Senate Bill 68: Another Education Omnibus, Part 2

Posted on by Scott Tanner

In Part 1 of the post, I detail the journey Senate Bill (SB) 68 took to become another education omnibus bill. When it first passed the Senate, SB 68 focused solely on prohibiting cell phones and other devices in school. It then grew to a more than 100-page bill with more than 30 additional policies attached—some of which are problematic.

Below, I will highlight problematic additions to the bill.

Phonics and Three-Cueing

The finally agreed bill now includes language to make phonics instruction (recognizing written words by connecting letters to their corresponding sounds) the primary instructional strategy for teaching word reading in early literacy. It also restricts the use of the three-cueing system (encouraging students to guess what an unfamiliar word is based on meaning, structure, or visual cues instead of sounding out the word entirely). The original amendment would have prohibited the use of three-cueing for teaching word reading, but the final version only prohibits “instruction in word reading relying primarily on the three-cueing system.” This change leaves the door open for its use and weakens the policy’s impact. I will write more about this in a future post.

New “Grade-Level” Category for the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP)

The new version of SB 68 also includes the addition of a fifth performance category (called “grade level”) for the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP). The MAP currently has four measures: advanced, proficient, basic, and below basic. “Proficient” is defined as mastery over all appropriate subject matter and introductory knowledge for the next grade. This sounds like an appropriate benchmark to set.

The new “grade-level” category essentially means partial mastery—a student “may be ready, with appropriate reinforcement” for the next grade. For parents, telling them their children are at “grade-level” makes it sound as if they are where they ought to be academically. But that is not what it means. Why is Missouri adding a new standard that is confusing at best and will make it harder to interpret scores? Do we really want to water down our standards when so many are at basic or below in the state?

Repurposing Scholarship Funds

Another provision allows unused funds for the Teacher Retention and Recruitment Scholarship (given to prospective teachers in high-need subject areas and schools) to be repurposed to non-high-need students in their final semester. These unused funds should be returned to the treasury to fund other existing priorities instead of being used for a new project entirely.

Open Enrollment—For a Select Few

Finally, SB 68 allows open enrollment for students whose parents are a contractor or regular employee of that district. This is a good opportunity for these families. But what Missouri needs is a universal open enrollment policy, which would help families and students in a variety of different circumstances. Why are only these families benefitted?

SB 68 illustrates the risk of omnibus bills: bad policies are often included, good policies get diluted, and elected officials can claim they had to swallow the bad with the good.

Senate Bill 68: From Simple Cell Phone Ban to Education Omnibus, Part 1

Posted on by Scott Tanner

Missouri’s 2025 legislative session has been a popular one for the omnibus bill, as exemplified by the passage of House Bill 495 and Senate Bill (SB) 4. Now, after passing both the House and Senate, Senate Bill 68 could be the latest installment.

SB 68 was originally intended to prohibit students from using an “electronic personal communications device” during instructional time (the current version prohibits students from using these devices from the start of the school day to the end, barring emergencies and exceptions). It was a little over 3 pages long and received an endorsement from Governor Kehoe: “It’s simple—cell phones have no place in Missouri classrooms.”

Today, SB 68 is no longer simple, and it is not the same bill that the governor endorsed two months ago. After its trip through the House and subsequent conference committee, SB 68 has ballooned to 138 pages and now includes 30 policies.

SB 68 now includes sweeteners or concessions for certain members and interest groups.

Wasn’t the original SB 68, which focused solely on cell phones in schools, a good, straightforward bill with enough merit and momentum to pass on its own? I guess not, because as I will detail in the following post, it now includes several bad policies that taint the worthwhile cell ban.

Curious about what got added to SB 68? Click here to read Part 2.

 

Children Have a Right to a Safe Place to Learn

Posted on by Mike Ederer

The U.S. Department of Education recently reminded states that under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), students must be given the option to transfer if their school is deemed “persistently dangerous.” ESSA requires each state to define what constitutes a persistently dangerous school, collect relevant data, and implement policies that allow students in such schools to move to safer alternatives.

This reminder came because most states are effectively ignoring the requirement. In 2024 only 25 schools nationwide were identified as persistently dangerous—15 of them in Arkansas alone. Missouri, despite ranking 50th in a recent analysis of School Safety, has never identified a single such school.

Missouri does have a definition on the books. Part of the definition is that a school must have an “act of school violence,” “violent behavior,” or a gun-free-schools violation in three consecutive years.  Unfortunately, there is plenty of violence and violent behavior in Missouri schools. For instance, there were 128 weapons violations and 335 violent incidents reported in Missouri schools just last year. A school safety hotline reported that they received nearly 1,600 tips of safety threats, including physical assault, threats to kill, guns, and drugs.

Yet there’s a catch. For a school to be labeled persistently dangerous in Missouri, it must also have more than five expulsions in two of three consecutive years (or more than 10 if the school enrolls over 250 students). However, schools can control expulsions and DESE data indicate that there were no expulsions of any student in the entire state in 2021, 2023, and 2024. Just 10 occurred in 2022. Meanwhile, nearly 13,500 students received out-of-school suspensions lasting 10 or more days last year.

Does it seem reasonable that no student in the entire state was expelled last year?

It is a policy failure that no schools in Missouri are classified as persistently dangerous, despite clear indications to the contrary. By allowing schools to manipulate their data—and in particular, to avoid expulsions at all costs—we are allowing them to circumvent the law. And the law exists for a good reason: to give students trapped in unsafe environments a real chance at success.

Parents have the right to expect their children will come home safely from school each day.  For children assigned to local schools that are persistently dangerous, ESSA is supposed to provide the opportunity to change schools. Missouri’s failure to take the law seriously has permitted persistently dangerous schools to operate without taking on the formal designation, and is a disservice to the children and families who are trapped in these schools.

Springfield Takes Its Time Hiring a City Manager

Posted on by Mike Ederer

Springfield is undergoing a lengthy process to hire its new city manager. There is nothing wrong with that. This is one of the most important decisions the members of the council and the new mayor will make. The position has a very high salary of $350,000. That is higher than the Kansas City manager’s salary, and KC is a lot bigger than Springfield. Apparently, the city council offered such a high salary to attract lots of national candidates, and some of the councilmembers are disappointed that most of their candidates, including the main finalist, were still local. C’est la vie.

The primary candidate under consideration now, David Cameron, the current city manager in nearby Republic, is controversial, so I read, because he is a “disrupter.” That’s great if you are leading a start-up in Silicon Valley. Is it great for a midwestern city? You tell me. According to the story in the News-Leader:

David has probably stepped on a few toes along the way, it would be impossible, unrealistic to think that you would be able to make everybody happy in the process of doing your job,” [Springfield Chamber of Commerce Chairman, Bob Helm] said. “His leadership style is bold. He operates with confidence. He’s become a great problem-solver and has also been very responsive to those who approach him along the way.

If his disruptive leadership style is used to push the city employees in Republic, to work harder, then that sounds great to me. If is it used to think “bold” and offer lots of tax incentives, then count me out. Here is a story about how Republic gave a big tax break to Amazon to open a distribution center there and how the city manager got a pay raise because of it. (The story is also noteworthy as it does a good job of looking at all sides of the issue instead of just repeating press releases from the government about how great tax incentives are.)

Too often, “visionary” or “bold” local leadership just leads to local delusions about how great a city can be instead of just trying to provide the necessary services to its residents.

In fairness to Republic, the city, overall, doesn’t appear to offer that many tax incentives, so legitimate criticism of the Amazon deal needs to acknowledge that. In Springfield, they are taking their time to decide on the city manager position, and getting that decision right is worth the wait.

For much more on the evidence about the plusses and minuses of professional city management, check out my first free-market municipality guide, which goes into that debate in detail.

“May Malaise” and the Value of Testing in Schools

Posted on by Mike Ederer

It’s that time of year again. As students finish testing, school begins to shift. More time is spent on parties, watching movies, and projects that fall below grade level. I call it the “May Malaise.”

I don’t object to a little downtime as the school year winds down—most parents probably feel the same. But I do mind that the slowdown seems to begin earlier and earlier in the year, stretching into a multi-week period in May when little meaningful academic work takes place. What’s more, students don’t always enjoy it either. Speaking from my own experience, my kids are not exactly clamoring for more assignments, but their disengagement is obvious.

This end-of-year drift is especially frustrating after months of being told how critical school attendance is. If every day in school matters, why is so much time wasted at the end of the year?

In the grand scheme of things, the May Malaise may seem like a minor annoyance. But it also informs a deeper question: What would schools look like without testing? While I don’t believe they would devolve into nonstop parties and movies, this period offers a glimpse into what the school system would look like with less focus on academics and less accountability. It suggests the motivation to improve student achievement isn’t as deeply embedded in the system as we might hope. And to me, it highlights the value of testing.

I know some people see standardized tests as the enemy of good teaching. They argue that tests constrain teachers, forcing them to “teach to the test” instead of inspiring creativity and deeper learning. But I see it differently. I believe testing is one of the most powerful tools we have to keep schools focused on what matters most: teaching core academic skills. I fear that if we stop testing, what little urgency we have for improving academic achievement will be lost.

Even if you think that tests are too distracting for teachers, or too stressful for students (some stress is good for them, I assure you!), just remember May Malaise. It could be worse.

Information Overload and Missouri School Report Cards

Posted on by Mike Ederer

Have you ever started reading the warning label on an over-the-counter drug like aspirin or ibuprofen? Ever finished one? Probably not.

Drug warning labels are classic examples of information overload—so packed with details that they become practically useless. Unfortunately, the school report cards produced by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) suffer from the same problem.

In theory, these report cards should help parents and community members quickly understand how their local schools are performing. When well-designed, they can promote transparency and inform decision-making. But if a school report card is not organized and does not emphasize the most important information, it functions like a drug warning label. It can include a lot of detail but be of little practical value.

If you’re curious to see this for yourself, here is a link to the school report cards made available by DESE. Choose a district, then a school, and you can scroll through a vast amount of information. However, after you’ve taken the time to look through it all, you may realize you haven’t learned very much. DESE’s report cards may be comprehensive, but they fail to deliver what busy families need most: clear, accessible information about school quality.

Now, contrast the Missouri report cards with this report card for Briarmeadow Charter School in Houston, produced by the Texas Education Agency. At the very top, letter grades in four categories are displayed prominently:

  • Overall Rating: A
  • Student Achievement: A
  • School Progress: A
  • Closing the Gap: A

With just a glance, you know where this school stands.

Texas is not alone in this approach. States like Florida, Illinois, and Louisiana also use summary performance indicators on their school report cards to give the public a clear picture of school quality. Unlike Missouri, these states are courageous enough to rate schools based on performance, and most importantly, publicly identify schools that are failing to educate their students.

It’s no coincidence that students in states with strong transparency and accountability policies, including clear and informative school report cards, consistently outperform Missouri students academically. These policies are key drivers of school improvement, and without them Missouri is only likely to fall further behind. School report cards that are informative about actual school performance are a simple way to get our state moving in the right direction.

Border War is Back On!

Posted on by Mike Ederer

For a brief, shining moment, Missouri and Kansas called a truce. After decades of lobbing taxpayer-funded incentives across State Line Road like cannonballs, the two states agreed to stop bribing businesses to hop the border. It was a bipartisan recognition that our local economy wasn’t growing—it was just shifting, while schools and libraries quietly picked up the tab. (To be honest, I was never convinced the truce was real or lasting—but it wasn’t nothing. )

That truce, however tenuous, is now over. And the legislative safeguards that underpinned it? Those are collapsing too. Missouri’s border war limitations on cross-state tax subsidies are set to expire in August. Earlier this year, legislation was introduced to preserve the truce by eliminating the expiration date entirely. Lawmakers added it to Senate Bill 10, which passed both chambers independently—but couldn’t get reconciled before session’s end. So the bill died, and with it, hopes for ending the economic arms race.

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly indicated last year she was never really serious about the truce. But now Missouri has let the truce expire. And in doing so, our lawmakers joined Kansas in an economic race to the bottom. It’s bad policy. Worse, it’s profoundly unserious governance.

Economic development isn’t war. It’s not supposed to be a battlefield where neighboring states trade artillery in the form of publicly issued bonds and tax abatements. Yet here we are again, watching legislators in Jefferson City and Topeka dress up like Civil War reenactors—reenacting the Border War with new costumes and worse math.

Meanwhile, Missouri public officials continue their own subsidy spree, throwing tax breaks at data centers and entertainment districts while the state is unable to keep the streets repaired or safe. If lawmakers were serious about our state’s economic health, they’d rein in their own giveaways first.

Instead, we’re back to playing an expensive, performative game—one that enriches developers, flatters politicians, and drains public coffers. Legislators in both states want to be seen as “fighting” for jobs, but all they’re doing is trading fire in border skirmishes that make the region poorer.

The original truce was imperfect, but it pointed in the right direction. It said we could grow the region without cannibalizing each other. That we didn’t have to subsidize the illusion of progress. That good policy could also be good politics.

By breaking the truce or letting it expire, politicians on both sides demonstrated they are not interested in sober economic stewardship. They may win a few headlines or ribbon cuttings. But the public—taxpayers, students, local governments—will be left paying the bill.

If this is a reenactment, let’s at least admit it: The weapons are new, but the economic costs are the same.

Don’t Believe the (Streetcar) Hype

Posted on by Mike Ederer

Back in 1988, Public Enemy urged us: “Don’t Believe the Hype.” In the 37 years since, plenty has changed—but that line remains sage advice, especially as Kansas City prepares to open another streetcar extension. It’s also a timely reminder for those of us in the media.

A recent article in The Beacon highlighted “Historic renovations, new buildings and empty lots. Twelve projects to watch along the streetcar extension.” These projects may well be real, and perhaps even partially spurred by the streetcar—though that’s a bold assumption. (Consider, for example, the claim years ago that a company moved to be nearer to the streetcar, only to find out the claim was  specious.)  But more to the point, the story misses a crucial journalistic opportunity: comparison.

What if development along the streetcar line is proceeding at the same rate as development elsewhere in the county? Wouldn’t that be a critical piece of context for readers? Unfortunately, the article doesn’t address it.

The piece features an enthusiastic architect praising the streetcar and predicting continued growth—but offers little else in the way of evidence. There are no supporting data or comparative figures, just optimism.

Yet when we look at property value increases within the streetcar development district, the growth mirrors that of the broader county. If the streetcar were truly driving development, we’d expect the district to outperform. But so far, it hasn’t.

In fact, the full picture is more sobering. The city has layered on economic development incentives—tax abatements and similar tools—specifically to attract investment along the line. Still, there’s little sign they’re making a difference.

So, as more coverage emerges touting the streetcar’s economic magic, it’s worth pausing to ask a foundational economic question: “Compared to what?” That kind of framing—rooted in evidence, not enthusiasm—might offer readers a more accurate view of what’s really happening.

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