Chris Braunlich is the former Co-President and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, Virginia’s non-partisan public policy foundation. He was appointed by Governor Bob McDonnell to the Virginia State Board of Education, where his colleagues elected him president of the Board.
Produced by Show-Me Opportunity
In my last post, I discussed the ADVANCE Act, which would lower barriers to the construction of advanced modular nuclear reactors across the country. But what about Missouri? While the potential for major changes still depends to some degree on action at the federal level, there are things that can be done closer to home.
First, policymakers here should understand what the future of nuclear power looks like. Even though Georgia just saw the completion of Vogtle Units 3 & 4 (which cost around $30 billion and over a decade to build), Vogtle may well be the swan song for traditional nuclear power plants. It simply is not feasible to construct such an immense project, and this points to the direction nuclear is going—toward advanced and small modular reactors, which I discuss in another post.
Even on a smaller scale, nuclear construction is still immensely costly, and utilities and private entities alike take on a huge financial risk largely due to the regulatory barriers. In Missouri, while we wait for needed federal reform, we should do what we can at the state level to reduce the risks involved with investment in nuclear power.
Does this mean we should hand out subsidies and tax credits like candy? No. But we need to signal our openness to nuclear expansion. Fortunately, our state already has some history with nuclear. The plant in Callaway has been reliably operating in our state since 1984. We also have a nationally known nuclear engineering school; in 2021, Missouri University of Science and Technology awarded the 11th most nuclear engineering degrees in the country. We have the potential to attract more nuclear developers to our state and should be partnering with them.
Seeking out private nuclear developers, forming a nuclear advisory board (which would focus solely on legislative and policy changes/opportunities to address nuclear workforce and education barriers, storage and waste practices, and coordination with federal agencies), and passing pro-nuclear legislation could all help bring more nuclear energy to Missouri. In a future post, I will discuss how Missouri could also lure developers by creating nuclear infrastructure through acquiring early-site permits on brownfield sites or failed construction projects.
In Tennessee, the Tennessee Valley Authority is partnering with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (USA), Ontario Power Generation (Canada), and Synthos Green Energy (Poland) to jointly invest $400 million into developing up to four small modular reactors. Advanced nuclear reactors are a new technology, and the fact they are reliable, versatile, clean, and powerful is drawing global interest. Missouri should be similarly proactive in looking for potential partners
Missouri should also improve the regulatory environment so that it does not discourage investment in nuclear power. State utilities cannot raise rates to help pay for construction projects in progress; they must wait until the development is fully operational and used in service. But power plants do not arise out of thin air; they are necessary infrastructure that benefit anyone who uses the energy they produce. My colleague David Stokes has discussed how this law was made by the anti-nuclear lobby in the 1970s to kill nuclear construction in the state—and it has succeeded thus far. Last session, Missouri, through HB 225, wisely sought to allow utilities to file with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (prior to the beginning of construction) in order to raise rates to pay (if needed) for small modular reactor projects only. If the newly requested rates are not “just and reasonable,” the commission can renegotiate or deny the proposed increase. This bill flew through the house but failed to gain traction in the Senate (where just about everything died). I understand the concerns with paying for a project that may never come to fruition, and I think adding a refund measure (if the project is cancelled) could help ease the concerns of ratepayers. A refund measure would also give utilities an additional incentive to finish what they started, which would further signal resolve to develop these reactors.
The emergence of small, modular nuclear reactors presents Missouri with a familiar choice: take the initiative or sit on the sidelines. Option B, which seems to be a traditional favorite among policymakers here, would be a costly error.
Of the 45 states with charter schools, Missouri is now the only one that doesn’t have suburban, small town, or rural charters. Nationally, over one million students attend suburban charter schools and over 500,000 attend charter schools in small towns and rural areas. In most states, charter schools have become part of the public school fabric, rather than a punishment or intervention for poor performance, as it is for the three urban districts in Missouri that have them. For example, Wisconsin has 90 urban charter schools, 41 suburban charters, and 105 in small towns or rural areas. Similarly, Arkansas has 47 urban, 11 suburban, and 35 small town and rural charters.
Missouri continues to be a holdout on bringing school choice to its 850,000 students. Families have a very limited ability to choose a public school in another district—it usually means having to pay tuition, and suburban and rural charter schools continue to be blocked. Missouri law allows charter schools in any district, but if the district is fully accredited then it must be sponsored by the district school board. This should not be a big deal. Over half of all charter schools nationally are sponsored by district school boards.
It’s surprising that there isn’t a suburban district in Missouri (I’m looking at you, Columbia) with a visionary school board that sees the benefit of bringing in a high-performing charter school to make the district more attractive. No school board has taken advantage of the national Charter School Program that provides planning and implementation seed money to those who want to open a charter school. Most districts in Missouri are experiencing declining enrollment. And yet no district has converted an existing shrinking school to a charter school in order to bring in enrollment from neighboring districts.
Missouri is the Show Me state, and dozens of other states have shown us what works. Why aren’t we doing anything about it?
A version of the following commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
A couple of weeks ago CNBC released its annual list of the Top States for Business 2023. Missouri was an unimpressive 32nd out of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia. Wondering what pulled us down? Well, this year CNBC decided that workforce quality would get the most weight of the 10 components of the index. And in that category, Missouri ranked 49th. We must not stack up too well against other states when it comes to the percentage of workers with college degrees or even industry credentials. Apparently, we also don’t compete well on the outmigration of educated workers, or on worker training programs, or on worker productivity.
So, imagine my surprise when the governor had a press conference just days later to announce a long list of Missouri’s “top” rankings. On some list we rank first in on-the-job-training. That would be for the number of participants, not quality or outcome, but still. There’s a list out there where we’re ranked second for apprenticeships and one where we are fourth for small-business jobs. The list of rankings is described as “incredible statistics that prove why Missouri is the Show-Me state.” Incredible indeed. Sadly, the governor’s list doesn’t include any source information, so we can’t tell who is saying all these complimentary things about our state.
As someone who follows the Missouri K-12 education system pretty closely, I’m not that surprised by the CNBC ranking. Education in the state is in a downward spiral. Last year, 70 percent of our fourth-graders scored below grade level on a nationally administered test. These children are moving on to the reading-to-learn years, and they haven’t learned to read. Middle school isn’t any more promising. Less than one-quarter of our eighth-graders can do math at grade level, according to the latest (2022) national assessments, and just 28 percent have grade-level reading skills.
When students start high school without having mastered the skills they need to succeed, the effects are predictable. Last year, just 60 percent of our 2022 high school graduates met the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (DESE’s) criteria for being college or career ready. It’s hard not to feel sorry for the 40 percent who walked across the stage and were handed a diploma even though they were unprepared for the next stage of their lives. Since we’re looking at rankings, did you know that last year Missouri ranked 43rd for the percentage of high school students who took a college-level Advanced Placement (AP) test in high school? We’re not talking about passing an AP exam; only one in five high school students even took one. Also, less than 8 percent of graduating high school students completed the Career and Technical Ed (CTE) certificate program.
What are the consequences of the poor job we’re doing of preparing our students for life after high school? According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the percentage of Missourians with bachelor’s or master’s degrees has been declining in recent years. Not by much —just from 31.9 percent for bachelor’s to 31.7—but is that the direction we want it going? There’s a similar trend line for graduate degrees, which had been increasing every year until a couple of years ago, when they began to decline.
We seem to have a workforce problem, and it appears to be getting worse. Our K-12 enrollment has been declining since before the pandemic and will continue to decline based on the size of recent kindergarten classes. And within those smaller groups of students, the percentage of kids who are at grade level is declining. Smaller percentages of smaller high school graduating classes will be ready for the next stage in their lives. We need leaders who are ready to confront those facts and do something about them. The future of the state depends on it.
These leading indicators may signal what’s next for our work force, but it’s not too late to turn things around. States all around Missouri are letting parents pick where their children attend school—public or private—and having state education money follow them. Families in these states can tailor the education of each of their children, even when those needs differ within the same family. Neighboring states are implementing aggressive early literacy programs, with Mississippi being a standout, and rethinking high schools. Innovation and true accountability are happening . . . elsewhere. Meanwhile, Missourians are being handed a cherry-picked list of statistics that we’re supposed to get excited about.
With the recent release of Oppenheimer (which I saw—it was awesome), it feels like an appropriate time to talk about a different (and non-explosive) form of nuclear technology—advanced nuclear reactors. Last Friday, the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act passed out of the United States Senate (86-11) as part of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. The goal of this bipartisan bill is to lower regulatory barriers for advanced nuclear reactors. The chief obstacle to increased nuclear energy is the immense construction costs associated with satisfying regulatory requirements. Before understanding how the ADVANCE Act would help, we need a deeper understanding of the current problems.
Advanced nuclear reactors are pre-fabricated (constructed off-site, which allows them to maintain the efficiency of a production line), so when reactor designs are approved, the same design can be used in numerous projects. By contrast, traditional reactors are typically custom-designed on-site. Private entities have been competing to develop the best reactor designs. However, many of these private entities struggle to acquire the necessary cash to propose a potential reactor design to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). NRC agents currently charge a billing rate of $290 per hour, with a review taking upwards of 18,000 hours, resulting in a typical review cost of $5,220,000! These costs place private developers in a difficult situation, as spending an immense amount of money on designing a reactor and paying regulators (who might reject the design) is a great risk. For example, Oklo Power (an American startup) submitted an application for a 1.5 MW microreactor, and had it denied after 22 months of review from the NRC.
The ADVANCE Act would shift responsibility for supervisory and nonsupervisory support costs, travel costs, training costs, and the administrative costs of different government offices that provide logistical support to the NRC. These costs currently fall on the nuclear developer. In the current state of the bill, the federal government would compensate the NRC for these additional costs in connection with advanced nuclear reactors. Taxpayers should of course be wary of any proposal to subsidize private nuclear power providers, but in this case the money would be going to defray the expenses incurred by our government as the result of a truly burdensome set of federal regulations.
The ADVANCE Act could also expedite the conversion of brownfield sites (land formerly used for industry), particularly former (or closing) fossil fuel facility sites, into nuclear power sites. Pre-fabricated reactors are adaptable and well-suited to these sites; on the other hand, traditional nuclear plants need to be uniquely constructed to match the terrain where they will be located.
Lastly, the ADVANCE Act would provide additional funding (mainly to facilitate a new nuclear traineeship program) to the NRC in order to speed up the review process. In this industry, time truly is money, and costs soar when delays occur.
So the ADVANCE Act would make it easier to build out our nuclear capabilities. Why is that important? Increased nuclear power would help achieve three key goals: increasing power supply in the United States, increasing our country’s energy independence, and increasing the supply of reliable, emissions-free energy.
As a state-based think tank, we don’t often discuss bills in Congress. But if nuclear energy is going to make a resurgence in our country, reform at the federal level will be necessary. Whether the federal government passes this law or not, Missouri could capitalize on the bipartisan desire for clean, reliable nuclear energy and become a leader in the industry.
Rural Missouri families, I’m told, don’t want or need school choice. They love their local schools, and there aren’t any private schools to choose from anyway. Not so in Iowa. The state’s new scholarship program, Students First education savings accounts (ESA), was signed into law earlier this year and was up and running by summer. So far, over 18,500 students have been approved for scholarships and another 1,000 applications still need to be reviewed. ESA recipients can take nearly $7,500 in state education funding to the public or private school of their choice.
What’s interesting is that, to date, students in 96 out of Iowa’s 99 counties have received scholarships. In Kossuth County, with just 15,000 people, 183 students have received Students First ESAs. In Worth County, with a population of just 7,500 people, eight students have decided that they do, in fact, want and need school choice.
Is our neighbor to the north really that different? Missouri families need school choice. They need it when their local school is too small or too big, when it doesn’t serve their child’s disability, when their child feels bullied or lost, or when their high school student needs a high-level STEM or language course that the local district doesn’t offer. The assigned-school-only dominoes are starting to fall. And they’re falling in our backyard. When will Missouri leadership get it?
David Stokes, Elias Tsapelas, and Avery Frank join Zach Lawhorn to discuss Missouri’s new transitional benefits law, Chesterfield discussing the use of eminent domain in their legal battle against Dillard’s, the future of nuclear reactor construction, and more.
Produced by Show-Me Opportunity
I can describe Missouri’s current Medicaid situation in three words: Time is money.
As I wrote last month, our state lagged much of the country in resuming its Medicaid eligibility redetermination processes following the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of starting in April as many states did, Missouri began processing redeterminations a month ago on July 1. Now that there are three months of data from across the country to look at, a new report from the Paragon Institute estimates just how much Missouri’s foot-dragging might cost.
For a quick refresher, during the pandemic, the federal government barred states from checking whether Medicaid enrollees remained eligible to receive services as they normally would. As a result, Missouri’s program set new records for enrollment and spending. But the catch is that likely more than 20% of those enrolled today aren’t eligible for coverage, so once the federal government allowed redeterminations to resume on April 1, states had significant financial interest in rightsizing their program rolls as quickly as possible.
No, this rightsizing doesn’t mean removing people from the program who are still eligible to receive services. What it means is that states typically pay health plans monthly for each Medicaid enrollee, so if 20 percent of those enrollees are ineligible, just using Missouri’s current enrollment of 1.5 million, that means taxpayers could be paying the health care costs of 300,000 people they shouldn’t be. And that’s really expensive!
So how can Missouri clean up the program’s rolls as quickly and accurately as possible? And how much will it cost if they don’t? That’s what the Paragon Institute report tries to answer.
First, the report estimates how much is being wasted per month on ineligible enrollees. For Missouri, if 20 percent of program enrollees are in fact ineligible, that means more than $120 million is wasted every 30 days. The federal government is giving states 12 months to process all of their redeterminations, but since so much is wasted per month, and since the share of these costs paid by the federal government will be declining each quarter, the sooner the eligibility checks can be completed, the better. The report suggests that if Missouri were to process all 1.5 million redeterminations in 6 months instead of the 12 months allowed, approximately $364 million could be saved.
Additionally, not all current enrollees are equally likely to be ineligible. Paragon suggests states should be prioritizing the redeterminations of the recipients who are most likely to be removed in order to maximize the savings. All told, if Missouri were to follow all of Paragon’s suggestions (other than the ones that can’t be done because it’s too late), our state could end up saving $729 million. That’s no small amount of money.
The Paragon Institute report shows us how much money Missouri’s overpopulated Medicaid rolls are costing the state, and considering how our state Medicaid agency started processing redeterminations three months later than necessary, I’m worried taxpayers are about to watch their money burn. If time really is money, Missourians should keep their eyes peeled for at least the next 12 months.
RECEPTION: 5:00 P.M.
PRESENTATION : 6:00 P.M.
Join the Show-Me Institute in St. Louis, Missouri at our annual Next Gen event as Senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, Corey DeAngelis shares his vision to revamp our nation’s education system. Corey sheds light on the challenges faced by, and failures of, today’s government schools revealing a rising tide of mediocrity, and explores the need for alternative solutions to solve America’s education crisis.
The event will take place at the Home of Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield. The Address will be provided to those who RSVP.
Show-Me Institute will pay Eventbrite ticketing fees.
*Estimated value of goods and services for reception and lecture: $80. Contributions to the Show-Me Institute are deductible for federal income tax purposes as allowed by law. The tax deduction is limited to the excess of the contribution over the fair market value of any goods or services received in exchange for the donation.
Corey DeAngelis is a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children. He is also the executive director at Educational Freedom Institute, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, a senior fellow at Reason Foundation, and a board member at Liberty Justice Center.
He was named on the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work on education policy and received the Buckley Award from America’s Future in 2020. He additionally received the Future 40 Award from Maverick PAC in 2021 and the OCPA Citizenship Award in 2022.
DeAngelis has authored or co-authored over 40 journal articles, book chapters, and reports on education policy, and he is the co-editor of School Choice Myths: Setting the Record Straight on Education Freedom. His research has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals, including Social Science Quarterly, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, Educational Review, and Peabody Journal of Education. He is a regular on Fox News and his work has also been published in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New York Post, and National Review.
DeAngelis received his PhD in education policy from the University of Arkansas. He holds a BBA and an MA in economics from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
