Rethinking Public Education, One Measure at a Time

Posted on by Steve Bernstetter

Public education, particularly in Saint Louis, is in a state of distress. Ineffectual leadership, failed reform initiatives, and declining student performance are just some of the symptoms of a much larger disease that could seriously cripple the future of this country. Recent attempts at reform can be divided into two categories: reshuffling the administrative deck and throwing more money at the problem. Clearly, neither of these solutions has succeeded. It is time for a more fundamental change.

Recently, two state legislators from Saint Louis, Sen. Jeff Smith and Rep. T.D. El-Amin, offered some suggestions for such reform. They rest firmly on the notion that teachers must be treated more like private employees, with all the associated privileges and responsibilities. Their proposals include new pay structures for teachers, mandatory testing of teachers, tax credits to private citizens for donations to after-school enrichment programs, lengthening the school day and school year, and mandatory state-funded early childhood education.

The proposal would offer incentives for teachers to specialize in the most needed areas, particularly science, math, special education, and English as a Second Language.  It would also offer bonuses to teachers for student performance. By the same token, those teachers that do not meet performance standards would receive professional development training; those failing more than once would be fired. Setting benchmarks that reflect a teacher’s performance and are not tied solely to the performance of each individual student is the key to making this system of compensation work.  Such a rubric would reflect the unfortunate reality that some students simply don’t want to learn, and avoid blaming the teachers for those student’s failures. This will create a pay structure that acknowledges the reality faced by teachers in the public system; a structure that encourages innovation and emphasizes performance. 

The plan also calls for state-funded pre-kindergarten education for all children between the ages of three and five, as well as tax credits to private donors who fund after-school enrichment programs. Both of these ideas are good on the surface, but the devil is in the details. A robust pre-school market already exists, and any attempt to require such additional schooling should take advantage of that market. It would be highly inefficient to build separate infrastructure for a network of new, state-funded, state-administered preschools. Rather, a practical approach would be to give every child a voucher to attend the existing preschool of their parents’ choosing. This method would place responsibility for kids’ educations squarely on the shoulders of parents, getting them involved in the education process early and hopefully keeping them involved throughout. If necessary, minimum performance standards could insure that preschools are optimally preparing student to enter kindergarten in the public system.

Similarly, private donations bolstered with tax credits for after-school programs should be distributed to schools chosen by that private donor, and students interested in those programs should have the option of attending the schools offering them. Injecting this small amount of competition into the system will encourage schools to seek this unique brand of public-private funding, fostering diversity between and within schools and districts. This choice-created diversity will more efficiently meet individual student needs than the current system that requires every school to be all things to all students.

Changing the way teachers are compensated and giving individual students and parents greater choice, and therefore a greater stake, in their education will serve the goal of creating a more effective and efficient system.  The possibility of real failure or real success created by competition will embolden schools and districts to strive for real excellence, rather than simply maintaining the defective status quo.

Steve Bernstetter is an intern at the Show-Me Institute and a graduate student in Public Policy Administration at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

 

Bernstetter on Education Reform

Posted on by Timothy B. Lee

We’ve got a new article up by Steve Bernstetter about a promising bill by two Saint Louis-area Democrats to implement some common-sense education reform ideas:

The proposal would offer incentives for teachers to specialize in the most needed areas, particularly science, math, special education, and English as a Second Language. It would also offer bonuses to teachers for student performance. By the same token, those teachers that do not meet performance standards would receive professional development training; those failing more than once would be fired. Setting benchmarks that reflect a teacher’s performance and are not tied solely to the performance of each individual student is the key to making this system of compensation work. Such a rubric would reflect the unfortunate reality that some students simply don’t want to learn, and avoid blaming the teachers for those student’s failures. This will create a pay structure that acknowledges the reality faced by teachers in the public system; a structure that encourages innovation and emphasizes performance.

The plan also calls for state-funded pre-kindergarten education for all children between the ages of three and five, as well as tax credits to private donors who fund after-school enrichment programs. Both of these ideas are good on the surface, but the devil is in the details. A robust pre-school market already exists, and any attempt to require such additional schooling should take advantage of that market. It would be highly inefficient to build separate infrastructure for a network of new, state-funded, state-administered preschools. Rather, a practical approach would be to give every child a voucher to attend the existing preschool of their parents’ choosing. This method would place responsibility for kids’ educations squarely on the shoulders of parents, getting them involved in the education process early and hopefully keeping them involved throughout. If necessary, minimum performance standards could insure that preschools are optimally preparing student to enter kindergarten in the public system.

Language, Dress of Thought

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

The English-language cartel is pushing for more regulations:

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The House voted Wednesday to require commercial drivers be able to communicate in English and take their certification test without translators to get their licenses.

Commercial truck drivers would also need to show they can read highway signs, fill out forms and respond to official inquires, such as about what they are hauling.

The purpose of this legislation is to make it harder for foreignors to get work as truck drivers, which would limit the number of available truck drivers and raise the wages of Americans who hold this job.

“Filling out forms” for the government can be confusing even if English is your native language. Requiring technical writing skills will bar a lot of hard-working legal immigrants from employment. Sure, it could be inconvenient if a policeman pulls over a truck driver who doesn’t know much English. There are a million other situations in which not knowing English would be inconvenient, which is why most people in this country speak English. But a law requiring truck drivers, yard work guys, or garbage collectors to speak English isn’t going to do much to improve the efficiency of our legal system or labor markets.

This legislation is unfair to people who had the misfortune not to be native English speakers. It’s also silly. Languages evolve naturally, so in the long run it’s futile to legislate about them. The English we speak is not the same as the English spoken today in Britain or the English that was spoken by Shakespeare. And English isn’t the same in all parts of our own country. For example, in Missouri I sometimes hear women address each other as “lady”. Try that north of Springfield, Illinois and you’ll get some strange looks.

The legislation also leaves an important question unresolved. Should we require truck drivers to say “Missouri” or “Missourah”?

I Won The (Assessment) Lottery!

Posted on by David Stokes

Most Saint Louis County taxpayers have by now received their reassessment notices.  It is hard not to think of the entire process as a lottery, even though I know the assessor’s office does a very good job, too good of a job in most people’s opinions, of assessing property in Saint Louis County.  Their system works as well as any system can that has to assess 365,000 properties every two years, but you can’t help but wonder about the system when your house goes up 5% and your neighbor’s very similar house goes up 21%.  I think my wife and I benefitted from comparison sales mostly from later in 2005, by which time the housing market had cooled somewhat.  People who had comparisons from 2004 and the first half of 2005 probably saw higher increases.  In our school district, the average increase in value was 20%.  Since we live in a muni with the same boundaries as the school district, our city council and school board should roll back the tax rates 20%, resulting in an unexpected tax decrease for us.   That is how we have won the lottery.  Yes, I owe you all a beer in celebration.   

Taxpayers need to know the average numbers for their area and pressure local government entities to roll back the rates to correspond with the assessment increases.  Reassessment is supposed to be revenue neutral at all levels.  Some entities, such as St. Louis County, have current rates so far below the maximum allowed (which they deserve thanks, or ‘props,” for) that they are not legally required to roll back the rate further.  These government entities need to roll back their rates even though they are not legally required to, just as St. Louis County did in 2005.  Not surprisingly, considering the nature of the beast, most government entities are at or near their cap and as such will be required to roll back rates.  So don’t panic if your increase is 20% if your entire area is around that level – while you will still probably see a tax increase it will not by anything like a 20% increase.

When should you appeal and or panic?  You should base your appeal not on the level of increase, as strange as that seems, but on the simple question of whether or not you feel your property is assessed too highly by the assessor’s office.  Even if you only go up 8%, if you truly feel that the assessment is too high, and you can get some evidence to support you, then by all means appeal.  As for panicking, if your increase is at least 10% more than average for your area (or 30% for most of St. Louis County) you should prepare for a sizeable tax increase and take steps now to appeal your assessment or, if you are a senior citizen or disabled, use the two programs available to you. 

The Kids on the Bus

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

I agree with my colleague Steven Bernstetter that helping children escape the failing St. Louis Public Schools is imperative. But I beg to differ about the success of the busing program. My experience during a semester at Parkway Central High School was that racial integration happened only on paper. In real life, the suburbanites were segregated in all-white "honors" classes, rarely seeing the city kids during the day. I had a little more interaction with students who were bused in, but only because of a glitch in my schedule that put me in Remedial Computer Skills 100.

The program put pressure on minority students who lived in the suburbs, because teachers expected them to act just like the students from the city. And the bused-in students were inevitably made to feel like unwelcome guests who might be bused back out if they didn’t behave.

Those who participate in the busing program have higher graduation rates than those who don’t, but I imagine they would graduate at the higher rates even in the absence of busing. Only students who are already very motivated would get up early in the morning and spend long hours on the bus for a chance to navigate a tense day at a racially divided school.

Of course, implementation of the program varies between districts, and my brief experience at Parkway might be anomalous. Still, I can’t help but notice the contrast between Parkway and the private schools I’ve attended and worked in, where even students on scholarships are treated like they belong there.

Common Sense in Arizona

Posted on by Timothy B. Lee

The Arizona Republic, the state’s largest paper, has a great editorial defending Arizona’s new scholarship tax credit program, which is quite similar to the proposals that we’ve been considering here in Missouri:
 

This myopic battle is anchored in fear. Its proponents fear that perfectly defensible programs for poor kids may metastasize into something bigger. But dread of what the future may hold is a mighty poor argument for denying a quality education to kids right now. It is not just the corporate tax credit they are fighting against. Last year, the state Legislature approved, and Napolitano signed, bills creating education voucher programs for disabled kids and children in foster programs. Those programs also are tied up in court by many of the same opponents.

Voucher programs traditionally have had a tougher time in the courts than tax-credit programs, so the future of these valuable tools may be more in doubt.

It would be a shame to see such programs flounder on the specious fear that if you give vouchers to disabled kids, or to kids at the rocky bottom of life’s well, that public education itself will crumble.

Simply put, it won’t. Education choice strengthens the underlying system. Someday, with luck, opponents of reform will figure that out.

Sadly, defenders of the status quo here in Missouri seem to be even more entrenched than they are in Arizona.

Hat tip: Cato

Eminent Domain Abuse in Our Back Yard

Posted on by Timothy B. Lee

The Post has an update on one of the most outrageous abuses of eminent domain in recent years: the blighting of a block of prosperous businesses in downtown Clayton:

On Jan. 19, St. Louis County Circuit Judge James R. Hartenbach agreed to allow Centene to use condemnation to acquire the properties. The owners say their properties are not blighted and should not be condemned. In a nonbinding referendum, Clayton voters expressed opposition to the use of eminent domain to benefit a private development.

Robert J. Schenk, a spokesman for Centene, said, “The properties that are the subject of litigation are still a critical part of the overall project. Without those properties, the project will not occur.”

Schenk said, “The developers are busy working to ensure that the project can move forward as quickly as possible as soon as the litigation question has been addressed.”

The properties in question are just a couple of blocks from our offices, and I’ve walked by them numerous time over the last two years. If they’re “blighted,” then every neighborhood in the state is blighted. Even more outrageous, these properties aren’t even essential to Centene’s new headquarters, they’re slated to be used for upscale retail establishments. Apparently Centene simply didn’t feel that the businesses currently occupying the space were high-class enough for its employees and clients to patronize, so they asked the city to bring in new, ritzier businesses.

In short, what is happening is precisely what Justice O’Connor predicted in her dissent in Kelo:

The logic of today’s decision is that eminent domain may only be used to upgrade?not downgrade?property. At best this makes the Public Use Clause redundant with the Due Process Clause, which already prohibits irrational government action. The Court rightfully admits, however, that the judiciary cannot get bogged down in predictive judgments about whether the public will actually be better off after a property transfer. In any event, this constraint has no realistic import. For who among us can say she already makes the most productive or attractive possible use of her property? The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.

But what about last year’s eminent domain legislation? Wasn’t it supposed to protect property owners? The legislation did substantially increase protection for farmers. But for the rest of us, all it had to offer was modest increases in compensation. The legislation left in place the absurdly lax standards for “blight” that essentially allows municipalities to condemn any property they want.

Riding the bus to the county, and a stronger MO

Posted on by Steven Bernstetter

Amidst the state takeover of the St. Louis Public Schools, education reformers are tossing around a number of ideas for improving the beleaugered district. Longer school days, stronger teacher accountability measures, and mandatory preschool education are just a few of the worthy proposals receiving attention. However, there is one program currently being phased out that has already been quite successful, though perhaps not to the degree one might realize at first glance: the Voluntary Interdistrict Transfer program.

Currently, as a remnant of court-mandated desegregation efforts originating in the early 1980s, the state of Missouri has a program enabling students in SLPS to transfer out of their neighborhood school and into a participating county school. The state pays the transportation costs and the receiving district’s average per pupil cost for the student, and the city school gets to keep the funding it would have otherwise spent on the transferring student. The program was originally intended to racially integrate previously homogenous districts, but has had a far more profound ecomomic effect on the city and state.

An excellent paper on the cost of highschool dropouts to the state demonstrates the fact that every student that doesn’t graduate represents significant economic costs to the state, costs much higher than the actual cost of education. The students who participate in the transfer program are roughly twice as likely to graduate from highschool as those who remain in the program. The long term economic costs to the state resulting from the lost tax revenue, lost economic activity, higher safety net costs, and higher incarceration rates associated with those dropouts far outweigh the short term costs of financing the program.

Citizens and politicians outside of St. Louis will surely balk at the idea of spending more state money on the failing SLPS, but the economic effects associated with the district’s failure to educate it’s students will be shared by the whole state. With that in mind, it is in the best interest of all Missourians to insure the continuation of this valuable and effective choice program, and let as many kids as so desire escape from their failing school.

Why School Reform Can’t Wait

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

A Post-Dispatch editorial describes the tragedy of public education in St. Louis:

Public education can be an avenue to unlimited opportunity. Yet tragically, far too many young people in St. Louis, especially African-American males who drop out of school, find themselves stuck on a dead-end street.

That sad fact often gets drowned out in the political uproar surrounding the state intervention now underway in the running of St. Louis public schools. It’s worth reflecting on as the new leaders set their goals and strategy.

The consequences of poor schooling are devastating for black children, for the neighborhoods where they live and for the community at large.

This is why we need to allow St. Louis children to attend better schools, right now. A tuition tax credits program would do just that. Improving public education is a process that takes many years–and so far we haven’t seen much improvement. In the meantime, children in St. Louis are losing the chance to get an education. The conflicts between students and government officials show how desperate the situation is for the students and how few alternatives they have.

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