Education Department to Revisit Title IX Guidelines for Sexual Assault Investigations

Posted on by Michael Q. McShane

On Friday, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos rescinded a “Dear Colleague” letter that the Obama administration had issued in 2011 detailing how universities should handle accusations of sexual assault. The Department will open a period of public comment on the issue and draft new rules in the coming months.

The Obama administration’s guidelines had come under criticism as more and more individuals accused of sexual assault came forward to argue that their due process rights were being violated.

The “Dear Colleague” letter (and subsequent communications by the Department of Education) offered several bits of problematic guidance. First, the letter directed universities to follow what is called a “single investigator” model when pursuing these claims, meaning that a university employee would, as Emily Yoffe of the Atlantic wrote, act as “detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury” for the case. There is a reason why we separate those responsibilities in our court system.

Standard rules of evidence that we would expect any court of law to follow did not have to be followed. Because of the opaque nature of these investigations, those accused did not have a right to submit evidence on their own behalf or cross-examine witnesses or experts. In fact, those accused of these crimes did not even have to be notified of the specific complaint against them. It was a recipe for disaster.

At the core of all investigations is the balance between the rights of the accused and the rights of the accusers. As both Yoffe and Robby Soave of Reason.com have documented in heartbreaking detail, current processes have failed both of these groups. Due process helps to ensure that the guilty are punished and that the innocent are not. With an issue as serious as sexual assault, it is that much more important that fair and transparent procedures are followed. Let’s hope that this period of public comment brings them back into balance.

A Closer Look at Accreditation

Posted on by Emily Stahly

In Missouri, it can be big news when a school district earns (or fails to earn) accreditation. Judging by the media coverage back in January, when the Saint Louis school district was fully accredited for the first time since 2007, the accreditation of a district sometimes seems to serve as a shorthand for the quality of the education that students in the district receive: An unaccredited school district is failing; an accredited district has at least crossed some threshold of adequacy.

But as usual, a closer look calls such clear distinctions into question. In her EducationNext article on accreditation and its possible role under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Jennifer Oldham contacted the Show-Me Institute’s Emily Stahly for a better understanding of what the reinstatement of accredited status means for Saint Louis. Unfortunately, as Emily wrote back in January, in this case the news is hardly cause for celebration. The district was accredited even though most students scored below the “proficient” level in both math and English on standardized tests, because “higher scores in the attendance and graduation-rate categories made up for poor results in academic achievement.”

Oldham’s article examines accreditation from several angles, including the effect that loss of accreditation can have on districts and communities and also the incentives that accrediting agencies face. The entire article is worth reading, and offers some ideas to consider as Missouri adapts to the ESSA standards for accountability.

How Easy Is It to Get a Sunshine Request Fulfilled? It Depends.

Posted on by Philip Oehlerking

Will Rogers once said, “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” And while government transparency is no joke, sometimes you have to laugh at how hard it can be to get information that should be readily available to the public. That continues to be the case with our “government checkbook” project, which my colleagues and I have been working on for several months now.

Let me re-set the stage. Missouri’s Sunshine Law (RSMo 610) requires municipalities and other public bodies to provide records of public interest, with some exceptions. It also states that if there is a charge billed to the requester, the municipality fulfilling the request should use employees of the public body that will result in the lowest amount of charges for search, research, and copying time.

Obtaining records of city expenses over the last five years is central to our project, and because there are so many cities in Missouri, it has been interesting to see the wide variety of reactions we have received from our uniform request (available below). As my colleague Scott Tuttle has noted before, responses to our inquiries have been uneven, with many cities promptly providing us the information we requested for reasonable fees, while others were less responsive and charged more.

For instance, the city of Festus took several days, waived their fees (as they are allowed to do) and gave a detailed Excel spreadsheet of their spending, which can be filtered and easily searched. Smithville took one day to fulfill the request and charged $20.00 for its records in PDF form. Meanwhile, Manchester—which to be fair is a city larger (population ~18,000) than either Festus (~12,000) or Smithville (~9,500)—told us it would cost approximately $1,200 and take up to four weeks for its staff to complete the response to my request.

Why the huge discrepancy in cost? The law does not specify the format in which information should be kept, or what a reasonable fee to charge is. To some degree this ambiguity makes sense, because the law has to be flexible enough to address situations and requests not considered when the statute was written. But should that gray area allow locales to drag their feet or (arguably) overcharge for documents that should be easy to access, while nonetheless complying with the law?

Although the responses from these three cities fulfilled statutory obligations, Festus and Smithville’s responses seemed to be most faithful not only to the law, but also to its spirit. As for Manchester’s response, you can judge for yourself.

It is puzzling with the technology available today why our cities and counties don’t simply publish their “checkbook” information online. There are plenty of free or low-cost platforms to keep these records up-to-date and accessible (look at what Manchester’s neighbor Ballwin is doing), and given the taxpayer interest and treasure involved, why should obstacles get in the way of accessing that information?

Click on the link below to see the request we sent out

Studies Show Benefits of School Choice Extend Beyond the Classroom

Posted on by Emily Stahly

There’s an old joke often told by economists that goes something like this:

A policeman sees a man looking for something under a streetlight and asks what he has lost. He says he lost his keys and the policeman decides to lend a hand looking for them. After a few minutes, the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them there, and the man replies, no, he lost them on the other side of the street. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the man replies, “well, this is where the light is.”

When education researchers want to measure the impact of a policy or program, they are forced to look where the light is. That usually means looking at student test scores, graduation rates, and a set of relatively limited short-term indicators.

Fortunately, school-choice researchers are starting to look at outcomes beyond just test scores, casting light into areas that were previously shrouded in darkness.

In fact, not only does new research show that school choice can boost test scores and increase the likelihood that low-income students finish college, but studies also suggest that students in school choice programs are less likely than their traditional school peers to commit crimes.

Researchers studying the high-performing Promise Academy in the Harlem Children’s Zone found promising results for students at that school, which uses a lottery system to place students in the limited number of available spots. Four percent of lottery “losers” were incarcerated compared to none of the lottery “winners.” In addition, charter school students were 17 percentage points more likely to enroll in college immediately after high school, and female lottery winners were 10.1 percentage points less likely to report having been pregnant as a teenager than lottery losers.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg district in North Carolina used a lottery system to place students into schools that have a limited number of available seats. A study by David J. Deming at Harvard University shows that high school students who “won” the lottery and were placed into their first-choice school were arrested 70 percent less for drug charges and 45 percent less for other felony charges compared to students who entered the lottery but did not secure a spot in their first-choice school.

Schools that use lottery systems for admission are especially helpful for comparison studies because they allow researchers to compare two groups of students who both showed a desire to attend a school of their choosing. But even in situations where there is no lottery, researchers can use other techniques to help ensure the validity of their findings.

For example, researchers from the University of Arkansas found the following reduction in crime rates for male students, relative to incidence rates for their age among the general population: 79 percent for felony crimes, 93 for drug related crimes, and 87 percent for thefts. Because private school enrollment through a voucher program is not capped in Milwaukee, researchers couldn’t sort students into lottery-winner and lottery-loser groups. Instead they “used comparison groups constructed through an algorithm that matched [voucher] students with Milwaukee Public School (MPS) students based on grade, neighborhood, race, gender, English language learner (ELL) status and math and reading test scores” (see page 6 of the study).

These studies are encouraging, and suggest that school choice can not only enrich the lives of students, but also help make our cities and communities safer. No wonder school choice is becoming more popular.

 

Feds Find KC Streetcar Deficient

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

On July 24, the Federal Transit Administration issued a triennial review of Kansas City, Missouri, and its FTA-funded projects, namely the downtown streetcar. The report, available at the link below, found the city deficient in several areas, including maintenance.

A number of initial deficiencies were closed prior to the issuance of the final report, often because the city addressed the concerns after receiving a draft of the report. The city has until October 19 to address the remaining items. Of the seven initial deficiencies, one that remains concerns maintenance, including vehicle preventative maintenance, facility/equipment maintenance, and oversight of contracted maintenance.

It is a shame to learn that the city isn’t properly maintaining its streetcars—or at least is not complying with federal grant guidelines for reporting maintenance procedures. These are complicated machines, and cities such as Seattle, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Toronto have had maintenance and safety issues with their streetcars.

Cincinnati’s streetcars—which were manufactured by the same company as Kansas City’s—have had myriad maintenance problems. At one point late last year, several streetcars were offline at once.

[Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority spokeswoman Sallie] Hilvers cited “manufacturing defects” that caused the service issues that resulted, at one point Thursday night, in all but one of the city’s five streetcar vehicles being removed from city streets.

It is possible that Kansas City has had no significant streetcar maintenance problems—despite an embarrassing shut down on at least one occasion. And it is possible that the deficiencies cited by the FTA are easily addressed. We’ll know more when the city responds to the outstanding issues. 

Click below to see the entire FTA report

Cleared for Landing – KCI and the Billion Dollar Terminal

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

The Kansas City Council’s Airport Subcommittee has recommended Edgemoor Infrastructure & Real Estate as the developer for a new billion-dollar single terminal at Kansas City International Airport. If the full Council agrees, this would bring to an end the latest chapter of the airport saga, one that Councilman Quinton Lucas referred to as “really weird” and The Kansas City Star editorial board called a “disruptive mess.” Show-Me Institute analysts have been writing about the process since way back in 2013; many would say both Lucas and The Star were being generous in their descriptions.

Four years ago, in our first post on the matter, we detailed the first arguments in favor of such an expense and concluded,

If the Aviation Department and their chorus on the City Council want to tear down a much-loved and nationally recognized airport, the public deserves transparent processes and substantive answers to serious questions regarding the endeavor’s necessity.

We’re not sure either obligation has been met satisfactorily. In fact, the past four years may have only decreased confidence among voters in their elected officials. Telling voters they bear no risk in the scheme is different from telling them the scheme is necessary or even worthwhile. Kansas Citians have seen too many so-called genius ideas become fools errands. The rallying cry for new terminal supporters, “build it and they will come,” is more wishful thinking than sound economic planning.

However the full Council votes on the Airport Subcommittee recommendation, voters will be asked to sign off on the project on November 7. We’ll hear a lot about public opinion polling in the meantime. I hope there will be just as much talk about what ought to be done, the likely benefits, and the most cost-effective way to do it. 

Ouch–Missouri Individual Health Insurance Premiums To Rise by Double Digits in 2018

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

Over the Labor Day holiday, the state released next year’s Obamacare health insurance rates for Missourians in the individual market, and it was  a doozy. Not only will participation in the marketplace decline in 2018, but plan prices will increase on average by a whopping one-third, or even more.

Rate proposals released Friday by the Missouri Department of Insurance are on average 36 percent to 42 percent higher than rates for similar 2017 plans….

Both Cigna and Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, the two companies returning to sell on the marketplace, listed the uncertainty about cost-sharing payments that help consumers cover the cost of insurance as justifications for their proposed rates.

Cigna has reportedly asked for up to a 73% price hike on at least some of its plans. Meanwhile Anthem will be dropping out of at least 17 counties in the state where the company marketed plans just this year. KCUR has a good national map of the number of insurers in each county in 2018. Particularly in Missouri, the map tells a story of an individual insurance market that for hundreds of thousands is less a market and more a monopoly, duopoly, or oligopoly. 

American health care reforms should be based on good policy that empowers people, not government. And these rate hikes are just the latest example of what happens when the center of a health care system is government and its cronies rather than patients themselves. We need change, and we need it sooner rather than later.

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