Parents Are Taking Control of Education

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

This has been an incredible school year by a number of measures. Most school districts have rebuilt their education delivery systems. Teachers have been forced to lean on technology whether they wanted to or not. But I believe families have experienced the biggest changes. After a scramble to figure out how to manage a complete school shutdown last spring, they have been dealing with changing plans and poor communication from districts. It’s not surprising that so many have taken things into their own hands and created pandemic pods (small classes outside traditional school districts) for their children.

What is surprising is how pervasive this apparently is. EdChoice has been polling parents since the shutdown last spring, and its latest poll results indicate that a shocking 35 percent of parents now report that their children are in pandemic pods, and another 18 percent are looking for one. Over half of parents, according to this survey, are writing (or trying to write) their own playbook for how and where their children will be educated. This represents a major disruption that is not going to just go away when schools reopen.

Equally surprising, nearly 70 percent of teachers surveyed expressed at least some interest in teaching in a pandemic pod. Teacher frustration seems to be high. They are dealing with mixed signals and many have to swap between teaching in person, recording virtual lessons, and virtual instruction in real time. The thought of just teaching eight or ten students in a home with no district bureaucracy must be tempting.

We are all exhausted by COVID and ready for things to go back to normal. But normal now is everyone wearing masks, touch-free bathrooms, and no hugging. Some of that will go away and some of it will stay. The same is true for public education. Families and teachers are taking ownership of public education like never before. To have some of that stick would be a much-needed step in the right direction.

October 22: Virtual Town Hall with Grover Norquist – Tax Reform and America’s National Debt Crisis

Posted on by Posted

Join us on Thursday, October 22 at 11:00 AM for a special town hall with Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist. Mr. Norquist will discuss tax reform and the looming national debt crisis in America before taking questions submitted by the audience.

REGISTER HERE

Questions can be submitted prior to the event by emailing them to [email protected]

Speaker Bio:

Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a taxpayer advocacy group he founded in 1985 at President Reagan’s request. ATR works to limit the size and cost of government and opposes higher taxes at the federal, state, and local levels and supports tax reform that moves towards taxing consumed income one time at one rate.

Chesterfield Quick to Demand More from Taxpayers

Posted on by Corianna Baier

Apparently, Chesterfield lawmakers are feeling the financial stress of the COVID-19 crisis and the subsequent economic downturn. In the latest newsletter to citizens, the mayor announced that the city will “put before the voters a very small property tax.” Already? We are still in the midst of this crisis, and Chesterfield is already asking for more money from taxpayers?

Though it’s felt like a long time for those of us working from home or locked in small apartments, we are only six months into this economic episode. It’s difficult to determine how much the economic shutdown will affect yearly revenues after only six months, especially since we don’t know when the economy will rebound. With so much unknown, how can Chesterfield have already decided that it needs a property tax? Even if Chesterfield really does need revenue right now, is this the best time to levy additional taxes on citizens when unemployment remains high and businesses still haven’t recovered?

Is Chesterfield really in such dire need for additional funding? This certainly isn’t the first economic downturn that the city has seen and probably won’t be the last, so why does the city seem so unprepared?  Why not shift some budget priorities around until the economy picks back up?

Cities should practice some fiscal responsibility themselves before they ask taxpayers for more of their hard-earned money. Millions of Americans have had to make financial sacrifices as a result of the pandemic; cities should do the same before reaching into the pockets of taxpayers. Chesterfield is probably one of many cities that will struggle with lost revenue, but it appears to be one of the first in Missouri to try and raise taxes as a result. Hopefully this isn’t a glimpse into the future for all of us; a tax increase is the last thing that people need right now.

It’s Time to Rethink How We Fund Public Education

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

It’s quite clear that we’re facing a series of fights over who gets the dwindling pot of public money in Missouri over the next couple of years. Tens of thousands of Missourians have lost their jobs and will be looking for more government support. And fewer people working means less state income tax revenue. At the same time, we recently voted to expand Medicaid.

So far, public education has been held basically harmless. Regardless of how or where they’re delivering education, school districts can use attendance numbers from either last year or the year before to calculate their state aid. But that won’t matter if there is less money to distribute. There aren’t many places to cut state spending other than public education. Teachers probably won’t get raises and class sizes will increase. There is likely to be an outcry.

One area where there could be a little give is reconsidering the concept of local control. Missouri has 520 public school districts. The average Missouri school district has just over 400 students. That’s a school, not a district. We have 64 districts that had 50 or fewer students in 2018–19. I know that communities feel strongly about their Eagles or their Tigers, but it’s really expensive to have so many separate bureaucracies.

According to the fiscal survey administered by the U.S. Department of Education every year, Missouri had over $360 million dollars in general administration spending in 2016–17 (latest year available). This includes expenditures for board of education and executive administration services and other school district administrative functions. At roughly $400 per student, Missouri is ranked 12th from the top when it comes to general administrative spending.

About half of Missouri’s general administrative spending was for salaries and the other half for benefits. Indeed, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) reported that in 2018–19, there were 281 district superintendents with salaries (before benefits) over $100,000 and 38 that were over $200,000.

This year, many Missouri students are learning from home in microschools or pandemic pods. Parents are picking up the cost of supplies and even paying tutors to manage online schooling. I think it’s time to start asking if we need to continue to spend over one-third of a billion dollars on bureaucracy, or if it’s time to rethink how we fund public education?

How Many Chances Does TIF Get?

Posted on by Corianna Baier

There are so many problems with the City of St. Louis’s tax-increment financing (TIF) program that it would make your head spin trying to list them all. TIF is an economic development tool meant to spur investment in neglected areas by providing some monetary incentives to developers. However, St. Louis seems to be handing out TIF projects and throwing away tax dollars without a second thought. A recent audit of the city’s use of TIF found serious problems. Some of the highlights:

  • The city’s TIF policy “does not clearly define the evaluation process or criteria to be used in project selection.” Without clear criteria, city officials have subjective power to pick which companies or developers receive hundreds of millions in tax incentives. This creates horrible incentives for companies and gives too much power to lawmakers.
  • The city’s policy “does not include effective project cost limits or overall program cost controls.” The city’s TIF program has grown significantly over the years. Limits and cost controls would cap TIF usage, which would help assure that the approved projects have been carefully vetted and that only the best projects are selected.
  • The audit also discovered that “projects were approved with flawed cost-benefit analyses, including overestimated revenue projections.” A cost–benefit analysis is supposed to be completed in the application process and helps to determine if TIF should be awarded. The audit found that of the thirteen projects analyzed, eight had cost–benefit analyses that contained serious flaws or were missing the cost–benefit analysis altogether.

In response to the audit, a city spokesman said that most suggested reforms are not required by state law. Just because something isn’t required by the state doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done in order to instill fair practices and proper use of taxpayer funds. The problems with the TIF program have been talked about for years, and research suggests that incentive packages like these don’t work. How many chances do the city and this program get? How many times do these problems need to be pointed out before we start to see some real change?

What Hayek Can Teach Us About Government Planning

Posted on by Jacob Dowell

Much of modern policy debate revolves around the idea of government planning the economy. How should the healthcare industry be set up? How much testing should a product go through? At what wage should a business hire an employee? All of these issues involve some degree of control by the various levels of government. But do government officials really know the answers to these questions?

For a better understanding of these issues, we can look to Friedrich August von Hayek, the great twentieth-century Austrian economist. In 1945 Hayek published his essay, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” in which he challenged the idea of central planning.

First, Hayek pointed out that the issue is not whether there should be a plan or no plan. The issue is whether there should be one plan by a single central authority, or millions of plans by the millions of people coordinating in the open market.

But having millions of plans by millions of different people seems chaotic. In order for all those plans to be effective, they would have to take into consideration all the relevant knowledge about the availability and possible uses of different resources. In a decentralized system, how is the relevant knowledge being coordinated? The answer, according to Hayek, is the price system.

Prices convey important information. Higher prices tell us that a good is relatively scarce; lower prices tell us it’s relatively abundant. This information then shapes the way people plan for the future and how they allocate their own resources. For example, say steel suddenly becomes scarcer. This will cause the price of steel to rise, telling everyone else in the economy that their use of steel needs to be economized.

Some businesses that use steel might reduce production or find cheaper alternative methods of production. Consumers of products that use steel might reduce their consumption. Other producers of steel, seeing higher revenue potential, might try to find ways to expand output and bring more steel to the market. The actions of all of these different people and companies are coordinated because of the information they gained from prices.

There’s no need for a central authority to gather all the relevant information to create a single plan. In fact, much of the relevant knowledge cannot be conveyed to a central authority at all.

Characteristics such as quality and an employee’s ability to learn cannot be precisely measured. Therefore, any datasheet given to the central authority will not give a full picture of the economy. Furthermore, all of this information is constantly changing, so that even the information that is quantifiable becomes obsolete by the time it reaches the central planner. Prices solve both of these problems. People’s implicit, unquantifiable knowledge can be reflected in constantly changing prices.

Hayek’s insight is significant when we think about modern policy issues. The government cannot know how best to set up a healthcare system, how to regulate production, or what wage employees should be paid.

Missourians should keep this in mind when the government pretends to have these answers. While it may be reasonable for the government to make adjustments when the market can’t provide—such as public goods and addressing negative externalities like pollution—more often than not, the best policy is to leave it to the market.

Pandemic Pods Raise Important Questions About School Funding

Posted on by Michael McShane

The Wall Street Journal has a great story about pandemic pods, small schools families are starting to keep their kids learning during the coronavirus. Pods are cropping up around the country, with small groups of families meeting in each other’s homes and hiring teachers to instruct their children.

While much of the conversation about pandemic pods has been about their effects on parents and children, the Journal article looks at them from the perspective of the teacher. The author argues that pods can be great for teachers.

Think about it. Let’s say that each of the families of a pod agrees to pay $5 per hour, per child to the teacher. Seems like a pretty good deal for them. That means a teacher with a pod of eight students will make $40 per hour. If they follow a typical 180 school year at eight hours a day, that means they will make $57,600 per year, just shy of the $62,304 the article reports the average teacher in America earns. Now, it is true that they might not receive the same benefits, and longer or shorter schedules could alter their total compensation, but they would be teaching a class half the size of their typical class, with none of the bureaucracy, red tape, faculty meanings, or pointless professional development sessions for close to their typical salary. Sounds like a pretty good deal for the teacher, too.

This of course raises an important question: Why can’t traditional schools offer the same kind of learning environment? After all, the average public school student in America brings more than $14,700 per year into the classroom, meaning a classroom of only eight students would have $112,000 in revenue to pay a teacher. It is absolutely true that some students are more expensive to educate, buildings need to be maintained, and the like. But it is also true that lots of jurisdictions spend much more than $14,700 per student, and playing a bit with the numbers (by say allowing slightly larger classes for children with fewer needs and smaller classes for children with more) could free up large amounts of money to make sure every student is cared for.

More importantly, the average class size in America is not eight—it is twice that. I have to ask: Where the heck is all the money going?

I hope this pandemic pushes parents, teachers, and citizens to start asking questions about how school districts spend the large sums of money that they are given by taxpayers. Perhaps with more scrutiny, more students can get the individualized and rich learning environments that students in pandemic pods are slated to receive. That would be great for teachers too.

Why Are Business Regulations Bad for Consumers?

Posted on by Corianna Baier

No matter your view on regulations, there’s no denying that they come with a cost. Regulations increase operating costs for businesses because businesses must devote resources (time and money) to compliance. Higher operating costs then translate to higher prices for consumers. All of which leads to a question: Are all 94,000 of Missouri’s regulations really worth paying for? Even the one that prohibits dental hygienists from receiving temporary licenses, and the one that dictates the placement and the type size used on that tags that go on mattresses?

A paper released last month by the Mercatus Center calculates how much regulations actually increase operating costs. The authors look at federal regulations in 28 industries and find that a 1 percent increase in industry-specific regulatory restrictions in one year is associated with a 0.2 percent increase in operating costs per unit of output in that year. Perhaps that seems like a small amount, but federal regulatory restrictions grew at an average annual rate of 3.55 percent from 1998 to 2017. This means that if nothing else affected operating costs, these regulations alone would have increased operating costs per unit of output by 17 percent over the past 20 years.

The Mercatus paper addresses federal-level regulations, but it’s safe to assume that Missouri’s numerous state and local regulations also bring about significant cost increases. Over time, these regulations mean increases in operating costs for businesses, and therefore increases in costs for consumers.

All regulations come with costs, so why are Missourians paying for needless ones? It’s been months since Missouri responded to the COVID-19 crisis by waiving regulations like the one prohibiting hospitals from establishing alternative sites of care, and the one that requires Missouri real estate brokers to keep a brick-and-mortar site open during business hours. Now, we should ask why these regulations existed in the first place and why we had to bear the cost of them. Isn’t it time for lawmakers and bureaucrats to get rid of all needless regulations? Cutting the red tape can lower costs for consumers and promote growth across the state.

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