Shopping For Schools At EAGLE College Prep

Posted on by James V. Shuls

Eagle College Prep

More than a year ago, I sat down with Suzanne Johnson and Matt Hoehner to discuss the charter school they were planning to open – EAGLE College Prep. Yesterday, I finally had a chance to visit the school and I was very excited about what I saw. Students were actively engaged with teachers, in both learning centers and on computers. I am a big fan of the school’s blended learning model, which incorporates technology and individualized instruction.

The best thing, however, had little to do with what students were doing in the classroom and much to do with what parents were doing there – shopping.

While I was waiting in the office for Hoehner, the executive director, I met a couple waiting for Johnson, the school leader. The couple has a son who will be entering kindergarten next year. They were waiting to take a tour. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is a fundamental shift in how we operate our public school system.

In the past, most parents simply accepted the school to which they were assigned. Sure, some expressed choice by purchasing a home in a good school district and some chose to send their children to private schools. The vast majority of parents, however, had very little ability to shop for their child’s school. That is changing thanks to charter schools.

Approximately 25 percent of public school students in Saint Louis attend charter schools and 40 percent in Kansas City attend charter schools. These schools offer parents the opportunity to choose the school that will best meet the needs of their children.

I have no idea if the couple will end up choosing to send their children to EAGLE College Prep, but I am excited to see parents empowered to choose through school choice.

Missouri’s Conservatives: Resolved to be Irresolute

Posted on by Andrew B. Wilson

As first appearing in the Columbia Tribune:

Winston Churchill chided the British government for inaction at a time of growing peril, saying (in 1936): “So they go on in strange paradox: decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift.”

I would make the same point about the Missouri Legislature. Once again, at the close of another session, our lawmakers (supposedly a fiercely conservative group) frittered away their time in producing a series of half-measures – with an excess of caution in trying to do the right things and a deficit of courage or common sense in failing to address key issues.

Take the school transfer bill (Senate Bill 493) passed on the second to last day. This bill was supposed to expand school choice. And so it might – in the long term, in setting up a process that would lead to the limited use of public money to support private (non-sectarian) education for some children.

However, if signed into law, the bill will pull a rug – or, to speak more dramatically, a magic carpet to better education – out from under more than 2,000 children in the Saint Louis area.

In revising the 1993 school transfer law, the new bill eliminated language that required unaccredited school districts to provide transferring students with paid bus transportation to schools in higher-performing districts. This means that many (and probably most) of the students who transferred out of the unaccredited Normandy and Riverview Gardens school districts last fall will suddenly be without the public transportation they need to continue their education at distant schools.

Lawmakers overrode Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto and passed into law the first reduction in our state’s income tax in almost a century. I will give them one cheer for that, and another cheer for refusing to be bull-rushed into accepting billions of dollars in federal subsidies to expand the wasteful and deeply troubled Medicaid program as part of implementation of the much-delayed and ever-changing Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare).

But it is impossible to give our lawmakers a third cheer given the gross deficiencies of both the school transfer and the tax cut bills.

For parents of students who transferred out of Normandy and Riverview Gardens last year, SB 493 is a cruel piece of legislation – marking a sudden removal of the freedom to choose a new school for their children.

Though long overdue, the tax cut bill proceeds in baby steps – beginning in 2017 with the first of a series of one-tenth of 1 percent cuts in the tax on personal income, from 6 percent to 5.5 percent in 2022, and with the phasing in of a 25 percent cut in taxes on pass-through income for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

What the legislature totally failed to do, however, was pave the way for deeper, broad-based cuts for all Missourians through the elimination or substantial reduction in targeted tax credits for economic development. That is money (about $400 million a year) that supposedly goes to promising business ventures and commercial developments. But the return on this investment of taxpayer money is not just bad; it is appalling. Again and again, the would-be great success stories (think Mamtek in Moberly and the Citadel in Kansas City) have turned into disappointments.

Instead, our legislators went in the exact opposite direction in approving a flurry of last-minute tax breaks for selected businesses – once again trying to pick winners and losers.

That was a shameful conclusion to another five-month legislative session that did little or nothing to advance the growth and competitiveness of our state. But maybe our representatives did their best, and that is the real tragedy.

Andrew B. Wilson is a resident fellow and senior writer at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

 

Shock: Transit Supporters Discover Sales Tax Will Go To Roads

Posted on by Joseph Miller

This week, in expectation of new revenue from a proposed statewide sales tax, the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) voted to approve a plan to replace Broadway Bridge in Kansas City at the price of $200 million. The proposed bridge rebuild should act as a reminder to Missourians that the proposed sales tax will mainly subsidize deferred road and bridge projects throughout the state.

The Broadway Bridge is one of four major bridges that span the Missouri River in Kansas City. Built in 1954 and operated as a toll road until 1991, the bridge is heavily traveled. The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) had considered rebuilding the aging bridge and replacing its interchange at 6th street, but the $200 million price forced a cash-strapped MoDOT to defer the project.

With the proposed 0.75-cent statewide sales tax, the funding might be made available for the bridge. However, some in the media have pointed out (correctly) that the project will consume much of the new sales tax money set aside for the Kansas City area, leaving less for transit.

That should not surprise anyone. After all, it was MoDOT’s growing highway funding needs and dwindling revenues that prompted the call for the statewide sales tax in the first place. And in terms of mobility in Kansas City, it is clear that the Broadway Bridge has a greater impact than any conceivable transit project. The bridge carries more cars per day (approximately 41,000) than the entire Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) bus system’s number of passengers each day, plus significant freight. It is far more cost effective than the half billion dollar streetcar expansion plan, which is likely to carry only 13,000 passengers per day.

While we might disagree with Kansas City’s transit supporters about priorities, they are right to think that using a sales tax to subsidize highway and bridge projects is unfair. After all, the thousands of drivers and truckers using the Broadway Bridge stand to benefit from a new bridge far more than the Kansas City residents who bike or walk to work, but they will pay for it equally.

And there is a better way. From 1956 to 1991, the Broadway Bridge operated as a toll bridge. That toll should be brought back (without the booths) to finance the construction and maintenance of the new bridge. If the toll were variably priced, the new bridge could guarantee congestion-free travel across the Missouri River.

Whether it is the Broadway Bridge or any other highway project, people should pay for them based on how much they actually use the route, which means gas taxes or tolls. Implementing a statewide sales tax is an unfair and economically unsound policy. The most likely result will be a highly political allocation of sales tax dollars and disappointment for transit supporters.

Show-Me Now! Red Tape: No Fare for Lyft, Uber

Posted on by David Stokes

The Show-Me Institute’s Director of Local Government Policy, David Stokes, talks about the regulatory capture that taxi cabs enjoy in St. Louis and Kansas City. The taxi cab companies control the taxi commissions in those cities. Not surprisingly, those commissions have created barriers to entry for companies like Lyft and Uber who offer alternatives to traditional taxi service.

 

I Feel Like I’m Taking Crazy Pills

Posted on by James V. Shuls

i-feel-like-im-taking-crazy-pills

On May 16, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board invoked the historic Brown vs. the Board of Education case in a diatribe against lawmakers and the bogeyman (Rex Sinquefield). Members of the editorial board are disappointed, to say the least, with how Missouri Senate Bill 493 – the “transfer fix” – turned out. Namely, they are concerned that cutting transportation for students who transfer to other districts will limit choices. They also suggested, “The transfer fix was supposed to determine a fair amount of tuition for the sending districts to pay to the receiving districts.” Senate Bill 493, they claim, did not do that.

With all of the blame that the paper’s editorial board dished out, I was a bit surprised to find that they did not mention the real culprits standing in the way of these legislative fixes – the education establishment. In a letter to the editor, I pointed this out:

From the outset, the education lobby — the strongest lobby in the state — has fought to limit the number of students transferring out of unaccredited school districts. Thanks to lobbyists from the Missouri Association of School Administrators, the Missouri School Boards Association, and a bevy of other education groups, Senate Bill 493 was never about providing options for students. It was about neutering the transfer law.

Apparently, the editors did not take notice of my letter. Yesterday, they once again attacked lawmakers and the bogeyman. They added Kate Casas, of the Children’s Education Council of Missouri and StudentsFirst, to their list of malcontents. Yet they once again failed to mention the education lobby.

Let’s think about it for a minute. The two major problems the Post-Dispatch editors have with the bill, besides the private option, are transportation and tuition. Who would lobby to cut transportation funds? Who would lobby to keep the tuition high or not count transferring students’ test scores? I doubt any lawmaker came up with these ideas on his or her own.

Did the bogeyman, Kate Casas, or StudentsFirst suggest cutting transportation funding? Did they fight to keep tuition high?

Doubtful.

As far as these two issues go, I’m on the same page as the editorial board. In my testimony before the Missouri House Education Committee, I suggested a simple method for calculating a lower tuition. I also noted that the bill removed transportation and suggested creating a fund to pay for the expense.

If you think about this objectively, the only conclusion is that the education establishment is to blame for the major problems in Senate Bill 493.

Burns and Mac Does Not Ask For Moon: NASA Calls Them ‘Responsible Corporate Citizen’

Posted on by David Stokes

One theme being bandied about regarding Burns and McDonnell’s request for tax subsidies is that company officials did not ask for as much as they could have and, furthermore, the company somehow deserves credit for this. From The Pitch:

To its credit, Burns & McDonnell isn’t seeking every tax break under the sun. “Greg’s first instruction to us was to find out what we needed to get the rents to be equal [to the company’s current headquarters] and stop there,” [Burns & McDonnell Director of Government Affairs Mike] Talboy says.

Or, as KSHB Channel 41 quoted Burns and Mac:

We are not requesting all the incentives that were available to us. Our goal throughout this process was to achieve a package that will allow us to pay fair market value.

Talk about adding insult to injury, after asking for millions of dollars in public subsidies, Burns & Mac wants to be lauded for not taking even more. This is modern crony capitalism: demand hard-earned taxpayer dollars and then expect us to act like you’re Andrew Carnegie.

Let’s be clear. Burns and McDonnell is asking for an enormous amount of subsidies, a.k.a., other people’s money, to build its expansion. The company is seeking a substantial Tax Increment Financing (TIF) package, a real estate tax abatement, a construction sales tax abatement, and probably more that I am missing.

Yael Abouhalkah writes in defense of Burns and Mac (in an overall well-balanced article):

One more thing: Kansas City politicians have approved far more expensive public subsidies — guaranteed by the city and gobbling up 100 percent of TIF revenues. Burns & McDonnell’s project is not city-backed, and it’s a 50 percent TIF.

TIFs are not intended to have the backing of local governments. The ones that are are exceptions, and damaging exceptions at that. So, no credit to Burns and Mac on that one.

The 50 percent claim is more disturbing. One hundred percent of subsidies for TIF are reserved for property taxes. State law limits sales and earnings taxes in TIF to 50 percent. But if you combine earnings and property taxes in the TIF, the company would have to either ask for a TIF far larger in percentage terms than the city normally approves, or it would have to hit its approximately $40 million TIF goal much quicker than 23 years.

Is there a solution that gives the company and the politicians the best of all worlds? Of course there is. Break aside the property taxes as part of a real estate abatement separate from the TIF, only use earnings (and the much smaller utility) taxes in the TIF, and then tell everyone you are making a sacrifice. Even though your subsidies will now last for two years more than they otherwise would have.

From the Kansas City Star (Chapter 100 bonds are the real estate tax abatement vehicle):

The plan includes $41.9 million in tax increment financing assistance over 23 years and a Chapter 100 bond that will save the company $41.8 million in property taxes over 25 years.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/05/14/5024360/burns-mcdonnell-headquarters-expansion.html#storylink=cpy

Real estate abatements are not generally given alongside TIFs, so let’s toss aside any notion that Burns and Mac is doing the city a favor by asking only for the “50 percent” earnings tax subsidy. This is $84 million in tax dollars the company will not have to pay. That means higher taxes for everyone else to pay for the services people need and want. (I admit that I don’t always agree with the “wants.”)

All this from a company that is proud to pay the earnings tax and gladly supported the effort to keep it in place. I can only imagine how much they would have asked for if they didn’t love paying the earnings tax so much.

The Show-Me Institute and others are not going to take our high school civics lessons and go home as long as modern-day corporate courtiers are abusing government authority to subsidize themselves at the expense of the taxpayers. Burns and Mac certainly has a Ph.D. in backroom cronyism.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/30/4993322/low-points-high-points-of-the.html#storylink=cpy

The Report Card Is In

Posted on by Rik W. Hafer

The 2013 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, have been made public. These results, published in a report from the National Center for Education Statistics, are derived from standardized tests in math and reading, given to fourth- and eighth-grade students across the country. Amongst many valuable statistics, the report includes the percent of students receiving scores that rate their achievement as “basic” or “proficient.” For example, basic is defined as “partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills.”

Research shows that a country’s or state’s economic prosperity is closely related to the educational attainment of its citizens. And the math scores that eighth graders achieved is actually a fairly good predictor of future economic activity. So, with that in mind, let’s answer the question “how did Missouri’s eighth-grade students fare on the standardized math test in 2013?”

The percentage of eighth-grade students in Missouri scoring at or above basic was, in 2013, 74 percent, right at the national average. But while the national average increased over the past decade (it was 68 percent in 2003), Missouri’s score hasn’t budged much: a decade ago, 71 percent of Missouri eighth graders scored at the basic level in 2003. More troublesome is the fact that the percentage has slipped in recent years. In 2009, 77 percent of Missouri’s eighth graders scored at the basic level.

This recent report indicates that there has been little progress in raising the math skills of Missouri’s eighth-grade students above the basic level. And if you think that improving the record would be difficult, in 2013, 23 states had higher percentages at the basic level than Missouri, nine of which registered percentages in the 80s. Indeed, in Massachusetts, 86 percent of the state’s eighth graders achieved that level of mastery.

Education must remain a priority for state government. Missouri’s leaders must not allow educational achievements attained thus far to wane. As other states demonstrate, our current educational record can be improved. Missourians’ future economic well-being may well depend on it.

Does Ballpark Village Really Need Subsidies?

Posted on by Michael Rathbone

We are two months into the baseball season and while the Cardinals might be off to a slower start than many had hoped, people’s reception of Ballpark Village has been positive. From what I have seen, the place looks amazing and I can’t wait to visit. However, does this popularity mean that it was correct to award Ballpark Village substantial tax subsides? Scott Beyer, writing in the American Spectator, doesn’t think so, and neither do I.

Beyer contends that public subsidies to developments such as Ballpark Village mean that there wasn’t enough demand in the first place in order to justify investing in them. I agree. I also believe that using subsidies to finance these projects will be of limited economic benefit because they will just shift spending from other local establishments. A waitress who works at one area restaurant told me that her co-workers in Kiener Plaza are expecting a permanent 10 percent reduction in revenue now that Ballpark Village has opened. This example is only anecdotal, but it falls in line with what economists find when they examine public subsidies for similar types of developments, such as sports stadiums. They find that a lot of the economic benefit these developments bring to cities comes at the expense of spending elsewhere in the economy. Little to no actual wealth is created.

The government should not be picking which development gets public money and which does not. Instead, it should be focused on providing public goods such as basic infrastructure and public safety. Ballpark Village looks like it is going to be a great success, as most people thought it would be. Forcing taxpayers to subsidize the development, however, is not justified and is improper.

An Authentic, Sustainable Blog Post That Creates A Strong Physical Connection Between Streetcars And Facts

Posted on by Joseph Miller

To coincide with the groundbreaking of the Downtown Streetcar, Kansas City released a “Downtown Streetcar Development and Investment Guide” to tout what residents can expect for $50 million a mile. But much like the streetcar plan itself, the “Guide” makes unsupported claims based on unscientific and unproven concepts.

One such claim is on page three, where the “Guide” suggests that the streetcar will:

Develop a transit spine around which existing transit can be more effectively organized.

What’s a transit spine? The term usually refers to bus rapid transit or rail corridors from which bus routes radiate. In a sense, the model works like highways and local streets. A driver takes a local road to the highway, which allows him/her to move quickly across the city, and then transfers to another local road to get to his/her destination. In transit, a resident would take a local bus to a light rail or BRT line, which moves him/her across the city quickly, then he/she would transfer to a local route for his/her destination. Of course, this concept only works if the transit spine: 1) spans a significant area of the city and 2) is significantly faster than local routes. The Downtown Streetcar is neither of those things. Using the streetcar as a transit spine would be like routing local roads to a highway that only went a couple miles and had a 30 mph speed limit and traffic lights.

There are many other examples of questionable claims in the “Guide,” but what perhaps goes unnoticed is the consistent use of unscientific, usually values-laden, urban planning concepts. These include:

  • Livable communities. What, one might ask, is an unlivable community? Of course, planners have a definition that fits what they think a community should look like, but it is a subjective concept.

  • Strong physical connection. A streetcar is supposed to create this between communities. It is a very soft concept that streetcars are simply defined as achieving. I know of no way this is testable.

  • Expanding the cultural environment. Again, a strange concept that is only subject to highly dubious measurement.

  • Authentic experience and authentic place. I find it hard to think of what an inauthentic experience or place is. Perhaps the Tokyo Dining Restaurant at Epcot Center? Or maybe the little Potemkin Villages that urban planners call transit-oriented development?

The “Guide” has little to be taken seriously, full of propaganda and values-charged language as it is. Unfortunately, this white noise is the basis of plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on streetcars and urban development subsidies.

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