Kansas City Fails to Meet Goals Set by 1968 Report

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

Immediately following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and riots in Kansas City, Mayor Ilus “Ike” Davis appointed the Mayor’s Commission on Civil Disorder to examine events and suggest changes. Reading the commission’s report 50 years to the week after it was issued is an unpleasant reminder of how little progress has been made.

The report examined “the severe civil disturbance that occurred in Kansas City during the week of April 8, 1968 and [made] a report to the people of Kansas City.” Among other things, the report contained recommendations for avoiding future riots and “for the establishment of harmonious relations among the people of this city.”

One of the areas examined was Kansas City’s police—their number, recruiting, training, and tactics. At the time of the report, Kansas City had 932 police officers and was facing reductions. On page 48 the report offers:

Instead of its police force being reduced, this city needs a total of at least 1,500 police officers. Even the existing statute contemplates two police employees for each 800 persons in the population. Since 1961 Kansas City’s population has increased by approximately 15%, and its land area has been nearly doubled by annexation. Expected police service has increased by 58%, but the number of law enforcement personnel has remained approximately the same as it was in 1961.

The commissioners’ call for more police to reduce crime is borne out by subsequent research. Yet Kansas City today has 1,283 sworn law enforcement officers, down 121 from the 1,404 officers they had in 2010. The city never achieved the 1,500 mark recommended by the commission’s report. Nor has the city successfully adopted the commission’s recommendation to rely more heavily on foot patrolmen—but that may be a function of not having enough officers.

Based on 2017 data, Kansas City has the sixth-highest homicide rate in the United States per 100,000 population. Based on FBI statistics, of the ten cities with the highest homicide rates, Kansas City has the fewest officers per 10,000 population.

A years-long, nation-leading spike in the number of homicides is arguably as “severe” a “civil disturbance” as one can imagine. Numerous factors are causally linked to crime, including education, poverty, and income inequality. Yet when it comes to the one aspect of public safety that policymakers can control, policing, Kansas City has fallen short of its 1968 goals.

More Reason to be Skeptical of Economic Development Incentives

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

If you’re hoping that a new report on Kansas City’s economic development incentives accurately assesses their value, I’ve got some bad news. Based on the draft copies of the always coming, never arriving report sent to me in response to an open records request, the report has one glaring and fatal flaw: It fails to address the much-maligned “but-for” analysis.

For a development project to receive tax-increment financing (TIF), one of the most popular subsidies, two boxes must be checked: A property must be declared blighted, and the proposed project must pass the but-for test. (We’ve written much about the largely meaningless blight standard before.) The but-for test, in short, is proof that a project wouldn’t go ahead in the absence of public assistance. Developers often support this claim by showing that a project would not be profitable without the public assistance, or in many cases not profitable enough for their tastes.

Much of the research on TIF subsidies in Missouri and around the country focuses exactly on that but-for analysis. Studies consistently find that TIF-treated areas grow economically at the same pace as non–TIF-treated areas. This means that cities are subsidizing development that is just as likely to happen without the subsidy—regardless of what the applicant tells you. TIF applications sometimes rely solely on the applicant’s own claim that without subsidies they would not build.

A new working paper from the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research underscores this exact problem in Kansas City when it concludes in part, “Overall, the research literature on incentives’ ‘but for’ effects is not as rigorous as one might hope.” No kidding. The paper sums up its findings as follows:

Based on a review of 34 estimates of “but for” percentages, from 30 different studies, this paper concludes that typical incentives probably tip somewhere between 2 percent and 25 percent of incented firms toward making a decision favoring the location providing the incentive. In other words, for at least 75 percent of incented firms, the firm would have made a similar location/expansion/retention decision without the incentive. Many of the current incentive studies are positively biased toward overestimating the “but for” percentage. Better estimates of “but for” percentages depend on developing data that quantitatively measure diverse changes in incentive policies across comparable areas. [Emphasis mine.]

If the draft report being passed around between the CDFA and Kansas City is any indication, not only does it fail to seriously analyze “but for” claims—unlike a similar study conducted in St. Louis—it barely mentions but-for whatsoever. That means we are being asked to assume that developments that come after subsidies are granted come because subsidies are granted—a basic logical fallacy. Kansas City leaders had the time and resources to commission a more thorough analysis of city incentives, and they chose not to. What they got instead was a report that mimics the failures of their policies.

The More They Give, the More They Take

Posted on by Graham Renz

The bottom line regarding tax giveaways like tax increment financing (TIF) and other subsidies is this: The more officials hand out to developers and special interests, the more ordinary taxpayers need to cough up to make up the difference. It looks like University City Public Library (UCPL) officials, like many officials caught in the middle of generous subsidy deals, know this well.

A recent UCPL survey asked some University City residents how they felt about a potential property tax hike to bolster the library’s budget. The increase mentioned would raise library tax rates from 28 cents per $100 of assessed value to 40 cents per $100 of assessed value. So, for example, a home with an appraised value of $100,000 would pay an additional $23 or so per year in property taxes if such a rate increase were to occur.

What’s notable is not that a public institution is asking for more cash, but that officials seem to be testing the waters as a massive TIF-funded development is being debated. For the proposed I-170 and Olive development,  taxpayers are being asked to part with $70.5 million over the next 20 or so years. Much of that $70.5M would come from property taxes that would otherwise go to schools, libraries, and other jurisdictions. So, in short, if the development goes through as proposed, the library (and school and other districts) would miss out on millions in revenue.

Now, I’m not claiming that UCPL is considering a tax hike because of the I-170 and Olive development, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a connection between the two. This would hardly be the first time a library or library district had to go to voters for additional funding because of loose tax subsidy policies. It was just in 2016 that, after years of losing out on millions in revenues because of tax giveaways, the Mid-Continent Public Library in Kansas City asked voters to approve a tax hike. At the time, my colleague Patrick Tuohey aptly dubbed the tax hike the “TIF Tax.”

UCPL and those it serves would likely benefit greatly from extra funding. UCPL has a modest staff of 16 employees and spends around $1.6-1.8 million a year (see pp. 165-171). Besides some pension liabilities somewhat out of their control, UCPL officials appear to be good stewards of the taxpayer funding they’re given. It’s just a shame that libraries and other districts are impacted so much by misguided economic development programs like TIF, and it’s an even bigger shame that taxpayers are often left holding the bag.

Is Success Really Just a Matter of Showing Up?

Posted on by Geneva Lee

A student who fails every test in a course is unlikely to get a passing grade just because he makes it to class every day. Yet the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) currently grants accreditation to every single public school in the state*—and some schools keep that accreditation despite poor academic performance because of the way attendance is factored into the state’s formula for evaluating them.

The state’s method of accrediting schools is based on its Annual Performance Report (APR), which uses five factors—academic achievement, subgroup achievement, high school/college/career readiness, graduation rates, and attendance rates—to assess the quality of public schools. Missouri’s APR is among the least stringent in the country, which might be why not a single district is unaccredited. The scoring of attendance is especially problematic, as perfect scores are handed out even when kids are missing for weeks.

This attendance inflation is especially concerning due to the large weight allocated to attendance in the Annual Performance Reports. The possible number of points from all categories varies by school, anywhere from 50 to 140 points, but in all cases a school must get 50 percent of the total available performance points if it is to be accredited. And here’s how attendance fits in: Regardless of how many points are possible for a given school, ten points are allotted for attendance, giving the measure different weights for different schools. This means that a 10/10 attendance score could account for anywhere from 14 to 40 percent of the necessary points for accreditation. Accordingly, a school that would otherwise lose accreditation based on the academic achievement of its students might nonetheless squeak past the 50 percent line thanks to strong attendance numbers. Considering that every Missouri school is currently accredited—even those with poor academic records—and considering the generous attendance formula (as detailed in a previous post), this scenario is hardly implausible.

Kansas City’s Central Middle School is a case in point. It is accredited with 75 percent of its possible APR points and 7.5 of its 10 possible attendance points, even though 54 percent of its student body was chronically absent (defined by the federal government as missing 15 or more days of school) in 2015–16. Its academics are among the poorest in the state, with only five percent of students proficient in math. Normandy’s 7th & 8th Grade Learning Center managed to become accredited with 37.5/70 points (54 percent), 7.5 of which were from attendance alone. The attendance boosted the Learning Center’s score by 11 percentage points, and without it, this school, in which only one in twelve kids is proficient in math, would not have been accredited.

Accreditation implies that Central and the Learning Center are preparing students to succeed, even though almost all students struggle with elementary concepts. Knowing that their schools are accredited will be cold comfort to students who find themselves unequipped for further studies or the workforce. Missouri needs to re-evaluate its educational standards and provide accurate performance reports that call attention to shortcomings in the public schooling system. The APR was never meant to provide cover to underperforming schools at the expense of students.

*DESE has informed us that they accredit exclusively at the district level, and thus do not accredit individual schools.

Missouri’s Making Improvements, but Still Trailing

Posted on by William Magee

The last few months have been good for the economy. The benefits of the recent federal tax cuts appear to be taking effect, resulting in a 4.1% national GDP growth for the second quarter of 2018—led by increased consumption and exports—and a 4.0% unemployment rate.

Based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ June data for Missouri, there is good news for our state, too. Our unemployment rate ticked down to 3.5% from 3.6% in May, which was already down from 3.7% in January. Missouri is now half a percentage point below the national unemployment rate. Additionally, Missouri’s labor force saw an increase of 8,000 people in just the last month. These data might suggest that an increasing number of Missourians are interested in working, and they are successfully finding jobs.

These statistics do not tell the whole story, however. Historically, Missouri is one of the slowest growing states in the nation. Compared to Tennessee, a demographically similar state, Missouri is still underperforming despite having similar unemployment rates. When looking at the growth in employment, Tennessee trumps Missouri. The figure below displays total employment as a percentage of 1990 employment. Even with a good last few months, Missouri lags behind Tennessee.

Chart: Employment as a percentage of 1990 employment

With similar demographics and access to resources, it should be possible for Missouri to experience Tennessee’s level of growth. As we discussed before, Tennessee’s improved performance might be related to its education and workforce development initiatives or lower tax burdens. Missouri has been heading in the right direction in recent months—but should we be content, or should we examine whether Missouri could benefit from adopting the policies that have helped Tennessee’s growth outpace ours?

Missouri Public Teachers, Take Note: Union Membership Is Optional

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

It’s back to school time, and new teachers have a little homework to do before the start of the school year. This summer the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that government unions, including local teachers’ unions, can no longer require non-members to pay fees to the union as a condition to employment. This had basically been the case in Missouri already, but for 22 other states, the ruling was a significant leap forward in workers’ rights, decades in the making.

But regardless of the extent to which the case affected a given state, the Court’s ruling highlights a pair of important questions that Missouri educators have to grapple with each year: namely, why might teachers join a union, and if they joined, what would their dues pay for?

Unionized teachers do receive some tangible benefits from their membership, such as legal services in the event they’re fired or sued, and liability insurance. The cost of union membership varies depending on location and the union involved; dues are typically either flat, such as the annual $219 for the Missouri State Teachers Association, or a percentage of salary, such as the one percent for the St. Louis chapter of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Of course, if a teacher doesn’t join, he or she is still covered by the salary schedule; not joining has no impact on things like health insurance, tenure, or seniority.

But if a teacher does join a union, a portion of their union dues often goes to advocacy work and to support political candidates. Given the diverse opinions of teachers, the funneling of dollars to particular causes often runs afoul of an individual teacher’s own personal beliefs. For example, at the national AFT conference just a few weeks ago, a resolution was passed that stipulated what policies a candidate must support to receive the union’s endorsement. These included, among other things, universal health care, universal and free child care, doubled per-pupil expenditures for low-income students, and free college

What a lot of teachers don’t know when faced with the decision of joining a union is that the vast majority of the benefits unions offer are also available through other vendors. For example, dues for Association of American Educators (AAE), a non-union professional organization for teachers, are just under $200 per year, and the benefits are similar to those offered by unions—disability insurance, legal protection—but without the politics. And if joining a group of any kind isn’t your style, teachers can always buy many of the benefits they want a la carte on the open market.

In short, Missouri teachers have a lot of options in determining how they’ll advance their professional interests—and they can do so with or without the political speech embedded in the operations of a government union. And especially after the passage of HB 1413, teachers in Missouri are particularly empowered to have a say in who represents them to their districts, and to see how unions spend the money they receive from members. Perhaps one day, public school teachers will even be able to negotiate their own employee contracts and have a freer hand to choose their health insurance and retirement plans, like many of the rest of us already have. But until then, Missouri teachers still have a lot of choices that they can make, and fortunately, subsidizing a union’s political speech doesn’t have to be one of them.

So Glad You Could Join Us . . .

Posted on by Geneva Lee

It’s hard to see the chalkboard from the back of the class. When you’re not even in the room, it’s impossible. For too many students, chronic absenteeism—missing 15 days of school per year or more—is the norm. Not being in school makes it pretty hard to learn. And yet, in Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE)’s Annual Performance Report (APR) system, schools with high rates of absenteeism often receive high or even perfect 10 out of 10 scores for the attendance component. How does this happen?

According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, in 2015–16 Missouri had 42 schools in which more than one-third of students were chronically absent. But a look at their APR scores would leave you thinking that attendance is fine. Only 11 of these schools received fewer than half of the 10 possible attendance points, and fourteen received 7.5 points or more. In one of the most egregious cases, Kansas City’s Central Middle School was accredited with 7.5 of its 10 attendance points, even though 54 percent of its student body was chronically absent.

Similarly, there were seven school districts in which 25 percent or more of the students were chronically absent, according to the federal government—and not one of these districts received fewer than 60 percent of their attendance points. Even Kansas City, where nearly 40 percent of students were chronically absent, received six out of ten possible APR attendance points.

Why is the rating system so generous with attendance points? Simply put, because there are actually 17.5 points available for a score that is based on a 10-point scale. Here’s how it works:

Two factors contribute to the attendance ratings. “Status” is based upon the percentage of students who attend at least 90 percent of school days, and “progress,” is the percentage change in this figure from the previous two-year average. Ten points are available for status and 7.5 additional points are available for progress, as shown in the table below. So, schools and districts only need to get just over half of the points to get the maximum score. For example, Kansas City’s Sunshine Elementary—where 39 percent of students are chronically absent—received 7.5 status points and 4.0 for progress, earning a perfect 10 out of 10 points.

DESE’s flawed attendance formula sets a low bar for public schools and obscures Missouri’s problem with chronic absenteeism. Granting APR points for attendance in the first place is questionable, as it lessens the weight of academic performance in the overall evaluation—a topic I’ll explore more in a future blog post. But if attendance is to be included in the APR formula, it should be measured in a way that alerts the public when absenteeism becomes a problem at a school.

Table: Attendance weight in APR score

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