Page 90 – Show-Me Institute

How To Incentivize Change with Adam Peshek

Posted on March 21, 2023January 13, 2026 by Susan Pendergrass

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Adam Peshek about the universal ESA programs, accountability of how funds are spent, how we can incentive improvement in education, and more.

Adam Peshek is Senior Director and Senior Fellow at Stand Together Trust, where he focuses on education policy. Prior to joining STT, Peshek spent eight years in leadership positions with ExcelinEd, including managing policy director. In this role, Peshek provided strategic support to state leaders interested in developing and implementing policies that expanded educational options for children. He also served as vice president of advocacy, directing the organization’s advocacy efforts with governors, state legislatures and departments of education, and other stakeholders.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Stitcher

Listen on SoundCloud

Produced By Show-Me Opportunity

Does Missouri Need DESE?

Posted on March 21, 2023January 13, 2026 by James V. Shuls

Several years ago, I made an interesting discovery—I had been blocked by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) on Twitter. A DESE representative assured me it was an accident, but it was interesting that the blocking came soon after I had been critical of DESE. I don’t recall the specific issue at the time; it may have been my opposition to Common Core. The exact issue is a moot point. Over the years, my Show-Me Institute colleagues and I have been critical of DESE on any number of issues.

To name just a few:

We have criticized the adoption of Common Core standards, especially without sufficient public feedback.
We have criticized the adoption of various testing regimes, which often provided families with little useful information.
We have criticized various iterations of the Missouri School Improvement Program, which evaluates and accredits school districts.
We have criticized the selection of various tests for teacher certification (and the whole certification enterprise).
We have criticized the quality of DESE’s website and the accessibility of data.
We have criticized the lack of clarity regarding statistics used for teacher retention and salaries.
We have argued DESE protects the status quo.
We have criticized DESE’s lack of leadership as schools were shut down during COVID.

I’ll add another criticism here. The structure of DESE is such that the buck never seems to stop anywhere. The commissioner serves at the pleasure of the state board of education. The state board of education members serve staggered terms, so that a single governor may hold little sway over the board. As such, the governor, the board, and the commissioner escape being held accountable in any meaningful way.

Yet, it is one thing to criticize DESE for failing to perform the duties it should be performing. It is another thing entirely to suggest DESE should not exist at all.

There seems to be a growing chorus of voices on social media calling for the abolition of DESE. It is hard to tell if there is really a movement here or simply the continuous ramblings of a few active Twitter users. Nevertheless, it is a question that deserves consideration—should DESE exist?

Conservatives have long argued that the federal department of education should be abolished. The argument for this is easy to follow—there is no provision for education in the constitution. Thus, it is a state issue.

What is the argument at the state level? It must be that education is a local issue and not a state issue. Here is where the DESE destroyers are wrong. The Missouri Constitution makes it clear that the responsibility to provide an education lies with the state:

A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, the general assembly shall establish and maintain free public schools for the gratuitous instruction of all persons in this state within ages not in excess of twenty-one years as prescribed by law. (IX Section 1(a))

Moreover, the constitution requires the state to spend 25 percent of general revenue on public education.

With clear constitutional authority and a sizeable budget dedicated to education, the state has need of an agency whose purpose is to distribute funds and assess the diffusion of knowledge. The state has need of an agency such as DESE.

While DESE could do so many things better than it does, there clearly is a role for DESE. Therefore, we should (1) do a better job of defining the proper role and responsibilities of DESE, (2) do a better job of holding DESE accountable for meeting those obligations, and (3) find ways to improve the overall structure of DESE so we can actually tell where the buck stops.

I welcome conversations that focus on these things.

The Earnings Tax Changes We Need

Posted on March 20, 2023January 13, 2026 by David Stokes

Kansas City officials have repealed the changes to the earnings tax refund system they made last year. Last year’s changes made it much more complicated and expensive to claim a refund for work done by nonresidents outside of Kansas City, such as people working from home part of the time. Kudos to the mayor and city council for approving these changes and going back to the old system, which had been working well.

This is a good time to remind people that the City of St. Louis is the opposite case—city government continues to do everything wrong when it comes to the earnings tax. Efforts are underway in Jefferson City to clarify that St. Louis and (presumably) Kansas City cannot tax remote work—as St. Louis continues to do unapologetically—and instead must institute a reasonable process to refund earnings taxes withheld for work nonresidents perform outside of the cities.

What should such a process entail? First, I think employer statements indicating the percentage of time a nonresident has worked outside city limits during a year should be treated as prima facia evidence of that fact. Obviously, there should be penalties for fraudulent filings. Beyond that, if a refund is denied there should be an impartial hearing process by the collector of revenue available at the city level if taxpayers request one. If after such an administrative hearing, the refund is still denied, then taxpayers should have the right (but not the requirement) to file a lawsuit in circuit court. In court, the judge should not be required to assume the city’s prior denial is correct. In other words, taxpayers should have the right to a trial de novo on the merits of their refund claims. Finally, people making claims should be able to recoup court costs and lawyer fees if they are victorious. Since the average amount of a refund claim for any one person would be relatively small, I think few cases would go this far, but cities should be financially responsible if they improperly deny people their legitimate refunds.

Kansas City was not, then was, and now is not again denying legitimate refunds. Kansas City has a fair process posted online. The government of the City of St. Louis has been abusing the process all along and is finally being told by courts it needs to give refunds. Because of the city’s obstinance, it is also necessary to clarify that class action suits are authorized in these instances, as filing a suit against St. Louis for a few hundred dollars is not something most people are going to do, which is exactly what city officials appear to be counting on. The abuse of taxpayers in the City of St. Louis needs to stop, and it needs to stop now.

How Can We Serve All Students Well?

Posted on March 17, 2023January 13, 2026 by James V. Shuls

Public schools serve all students. This idea leads to one of the most common criticisms of school choice programs—that these programs only serve a select group of students. I believe this criticism stems from an honest desire to ensure every child gets a good education. Yet, this attack on school choice programs falls short. It is a red herring and distracts from the true issues at hand. Moreover, it elevates one value over others that we hold as a society, such as diversity and pluralism.

When critics of school choice levy this claim of exclusion against private schools, they forget a few important details. First, it is not historically true that public schools served all people. Black Americans, Native Americans, students with special needs, and nearly every other marginalized group can point to a time in our nation’s history when they were excluded from our public school system.

Second, this claim of “serving all” is not presently true. No school can serve all students, so our public school system rations admission. Several public schools have attendance zones that draw boundaries between affluent and impoverished communities. These lines can and do exclude poor students from receiving a quality education. In fact, schools have employees whose jobs are to vet the addresses of students to remove those that do not belong.

The truth is that no school serves every child. It is impossible. That is why this attack fails; the true goal is not for a single school to serve every child but for every child to be served well by our educational systems. Serving all students well can only happen when we recognize the point of an education system is to meet the unique and varied needs of students and their families.

The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan understood this. In a 1977 address to the graduating class of LeMoyne College in Syracuse, NY, he said:

Diversity. Pluralism. Variety. These are values, too, and perhaps nowhere more valuable than in the experiences that our children have in their early years, when their values and attitudes are formed, their minds awakened, and their friendships formed.

I cherish these values, and I do not believe it excessive to ask that they be embodied in our national policies for the betterment of American education.

Our public education system should serve every student well. Yet we simply cannot do that by assigning students to schools via mandatory attendance boundaries. The only way to truly serve all students well is to elevate these other values of diversity, pluralism, and variety. The only way to truly serve all students well is to provide them with educational options.

Expanding the VIP List for Charter School Eligibility

Posted on March 16, 2023January 13, 2026 by Avery Frank

In Missouri, only a select few are eligible for the VIP status of charter school eligibility. The “bouncer” until recently only had two names on his clipboard: St. Louis City Public School District and Kansas City Public Schools. For a charter school to exist, it must have a sponsor. Sponsors must be one of the following: a public four-year university, a community college, a private university, a technical school, a local school board, or the Missouri Charter Public School Commission.

For accredited districts (districts that meet the academic standards set by the state), only the local school board can sponsor a charter school. This has served as a formidable roadblock to charter school formation, as no accredited district has sponsored a charter school. However, if a school district is unaccredited (districts that fail to meet the standards set by the state) for three consecutive years, or has been provisionally accredited for three consecutive years, any of the other entities mentioned in the above paragraph can sponsor a charter school. Recently, the Missouri Charter Public School Commission created a charter school called the Leadership School in the provisionally accredited Normandy Schools Collaborative.

While the Missouri Legislature is most likely not thinking of charter schools in terms of nightclubs, the prospect of charter school expansion is being discussed to make the list less exclusive. Senate Bill (SB) 304 would allow charter schools to be created in any municipality with a population of more than 30,000 or any school district located within a county with a charter form of government. If SB 304 passed, charter schools could be established in:

All currently eligible districts
School districts in the following counties: St. Louis, Jackson, St. Charles, Jefferson, and Clay (a sponsor from a state-approved entity would be required)
School districts in municipalities with more than 30,000 residents, which currently includes: Cape Girardeau, Jefferson City, Joplin, Springfield, and Columbia (a sponsor from a state-approved entity would be required)

SB 304 would be a solid first step to give parents outside of St. Louis and Kansas City more options. Columbia is a good example of a city whose residents could benefit greatly from this bill. In Columbia , English/language arts (ELA) and mathematics scores are below the state average—students in the district currently have 43.8% and 30.8% proficiency rates, respectively. Low-income students are particularly struggling, with rates of 24% and 13.1% in ELA and mathematics—around 7 points below the state average for low-income students. With these scores in mind, maybe a family in Columbia wants a charter school because it is unsatisfied with the instruction in the local district. Perhaps a low-income family could find a charter school that specializes in instruction for low-income students. Charter schools can provide these needed alternative options for Columbia families, and SB 304 would make it possible.

Charter schools of various types (classical, English as a second language, low-income, etc.) have opened in Kansas City and St. Louis. One school, University Academy, has been named a “Blue Ribbon School” (an honor bestowed by the U.S. Department of Education for schools that exemplify excellence). Families across the state want and need more options. Missouri is a diverse state, and families deserve a diverse array of options to cater to their children’s needs and hold education institutions accountable.

A New Economic Playbook with Allison Schrager

Posted on March 15, 2023January 13, 2026 by Susan Pendergrass

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Allison Schrager about inflation, the Federal Reserve’s next move in light of panic in the banking sector, how supply-side reforms can boost the economy, and more.

Allison Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a City Journal contributing editor, where her research focuses on public finance, pensions, tax policy, labor markets, and monetary policy. She is also the author of An Economist Walks Into a Brothel and co-founder of LifeCycle Finance Partners, LLC, a risk advisory firm.

Read Allison and Brian’s report: New Economic Challenges, New Supply-Side Playbook: How Congress Can Fight the Next Recession

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Stitcher

Listen on SoundCloud

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

Short-Term Rentals, Long-Term Taxes

Posted on March 15, 2023January 13, 2026 by David Stokes

Kansas City and Springfield both have hotel tax proposals on their April ballots. In neither case do they propose raising the hotel tax (dare to dream that this were the case for all tax increase votes). Instead, they are seeking to expand the imposition of hotel taxes to short-term rentals, such as Airbnb, Vrbo, and that neighbor lady down the street who rents spare rooms out to minor league hockey players like in Youngblood.

Expanding the tax base makes for good tax policy, and equalizing the tax difference between competitors is also good policy. There is no reason that a hotel should have its guests pay one tax rate while Vrbo guests pay a lower rate. The time period of any theoretical “infant industry” argument is long past. The short-term rental industry is a major part of tourism and hospitality, and it should be treated the same as standard hotels for sales tax purposes.

Of course, I would like to see an expansion of the hotel tax base combined with lowering the tax rate, but saving money for tourists probably isn’t the top priority for local officials. I’ll have to be content with the hope that increased revenue from expanding the hotel tax base will remove pressure to raise the hotel tax rates in the future.

Like marijuana taxes and use taxes, hotel tax expansion can offer a method for new municipal tax revenues in an economically sound fashion. However, cities should not just use these new revenue sources to simply get and spend more money. They can also be used to replace other, more economically harmful taxes. These include local earnings taxes, high commercial property taxes, the ridiculous “economic development” sales tax, and personal property taxes on business equipment. (I am well aware that hotel taxes are usually dedicated to tourism promotion and not as readily exchangeable as use or marijuana taxes, but that is a choice that cities make [and a defensible one], not some order delivered via lightning bolt by Zeus himself that the cities can’t change if they wanted to.)

That would be a trade-off that would truly benefit cities in Missouri.

Will Open Enrollment Create High School Sport Powerhouses?

Posted on March 14, 2023January 13, 2026 by Avery Frank

The Missouri Legislature is currently debating several bills that would create open enrollment for Missouri students. Evaluating open enrollment’s effects on high school sports does matter, as families and student athletes across the state cherish athletics—I still fondly remember high school football games on Friday nights.

Opponents of open enrollment argue that the gap between wealthy and poor schools will grow because of sports—athletes will want to transfer to bigger, wealthier schools that offer better facilities and have more competitive teams. Here’s how a Missouri superintendent put it:

If this bill goes through, we expect to lose 100 or more students. Some will go play softball at Sullivan because they have a state-contending team, some to Union because they have a beautiful gymnasium, and some to Pacific because of their weight room facilities. Our football team was undefeated in . . . the regular season but we’ll lose kids because our facilities are not as nice and we can’t afford to fix that.

Yes, some students will likely transfer to schools with more successful sports programs to improve their athletic careers. However, this already happens. There are plenty of stories of the families of elite athletes moving to a new district, paying for a private school, or receiving a scholarship from a private school. SB5 and HB253, two bills that would create open enrollment, include provisions that restrict transfer students from playing the sport they played at their previous school for 365 days from the date of transfer.

Transfers can also go the opposite way—kids at bigger schools can transfer to smaller schools. Students can transfer to a different school to get playing time, showcase their skills, play in a system that caters to their strengths, or play for a different coach. For some, winning is not as important as getting to consistently play in front of your friends and family. Sometimes, a player just needs a new environment to enjoy a sport or unlock their full potential.

Iowa has had open enrollment for the past 30 years. A recent Columbia Missourian story quoted Margaret Buckton, professional advocate for Rural School Advocates of Iowa, on the state’s experience with sports and open enrollment:

Buckton said some rural schools would call open enrollment “the savior of their budget” because it has allowed them to afford programs they could not have otherwise. Buckton said many students prefer rural districts because they have smaller class sizes and sports programs, which gives a student a better chance of standing out on a team.

Both common sense and Iowa’s experience tell us that worrying about athletes transferring isn’t a good reason to oppose open enrollment.

To the Beach!

Posted on March 13, 2023January 13, 2026 by Susan Pendergrass

It’s mid-March in Missouri and we all know what that means—spring break! The legislature adjourned on Thursday and won’t be back for a week and a half. The good news is that the House got caught up on its homework before everyone left. The House debated and, ultimately, passed a bill (House Bill 253) that will create more education options for Missouri families.

HB 253 is one of the open enrollment bills filed this session and it allows Missouri families to choose a public school other than the one assigned to them based on their address. They can choose a school within their home district or in a different district, provided that the school has an open seat for them. While this bill has many shortcomings, it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, unlike the open enrollment laws in 23 other states, HB 253 lets districts opt out of accepting nonresident students. And while many districts may decide to opt out initially, I’m hopeful that as Missourians get used to trusting parents, most districts will see the benefit of working to attract students. Given that every public school district in St. Louis has experienced declining enrollment in the last few years, those that sit this out will do so at their folly.

The bill was amended so that districts can limit the number of transfers out to three percent of the prior year’s enrollment. This is a nice financial guardrail, districts can use the highest of the last four year’s enrollment for state funding anyway. This gives them several years before they feel any financial pain from exiting students.

Minnesota has had a mandatory open enrollment law since 1989. Remember 1989? George H.W. Bush was sworn in as president and Rain Man won best picture. This is not a new idea. The scary and paradoxical scenario laid out by opponents of the bill that our beloved rural high schools that are the hearts of their communities will also experience heavy student losses hasn’t happened in Minnesota or Wisconsin or Ohio or any other state that has had open enrollment for decades.

When the tanned and rested legislature returns it will be up to the Senate to make open enrollment a reality for Missouri families. I look forward to seeing it happen.

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.