Show-Me Institute Intern Emily Watson talks about the importance of vo-tech education and congratulates Missouri’s General Assembly for legislation that allows Missouri high school students to apply vo-tech classes toward their school requirements.
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Yesterday, the Missouri State Board of Education voted to lapse the Normandy School District. What exactly this means for the district and students, especially transfer students, remains to be seen. What we know at this point is that the district boundaries will stay the same, the district will be known as the Normandy Schools Collaborative, an appointed board will replace the elected board, and all contracts will be void.
Some have asked me if this is a good move. I have to say, “Compared to what?”
Let’s consider two scenarios.
Scenario 1: The Transfer Law Never Went Into Effect
The problems in the Normandy School District did not begin when a quarter of the students abandoned ship last fall. The district received its first accreditation designation in 1996 – provisional. For the past 18 years, the district has never been fully accredited. The four-year graduation rate for males is less than 50 percent. In 2013, the district received an 11.1 percent on the Missouri School Improvement Program Annual Report (MSIP 5).
When the problems from Normandy began to spill into other districts, the public began to take notice.
If the transfer law had not taken effect, Normandy would probably continue to trudge along unaffected for another decade without any significant reforms.
Scenario 2: Normandy School District Remains Unchanged
Whether Missouri Senate Bill 493 passes or not, the Normandy School District must continue to make adjustments, especially in regards to staffing. This has been a tough year for the district financially. The transfer program came as a sudden shock and the district did not have time to prepare. Normally, a business losing a quarter of its customers would make immediate and deep cuts. This was problematic for a district locked into long-term contracts and collective bargaining agreements.
If the district were to continue to operate under the current or SB 493 version of the transfer law, they would still have to deal with these realities. Essentially, they would be forced to adapt without having the freedom to adapt.
Conclusion
We still do not know all the details of the new Normandy Schools Collaborative plan; but given these two alternative scenarios, the new plan looks immeasurably better. If the State Board of Education appoints a board that is willing to make substantial changes to the way the district operates, this could be a very positive reform.
Missouri Sen. John Lamping (R-Dist. 24) talks about the recently concluded 2014 state legislative session.
The recent conflict between Lyft and the St. Louis Metropolitan Taxicab Commission (MTC) adds even more credence to the argument that the MTC should not exist. Under the guise of protecting public safety, the MTC controls market entry for taxis in Saint Louis, sets prices, and needlessly regulates the for-hire vehicle market in favor of large taxi companies. There are many examples of these types of competition stifling regulations in the MTC’s For Hire Vehicle Code, including:
Regulations that restrict market entry:
Regulations that restrict competition:
Regulations that are needless or simply ridiculous:
You are free to believe these and many other MTC regulations have some tangential connection to keeping passengers safe. But the simplest explanation is that the purpose of these rules is the same as their result: to limit market entry and control competition. Equally simple is the method for improving taxi service in Saint Louis: shutting down the Metropolitan Taxicab Commission.
Kansas City’s attack on Lyft has been a reminder to many residents of the city’s excessively regulated for-hire vehicle market. City officials have long claimed that these regulations are all about safety. But any cursory inspection of Kansas City taxicab code reveals provisions that are clearly designed to limit competition and have nothing to do with passenger safety. Here are just some examples from the city’s taxicab code:
Ordinances that limit market entry:
Ordinances that set prices and reduce competition:
Ordinances that are ridiculous, needless, and/or outdated:
These are just a few of the many questionable regulations that have nothing to do with customer safety and everything to do with controlling the market and reducing competition for large taxi companies. Needless to say, transportation options in Kansas City would greatly improve if these and other sections of the taxicab code were repealed.
On Friday, May 9, Citizens for Modern Transit (CMT) held a race between the MetroLink, cars, and bikers from one metro stop to another one. That seemed rigged in favor of the MetroLink to us, so we held our own race from our office in the Central West End to BARcelona in Clayton.
St. Louis’s light rail, MetroLink, has been built on press events and promises. The CMT made-for-media race earlier this month is a great example of the former, but consider some of the promises made to sell MetroLink:
* “…some of Metro Link’s heaviest use could come from lunch-hour passengers moving among downtown, Union Station and the Central West End.” – St. Louis Post-Dispatch 10/26/1988
* “The city is talking with investors and developers about building a golf course just north of the King Bridge, an area of abandoned rail lines… City planners picture light industry around the golf course.
“Conventioneers, just five minutes from East St. Louis by rail, offer a natural market for a golf course…” – St. Louis Post-Dispatch 10/17/1993
During our race, Joseph Miller provides the numbers behind MetroLink. It’s incredibly expensive and there are better ways to improve public transportation. For example, money used on MetroLink would be better spent improving bus service.
Note 1: When Joseph Miller refers to “city” and “city planners” he means the “St. Louis region” and “regional planners”.
As I reflect on the 2014 Missouri legislative session, it is easy to get caught up in what could have been. I would have loved for the transfer fix to have resulted in a school choice law that significantly expanded opportunities for students. That was not to be the case. Still, the Missouri Legislature did do some good things.
Last year, opponents of Common Core were not able to get any legislation passed. Not even a bill requiring public meetings on the matter. This year, lawmakers passed a Common Core bill with overwhelming bipartisan support. The bill does not repeal Common Core, but does make the repeal possible. The bill calls for convening work groups to evaluate Missouri’s education standards. The result could be a new set of standards or the groups could end up adopting Common Core. More importantly, the bill will make it impossible for a new set of learning standards to be foisted upon Missourians without the public’s knowledge.
The legislature also took a small step in the right direction on teacher licensing. With the passage of Senate Bill 782, the legislature created a new pathway to the classroom for prospective elementary school teachers. Now, individuals can obtain certification to teach elementary school from the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE). ABCTE already offers teacher certification in several middle and high school subjects. This reduces barriers to entering the teaching profession, making it easier for mid-career professionals to switch careers. Thus far, studies of ABCTE teachers have been pretty positive.
This simple expansion of pathways to the classroom will not lead to a systematic change, but it is a great piece of legislation. It is simple, to the point (about four lines of text), and reduces unnecessary barriers to entering the teaching profession.
On Thursday, the Missouri Legislature passed Senate Bill 493. Described as the “transfer fix,” the bill contains many provisions. One is the ability of students to use public dollars to attend a nonsectarian private school. If you believe the hype, I should be celebrating. After all, I am a proponent of private school choice. Sadly, I have been wrestling with whether this is even a victory for the school choice crowd.
Don’t get me wrong. I am glad that the legislature moved in a bipartisan manner to get this bill passed. Unlike the education establishment, I am willing to compromise and there are many needed aspects in this bill. Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel as if the students who need educational options got the short end of the stick with this deal.
Am I being too cynical? Should I be celebrating? To answer this question, I asked several school choice policy experts this question:
Is this a win for school choice or does it do more harm than good?
Here were their responses:
Mike McShane – Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
The number of hoops parents and schools are required to jump through in order to participate will most likely prevent students from ever accessing a private education. This is Potemkin private school choice.
Patrick Wolf – Professor and 21st Century Chair in School Choice at the University of Arkansas
I wouldn’t expect more than a handful of families to navigate all of those huge roadblocks to exercise private school choice, especially since religious schools are excluded from the program. When families have a broad set of private school choices, nearly 80 percent of them choose private schools with a religious ethos. That is their preference. This is essentially a private school choice program without the private school choice part.
Jonathan Butcher – Education Director at the Goldwater Institute
I don’t think it does more harm than good, but I’m not sure it will accomplish anything. At least not right away.
Matt Ladner – Senior Advisor of Policy and Research for the Foundation for Excellence in Education
The academic catastrophe going on in Kansas City and Saint Louis have been well understood for decades. On the private side of things, this legislation brings to mind an inspector on the Titanic making conditional offers of an approved life vest three years in the future.
Jason Bedrick, policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and Jay Greene, head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, both pointed to the exclusion of religious schools and the testing requirement as very negative aspects of the bill.
“It’s especially painful when a ‘school choice’ program is designed in such a way that its passage is, to say the least, no cause for celebration,” Bedrick wrote.
Greene cautioned that this legislation might stifle future pushes to create school choice programs in Missouri.
A fix to some of the transfer issues was needed and on balance, the bill is mostly positive. But given these comments, I think my initial reaction was correct – this is not a school choice bill. It addresses some issues, but it does not expand options for students.
Summary of the private option:
Students in unaccredited schools within unaccredited districts are free to transfer. They must first apply to an accredited school within their district. If there are no spaces, they are able to transfer to another district or, upon voter approval, a private school. The private school must be located within the unaccredited district, nonsectarian, accredited, administer state tests, and meet a few other criteria. There is no transportation for transfer students.
As the session was coming to a close this afternoon, the Missouri House and Senate both passed the “Right to Try” bill and sent the legislation to the governor. As I’ve written and testified in the past, the law will allow greater flexibility for terminally ill patients. Specifically, it allows these patients to seek medications that the drug companies have developed and the FDA has determined to be safe for humans, but are not yet sold on the market. Assuming the governor does not block it, Missouri is set to become one of the first states in the country to enact such legislation. Following the passage of last year’s Volunteer Health Services Act, Missouri is certainly on a roll when it comes to enacting forward-looking and people-empowering health care reforms. Right to Try’s passage is a victory for Missourians.
Congratulations to the legislators who made the bill happen, to the Goldwater Institute, which has pioneered the idea, and most importantly, to the patients and families who will benefit from this law’s enactment.
