In this policy breakfast, Will Scharf, Policy Director for the Office of Governor Eric Greitens, provides an update on Missouri’s current legislative session. He also takes questions from the audience.
Charter Schools 101: Are Charter Schools Public or Private?
As I wrote last week, even after 30 years charter schools remain a mystery to many people. Often, even the people who understand the basics about how charters operate are confused about whether they are public or private schools.
For the record: Charter schools are public schools. In fact, they’re commonly referred to as “public charter schools” by supporters and detractors alike. But misunderstanding about the issue has been surprisingly stubborn. In fact, a former Secretary of Education and current head of the U. S. Senate Education Committee said just two years ago, “There are some private charter schools, are there not?”
Charter schools have much more in common with traditional public schools than many people realize. Charters receive the same state and federal funding that any public school receives. In most cases, they also receive the local funding per student for the students who attend. Unlike traditional public schools, charter schools must pay all of their costs, including the cost of buying or building the school, from their annual revenue.
The students in charter schools are public school students whose parents have chosen to send them to a charter school rather than send them to the public school to which they are assigned based on their address. They participate in all state testing and have all of the same rights and responsibilities of all public school students. It is illegal for charter schools to discriminate against any student who chooses them, to charge tuition, or to teach religion. If there are more parents who choose the school than there are seats, students must be selected through a public lottery. Parents are free to have their child return to their assigned public school at any time if they aren’t satisfied with the charter school.
The teachers at a charter school are public school teachers, although not usually required to be members of a local teacher’s union or collective bargaining agreement. The administration and board of each charter school has substantial discretion when it comes to hiring, paying, and firing their staff. In Missouri, charter school teachers are required to participate in the public pension plans for teachers.
Unfortunately, myths about charter schools abound, leading to serious misunderstandings. And because they’re not typical public schools and don’t answer to the local school board, opponents sometimes refer to them as private schools. But saying it doesn’t make it so.
Enhanced Sunshine Law Enforcement A Good Idea
Show-Me Institute readers probably know about some of the difficulties we’ve had in getting municipal spending information for our Municipal Checkbook Project. From cities’ bad record-keeping to being told it would cost us tens of thousands of dollars for them to provide the information, we have heard a lot of excuses for why Missouri municipalities can’t tell us how they’re spending the public’s money. And while some of these answers were arguably in compliance with the letter of Missouri’s Sunshine laws, many of the excuses are, in my estimation, far afield from the laws’ intent of fostering meaningfully open and transparent government.
But those excuses may have to get more creative if one proposal becomes law. Among other things, the reform would create a “transparency division” in the attorney general’s office to focus on transparency matters. It would also put some teeth into the statutes to ensure that agents of the state are in compliance with Missouri’s Sunshine laws. While the legislation itself was only recently filed, the idea has been percolating for at least a few weeks.
Creation of a transparency division, Hawley said, will ensure that questions about conflict of interest won’t interfere with enforcement of the Sunshine Law. And enumerating penalties for violation of record retention law will help ensure enforcement.
Hawley said many improvements could be made to the Sunshine Law to get it in line with modern technology. But discussion of a large-scale review of the law shouldn’t stand in the way of his proposals aimed at improving enforcement of the existing law, he said.
Comprehensive reform is always welcome. For example, we’d like to see cities regularly report their spending rather than forcing taxpayers to instead chase cities and their excuses ad infinitum. But incremental reforms that move toward those larger ends are also welcome, and it seems like this proposal is well within that track.
Brenda Talent Joins Panel on KETC’s Donnybrook
On Thursday, February 22, Show-Me Institute CEO Brenda Talent appeared on KETC’s Donnybrook to discuss controversies in Jefferson City, the effectiveness of the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association, and the recent public relations efforts of the St. Louis City Police Department.
Springfield Policy Lunch: Legislative Update
In this policy lunch, Rep. Crystal Quade (D-Greene County) and Rep. Elijah Haahr (R-Springfield) provide an update on the current legislative session in Missouri’s House of Representatives. Afterward, they take questions from the audience.
Charter Schools 101: What Is a Charter School?
It’s hard to believe that after nearly 30 years charter schools are still a mystery in some parts of the United States. But I still get the question: What is a charter school?
Charter schools are public schools, but instead of being governed by a local school board, they are governed by a document—their charter—that lays out how the school will operate and the metrics by which its performance will be judged. The charter is granted to the group of individuals who seek to open and run the school, and it has an expiration date of three to five years, at which point it needs to be renewed or the school is closed. The charter is awarded by an authorizer, or sponsor, who is responsible for making sure that the school stays on track, both academically and financially, and who makes the renewal or closure recommendation.
A little history might be helpful in understanding how the charter school movement began. It started in the late 1980s as an idea to let teachers, parents, or community leaders open and run a public school outside of district oversight. Credit for the idea usually goes to Al Shanker—head of one of the two major teacher’s unions in the United States. In 1988, Shanker offered an idea for reinvigorating public education that was inspired by a visit to a school in Cologne, Germany the prior year. He argued that we should allow teachers to create innovative, autonomous public schools, and that these chartered schools would serve as laboratories from which effective ideas could be replicated.
Around the same time, political economists John Chubb and Terry Moe argued that the institutional structure of public education wasn’t working. they found that autonomy was the one indispensable requirement for an effective school. And, they concluded, the existing structure of public education limits and undermines school autonomy. In their book Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools, Chubb and Moe proposed building an entirely new structure for public education that would withdraw authority from existing institutions and place it directly in the hands of schools, parents, and students. School districts could continue to operate their existing schools, but they would have no authority over the “chartered” public schools.
In 1991, bipartisan support for Al Shanker’s idea led to the passage of the first charter school law in Minnesota. The law was groundbreaking, and in 1992 eight chartered public schools opened in Minnesota that were autonomous, student-centered, results-oriented, and designed and run by teachers. The following year California followed suit. At the start of the 2017–18 school year, there were over 7,000 charter schools in 42 states plus the District of Columbia, serving nearly 3.2 million students. Charter schools now represent seven percent of all public schools and enroll six percent of public school students. Today, one in five public school students attends school in a district with at least 10 percent of its students in charter schools.
A $200,000 Retirement Benefit and a $250,000 Salary? Deal!
Ah retirement . . . that glorious time at 57 years of age when you can begin drawing roughly $200,000 annually for the rest of your life while simultaneously continuing to work and earn an additional $250,000.
What, that’s not the norm? Well, it is exactly what the “retiring” Pattonville superintendent will be doing soon.
The Kansas City Business Journal is reporting that the longtime superintendent will be retiring from Pattonville this year and taking up the superintendent position in the Shawnee Mission School District in Kansas. This move will allow him to retire from the pension system in Missouri and begin drawing his guaranteed benefit while also earning a salary in his new district, because the two school districts are in different pension systems.
According to the St. Louis Business Journal, the Pattonville superintendent earned $267,232 in 2016–17. In Missouri’s Public School Retirement System, members can earn 75% of their final average salary (defined as their three highest consecutive years). This would easily put his annual retirement benefit over $200,000, because the listed salary does not include other benefits, such as medical, which are also included in the final average salary.
There are three important things to take away from this.
First, we have to ask if it is wise to have a system that pushes effective leaders out at a relatively early age. This superintendent, who might likely work for another decade or more in Kansas, will begin drawing his retirement immediately and will draw it for the rest of his life. Indeed, there is a tremendous incentive for individuals to retire at this point in their career.
This leads us to our second point, pushing out effective educators may not be an effective strategy if we want to improve the quality of education. This superintendent will take his services elsewhere, but many terrific teachers, principals, and superintendents are pushed out of education all together.
Finally, when people ask why the pension system is underfunded, this should be one of the prime examples you give them. The problem is that individuals like this superintendent often do not contribute enough to the system to cover their pension benefits. He is a big time pension winner, who will be receiving much more in benefits than he contributed to the system.
Don’t get me wrong: I applaud the superintendent’s decision. It’s a smart one, and we should all be so lucky. The problem is that we can’t all be so lucky. Lavish benefits like this must be paid for by someone. As I have shown before, they are paid by teachers who leave money in the system, by low-paid teachers in other districts, and ultimately by taxpayers.
Superintendents and others like Pattonville’s are not simply getting what they put into the system; they are getting much more. Let me ask you which system seems fair: this one, or a system in which retirees receive benefits that are in line with their contributions? If you ask me, the answer seems obvious.
The Power & Light District Still Hasn’t Delivered
On Ruckus last week we discussed the city’s debt and its profligate spending on the Power & Light District downtown. In the segment, I asserted that ten years ago, “Kansas City fell all over itself to try to build an entertainment district. It hasn’t created any new jobs; it hasn’t created any new businesses.” How can that be—isn’t it evident that downtown has seen a rebirth?
As I’ve written before, most of these taxpayer subsidies result only in economic diversion. They don’t create anything new; at best they just move development to different areas. The H&R Block headquarters for which taxpayers paid didn’t create the new jobs that were promised; it merely consolidated jobs from across the area to one place. Likewise, as the chart below shows, the Power & Light District didn’t create new jobs or businesses, but instead simply relocated them from elsewhere.
The number of bars and restaurants (and their accompanying jobs) remained flat in Kansas City for years after the Power & Light District opened. If the Power & Light District had been the success that city leaders claimed, you’d have seen an uptick in employee liquor cards and licenses. But citywide, the numbers were flat at best. This means that any new jobs and businesses downtown merely came at the cost of jobs and businesses elsewhere in the city. Nothing new was created. Only now, as the economy improves, are those numbers going up.
Focusing on reviving downtown Kansas City might be a worthy goal. As I wrote last year,
Policymakers are free to argue that diverting economic activity from elsewhere in Kansas City to the downtown area is good policy. That would be a welcome policy debate worthy of consideration. But supporting policies that merely move activity around and then pretending something new has been created is not only disingenuous, it is unsustainable.
The rest of Kansas City has needs, including basic infrastructure and greater police presence. Focusing on downtown hasn’t provided any net benefit, and it has cost us dearly.
Map: Medicaid Spending and Enrollment by County in 2016
Recently, Patrick Ishmael, Show-Me’s Director of Government Accountability, pointed out that Medicaid spending is increasing in Missouri at an alarming rate. Even though some downplayed the 6.2 percent growth in spending, there is cause for concern. The Medicaid budget increased by nearly $570 million from FY2016 to FY2017. Additionally, Ishmael notes that Medicaid’s share of the budget has risen from 18.4 percent in FY2000 to over 37 percent in FY2016.
Since Medicaid is such a large part of state spending, it is worth taking a closer look at where and how this money is being spent. Below is a map that shows the percentage of counties’ populations enrolled in Medicaid, also known at Mo HealthNet. The data table, provided by the Department of Social Services, can also be sorted by expenditures, enrollees, and percentage of the population for each county.
The data displayed are from FY2016; in FY2017, another $570 million and 26,948 enrollees were added to these numbers. This information could help provide a clearer picture of Medicaid’s costs and the variation in participation rates across counties. With such information, lawmakers and taxpayers can better understand how changes—whether cuts or expansion—to the program would affect the state.
