School Choice, Let Me Be Me

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

Where did you go to high school?

“The question” is as much a part of the Saint Louis identity as the Gateway Arch, Cardinals baseball, or Gooey Butter Cake. Last year, I decided that I’d take a stand against high school-based judgments by asking a question myself: What high school do you think I attended?

From there, it got interesting. “Ladue, Incarnate Word, Lafayette” are just a few school names that I heard. The variety and wide range of schools was interesting to hear, but no one came close to the school I actually attended. The truth is that I graduated from an often-underperforming, low-income public high school just below the Saint Louis City line. In 2013, only 20 percent of graduates had completed a four-year degree, according to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

For many students who attend a high school within their zip code, their school often is not a reflection of who they are. They must fit in, instead of choosing a school that fits. With school choice, a high school becomes less of a description about where the student lives and how much money the student’s family has, and more about what makes the student unique.

Join us in Saint Louis or Kansas City to learn more about how educational options allow students to be themselves. If you plan on attending, use the hashtag, #letmebeme, for all event-related tweets.

 

Thoughts on the Latest Rams Press Conference

Posted on by Michael Rathbone

With the recent news that Rams owner Stan Kroenke is planning to build a new football stadium, the chances of the Rams leaving Saint Louis have increased substantially. Late last year, Gov. Nixon appointed a two-person team whose mission was to investigate options for keeping the NFL in Saint Louis. The team, which consists of former Anheuser-Busch executive Dave Peacock and Clayton area attorney Bob Blitz, presented their report on Friday. Below are key points raised in that report:

  • Plans are for a new stadium located on the riverfront, north of Lumiere Casino and northeast of the Edward Jones Dome.

Stadium2.0

  • The stadium also would be available for professional soccer.

  • It would be a public asset owned by a public entity and leased to the team. Also, the new stadium would come with a new lease, 30 years or more.

  • Cost estimate: $860-$985 million, at least half of which would be privately financed (minimum $200 million from Stan Kroenke and another $200 million from the NFL).

  • No new tax burden, although there would be public money involved.

  • Estimated completion date: 2020.

After listening to the press conference and going over some of the points raised here, I have my misgivings about this project. First, I would like to know specifically where the money is coming from to pay for this new stadium. During the press conference, Peacock said that the sources of public financing would not be ascertained until there was a commitment from the NFL and from the Rams on moving forward with this project. Second, the $860-$985 million price tag would only be for the new stadium. Additional money (it wasn’t said how much) would be needed to upgrade the current Dome so it will be a full-time convention center. How are we going to pay for that as well?

My biggest misgiving is the fact that we will be publicly subsidizing this thing at all. Kroenke’s proposal in Los Angeles would be completely privately financed. Why should the public put up money when Kroenke can afford to pay for the costs himself? The most recent trend in stadium construction is toward private investment. That’s what happened in San Francisco and New York, so why should Saint Louis be different?

I know it is easy to be wowed by beautiful pictures of sparkling developments like the one above. Yet, nice pictures aside, these kinds of plans do not produce the economic benefits that would make these developments worthwhile. I want Saint Louis to remain an NFL town, but I don’t want to spend taxpayer dollars to do it.

Should Missouri Use an A Through F System to Grade Public Schools?

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

restaurant-ratings-abc-1031

The practice of grading organizations using an A through F grading scale has been utilized by many types of industries. This legislative session, elected officials will decide if the system is right for Missouri’s public schools. Senate Bill 28 “requires the State Board of Education to develop a simplified annual school report card for each school attendance center using a letter grade of A to F.”

To understand Missouri’s current accountability system, the MSIP-5, a parent must first have access to the Internet. The Comprehensive Guide can be located using the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (DESE) website. Navigating the site is notoriously difficult, especially for a first-time user. Once the document is found, the parent must read through 104 pages of confusing tables and formulas just to, hopefully, understand the accreditation process on page 56.

The table below shows Missouri’s accreditation scheme. Although there are only four categories, words like “partially accredited” are not intuitively associated with the word “underperforming,” as the letters C and D are.

accreditation

To gain a different perspective, imagine if restaurants were evaluated using the MSIP-5—“How about dinner at Barcelona in Clayton? It got an APR of 73; oh, but its MPI was Floor.” Simply saying the restaurant has three and half stars on YELP indicates the restaurant is good, but perhaps some have had a not-so-good experience.

Our familiarity with letter grades, stars, and even “$$” provides us with simple indications of the type of service we should expect to receive. States such as Florida, Oklahoma, and Indiana have developed similar A through F school grading schemes. Some criticisms state that the systems are “oversimplified” or “have arbitrary cutoffs.” With any system, including the MSIP-5, there may be questionable cutoff points.

Ultimately, an A through F grading scale would allow parents a better understanding of what a school offers, turning them into more effective consumers of educational services.

 

 

Streetcars Continue to Fail

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

In September we highlighted the problems with streetcar cost overruns in Charlotte, North Carolina. Now it appears streetcar efforts are collapsing everywhere. According to POLITICO:

From D.C. to Atlanta, from San Antonio to Salt Lake City, streetcar projects have run into delays, cutbacks and other snags, and some have been scrapped altogether. The most dramatic recent example was November’s demise of a $550 million, state-aided streetcar project in the liberal, traditionally pro-transit D.C. suburb of Arlington County, Va., which had turned politically toxic as its price tag more than doubled. (DOT rejected an application for federal funds for that project, but supporters believed a second attempt would succeed.)

The project in Arlington, Virginia, has come to a complete stop because of problems. This is noteworthy because the region was held up as a positive example by streetcar booster Councilman Russ Johnson at the two-mile starter line’s groundbreaking. According to POLITICO:

In D.C., the H Street line is three years late in opening, marred by missteps like a test run in which the streetcar had to stand still for 15 minutes while an ambulance blocked its path. This fall, the District cut the size of its planned streetcar network from 20 miles to eight miles.

Kansas City voters wisely rejected a streetcar expansion effort in November, but city leaders seem intent on putting it on the ballot again. If city leadership won’t listen to voters, perhaps they will heed their peers around the country who are rethinking their positions.

Equal Opportunity Scholarships-Giving Students Options

Posted on by James V. Shuls

boy-2

If you could expand educational opportunities for students in failing schools by leveraging greater private investment in education, would you do it? Of course you would! This is exactly the idea behind the Equal Opportunity Scholarship idea (otherwise known as a tax credit scholarship).

The way it works is pretty simple. Taxpayers donate money to a scholarship organization. In exchange for their donation, they get a credit toward their taxes. Let’s say the credit is 75 percent. That would mean a donation of $1,000 to a scholarship organization would net a credit toward tax liabilities of $750. While the total taxes collected drops by $750, the total amount contributed goes up. The end result is greater private investment in education.

With the funds, the scholarship organizations provide tuition assistance for students who wish to attend high-quality private schools. More than a dozen states have similar programs. They are a proven method of increasing options for students. And they have the added benefit of saving taxpayers money. The Show-Me Institute has highlighted successful examples in Arizona, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.

Over the next few months, Missouri lawmakers will bandy about ideas to “solve” the problem of unaccredited schools. Thus far, Equal Opportunity Scholarships are the only proactive idea that will expand options for Missouri students.

Fuel Prices Falling, Along With Planners’ Expectations

Posted on by Joseph Miller

gas station-300x192At the time this was written, the average price for a regular gallon of gas in Missouri was $1.859. The price at the same time last year was $3.018. Fuel prices falling nearly 40 percent over 12 months is an unexpected windfall for Missouri families, with a hypothetical household getting an extra 2.75 percent raise off of savings at the pump. It is also likely to mean lower prices for nearly all goods and services, as lower fuel prices mean items can be produced and delivered for less.

While low fuel prices may give an unexpected boost to the economy at-large, they confound the expectations of city and state planners. Whether the source is the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) (the Kansas City area planning agency), the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT), or East-West Gateway (the Saint Louis regional planning agency), they all expected rising fuel prices to continue into the future. For example, in MoDOT’s October 2014 Financial Snapshot, they figured gas would average $3.26 in the upcoming year.

None of this is to blame these agencies for failing to predict future gas prices. The price of oil is historically volatile, and few predicted prices to fall as they have. What these government bodies should be faulted for is using what was at best an educated guess about the direction of gas prices as a standard plank in their arguments for billions of dollars of state and local investment in alternative transportation and restrictive land-use policies. For example, MoDOT used the trend in fuel prices as part of its argument that they needed the ability to fund billion-dollar passenger rail lines as well as support urban transit. MARC predicted that rising gas prices, along with other trends, would “demand for more walkable, transit-friendly development closer in.” This is part of their reasoning for recommending regional densification and urban refill.

Regional planners have consistently made the argument that citizens will increasingly use public transportation and live in denser environments, due in part to more expensive fuel. But instead of waiting for these markets to materialize and responding to steadily rising needs, residents are asked to spend billions today to meet uncertain demand down the road. What the precipitous fall in oil prices should remind us is that long-term predictions can be mistaken. While the estimates themselves may be prudent, using them to speculate with public dollars is not.

What Do Home Care Union Executives Really Want: A Wage Increase for Their Workers or a Union Contract?

Posted on by John Wright

residentialworker1On Christmas week, while many Missourians were exchanging presents or grabbing Chinese food, members of the Missouri Home Care Union were hard at work lobbying the governor. Ostensibly seeking higher pay for the home care attendants the union represents, the union placed carolers outside the governor’s mansion singing Christmas songs with lyrics altered to convey their message. Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” became “I’m Dreaming of a Fair Governor,” and St. Louis Public Radio captured union members singing several bars of “home care workers are coming to town.”

The odd thing about this press junket is that the governor wants to give home care workers the pay increase the union is asking for, but the union objects to the method the governor proposes to give home care workers this pay bump. From the governor’s Office of Administration:

“The governor supports the wage range provision of the labor agreement between the Missouri Quality Home Care Council and the Missouri Home Care Union that provides a pay raise for home health care workers. To ensure the wage range provision of the agreement has the full force and effect of the law, the administration will be implementing the wage range recommendation through an administrative rule.”

Jeff Mazur, executive director of the union, responded by calling the governor’s proposal to enact the pay raise “unnecessary and unwise.” It appears union executives like Mazur are really after a governor’s order implementing a collective bargaining agreement. We’ve seen this before in other states.

Home health care unions, like the Missouri Home Care Union, formed to represent home care attendants who received Medicaid funding for acting as a personal assistant of a person in need of care. In many states, such as Illinois and Michigan, once home care unions were formed, they negotiated a union contract that forced all home care workers to pay a portion of their check to the union, whether or not the worker wanted union representation.

Imagine you’re enrolled in Missouri’s home care program and you’re getting a check from the government to help offset the cost of taking care of a disabled relative. Now imagine that the state bound you to a union contract against your will, and a portion of your check is going to union executives and their pet political causes.

Governor Nixon is right to be cautious of the union’s demands. If Missouri is better off increasing payments to people enrolled in the home care program, it can do so without entering a collective bargaining agreement. Such collective bargaining agreements can have bad consequences for the home care assistants subject to them, who often cannot afford to have their benefits tapped into by a union that they do not support.

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