Education: A Way Out

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

For some students, education is a “way out,” but in places with few educational options, the way out is often a public school that does not meet the needs of its students.

Eighteen states and Washington, D.C., have taken steps to ensure students have more choice in education. New Orleans parents Gerald and Shermane Prosper were able to take advantage of the Louisiana Scholarship program, which allows their son to attend a private school. The voucher program, enacted in 2008, serves low-income students in low-performing schools and provides educational access to more than one-third of students in the state. Show-Me Institute Fellow James Shuls has shown how this type of scholarship program could potentially save Missourians millions of taxpayer dollars.

Watch the video to learn how the Prosper family views education as a pathway to success.

University City Should Carefully Consider Privatization Proposal; Ignore Special Interests

Posted on by John Wright

University City is considering outsourcing emergency medical services (EMS). Predictably, this proposal has been the subject of debate among city council members. Two council members have questioned whether the city should outsource one of its core services, while another member urged the council to remain open minded until they have all the data on outsourcing.

The Show-Me Institute has written favorably about EMS privatization policies in the past. Privatization, when done right, can increase efficiency and expertise, provide improved services to the public, and decrease costs. However, all outsourcing proposals must be carefully considered to ensure privatization is done properly.

The University City Council ought to investigate the specifics of this privatization proposal for how it would affect services and city finances, rather than shooting from the hip and accepting or rejecting a privatization proposal on purely political grounds. Public employees, city officials, and businesses that the city may contract with are all interested parties in any outsourcing effort. When deciding whether to contract out services, the council should do its best to ignore the special interests and focus on the details of how this proposal affects the city as a whole.

Private ambulances have served parts of Saint Louis County for years, and University City might be able to benefit from private ambulances as well.

Ideas for Kansas City Schools: Pay Teachers More Sooner

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) is seeking input from parents, school staff, and the community about how it might regain and sustain full accreditation and retain and attract students. To that end, it is forming a School Improvement Advisory Committee (SIAC) and has been seeking applicants to serve in that capacity. Previously, we shared some ideas for strengthening administration and staff. Today, we’d like to suggest at least one change to Kansas City’s teacher pay schedule: pay teachers more sooner.

As it stands, the pay schedule for Kansas City teachers starts low and provides only modest increases in the initial years. Largest pay increases come at the end of a career, in a manner to maximize pension value. As my colleague James Shuls has argued in previous posts, this is a disincentive for new and effective teachers to stay on. Dane Stangler and Aaron North of the Kauffman Foundation wrote in a March 2014 op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Because most of the pension value accrues in the final years of an educator’s career, the typical new teacher in Kansas City or St. Louis does not benefit from the current system. Based on our research, we estimate the likelihood that a traditional public school teacher in St. Louis stays in the profession long enough to earn the maximum pension benefit to be about 4 percent. In other words, 96 percent of teachers in St. Louis will leave prior to reaching the full benefit and the percentage is comparable in Kansas City (approximately 3 percent).

As a result, new teachers are less likely to stay on. According to the Show-Me Institute’s Michael Podgursky, “After eight years, roughly 70 percent of teachers remain on the job. The eight-year survival rates in STL and KC are far lower, ranging from 10 percent to 30 percent.”

Podgursky’s paper urges more transparency and,

Given the relatively small share of new teachers in Kansas City or Saint Louis who can expect to complete an entire career in either district, as a strategic recruiting tool it makes more sense to raise front-end salaries, 

rather than “generous end-of-career retirement benefits.”

Certainly, there are many reasons why teachers in Kansas City and Saint Louis are much more likely to leave, and creating a more fair pension system will not solve all of them. But one thing we can do in Kansas City is to let new teachers know they are valued early on in their careers and that we want them to stay on.

Public Dollars Going to Bike Sharing in Saint Louis?

Posted on by Joseph Miller

Bike sharing is growing in popularity across the country. In cities like New York, Miami, Chicago, and Kansas City, bike sharing allows pedestrians to explore the urban landscape without having to use a car, public transportation, or walk. Right now, Great Rivers Greenway (supported by Saint Louis sales taxes) is spearheading a study on bringing a bike share program to Saint Louis.

The study estimates that the cost to implement bike sharing in Saint Louis would range from $12.4 million to $14.7 million over five years. However, they also want to be able to use federal and local taxes to fund the system. That is both unnecessary and unfair.

It is unnecessary because many bike share programs across the United States are funded almost entirely by users and private sponsors, including the Kansas City B-Cycle. Far from being controlled by the city in a top-down fashion, Kansas City residents have taken to crowdfunding bike share stands they want to use. That kind of bottom-up, voluntary approach not only is innovative but it means no one pays for the bike share who does not choose to.

Supporters of public subsidies for bike share make arguments very similar to those made for public transportation, such as reducing congestion and helping people without cars. But while transit’s main beneficiaries are commuters and the economically disadvantaged, bike share’s benefits mostly accrue to the well-off engaged in recreation. As we wrote previously:

A survey of riders using Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C., found that 95 percent of users held a college degree (56 percent had a masters or doctorate). As for income, 80 percent made more than $50,000 per year and 45 percent earned more than $100,000 per year. For perspective, per capita personal income in the district is about $45,000 and less than half of all residents have college degrees. . . . Furthermore, from data collected in Kansas City, we know that most riders use the bikes on the weekends in the downtown core. In short, a city-supported bike share uses public dollars to support the weekend excursions of highly educated, upper-middle-class residents.

Bike share programs are a great way for cities to provide residents and tourists with a fun and healthy way to see parts of town. However, residents should remember that spending public resources on bike shares is a subsidy to the wealthy and, thankfully, unnecessary.

Why a Teaching Degree Is Easy as 1-2-3

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

Having experienced firsthand the ease of a teaching program, I wasn’t surprised by the results of a recent National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) study, which examined the demands of teacher training programs. Like many pre-service teachers, I knew that if I was to become an effective teacher, it wouldn’t be due to the rigors of my program. Here is an example of an assignment I completed during graduate school.

The assignment was to explain some differentiated instruction techniques I planned to use in the classroom—by drawing a cartoon. This is what I turned in:

mat blog picture

Clearly, I’m not an artist, but still, this is absolute nonsense—I received minimal points off. This is the kind of assignment the NCTQ would refer to as criterion-deficient. Criterion-deficient assignments are broad in scope and may be difficult for instructors to give high-level feedback. Unlike assignments that allow instructors to measure mastery of knowledge or skills, criterion-deficient assignments are subjective. How could an instructor give high-level feedback to the above garbage?

The NCTQ found that on average 71 percent of grades in teacher preparation courses rely heavily on criterion-deficient assignments. The study also found there is a correlation between the percentage of criterion-deficient assignments and high grades—teacher candidates are 50 percent more likely to receive honors at graduation than candidates with other majors.

I hope these embarrassing findings are a sign to universities that they should stop focusing on reflective assignments that are subjective in nature and, instead, build an environment of rigor that will ultimately draw more quality students to the teaching profession.

North-South MetroLink Line Wasteful, Unnecessary

Posted on by Joseph Miller

A group of Saint Louis officials and former regional planners are again making the case for a north-south MetroLink line, this time running from Ferguson to Bayless Avenue in South Saint Louis County. While we have consistently argued that public transportation investments are best made around this corridor, the light rail option is many times the cost of Bus Rapid Transit or other improvements.

So how much will the proposed line cost? According to the Post-Dispatch: “The original north-south proposal was initially estimated at $1 billion in 2007 dollars. Members of the coalition would not venture a guess this week at the current price tag.”

nsmlr

The latest plan actually goes further north than the $1 billion plan suggested by East-West Gateway (EWG) in 2008. According to East-West Gateway’s Vision 2040 (released in 2011), the cost for a route from Florissant Valley Community College to Butler Hill (going further south than the current proposal) was more than $1.6 billion. It is therefore safe to assume that the plan will cost between $1 billion and $1.6 billion, probably closer to $1.6 billion when adjusted for inflation. To put that in perspective, this MetroLink expansion would cost between $2,700 and $4,406 for every person living near the proposed line.

Proponents hope, and likely require, that the federal government will pay up to half of the costs of building the new route. Even allowing that, the city and county would be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in capital costs and additional annual operating costs likely to exceed $20 million per year. That will mean tax increases in the city and county, all to add 12,000 to 15,000 transit riders per day. For perspective, Saint Louis City and County combined have more than 630,000 daily commuters.

There exists a much more cost-effective way of increasing transit service along the city’s north-south corridor: Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). BRT can, and does in other cities, provide the speed and comfort of light rail service for a fraction of rail’s price. Metro is in the process of implementing BRT in Saint Louis right now, and we have argued that BRT routes serving the city and North Saint Louis County make the most sense. According to EWG, running BRT on Grand from Natural Bridge to Chippewa would cost a total of $24 million to implement. That’s less than half the cost of one mile of the proposed MetroLink expansion. In fact, Metro could afford to implement all five of its preferred BRT routes for less than 20 percent the cost of the north-south MetroLink proposal.

MetroLink proponents make the same ungrounded claims about the rail transforming marginalized communities as they did two decades ago (remember the golf course in East Saint Louis?). Now, just as then, it is not rail, but rather improved transportation that raises living standards. And in terms of improving transportation, the relative merits and incredible cost differential between BRT and light rail should be the end of the argument.

Veil Lifted from Teacher Collective Bargaining Negotiations in Colorado

Posted on by Brittany Wagner

Colorado voters said YES to Proposition 104 last week at a ratio of 7 to 3. The ballot initiative will open collective bargaining negotiations between teachers’ unions and school boards to the public. Supporters say the new law will bring transparency to local government, allowing parents and taxpayers a look into what teachers’ unions ask for during negotiations.

Should Missouri pursue similar reform?

Collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) are subject to Missouri’s Sunshine Law. Many existing agreements can be viewed on Show-Me Sunshine. Here are just a few of the hundreds of items teachers and school boards have bargained for:

  • Salary

  • Benefits

  • Sick days

  • Student behavior

  • Parent communication

  • Amount of time a parent may spend in the classroom

  • Paid release days for union activity

  • Hiring policies

Parents may not be aware of the restrictiveness of some of these contracts. A study by USC Associate Professor Katharine Strunk found that in school districts with more union power school boards had less flexibility in decision making. This is unnerving, as school board members are elected by citizens; teachers’ unions are not.

Perhaps if Missouri’s Sunshine Law was expanded to include collective negotiations, school boards would be less likely to give in to cumbersome demands in the presence of taxpayers and parents. In the absence of a collaborative policy, this would bring parents and taxpayers a step closer to having a place at the bargaining table.

Star Survey Results Actually No Surprise at All

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

The Kansas City Star‘s Yael Abouhalkah seems surprised that voters in the Star‘s unscientific online survey rejected the question, “Should taxpayers build a downtown stadium for the Royals?”

  • Strongly agree — 26 percent

  • Agree — 9 percent

  • Disagree — 14 percent

  • Absolutely not — 51 percent

That’s a pretty strong vote of 65 percent opposition to the idea. Readers offered several dozen comments.

We at Show-Me had some immediate comments too. The least of which not being that you’d certainly have to work at the Star to be surprised by this result. Kansas City has had ruinous results in building big projects like this. For example:

Furthermore, just as mega-events such as Republican Conventions and Super Bowls fail to generate economic benefits, stadiums and arenas fail as well. (Read here for studies by The Brookings Institution and The Atlantic.) Kansas City voters are wary of such promises, and they are either defeating such efforts as translational medicine taxes and streetcars or are demanding sign-off on efforts to build new airport terminals. Why this well-founded skepticism is surprising to anyone is itself a surprise. The city should focus on delivering basic and necessary services and leave the economic speculation to others.

Loop Trolley Hits $11 Million Speed Bump

Posted on by Joseph Miller

The implementation of the proposed Loop Trolley, to run from the Missouri History Museum to the historic Delmar Loop neighborhood, has encountered frequent delays in recent years due to design finalization and legal concerns. Now it can add cost overruns to its list of problems. Bids to build the trolley have come in $11 million over the original $43 million cost estimate. That’s almost a 26 percent cost overrun before construction has even started. While trolley planners hope that lower estimates will come in later this month, if they do not, the trolley backers will have to alter their plans or find new revenue sources.

mysterybox

 

Current funding sources for the Loop Trolley are multifarious, including a 1 percent sales tax in the Loop Transportation Development District (TDD), tax credits, congestion relief funds (despite the possibility that traffic may get significantly worse due to the trolley), MoDOT, Great Rivers Greenway (funded by sales taxes), and private money. By far the most important contributor is the federal government, which granted the project $25 million.

While sources are diverse, they tend to be both rigid and highly contingent, with little room to generate an extra $11 million. The federal government already is unhappy with the progress of the trolley and, far from considering further subsidies, has previously threatened to remove the grant. Tax credits and TIF revenue only go so far, and private donations, congestion relief funds, and state aid were never guaranteed in the first place, when less was required. The oft-mentioned 1 percent sales tax in the TDD is supposed to fund the operation of the trolley, not its construction.

If the Loop Trolley comes in $11 million over budget, existing funding mechanisms (which could only maybe cover $43 million) would be overwhelmed. But Loop Trolley planners remain confident. We can only hope that confidence is based on cost-cutting measures or private support, not more public subsidies.

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