar to Cold War–era growth. Just data centers by themselves are supposed to go from 3% of U.S. electricity demand today to 8–12% by 2030. That’s a huge jump.

Susan Pendergrass (01:56)
Well, if it’s so great, why did it go away? I remember Three Mile Island, and I saw the movie about Chernobyl. When it gets bad, it gets really bad. Why did nuclear go away so hard if it’s such a great, clean, reliable source of energy?

Avery Frank (02:26)
I’d say it went away for three key reasons: public fear, regulation, and regulatory attitude. Most of the time, public fear from events like Three Mile Island drove increased regulation.

Two key events stand out. First, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) *correction* in 1970. That was a huge blow for the nuclear industry. Construction costs went up 25% and projects took two years longer. Then came Three Mile Island in 1979. It was mitigated by safeguards, but public fear skyrocketed. Costs afterwards were three times higher and construction took twice as long. That was the big turning point.

Susan Pendergrass (03:54)
Then if it’s that expensive, why is it coming back?

Avery Frank (04:14)
Companies are turning to nuclear out of desperation. They need a lot of power, as I mentioned with data centers, but they also have clean climate pledges. They can’t really do it with solar or wind. They’re kind of backed into a corner.

Susan Pendergrass (04:20)
Why not solar or wind?

Avery Frank (04:39)
Solar and wind are intermittent resources. Nuclear plants run consistently. Data centers can’t have outages—you need steady, reliable power. That’s what nuclear does best.

Susan Pendergrass (05:08)
Does it generate a lot of nuclear waste?

Avery Frank (05:15)
In the U.S. we use a once-through cycle. We refine uranium, put it in a plant, then seal it up forever. Other countries like France and Japan recycle their fuel. About 96% of spent fuel is still reusable, but the U.S. stopped recycling in the 1970s. If we restarted, we could reduce waste significantly, which already isn’t that large to begin with.

Susan Pendergrass (06:09)
So what could Missouri be doing right now to take advantage of this moment?

Avery Frank (06:32)
Timing is key. Missouri already has advantages: intellectual capital, infrastructure, the Missouri University Research Reactor, and Missouri S&T producing top nuclear engineers. We also have retiring coal plants that could be retrofitted into advanced nuclear plants, cutting costs by up to 35%.

Federal reforms like the ADVANCE Act are making things easier, but Missouri could act too. For example, we could form a Nuclear Advisory Council, like Tennessee did, to identify strengths and weaknesses and make recommendations. That’s attracted significant investment there.

Susan Pendergrass (08:14)
What about public-private partnerships?

Avery Frank (08:37)
That’s a great point. We believe the free market can play a big role, just like it did in space travel. One idea is Consumer Regulated Electricity (CRE), where private developers build small modular reactors for large customers like data centers on their own dime, outside the regulated grid. That takes the burden off ratepayers while meeting rising demand.

Susan Pendergrass (10:26)
Because I assume energy demand forecasts keep being revised up, right?

Avery Frank (11:03)
Exactly, and they’re hard to predict. What if AI suddenly uses less power? Then Missouri could be stuck with excess nuclear capacity. Letting the free market take some of that risk makes sense.

Susan Pendergrass (11:39)
What about the last Missouri legislative session?

Avery Frank (12:06)
Senate Bill 4 passed. It was a big utility bill that allowed “construction work in progress,” meaning utilities can charge ratepayers during construction, not just when a plant comes online. It’s unclear if it applies to nuclear, but it could. I’ve suggested treating it more like a bond, so consumers who shoulder the risk also see some reward, like lower rates or refunds.

Susan Pendergrass (13:44)
Any other signs that Missouri welcomes nuclear investment?

Avery Frank (13:47)
Yes. I attended the Missouri Nuclear Energy Summit in Columbia. Governor Kehoe was there and said we need to develop nuclear at business speed, not bureaucratic speed. That shows real resolve. Legislators are supportive too. Missouri has the advantages and infrastructure—we just need the right regulatory environment.

If Missouri created a Nuclear Advisory Council, like Tennessee, it could attract significant investment and expertise. Energy availability is now one of the top factors for companies deciding where to locate. If Missouri can offer abundant, reliable, clean energy, we’ll be far more competitive.

Susan Pendergrass (16:20)
That’s awesome. You have a paper out on this, available at showmeinstitute.org. Thanks for coming on and explaining it to us.

Avery Frank (16:32)
Awesome, thank you for the interview, Susan.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

Why America Can’t Build Enough Housing with Edward L. Glaeser

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Edward L.Glaeser, professor of economics at Harvard University and nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, about America’s housing crisis. They discuss why affordability is a supply problem, how zoning and land-use rules drive up costs, the decline of suburban building, and what states like Missouri can do to encourage growth and restore opportunity.

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Timestamps

00:00 The Housing Crisis: Understanding the Supply Problem
02:19 The Role of Land Use Regulations
05:15 The Impact of Local Zoning on Housing Development
08:11 The Shift in Public Perception and NIMBYism
10:56 The Decline of Mobility and Its Consequences
14:03 Future of Housing: Urban vs. Suburban Development
16:25 Policy Solutions for Housing Affordability

Transcript

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Susan Pendergrass (00:00)
Always a pleasure to talk to Dr. Edward Glaeser of Harvard. And you have a new paper out that looks at how housing has changed.

I want to talk about that. I was just saying before we started recording that I had Brian Kaplan on and we talked about how it’s a supply problem, not a demand problem, but explain to me why, first of all, what’s going on now with housing in the United States and why places like Los Angeles continue to just not have enough housing so that people are living on the streets?

Edward Glaeser (00:32)
Okay, so big question. Of course, homelessness is partially about housing supply. It’s also about mental illness. It’s about fentanyl. It’s about other things as well. But there’s no question that the rent is too darn high, as the party bearing that name says, and that housing prices in America have gotten to be astonishingly high, not just in coastal enclaves like—

Susan Pendergrass (00:33)
Big question.

Edward Glaeser (00:56)
—Los Angeles, but also in places like Atlanta, like Phoenix, that used to be bastions of affordability for ordinary Americans, largely because they built enough. Those places are increasingly also turning into places where a great house in a great neighborhood just seems out of reach for middle-class Americans. Now, you can build further out, and they still are, but they’re building much less in the sort of moderate density,

Susan Pendergrass (01:14)
But why? Can’t they just keep building?

Edward Glaeser (01:22)
—medium-price areas that used to build a ton of housing in the 70s and 80s. They’re just not doing that anymore. And I want to just, you know, let’s get the economics of supply and demand across to the audience, right? Some of your audience may have taken Economics 101, in which case they may remember those graphs that show a supply curve and a demand curve. But basically all you need to remember is that when prices are high and the quantity of something is high, then it’s likely to be a demand problem.

If the price of something is way up and the quantity of it is way down, that’s a supply problem. Because if it were all about demand, the quantity should be up as well. That’s how we fundamentally know this is a supply problem, not a demand problem.

When you look at Atlanta, Phoenix, and Dallas, you see this change: they used to build like crazy, and now they don’t. At the national level, if we built between 2000 and 2020 at the same rate we did between 1980 and 2000, we’d have 15 million more homes. Housing would be far more affordable.

Susan Pendergrass (02:46)
Yes, so then why aren’t construction firms building the houses? I assume the profit margins are similar. Why not or more? What’s stopping them?

Edward Glaeser (02:56)
I have to take you back 20 years to my first work on this. We think land-use regulation is the great cause of how we’ve produced scarcity in a land of natural abundance.

We know this across metropolitan areas: those more heavily zoned have higher prices and less housing. Within metros, towns with larger minimum lot sizes get less building. That’s obvious: if you require two acres per home, you’ll get fewer homes.

The most economic way we know this is by comparing prices to marginal cost. If markets are relatively unfettered, consumer prices equal firms’ marginal costs. That’s Econ 101. Housing isn’t monopolized—there are thousands of developers. So prices should match costs.

But in New York City, for example, adding a condo unit just means adding a story. More than 20 years ago, Joe Gyourko, Raven Saks, and I found that construction costs were about half of condo prices. That implied a big barrier—what we called the “zoning tax.”

In suburban areas, we measured land value by comparing one-acre vs. two-acre properties. Coastal metros showed big gaps between construction costs and home prices. Again, zoning and land-use rules were to blame.

In pricier parts of Atlanta and Phoenix—Buckhead, Scottsdale—they’ve basically gone “full Los Angeles,” making construction very difficult.

Susan Pendergrass (06:14)
Okay.

Edward Glaeser (06:28)
Costs themselves also rose. Between 1900 and 1940, building costs were flat. Between 1940 and 1970, they dropped—thanks to master builders like William Levitt applying mass production. But after 1970, costs rose.

Why? Because zoning meant projects got smaller: 3,000-unit developments shrank to 30 units or 3 units. Builders got smaller too. In most industries, employees work in large establishments. In residential construction, most work in firms with fewer than 10 employees. An 8-person firm doesn’t have an R&D department.

So construction lost the innovation seen in other industries.

Susan Pendergrass (07:15)
Right.

Edward Glaeser (07:17)
And since 1970, patenting in construction has collapsed while patenting in manufacturing skyrocketed. Innovation disappeared, leaving mom-and-pop builders stuck with outdated methods.

Susan Pendergrass (07:44)
People say it’s supply chains or young people not going into the trades that makes housing expensive. But it doesn’t check out, given how expensive homes are. Out here in exurbs, big developments keep going up—but once people buy, they often oppose further building. They say, “I came here for rural space. Don’t let more people in.” Does that happen in Phoenix and Atlanta?

Edward Glaeser (08:29)
That happens everywhere. Once people have what they want, new building rarely benefits them. Change is scary, so they resist—even if development wouldn’t really harm them.

It’s tragic. America was supposed to be a land where outsiders could come find opportunity. Instead, we’ve become a nation of insiders pulling up the drawbridge. Mancur Olson’s Rise and Decline of Nations predicted this: collusive groups protect their own interests at the expense of others. Forty years later, it feels right.

Susan Pendergrass (10:13)
I saw an article about how mobility is way down—people aren’t moving within counties, states, or across states. Couples with kids used to move up from starter homes. Now they’re stuck because they can’t afford the next step.

Edward Glaeser (10:50)
Exactly. This isn’t a three-year trend—it’s a 30-year trend. It’s not about interest rates or supply chains. Productivity in construction has stagnated.

Economists talk about Baumol’s disease: stagnant industries see rising costs because labor gets bid up elsewhere. But most industries innovate. Construction hasn’t. We still build homes the same way we did decades ago.

Susan Pendergrass (11:59)
If anything, we’ve made it harder—with codes, inspections, permits. It’s so cumbersome, people avoid it.

Edward Glaeser (12:01)
Absolutely. Local zoning and federal rules also block modular, mass-produced housing. Japan does it with just nine zoning codes nationwide, making uniform mass production possible. Scandinavia too. We could have attractive, customizable mass-produced homes here.

Susan Pendergrass (13:17)
So where is this headed? Are suburbs in decline? Will people return to cities? Or just stay stuck?

Edward Glaeser (13:38)
Without policy change, there will be pain. Some urban cores are seeing more building, since cities often have groups that want development—employers, unions, banks. Suburbs are harder; homeowners dominate and resist.

Real change likely requires state governments. Asking suburbs to change on their own is futile. States can limit zoning abuse—some already do. At the federal level, modest steps like the Build More Housing Near Transit Act could help.

Susan Pendergrass (17:35)
In Missouri, we tried tax credits for low-income housing, but developers traded them without building. It seems more effective to just let middle- and upper-income housing get built—then people naturally move up and free up more affordable homes.

Edward Glaeser (18:45)
I strongly agree. Poor people typically drive used cars—they should also live in “used” houses. Filtering is natural. Creating two classes of housing—affordable vs. everything else—is unhealthy. Real affordability means anyone can rent or buy at a reasonable price, not just lottery winners of subsidies.

Susan Pendergrass (20:07)
Yes. Some places have nothing under a million dollars. That forces sprawl, but even sprawl is slowing.

Edward Glaeser (20:42)
And ironically, stopping suburban building hurts the environment. Preventing infill just pushes growth further out, creating more driving and emissions. California has the mildest climate, making it the lowest-carbon region—but decades of policy stopped construction there.

Susan Pendergrass (21:28)
It’s counterintuitive, but your work makes sense of it. Thank you for making it clear.

Edward Glaeser (21:58)
Thank you—and I’m always grateful to join your podcast and work with the Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass (22:01)
Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us.

Edward Glaeser (22:06)
Thank you.

 

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

 

What the Media Gets Wrong About School Choice with Matthew Ladner

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

Susan Pendergrass talks with Matthew Ladner, senior advisor for education policy implementation at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, about a recent Washington Post article blaming Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts for school closures in the Roosevelt Elementary School District. They unpack the real reasons behind declining enrollment, the role of open enrollment and charter schools, and why most Arizona students exercising school choice are still in public schools. The discussion covers how media narratives overlook parent-driven decisions, the political resistance to letting kids leave low-performing districts, and why open enrollment could be a game changer for states like Missouri. Ladner also shares his broader perspective on the post-COVID shift toward educational self-reliance and what it means for the future of public education.

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Episode Transcript

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Susan Pendergrass (00:00)
Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast this morning, Matt Ladner of the Heritage Foundation. You are no stranger to Arizona education or school choice, right? Nor am I. I feel like I could be wrong, but we met at the Goldwater Institute around the year 2002. Does that sound right? It’s been a minute and it was so—

Matthew Ladner (00:03)
That could be, yes, indeed.

Susan Pendergrass (00:28)
It was surprising to me to see in the Washington Post a week or so ago, basically a hit piece on Arizona education. Because oftentimes Arizona’s held up like Florida as one of the states that’s really making strides in both test scores overall, but in particular in Arizona, test scores and growth scores for low-income kids. They’ve really taken bold moves and made an actual difference in outcomes.

And yet we have this piece that says because Arizona is giving parents the option of a scholarship instead of an assigned public school, that is killing this poor Roosevelt Elementary School in Phoenix. I assume you saw the article.

Matthew Ladner (01:08)
I did indeed. Well, so I moved to Arizona in 2003. Of course, I was doing work here before I moved here. So we probably met the year before at the Goldwater Institute.

Susan Pendergrass (01:10)
What’s your take? What’s your hot take?

Matthew Ladner (01:24)
The first I heard of the Roosevelt Elementary School District was in 2005, when someone I worked with had a child who was attending a Roosevelt school and was brutally assaulted. By brutally assaulted, I mean rushed to the emergency room based on what happened to this child.

Susan Pendergrass (01:39)
My gosh.

Matthew Ladner (01:49)
Obviously, the school administration did not react well. In fact, they questioned whether the attack had been provoked—classic blame-the-victim. At that time, I put my coworker in touch with someone who did informally what we would today call navigation—helping people find schools.

Susan Pendergrass (01:59)
Thanks.

Matthew Ladner (02:13)
At that time, it was incredibly difficult to find a school for this woman’s children. The school year had already started. There were charter schools in South Phoenix, where the Roosevelt Elementary School District is located, but they had waitlists. We had scholarship tax credits, but the school year had already started, the money had already been committed, and there were waitlists.

We had open enrollment, but school districts were not interested in taking students from Roosevelt. In fact, I recall my coworker calling about an open enrollment transfer, and when she said her kids attended Roosevelt Elementary, they hung up the phone on her. It was visceral. She was almost as stuck as she would have been in 1993, the year before Arizona started any kind of school choice.

Fast-forward 20 years, no one in Arizona is stuck like that anymore. Every child has access to an ESA program. While only a minority actually use it, it’s available to everyone. That, I believe, motivates these drive-by shooting journalistic exercises, because very powerful vested interests don’t like people having the option of leaving.

If you read the Washington Post article, the unstated hypothesis is that the world would be a better place if people like my former coworker did not have the option of going somewhere else.

Susan Pendergrass (04:04)
That’s exactly right.

They chronicle the closing of an elementary school in that district. People are sad, heartbroken, and anxious. It’s a tragic story. But dwindling enrollment is less due to the ESA program and more due to the fact that in Arizona, you can pick any public school in the state.

In fact, they cite one group of low-income parents of color who started their own micro-school to avoid going to that school. Yet the counterfactual is: “If only they didn’t have the option of leaving, this school would stay open.” As if we should have kept kids trapped in a failing school. Hard to believe that’s the case in 2025.

Matthew Ladner (04:52)
Absolutely.

It’s offensive to argue the world would be better if people didn’t have the option of leaving a situation that wasn’t working for their child. The reality is, the largest form of school choice in Arizona remains district open enrollment.

Back in 2017, a study of Phoenix-area school districts found that the number of open enrollment kids—within and between districts—was about twice the number of charter school students. And Arizona has the nation’s largest charter sector.

Susan Pendergrass (05:42)
About how many kids are in charter schools?

Matthew Ladner (05:44)
Today it’s around 21% of public school enrollment. Back in 2017 it was about 16%.

Open enrollment is the King Kong of school choice. If Arizona has a school choice justice league, Superman is district open enrollment. Then come charter schools, and trailing far behind are private choice programs.

I do understand people don’t like school closures. Even schools that are underperforming and half-empty have emotional attachment. When you move to close them, people say, “My grandfather graduated from that school—how dare you close it!”

Susan Pendergrass (06:33)
No, yes.

Matthew Ladner (06:55)
State data shows Roosevelt has 6,500 kids who live in the district and attend its schools. But 5,700 kids live in Roosevelt and attend a charter. Another 2,700 attend a different district. About 800 use an ESA.

A final report showed only 129 ESA students previously attended a Roosevelt school. If you’re running a 6,500-student district, you don’t close five schools over 129 students. The Post article was misguided and misleading. Roosevelt’s enrollment has been declining since about 2006. There’s also the baby bust since 2007, which Arizona has worse than most states.

Susan Pendergrass (09:11)
Right. And in addition to bad reporting, the article says this ESA program “offers a window into the GOP vision for K–12 education.” In other words, nothing to do with what parents want. It’s supposedly a GOP political strategy to kill public schools.

That’s damaging because a lot of people don’t read past the headline. In Missouri, we don’t even have open enrollment. Some of our lowest-performing districts demand to be carved out from letting kids leave because they believe they’ll all leave and the district will collapse.

For example, in Ferguson, only 3% of 8th graders are proficient in math. Yet they don’t want kids to leave, even though they’re arguably not even fulfilling the constitutional duty to provide a free and fair public education.

Matthew Ladner (11:02)
Yeah, it’s bad all around. The Fordham Institute’s open enrollment map of Ohio shows every urban district is surrounded by districts that don’t participate. Arizona is the opposite. Almost all districts do open enrollment, including Scottsdale Unified—where about 25% of kids come from outside the district.

They do that because 9,000 kids who live in Scottsdale attend elsewhere. Financial incentives pushed even wealthy districts to open up.

Susan Pendergrass (13:10)
Right.

Matthew Ladner (13:23)
The Post piece framed this as a GOP vision, but really it’s about giving families dignity and autonomy. The underlying hypothesis was that low-income Hispanic and African American parents in Roosevelt are doing something wrong by making the best choices for their kids. That’s offensive, and bad reporting on top of it.

Susan Pendergrass (14:14)
Right. In Missouri, we rank all schools. When we launched that website, protesters said it was racist because many low-performing schools enrolled Black and brown kids. But those kids are already stuck in F schools. Shouldn’t we let them out?

Instead, the approach is: “Let’s not tell them it’s an F school, and if they find out, let’s not let them out.” That’s insulting to parents.

Meanwhile, in St. Louis, schools are losing kids but the district passed a moratorium on new charters because they know a new charter would fill up immediately.

Matthew Ladner (15:42)
Right.

Susan Pendergrass (15:43)
What’s your global view? In Missouri, we’re fighting lawsuits against our scholarship program. Do you see this as a last gasp, or what?

Matthew Ladner (16:03)
Not a last gasp. The struggle will continue past our lifetimes. But we are making progress.

The reason you see lawsuits and agenda-driven journalism is that there was an awakening during COVID. People realized the district system isn’t run for parents—it’s captured by unions and contractors. Schools are not about your kids. They’re about employees and contracts.

Now we’re seeing a self-reliance movement in education—school choice, homeschooling, co-ops. It’s growing. And frankly, Randy Weingarten’s actions during COVID made her the poster child for this failure.

Susan Pendergrass (18:18)
In terms of keeping schools closed and how she reacted?

Matthew Ladner (18:21)
Exactly. If you didn’t realize during COVID that the system wasn’t about you, someone needs to draw you a picture.

Susan Pendergrass (18:33)
The protests with coffins in the street, saying we were sending teachers to their deaths—they overplayed it a bit.

Matthew Ladner (18:37)
Yeah. And now we’re in a different environment. Young parents I talk to say there’s no way they’re sending kids to district schools.

That’s not to say everyone in districts is bad. There are good teachers trapped in a bad system. But the exciting part is teachers leaving to start their own schools. In Florida, there’s nothing stopping them, and it’s beautiful to see.

Susan Pendergrass (19:46)
Yes. In Missouri, we’ve cut off the teacher-as-entrepreneur option. It’s too bad. Every summer, parents reach out to me desperate to transfer kids to other districts, but we have nothing for them—except paying very high tuition.

It reminds me of your coworker stuck in Roosevelt. People say, “Just move.” But not everyone can move, nor should they have to.

Matthew Ladner (20:49)
Right.

Susan Pendergrass (21:09)
When I see a major outlet still saying in 2025 that ESAs are killing public education, when it’s really poor parents finding alternatives, that’s sad.

Matthew Ladner (21:28)
Exactly. It’s not up to me or lawmakers to decide where kids go. Families should decide, and that’s as it should be.

Susan Pendergrass (21:55)
Thank you so much for joining us. We have to keep this in front of people, and I appreciate you coming on.

Matthew Ladner (22:05)
Thank you, Susan.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

Denied Entrance at the Port of Call

Posted on by Scott Tanner

It is often said that government taxes and spends like drunken sailors, and that metaphor is particularly appropriate when referring to Missouri’s local port districts. Port districts are another one of those beloved quasi-governmental agencies. If there is one thing we have too much of in Missouri, it is quasi-governmental agencies.

Port districts exist, in theory, to build and manage port facilities along rivers. When they actually focus on that job, I have no complaints. But in reality, many of the port districts are focused on other things, such as granting tax subsidies or engaging in government corruption. (The latter is less common, thankfully.)

The City of St. Louis’s port authority legitimately operates port facilities along the Mississippi. However, it is also substantially engaged in the granting of tax subsidies, usually for businesses that have absolutely nothing to do with rivers or shipping. For example, the port authority passed a one-cent special “port” sales tax for the St. Louis soccer team to be charged at the soccer stadium that the team gets to keep for its own purposes. (The soccer team has stated that it will use those funds to fix groundwater issues, so I guess it’s at least related to water.)

That was the city’s first “port” sales tax. Now there is a hotel, retail, and condo redevelopment downtown that also wants in on the game. The Jefferson Arms redevelopment has also requested a “port” sales tax of one percent. This is on top of the tax-increment financing subsidy it has already received, as well as the state and federal historic tax credits it got, and the community improvement district and transportation development district extra sales taxes it has applied for and will likely receive. Could it be that the developer wants to socialize the risk and cost, while privatizing the profit?

But a strange thing happened when the developer and its consultants tried to get the sales tax approved by the port authority. The port board said, “Wait, not just yet.” (Trust me, I wish I could say it said “no,” but the vote was tabled, not defeated.)

As Commissioner William Kay Jr. noted at the hearing: “If all three districts are approved, the Jefferson Arms building would have the highest sales tax rate in the city at 12.67%. We’ve got the CID, we’ve got the TDD—the tax rate right now will be 11.67%,” Kay said. “That’s the high mark for the city. I do not think the port authority needs to get into the business of subsidizing these projects.”

Let me reiterate: the Jefferson Arms project has nothing to do with a port. The use of port authorities to create one more tax subsidy opportunity in St. Louis, Kansas City, or anywhere else is terrible public policy. It’s great to see one agency say “not yet.” Hopefully, that “not yet” becomes a “no” in the future, both for this instance and many other subsidy proposals around the state.

Furthermore, the state legislature should remove the ability of port districts to issue tax subsidies or institute new sales taxes. Ports should be funded with user fees to the largest extent possible, and should not be another tool in the corporate welfare toolbox.

Does Democratic Accountability Work in Public Education?

Posted on by Scott Tanner

I used to believe that local school board elections were an effective tool for holding public schools accountable, but I don’t anymore.

On the surface, school board elections seem like they should serve an accountability role. The logic is straightforward: if school policies veer too far left or right, or if schools underperform, voters can replace the board. School board members, knowing they can be removed, enact representative and sensible policies to avoid this fate.

However, in practice, it doesn’t work this way.

One reason is that school board elections are usually held off-cycle, when voter turnout is low. This gives outsized influence to organized interest groups—namely teachers’ unions—even though they represent a small fraction of the population. There is clear evidence that teachers’ unions have great sway in school board elections. The result is that election outcomes reflect the will of a small segment of the population with high personal stakes.

This recently released study from the Annenberg Institute reinforces my skepticism about the value of democratic accountability. The authors analyzed data from over 50,000 school board elections across 16 states, including Missouri. They find that school board elections are often non-competitive. Over a third of elections are uncontested and, as in other elections (e.g., state and federal legislative elections), when incumbents run, they usually win (more than 80 percent of the time). Most school board turnover isn’t due to electoral defeat, but incumbents simply choosing not to run again.

The influence of interest groups like teachers’ unions likely contributes to these findings. Potential competitors for school board seats know that if they run against a union’s preferred candidate, they’ll lose. In the authors’ words, “if competitive races characterized by retrospective voting are indeed essential to the health of local democracy and public education, our results paint a grim picture.” (p. 4; note that “retrospective voting” is a political science term that means voters make decisions based on the past performance of the party or candidate in power.)

So, democratic accountability in education is not what we want it to be. Can it be fixed? I’m not optimistic, but one change that would help would be to move school board elections onto the same cycle as general elections. This would increase voter turnout and reduce the influence of interest groups, though the interest groups would fight such a change. It would also help if we had more transparent reporting about school performance. There is no denying that local voters are apathetic about schools, but maybe if voters in low-performing districts better understood school performance, they would be more inclined to act.

Even if changes like these help, democratic accountability is unlikely to become a powerful lever for change. This strengthens the case for investing in alternative approaches: market-based accountability, and even top-down accountability from the state.

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