Municipal Checkbook Legislation Perfected in the House

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

The movement toward greater spending transparency in Missouri local government reached a milestone this week. A law requiring cities to submit spending records to the state was perfected in the Missouri House of Representatives—the furthest such legislation has gone to date. Perfection means that the bill, as amended, has been finalized by the entire chamber. Clearing a “perfection” vote is important because it often approximates whether a bill has enough support in the chamber for passage. My colleague Philip Oehlerking and I have been big proponents of ensuring that the public has access to this information, and the perfection of this bill is an important step in that direction.

And to be clear, the movement of this bill is part of a larger spending transparency reform arc. Last year the state began publishing its own spending online in a more digestible format, and legislation passed in 2018 now requires school districts to publicize similar spending details of their own. We’ll keep you posted on where the municipal spending bill goes, and whether cities will have to join other government units in Missouri in sharing their spending with the public. Such a requirement is long overdue.

If government can spend your money, they should be able to tell you where they spent it. And if they can’t, or won’t? That’s a problem.

 

Should Taxpayers Pay $10 Million To Reduce Streetcar Waiting Times?

Posted on by Kelvey Vander Hart

Is reducing the time someone spends waiting on a streetcar worth a $10 million-dollar price tag? The Kansas City Streetcar Authority certainly thinks so—they just spent taxpayer money on two additional streetcars, each costing $5 million.

These additional streetcars will be added to the current fleet of four that travels the two-mile loop from Union Station to the River Market. While the fleet currently has four streetcars, only three are usually in use; the remaining streetcar is brought out only during busy occasions. The two streetcars that were just ordered would increase the normal number in use from three to four.

Mike Hurd, the marketing director for the Downtown Council of Kansas City, explained the purchase:

We have so many times of the year that we have big events going and the current rotation of streetcars really is not enough to handle the demand. So being able to add streetcars and still being able to keep the service free is just fantastic.

Hurd’s comments need a correction. While the streetcar may not charge a fee to riders, it is not a free service—it is paid for by taxpayers. Instead of receiving funds from a small user fee, the Kansas City streetcar is funded by special taxing in an area called a transportation development district (TDD). Researchers at the Show-Me Institute have written frequently about these districts, and previously explained how a TDD is created.

The taxing rates within this TDD are not going up to pay for these new streetcars. Instead, the official position is that the KC Streetcar Authority will be using existing funds saved  from previously received TDD income. This raises a question: If the Authority is able to save more than $10 million dollars from this TDD, doesn’t that indicate that the district tax rate is higher than needed to fund normal operations?

Additionally, no data has been released to confirm wait times will be significantly reduced by adding two new streetcars to the fleet. If the goal is to add an extra streetcar to the daily rotation and hold two back for special events, why not test the idea by running the current fleet of four streetcars on a daily basis and measuring the results? It appears Kansas City officials are touting an untested solution to a potentially nonexistent problem, and using taxpayer dollars to bring it to life.

If there really are $10 million dollars in excess funds, maybe the Streetcar Authority should lower the tax rates in the TDD. Instead, residents are being asked to pay for expensive additions to an already expensive scheme. Is that really a good idea?

 

Yes, the Mayor’s Pre-K Program Is a Voucher

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

As Kansas City considers expanding pre-K on the April 2nd ballot, two things about the research should be made clear: pre-K programs often do not have the long-term results supporters claim they do, and the programs that do show results cannot be scaled up for an entire city. These facts aside, there is one good thing about the Mayor’s proposal: it’s a voucher. Mind you, the word voucher never appears in the Mayor’s 70-page implementation plan. The Mayor argued in an American Public Square panel discussion that his proposal was not a voucher. He said:

A voucher would be . . . taking public money and pouring it into a non-public entity. But pre-K doesn’t work like that and this tax doesn’t work like that. It’s not a voucher. What we are doing with pre-K instead of pouring money into [schools] from the public trough is we’re pouring more money into all of the [schools].

The mayor seems to think that money raised through a three-eighths percent sales tax is not the “public trough.” But his is a distinction without a difference; a program does not need to spend particular tax dollars in order to be considered a voucher.

It’s true, however, that many voucher programs use education dollars. National Public Radio, in an explainer piece on vouchers, said only that they are state dollars taken from “what the state would have otherwise spent to educate” children. Ed Choice, an organization that supports education vouchers, described vouchers as coming from “funds typically spent by a school district.”

Regardless of the tax source, vouchers are simply public dollars made available to families to offset the costs of the school they choose for their children, essentially functioning like a scholarship. Those public dollars can be raised from property taxes as in the case with local school funding, income taxes as in the case of federal programs, or sales taxes as in the case with the Mayor’s pre-K program. But they are all voucher programs.

It is understandable why the Mayor, in pitching his program to the education establishment, wants to avoid the term. Vouchers, and programs like it, have become toxic among public school bureaucracies since it would break their monopoly on public dollars for education. This is the main reason the public school districts in Kansas City oppose the Mayor’s proposal, but giving parents the power to choose which program is best for their kids is the strongest aspect of his plan.

Mayor James should be congratulated for recognizing and answering the demand for more and greater parental involvement in their children’s education. School choice is the trend in Kansas City and, despite its other significant shortcomings, his pre-K voucher program at least respects that.

 

 

Arizona is Pushing Universal Licensing? Yes Please!

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

If you’re licensed to fix hair, or fix plumbing, or fix ankles in another state, it’s sort of silly that Missouri would start with the presumption that you can’t fix those things in our state, too. Missouri has made positive strides on licensing in the past, but there’s plenty more that could, and should, be done.

And that’s why it was exciting to see Arizona take a big step toward that ultimate policy goal of greater licensure reciprocity, by putting forward “universal licensing” legislation. From the Reason write-up:

A bill introduced Monday in the Arizona General Assembly would allow anyone with an occupational license from a different state to automatically qualify for the same license in Arizona without having to retake classes and pass tests again—though they would have to pay a fee to the state board that administers the license, and would have to demonstrate that they were in good standing with the licensing authorities in their previous state. So-called “universal licensing recognition” would make it easier for licensed workers to move to Arizona and would do away with time-consuming and expensive requirements for license-holders who want to move across state lines…

Arizona already recognizes licenses from beyond its own borders for military families, and the new bill would extend that same privilege to other workers.

Last month the bill passed out of the Arizona House on a bipartisan vote, and it’s now before the Arizona Senate for further consideration.

The Arizona bill could go further in its reforms than it currently does. First, the bill’s provisions apply to “a person who establishes residence in [Arizona]”; incidental contact by an out-of-state practitioner, as might happen in a telemedicine context, isn’t enough to enjoy the licensing relief of the bill. Second, the bill still allows Arizona regulators to impose some financial and examination burdens on these workers, so time will tell whether the regulatory state in Arizona will be defanged here, or whether in practice these licensing boards will just get more creative in enacting barriers to professional entry.

Arizona’s bill is an incremental reform, but as increments go, it would be a pretty sizable chunk of better policy. It will be interesting to see if the bill becomes law, and if it does, how many states follow suit shortly thereafter. Missouri policymakers should keep a close eye on this legislation. It isn’t perfect, as I’ve noted, but it could be a good starting point for truly universal and reciprocal licensure reform.

 

Kansas City’s Pre-K Bait and Switch

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

On the April ballot, Kansas Citians are being asked to vote on a three-eighth cent sales tax to fund a universal pre-K program. But the benefits being promised to Kansas City voters are not from the type of program Kansas Citians are being offered. Proponents may be promising voters a Lamborghini, but their car lot is filled with mopeds.

Supporters for the value of pre-K point to a single preschool program, the HighScope Perry program in Ypsilanti, Michigan that ran from 1958 to 1962. The participants had been tracked over 40 years and the resulting data provide much of the basis for what supporters claim is the benefit of pre-K.

The Mid America Regional Council (MARC), which will administer the Kansas City pre-K program if approved by voters, claims in its 2018 “Status of Children and Families” report that (page 45):

Research shows that every dollar invested in early childhood education saves up to $13 in future social costs, leading to lower crime rates, fewer adults on public assistance, fewer teen pregnancies, and a stronger, more prepared workforce.

Mayor Sly James’s pre-K Implementation Plan for pre-K similarly claims (page 44):

. . . the public benefits accrued over time from children who attended HighScope Perry Preschool program in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at a rate of 13 to one.

These returns seem too good to be true. And they are. The 13-to-one return comes from a single study of the HighScope Perry plan published in 2005, which claimed:

For the general public, higher tax revenues, lower criminal justice system expenditures, and lower welfare payments easily outweigh program costs; they repay $12.90 for every $1 invested. However, program gains come mainly from reduced crime by males.

The HighScope Perry study was of 123 “low-income African-American children who were assessed to be at high risk of school failure.” Only 58 were randomly assigned “to a program group that received a high-quality preschool program at ages 3 and 4.” The high-quality program included:

  • Two school years of preschool running October through May;
  • A center-based program for 2.5 hours per day with “4 teachers for 20 to 25 children”;
  • Home visiting for 1.5 hours per week; and
  • Group meetings of parents.

Only 39 of the participants in this study were male (see footnote 3 here). In other words, Mayor James and MARC want voters to believe that a small-scale, intensive two-year education program conducted with 39 high-risk boys can be extrapolated to the more than 6,000 children in Kansas City.

Even other proponents of pre-K are more restrained in calculating possible returns. Economist and Nobel laureate James Heckman wrote in a 2017 research summary of that same HighScope Perry program (emphasis added):

Every dollar spent on high quality, birth-to-five programs for disadvantaged children delivers a 13% per annum return on investment. These economically significant returns account for the welfare costs of taxation to finance the program and survive a battery of sensitivity analyses.

As I pointed out in a recent American Public Square panel discussion about pre-K in Kansas City, the program Kansas City voters are being asked to support is nothing like the HighScope Perry program Heckman analyzed. The plan being put before voters does not have anywhere near the 5 or 6 to 1 ratio of child to teacher, will not include home visits, will not be two years, and will not spend as much per child as HighScope Perry did.

A recent blog post discussed the unimpressive findings on pre-K programs such as Head Start that more closely resemble what Kansas Citians are being offered. But using HighScope Perry’s results to pitch pre-K for all in Kansas City is nothing short of a bait and switch.

 

 

Pre-K in Kansas City Likely Won’t Deliver on Its Promises

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

In a recent post, I pointed out that the pre-K program being presented to Kansas City voters is significantly different than the programs whose results they point to. We very likely won’t see the 13-to-one dollar return on investment for pre-K claimed by Mayor James and the Mid America Regional Council (MARC). We probably won’t even see the 13 percent annual return projected by economist James Heckman. The research on programs like the one being proposed in Kansas City—such as Head Start and the Tennessee state volunteer pre-K program—suggests these programs are large, expensive, and absolute failures.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched the Head Start program in 1965. It was expanded in 1981 and now has a $9 billion budget. Operated in Kansas City since 2005 by MARC, the program works to provide:

Comprehensive, high-quality birth-through-five early education services that facilitate healthy development including physical and social/emotional development and prepare children for school success.

Is it working? No. According to HHS’s own 2012 report, “after the initially realized cognitive benefits for the Head Start children, these gains were quickly made up by children in the non-Head Start group.” The report indicates this finding is similar to other studies published between 1995 and 2010. 

A 2013 story in The Washington Post is a pretty even-handed write up of the value of pre-K. The author points out that extrapolating findings from the HighScope Perry study (an influential pre-k study of a small group of children in Michigan) to larger populations like Kansas City’s is highly questionable. In discussing the fade out of any initial Head Start benefit, the author wrote:

Some Head Start supporters, like Danielle Ewen, formerly of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), argue that this says more about K-12, and that what’s likely happening is that poor quality public schools are actually reversing Head Start’s gains.

If this is the case, children in the Kansas City Public School District can expect to see no long-term benefit whatsoever. Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution points not only to research on Head Start, but to large scale pre-K programs such as the Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K (TVPK) program. In those follow-up studies, children in the control group soon outperformed those who received the preschool benefit.

Using the state test data and the full randomized sample, the evaluators report negative impacts for reading, math, and science scores at the end of third grade for children assigned to TVPK. The negative impacts on math and science are statistically significant and substantive: children randomly assigned as preschoolers to TVPK had lost ground to their peers who had randomly not been offered admission to the pre-K program.

Whitehurst revisits this in a 2018 paper in which he writes:

Unabashed enthusiasts for increased investments in state pre-K need to confront the evidence that it does not enhance student achievement meaningfully, if at all. It may, of course, have positive impacts on other outcomes, although these have not yet been demonstrated. It is time for policymakers and advocates to consider and test potentially more powerful forms of investment in better futures for children.

As we wrote in a previous post, policymakers in Kansas City may not be interested in confronting such evidence. This is especially true of Whitehurst’s observation that direct aid to families, such as the earned income tax credit (EITC), “produced substantially larger gains in children’s school achievement per dollar of expenditure than a year of preschool, participation in Head Start, or class size reduction in the early grades.” 

Designing public policy is not easy. Neither is delivering effective education on a large scale. But we need to rise to the challenge of both. As it stands, the proposal of pre-K in Kansas City is unlikely to lead to significant long-term benefits for the children involved, especially if they matriculate into underperforming K-12 schools. A program with questionable efficacy that taxes the very low-income families it is meant to help seems, on balance, to make this plan more harm than help.

 

Asleep at the Wheel or Self-Driving Car?

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

The breathless headline asserting the United States has “wasted” up to $1 billion on charter schools is an eye-catcher. That conclusion comes from a paper released by an advocacy group that claims the U.S. Department of Education has been “asleep at the wheel” in administering the Charter Schools Program.

First, let’s not confuse charter schools with the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP).  The CSP was implemented in 1994 in order to increase the national understanding of charter schools and to expand the number of high-quality charter schools. The CSP awards grants for the planning, program design, and initial implementation of charter schools. Some schools that received planning grants were never able to open. According to the notes in the CSP data file, there are a number of reasons that might happen, including not being able to find a building, deciding to combine with another operator, or other typical start-up issues. And some charter schools that received grants and opened were then closed, as the charter school model dictates they would if they have performance or financial issues.

So, of the $12.5 trillion (adjusted for inflation) spent on K-12 public education since 1995, the $4 billion in grants awarded through the CSP accounts for 0.03 percent. And of that, according to the authors of the report, one-fourth, or 0.008 percent, went to schools that either didn’t open or opened and have since closed. Asleep at the wheel! Imagine what’s been spent on traditional public schools that are failing students, but never get closed.

Parental satisfaction and support for charter schools remains extremely high, particularly among younger parents. And the charter school sector is designed for continuous improvement, refining its planning and chartering process so that new charter schools can open strong and those that aren’t working close down. Sounds like more of a self-driving car than one careening off the road to me.

 

IRCs Open the Door to Career Opportunities

Posted on by Abigail Burrola

Imagine you spent much of high school in a career and technical education (CTE) program, mastering the skills you’ll need for the career you plan to pursue after graduation. You get your CTE certificate when you graduate, confident that it’s your ticket to employment in your chosen field. But despite all the work you put in, you can’t get the job you want because your credential isn’t the right one. And to add insult to injury, the right credential—the one that employers are looking for—was there for the taking all along. Had you only realized its importance, you could have earned it in high school along with your CTE certificate.

In many cases, the “right” credential to have coming out of high school is an industry-recognized credential (IRC). You earn it by passing an exam that is designed not by your school, but by a professional trade organization. There’s nothing wrong with earning a CTE certificate from your school; it can reflect a broad competence in the skills required for a given profession. But an IRC indicates mastery of knowledge specifically chosen by employers who have jobs to fill. It only makes sense that schools should encourage students to earn the credential that their potential employers want them to have.

The graphic at the top of this post shows just a few of the career options that can open up for students who earn an IRC. Others include (but aren’t limited to) education, culinary arts, business, graphic design, and hospitality. Fewer than 3 percent of Missouri high school students earned an IRC in 2017. Moreover, out of 27,437 students who completed three or more CTE classes during the 2016–2017 school year, only 8,565 earned IRCs. Employers are bending over backwards to tell us what students need to learn in order to get hired; shouldn’t we listen to them?

Listen to the podcast.

IRC infographic-1.pdf

The Majority of Kansas City Families Choose Their Child’s School

Posted on by Michael Q. McShane

The data are in. The families of Kansas City have made their intentions clear by voting with their feet. They want school choice.

Local education gadfly Rebecca Haessig recently broke down the 2018-19 enrollment figures for public schools in Kansas City on her blog Set The Schools Free. According to her number crunching, 12,475 Kansas City students attend charter schools, 3,705 students attend Kansas City Public Schools Signature schools, and 10,582 attend traditional neighborhood schools. That means that 16,180 students out of 26,762 total students attend a school that requires an active choice. That is 60% of all Kansas City students in public schools.

What’s more, this does not even count the thousands of children who attend private schools or the families that move to other school districts in the Kansas City area for better schools. It simply states that within the boundaries of the Kansas City Public Schools, the majority of families actively choose their schools.

This is important for three reasons.

First, school choice is not some fringe movement. Marginalization is a classic political tactic, and one that is frequently used to try and slow down the expansion of school choice. But the numbers don’t lie. School choice is the norm, not the exception.

Second, we need to be all-inclusive when we talk about school choice. Many of the loudest anti-charter school or private school choice voices in Kansas City send their children to schools of choice. These schools often have screening mechanisms that weed out lower performing students, students with discipline problems, or students with uninvolved parents. If these critics are going to complain about various types of school choice, they should be transparent about the fact that they’re using some form of school choice for their own kids.

Third, we have to square these figures with the continued argument that the Kansas City Public Schools are improving. Now, I totally agree with my friend Susan Pendergrass that Missouri is grading schools on a pretty generous curve,  but simply taking the district’s own rhetoric at face value, school choice is obviously not hurting  KCPS given its much touted improvement in APR (Annual Progress Report) scores. They can’t have it both ways. If the school district is improving, like they are arguing, school choice can’t be that big of a problem, because 60% of kids are taking advantage of it!

It was Daniel Patrick Moynihan who famously said, “everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.” The facts on school choice in Kansas City are clear and deserve to be acknowledged.

 

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