Denying Evidence, Denying Opportunity

Posted on by James V. Shuls

Fewer than three out of ten students who enter Saint Louis' Sumner High School in ninth grade will graduate from the school within four years. In all, there are six high schools in Missouri where fewer than 60 percent of students graduate on time. Fortunately, students in the Kansas City and Saint Louis School Districts have magnet schools and charter schools as an option. In Normandy, students have no such options. They are stuck.  Keep this in mind as you read this post.

Recently, the Center for Public Education, an arm of the National School Boards Association, released a report on the merits of school choice. The paper claims to summarize “what the research says.” Interestingly, the report fails to include almost every analysis that has found benefits to private school choice programs.

When Anna Egalite, an assistant professor of educational leadership, policy, and human development at North Carolina State University, conducted a systematic review of the competitive effects of private school choice programs, she found 21 studies. She concluded that the results “unanimously find positive impacts on student achievement. Such overwhelming evidence supports the development of market-based schooling policies as a means to increase student achievement in traditional public schools.” Interestingly, the Center for Public Education did not cite any of these studies.

Similarly, there have been 12 random-assignment studies of voucher programs. These are considered the “gold-standard” in social science research because they are the best at determining causality. Eleven of the 12 studies have found positive effects from voucher programs. The Center for Public Education review only cites one of these studies.

The report cites plenty of useful statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics and other sources, but does not even attempt to cite the plethora of useful research on school choice programs.

Nevertheless, the report does get at least one thing right—private school choice tends to boost graduation rates.  This was highlighted in the evaluation of the Washington D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, which showed a 21 percentage point increase in the graduation rate for voucher users.

Not surprisingly, given that they neglect to cite any of the ample evidence showing that school choice succeeds, the Center's conclusion is that “In general, we find that school choices work for some students sometimes, are worse for some students sometimes, and are usually no better or worse than traditional public schools.”

In addition to simply being inaccurate, this conclusion does a great disservice to the students most in need of another educational option; particularly the students in the six Missouri school districts with the worst graduation rates (see above).

School choice may not be a cure-all, but the evidence is quite clear: students benefit from school choice. Indeed, students at Sumner and the other schools listed above may benefit the most. 

What Kansas City Can Learn From the Royals

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

Everyone at the Show-Me Institute, especially those in the Kansas City office, offer our ecstatic if hoarse congratulations to the Royals for their World Series championship. More than merely winning, the team demonstrated how the game ought to be played.

It's been said time and again that the Kansas City Royals have succeeded by playing small ball; focusing on base hits, keeping the runs coming. There is no dependence on big personalities, and hopes aren't pinned to a dramatic swing for the fences to win the game. The Royals charted their own course, built on their own strengths, and delivered a product no one else could.

Kansas City government—and Missouri government in general—could learn a lot from that. Instead, city leaders engage in the municipal me-tooism of convention hotels, streetcars and airports. We pin our hopes on big plays (Boeing tax credits, Power & Light District) and neglect the basics (deferred maintenance on neglected infrastructure, diverting funds from schools, libraries, sewers, public safety). As a result, the City of Fountains cannot afford to maintain its fountains. 

Policy makers are sacrificing the basics in order to score with big projects. It isn't working. We ought to learn the lesson of the Royals' last two seasons: focus on the basics, play to your strengths, keep the line moving.

Hearing on the Kansas City Convention Hotel

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey
On October 15, members of the Kansas City City Council heard from developers and supporters of a proposal to use taxpayer funds to subsidize a $300+ million convention hotel. The Show-Me Institute’s Patrick Tuohey suggested that Council members need to read the reports prepared by consultant to the developers and others to assess the wisdom of investing taxpayer dollars. From what we’ve seen so far, we question whether the projections made are realistic—especially when similar projects in Kansas City have failed in the past.
 

Melville School District Wants to Raise Property Tax Rates

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

Today voters in the Mehlville School District will decide if their current property tax rate will increase by 49 cents per $100 dollars of assessed valuation. If Prop R passes, the owner of a $150,000 dollar home will pay about $140 more per year in property taxes.

Funds raised from the tax increase will be directed toward priorities such as hiring 16 new certified teachers to help struggling students and restoring technology and student club funding. Proponents of Proposition R say that without additional funds, home values will decrease due to declining academic performance. Opponents believe the additional funds won’t be used wisely, in which case the increased tax rate will lower the value of their homes.

Analysts at the Show-Me Institute have looked at how school quality and tax rates affect home prices. In Real Estate Assessment and Property Taxation, analysts demonstrated that the quality of schools and their related tax rates are capitalized into the value of property. As the video below explains, homeowners in the Clayton and Ladue school districts in Richmond Heights pay substantially more for comparable homes with better performing schools and lower tax rates.  

In short, homeowners and voters want to get the most bang for their tax bucks. The following data on school performance and school funding may shed some light on what’s going on in the district.

First, the graph below shows how Mehlville and the districts around it performed on the MAP test in 2015 in both math and science.

Mehlville doesn’t look great. In fact, the district has the second lowest math scores in the area.

But, if we look at a second data set—college readiness indicators like average ACT scores, college remediation rates (the percentage of students who enroll in courses they should have completed in high school), and the number of AP courses the district is offering—Melville is performing better than other districts in the area (see table below). 

College Readiness Indicators

School District

Avg. ACT Score

College Remediation Rate

# of AP Courses Offered

Mehlville

23

32.9

16

Kirkwood

24

30.3

19

Lindbergh

23

23.6

19

Bayless

21.7

59.6

2

Hancock

22

33.3

9

Affton

19.7

50

5

Webster Groves

23.1

24.6

3

Even with reports of losing teachers to neighboring districts, Mehlville is able to offer a large number of AP courses and prepare students for college at about the same rate as neighboring districts with more teachers and administrators (as our next graph displays).

The graph below presents teacher/student and administrator/student ratios. Mehlville has more students per teacher than Kirkwood, but fewer students per teacher than Lindbergh, even though both are better-performing districts. Mehlville also has the highest student-to-administrator ratio in the area.

Finally, relative to other school district property tax rates in the area, Melville has the lowest rate:

School District

Tax Rate Per $100

Mehlville

$3.7621

Kirkwood

$4.2524

Lindbergh

$4.2906

Bayless

$4.7682

Hancock

$4.8164

Affton

$5.368

Webster Groves

$5.8584

 

So what should we make of all of this? Frankly, it’s tough to say. In some ways, it appears that Mehlville is operating efficiently. With fewer teachers and administrators and a lower tax burden, the district is achieving about as well on several key indicators as other districts. In other ways, it appears that the district is lagging behind.

The real question is whether new dollars will do anything to move the needle on student performance. Simply hiring more teachers and investing in technology and student clubs doesn’t seem particularly compelling. What’s more, will raising taxes hurt Mehlville’s competitive edge in recruiting new homeowners? Without strong answers to these questions, it is hard to determine if taxpayers should get behind any effort to increase tax rates in the district.

 

 

Property Tax Increase on Ballot in Kirkwood School District

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

Tomorrow, Kirkwood School District voters will decide if the district will increase its operating tax levy by 78 cents per $100 dollars of assessed valuation. This is a substantial increase—the neighboring Melville School District is proposing only a 49-cent increase. The tax levy pays for the operating costs of the district, including salaries and benefits for teachers and administrators. If Prop A passes, the owner of a $250,000 dollar house will pay $370 dollars more per year.   

Earlier, I wrote about Mehlville School District’s proposed property tax increase. Voters in both Melville and Kirkwood must decide whether they think additional funds will improve the quality of the districts. To make this decision, they should consider how the school districts are currently spending tax dollars.

A group called Tax Fairly opposes the tax hike. Information about their reasons for opposing the tax increase may be found here.

Tax Fairly points out that Kirkwood has the highest-paid superintendent in the state and the second highest-paid teachers in the state (only the Clayton School District pays more). Kirkwood School Board President E. J. Miller told the Post-Dispatch, “We want the best of the best. We think that to hire them and retain them, we want to pay them well.”

Proponents of Prop A believe the property tax increase is necessary due to increasing enrollment. A district-hired demographer estimated an enrollment increase of between 10 and 11 percent by 2019. To keep up with the rate of enrollment, the district would have to hire new teachers to keep class sizes down.

Tax Fairly disagrees with the district’s enrollment estimates. The group questions the methods used to determine 2019 enrollment. They point out that at least some of the rising enrollment the district has experienced has been due to transfer students from the Normandy and Riverview Gardens districts. They also call attention to the fact that Kirkwood allows children of teachers in the district to attend the school tuition-free.

I want to add one wrinkle to this debate. The chart above provides teacher–student ratios for Kirkwood and the surrounding school districts (using Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Data). Kirkwood classrooms average 14 students per teacher, which is lower than most other school districts in the area. Perhaps it’s not Kirkwood’s teacher salaries that are driving costs, but the number of teachers they need.

Research shows that teacher quality is more important than class size, that is, class sizes could increase slightly and still maintain the same level of quality. In fact, according to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the desirable standard for student enrollment in classrooms is between 17 and 25 students, depending on the grade level, well above Kirkwood’s average.  Is the district operating as efficiently as it could? Arguably not.

Although many agree the district is performing well, a major concern for taxpayers is how the district will spend $10.4 million in additional revenue annually. The 2015–2016 operating revenue budget is $62 million. Is all of that new money necessary?

Missouri’s Latest Report Card: C-

Posted on by Rik W. Hafer

The National Center for Education Statistics recently released the latest assessment scores for all 50 states. Missouri ranks in the lower half.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a biennial assessment of fourth-grade and eighth-grade students across the country in English and math proficiency. The good news from the 2015 scores is that Missouri did about as well (or poorly) as in 2013. But that is where the good news ends.

I will focus on the math scores, because there is ample evidence that how students do on the math component of the test is a good indicator of future economic success. That is, states with low math scores also tend to be states that have poor records when it comes to economic growth. And Missouri is not an economic powerhouse by any stretch of the statistical imagination.

So how did Missouri students do in math this time around? Thirty-eight percent of fourth-graders scored at the proficient level. If my own math is correct here, that means 62 percent scored at levels less than proficient. That put Missouri at 29th compared to other states. Eighth-graders did slightly worse: only 31 percent scored at or above the proficient level. That score put Missouri at 32nd. (For perspective, more than 50 percent of fourth- and eighth-grade students in Massachusetts scored above at or above the proficient level in math.) And as the recent post by James Shuls) points out, adjusting for state demographics does not improve the outcome.

Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) notes that these current rankings are no worse (eighth-grade math) and an improvement (fourth-grade math) compared with the 2013 results. They fail, however, to report that both scores are lower than their peaks, which occurred in 2009. Though the scores appear to have stopped falling, they also have not regained the ground lost over the past six years.

With NAEP scores falling or, at best stable, how long will state education administrators and politicians continue with the ineffective Top 10 by 20 campaign? The only way Missouri will become a top-10–ranked state in terms of educational achievement is if most of the states currently ahead of it somehow begin to fail miserably.

I just do not see that happening. Do you?

Keeping the Rams – Lessons from a Nursery Song

Posted on by Andrew B. Wilson

Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes sir, three bags full. 

In reading reports of Tuesday’s NFL “hearing” at the Peabody Opera House, I was reminded of that old nursery song, which is really a parable about scarce resources.

In the nursery song, there are four woolly sheep of different colors (black, white, grey, and brown), plus a fifth sheep that has already been fleeced. Beginning with the black sheep, the four sheep all give “three bags full” of wool for others to use:

One for the master,
one for the dame,
and one for the little boy
who lives down the lane.

But then, of course, you come to the last sheep, and there’s the problem:

Baa, baa, bare sheep,
have you any wool?
No sir, no sir, no bags full.
None for the master,
none for the dame,
and none for the little boy
who lives down the lane.

Alternately rowdy and tearful, some 1,000 Saint Louis Rams fans showed up to plead with NFL officials to keep the team in Saint Louis. The passionate fans who wore NFL jerseys featuring the names of their favorite players see themselves in the role of the sheep that has been fleeced – or are about to be – assuming the owner Stan Kroenke succeeds in moving the team to the Los Angeles area. That is an understandable reaction to the disappointment of losing a favorite team.

However, from an economic viewpoint, it is really the taxpayers in the state of Missouri who were fleeced once – and are about to be fleeced again – if the plan to build a new $1 billion public/private downtown stadium along with the riverfront goes ahead – with the expenditure of some $400 million in public money through issuance of bonds, state tax credits, and infrastructure grants.

The Edward Jones Dome (or TWA Dome, as it was formerly called) was a 100 percent publicly financed project. The Rams pay an annual rent of just $240,000, which is just 1 percent of the $24 million annual cost that taxpayers have paid (and will continue to pay until 2022) to service the debt on its construction.

There is no legitimate reason to subsidize professional football, which is a hugely profitable business in its own right. Saint Louis and the state of Missouri shouldn’t have to sweeten the pot at public expense to keep the Rams in the St. Louis. It would be better to let them go.

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye

Posted on by Michael Rathbone

This is my final post for the Show-Me Institute, and it has been a great four years. I am proud to have had the opportunity to work with my colleagues and to have played a part in helping to protect liberty in Missouri. But while much has been done, there is a lot left to do.

Missouri needs to remain economically competitive with Kansas and other neighboring states. Eliminating income taxes on job producers would be a great step toward this goal.

Missouri needs to ensure that public pensions don't wreck state and local finances.

Missouri should not enact job-devastating regulations like the minimum wage. Well-intentioned as it might be, an increase to the minimum wage would destroy jobs for the people who need them most.

These are a few of the many topics that Missourians will need to address going forward, and my colleagues will carry on that fight in the months and years ahead. For my part, it was an honor to work with them, and for you.

Support Us

The work of the Show-Me Institute would not be possible without the generous support of people who are inspired by the vision of liberty and free enterprise. We hope you will join our efforts and become a Show-Me Institute sponsor.

Donate
Man on Horse Charging