If we believe it’s essential for schools to teach core academic skills—like reading and math—then we should support the tools that help us measure those skills. Statewide standardized tests remain our best tool for understanding how much students are learning. As the saying goes, what gets measured gets counted.

However, there is growing opposition to state testing in Missouri on both sides of the political aisle. On the left, the education establishment has long resisted all forms of accountability, and what better way to shut down accountability than to stop measuring how students perform in school? The left has been surprisingly effective in undermining the credibility of state tests, leading many to believe they don’t measure what matters. Standardized tests have been criticized for being too narrow, unobjective, and even racist. (I wish I were exaggerating on the last point, but I am not.) At the university level, we saw a brief movement to eliminate SAT and ACT requirements—only to see many institutions walk those changes back once they realized these tests provide crucial insight into academic readiness.

Meanwhile, on the right, the opposition to testing is relatively new. Not long ago, political conservatives were strong advocates for test-based accountability. No Child Left Behind, the largest test-based accountability policy in U.S. history, was ushered in under George W. Bush in the early 2000s. But today, it seems that testing has been swept up in a general push to shrink government and localize decision-making. In Missouri, testing is viewed as part of the state’s top-down policy agenda and a threat to local control.

This left-right alliance is playing out now in Jefferson City. Senate Bill 360, which would dismantle uniform statewide testing and accountability in Missouri, is sponsored by Republican Senator Jill Carter and supported by the National Education Association, a group typically aligned with the left.

All of this is unfortunate, because the truth is we need state standardized tests. The Missouri tests are not what many have been led to believe. They are objective, they are not racially biased, and they are not political. They are not concoctions brewed up in the back room of state government—rather, they are developed by independent experts, grounded in years of research, and focused almost entirely on reading and math.

Without statewide testing, we risk replacing hard data with empty assurances. School districts will insist students are learning—they’re doing exceptionally well, in fact!—and we’ll have no choice but to trust them.

An extreme policy would be to end testing entirely, but an equally damaging policy would be to abandon a common state test and allow school districts to use their own tests. This sounds appealing to local-control advocates, and in fact is the proposal on the table in SB360. But if this were to happen, it would be impossible to compare outcomes across districts, leaving us in the same place as if we had no testing at all.

If you’re unhappy with the direction schools are heading, just wait until we don’t have state tests—and the hard data provided by the tests—to keep them in line.

The post The Testing Bogeyman Is Alive and Well in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There is some good news, though, for high school students in St. Louis. Believe STL Academy, a charter school, is set to open next fall. Believe STL is modeled after the Believe Circle City (BCC) high school in Indianapolis. BCC works with “historically underestimated youth” and helps them become successful adults. BCC has achieved dramatic results, such as having 30 percent of its students pass a college-level Advanced Placement exam, spurring dramatic growth in the SAT scores of its students, and having extremely high (92 percent) average daily attendance.

Sadly, SLPS is suing to prevent this school from opening. The case rests on an administrative matter—SLPS claims it wasn’t informed that the school would be opening. The charter school’s application was approved by both the Missouri Public Charter School Commission and the state board of education. Yet, the SLPS Board wants to derail it. The board president said, “There are too many schools in St. Louis right now.”

The number of schools, filled or nearly empty, has nothing to do with the quality of those schools when students are assigned to them. When students get to choose, it does. Only those schools that can attract and keep students will stay open. Blocking charter schools, especially those with proven track records, is akin to trapping children on a sinking ship. Shouldn’t we instead be building a system of schools that best serves as many students as possible?

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Nationally, the average composite ACT score fell from 19.8 in 2022 to 19.5 in 2023. Prior to 2022, scores hadn’t been below 20.0 in more than thirty years. In Missouri, scores fell from 20.3 to 19.8, the lowest average composite score for the state since 2000. Missouri’s average was near that point (19.86) in 2018 when the test was required for all students, whether they intended to go to college or not. That is no longer the case. Last year, 66 percent of graduating students took the exam.

So, what does this mean? As predicted, students who were at “important” points in their K-12 education are in real trouble. Nearly 40 percent of Missouri’s 3rd graders (kindergartners in Spring 2020) scored below Basic in reading last year, meaning they don’t even have a partial understanding of the subject. They missed a critical window to develop a skill that is fundamental to their future success in school.

The same can now be said of students who were starting high school. They are, as a group, less ready for postsecondary education. This has implications for their lives as well as the quality of the Missouri workforce. Our state leaders should be addressing this as the crisis that it is. It should be a policy priority. They should be talking about it routinely. Is that what you’re seeing or hearing?

The post College Readiness Declines appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The worst news for Missouri is in the Workforce category. Metrics for this category include the concentration of STEM workers and the percentage of workers with bachelor’s degrees, associate’s degrees, and Industry Recognized Credentials (IRCs). It also includes net migration of educated workers, worker training programs, right-to-work laws, and worker productivity. Missouri ranked 49th out of 50 states in Workforce, garnering just 151 of the 400 possible points.

There are a few things we know about Missouri’s workforce now and its prospects for the future. The percentage of Missourians with college degrees has been declining in recent years. The percentage of Missourians with bachelor’s degrees has declined from 31.9 percent in 2020 to 31.7 percent in 2022. (For reference, it was 25.6 percent in 2010.) Not going up as fast or remaining stagnant is problematic. Declining is very bad news.

We also know that just 60 percent of our 61,200 high school graduates in 2022 were considered to be college or career ready when they left with their diplomas. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) determines college or career readiness by scores on the ACT or SAT college entrance exams, the ACT WorkKeys assessment, which measures career readiness skills, the Accuplacer assessment, which is a college placement exam, and the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) military assessment.

So, our workforce is already in bad shape, and we are handing diplomas to nearly 25,000 high school graduates who are known to not be college or career ready. Wouldn’t you think that our leaders would be addressing this like the crisis that it is?

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Let’s forget the last part of that statement, which suggests that the job of adults is to find out where a student’s “heart is and let them follow it.” I might argue that the job of the adult is to steer children into a worthwhile pursuit, understanding that our passions can often lead us astray. Nevertheless, that is not the point I want to make here. The point is, Kehoe is promoting a very specific educational philosophy . . . and it is an educational philosophy that not everyone holds.

Noted professor and philosopher, Mortimer J. Adler, whom William F. Buckley described as “unquestionably the single most prolific educator in America” during the introduction to his 1970 Firing Line appearance, wrote in 1951, “Vocational training is learning for the sake of earning.” On the other hand, Adler also said “School is a place of learning for the sake of learning, not for the sake of earning.” Adler promoted what we call the “liberal” view of schooling. This view, not to be confused with the modern political conception, suggests that the purpose of schooling is to cultivate those skills which are common and necessary for the development of all people. The liberal arts are, according to Adler, “nothing but the skills of learning itself—the skills of reading, writing, speaking, listening, observing, calculating, and measuring.”

Many agree with Adler’s view of the purpose of education:

The aim of education is to cultivate the individual’s capacities for mental growth and moral development; to help him acquire the intellectual and moral virtues required for a good human life, spent publicly in political action or service and privately in noble or honorable use of free time for the creative pursuits of leisure, among which continued learning throughout life is preeminent.

But this view is in contrast with Kehoe’s vision. Learning how to use fabrication tools is itself a useful vocational skill; it is not, however, a universal skill that leads to continuous self-improvement in areas beyond the skill itself. It is vocational, not liberal.

While the lieutenant governor praised the vocational programs in Moberly, the liberal programs do not appear to be going as well. In 2021, little more than one third of students in the Moberly school districts scored proficient or advanced on the state’s language arts exam and fewer than one third did in math. The average ACT score for Moberly students was 18.5, well below state and national averages.

So what do we do about this as a society? We have two very different, competing ideas for what our public schools should be doing. One suggests the purpose, as early as elementary school, is to prepare students for the workforce. The other suggests the purpose of schools is to inculcate those skills and dispositions that lead to a lifetime of learning.

We have two options. We can, as we have done throughout history, allow the ideas to battle it out in the public sphere where the winner takes all by setting the philosophy down in state statutes, standards, and testing regimes that control local public schools. Or we can allow individuals broader access to the schools that align with their vision of a quality education via school choice programs.

School choice programs allow schools that focus on vocational preparation to flourish alongside schools that focus on the liberal arts. These programs allow for minority voices, which may otherwise get shut out in the pugilistic, winner-take-all system, to have an opportunity for the schools they desire.

As someone who tends to subscribe to Adler’s view of education, I wish I could make everyone see the world the way I do. I wish people would realize, as Adler suggests, “Training in the liberal arts is indispensable to making free men out of children. It prepares them for the uses of freedom—the proper employment of free time and the exercise of political power. It prepares them for leisure and for citizenship.” Alas, I don’t have those powers of persuasion. So, in the meantime, I’ll settle for a school choice system that allows such schools to flourish.

The post Is the Purpose of Education to Prepare Students for Jobs? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The problem is that the report quickly glosses past their acknowledgment of “decades of economic underperformance, population stagnation and racial division” to a future of growth and expansion in a mere nine years. And the path to achieving this miracle is less than clear. The report is peppered with buzz words, but short on detail.

As someone who spends time studying education policy and results across the state of Missouri, I’m very curious to know how this group plans to turn a school system in which just 18.5 percent of students score Proficient or above in math into a “talent engine.” The commission wants to ensure “that every student receives quality STEM education and exposure to various occupations beginning in pre-K and continuing through high school”? What does quality STEM education look like and who’s going to teach it? And don’t we have quite a long way to go there, given that the average high school ACT score is currently 16.6?

Action item number four is “Become a talent magnet and engine,” and that’s the only part of the plan that mentions education. “Successful” programs at local community colleges and universities are identified, but fewer than 60 percent of SLPS graduates enroll in college and the report acknowledges their dismal completion rates.

Not to be a wet blanket, but St. Louis is not going to be a talent engine or magnet until we figure out how to better educate the 82 percent of students who are not able to do math at grade level. All the jargon and buzzwords in the world won’t help a district with a mobility rate (a measure of how many kids joined or left a district in a given year) of over 46 percent. Turning this ship around will be difficult and will require big ideas and open-minded thinking.

St. Louis already has quite a few high-performing charter schools, but we could use more. There are existing charter school networks with proven track records of success in STEM education for disadvantaged students. The Denver School for Science and Technology (DSST) network, for example, serves nearly 7,000 students across nine middle schools and six high schools. Just 15 percent of DSST students are white and over 70 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. But here are the numbers that matter: DSST has had 100 percent college acceptance for its high school seniors for the last twelve years in a row. Its average SAT score of 1092 is higher than the national average of 1059. And two-thirds of its graduates become first-generation college students.

DSST is just one example. Cities like Denver that encourage strong portfolios of education options for their students become growth engines. Families want to stay and raise their children in these cities. Putting STEM materials in front of students who are stuck in schools that can’t teach them math isn’t going to cut it. Every parent in the St. Louis region should have several publicly funded options for educating their children—traditional public schools, charter public schools, private schools, or homeschooling. A robust system of choice should be our goal, not waving a wand over the existing system and imagining it will simply transform itself.

The post We Need Actions, Not Words appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Some would argue that ACT scores were negatively affected when the state paid everyone’s testing fee and nearly every high school senior took the exam. That appears to be true. The state starting picking up the tab in 2015, but just 77 percent of seniors took the test that year. In 2016, nearly every student took the exam and scores dropped. Only 22 percent of students met all college readiness benchmarks that year. In 2018, the state stopped paying for the exam and participation dropped off. This past school year participation was down to 82 percent and college readiness had improved by three percentage points.

What’s troubling is when you compare 2015 to 2019. Participation rates were about the same. But college readiness was five points higher (30 percent met all four benchmarks) in 2015. And the percentage of students who met none of the benchmarks was eight points lower. The excuse that non-college bound seniors were taking the test and lowering the scores falls apart.

Let’s be honest. The ACT bar is not that high. In English, meeting the college readiness benchmark means that a student has a 50 percent chance of getting a B and a 75 percent chance of getting a C in a typical college freshman English class. If Missouri high school graduates can’t hit that mark, then I would say we have a problem.

The post It’s Time to Stop Making Excuses appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Would that be a fair game, or even fun? Of course not. But this version of Life is reality for many Americans. Where people grow up—their zip code or place on the game board—significantly affects their chances to succeed as adults.

Without a doubt Americans, rich and poor, are much better off now than they were a hundred years ago thanks to unprecedented economic growth made possible by the free enterprise of individuals and pro-market political institutions. Nevertheless, economic mobility, or the ability to move up the income ladder, varies for children depending on where they live, and these disparities have consequences—both for children growing up in low-income families and for the rest of the state.

A recent pair of essays from the Show-Me Institute digs deeper into the data on poverty and upward mobility in Missouri and asks what, if anything, can be done to break cycles of poverty. The solution is not simply to expand entitlement spending; America has been increasing welfare benefits for over 50 years, and it’s time to change our approach.

While child poverty is decreasing in Missouri—the percentage of children in poverty dropped from 22.6 percent in 2012 to 18.6 percent in 2017—child poverty rates in Missouri range from single digits, as in St. Charles County, to over 40 percent in St. Louis City. Moreover, data on economic mobility suggest that about one-third of children born into low-income homes in the areas surrounding Cape Girardeau, Poplar Bluff, Kansas City, and St. Louis will remain in poverty as adults.

Searching for solutions to this problem is important primarily so children in poverty have more opportunities for a better future; but Missourians should also be aware of the economic impact of lifelong poverty on the state and taxpayers. Based on economic mobility data for Missouri, roughly 77,800 people who were poor as children in the late 1980s will remain poor throughout their adult lives and will collect a conservatively estimated $15 billion in lifetime welfare benefits as a group.

Having a safety net is important, but could Missouri find a better way to invest these public dollars to help people move up and out of poverty? One promising possibility is the improvement of our education system through competition and innovation to better meet the needs of low-income students.

Data show significant gaps in test scores between low-income students and their peers on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) and the ACT college entrance exam in Missouri. While quality education cannot be measured by standardized test scores alone, these results do tell us that low-income students are less likely than their peers to have mastered the basic academic skills that will enable them to be successful in college or their chosen career.

Thankfully, Missourians can look to other states for examples of programs that help students from low-income families be successful, including specialized vocational high schools and emergency grants to help low-income college students stay enrolled. Whether by helping low-income kids to get a jump-start on a career of their choice or by better ensuring that they can get through college, Missouri should move toward an education system that meets the diverse needs and interests of these students though innovative schools and programs.

No single reform to education or any other policy area will end cyclical poverty. State leaders and policymakers do have the opportunity, however, to prioritize free-market solutions that enable people to provide for themselves and their families and help create surer pathways to prosperity.

The post Cyclical Poverty Is a Problem in Missouri-What Can Be Done About It? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A few weeks ago, ACT released Missouri’s 2018 graduating class state report. It reports that a dismal 22 percent of the class of 2018 graduates were college-ready in English, math, reading and science. The test results from the last three years provide a some insight into how well our students are prepared for life after high school.

The graduating classes of 2016, 2017, and 2018 had 100 percent test participation because of DESE’s three-year plan to supply the ACT to all high school juniors. Before the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) provided the ACT to every student, information about test results only applied to the approximately 77 percent of the 2015 class (page 3). It shouldn’t be surprising that average scores declined with the addition of a large group of participants who otherwise wouldn’t have taken the exam. Previously, some students would decline to take the test for financial reasons, but for others it was because they knew they weren’t prepared for such a test, or because they had no intention of going to college and therefore didn’t see any reason to take it. As a group, such students might reasonably be expected to score lower than students who looked at a high ACT score as an important asset in trying to get into a good college and who had the resources to prepare for the exam. But just because the decrease in overall scores can be explained doesn’t mean it should be excused. The ACT still measures readiness for life after high school, and seeing low scores—even from those who don’t plan on going to college—should concern all Missourians.

DESE stated the class of 2018 was the final year of the state provided ACT tests. But the three years of results revealed that when all of our students are tested, there are more students than we originally thought whom high schools are not preparing. Now that we’ve seen the real scope of the problem, will DESE acknowledge the issue or try to sweep it under the rug by celebrating when test scores inevitably go back up next year?

The post ACT Scores Show Students Aren’t Ready for College appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Indianapolis has been a standout in creating a vibrant network of schools from which parents can choose. In addition to dozens of charter schools and the Indiana Choice Scholarship voucher program, Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) has been sponsoring Innovation Network Schools. These schools have been achieving large yearly gains in standardized test scores, for which IPS gets the credit. And parents get the benefit of a collaborative, choice-rich environment that prioritizes student needs over turf battles. Not surprisingly, Indy’s metro population has been growing by over five percent per year since 2010.

The news out of St. Louis is much less positive. Fodor’s added it to their “do not travel” list this year and the NAACP has issued a travel advisory to warn people against driving through the city. And, just last week, new census numbers revealed that St. Louis’ population—both in the city and the county—continues to decline, with the region having now dropped out of the top 20 largest metropolitan areas.

It’s hard to imagine that St. Louis is going to be able to turn this around and start growing again unless it focuses on getting the basics right: keeping people safe, providing quality schools, and not taxing people to exhaustion. It’s time to stop defending a failing status quo.

In 2017, just 31 percent of St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) 8th graders were Proficient in English/Language Arts and just 9 percent were Proficient in Math. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) considers St. Louis Public Schools to be “fully accredited”; however, when only one out of ten students starts high school knowing how to do math at grade level, it’s going to be tough to turn out students who are college- or career-ready. And sure enough, the average ACT score in 2017 was 17.0, with 87 percent of those who took the exam scoring below the national average.

Fortunately, some St. Louis parents have access to public charter schools, many of which dramatically outperform the school district. But the district and the charter schools are often at odds. In fact, the district, along with the NAACP, is suing the charter schools over a desegregation sales tax the SLPS claims should not have been shared with the charter schools. If SLPS wins, most of the charter schools are likely to be bankrupted. Rather than trying to expand options for parents, the SLPS lawsuit could end up limiting them.

Too often in Missouri, it seems that giving parents options like charter schools is seen as a threat rather than a useful tool. Maybe that’s one reason the city is losing residents, as some parents vote with their feet and move elsewhere.

The post School Options and the Rise and Fall of Cities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I guess it’s good news that Missouri’s graduation rate in 2017 was nearly 90 percent—higher than the national average. But have we really put those students on the “path to achieve their goals in life”? Or has a high school diploma become little more than a participation trophy?

Consider that in 2017, the percentages of Missouri 11th-graders who scored Proficient or above on the state assessments were 35 percent in English/language arts, 15 percent in math, and 20 percent in science. And, according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), just 42.5 percent of 2017 graduates were “College or Career Ready”—meaning that they met or exceeded the state standards for the ACT, SAT, COMPASS, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) or they received and industry recognized credential (IRC).

This is backed up by a 2011 study commissioned by the Missouri Department of Higher Education, which found that 64 percent of Missouri students who were first-time undergraduates at public two-year institutions took at least one remedial course, including 56 percent who needed remedial math. At public four-year institutions the numbers were better, but still one in five students took at least one remedial course. Taking remedial courses is expensive and discouraging.

Recently, stories of “graduation rate malfeasance” have surfaced in nearly 10 states. Nationally, graduation rates are at an all-time high even as rates of proficiency have stagnated or declined. What good is it to increase graduation rates if academic performance and college readiness aren’t improving?

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), passed in 2015, moves much of the responsibility for school accountability back to states. ESSA required states to submit accountability plans that include graduation rates as a measure of school quality. Most states are now implementing their approved plans and, sure enough, graduation rates are taking off. Does that mean we’re holding schools more accountable? Probably not.

As was pointed out in a recent essay by the Show-Me Institute, accountability plans—even the most complicated ones – can be toothless, gamed, and even ignored. Missouri has an opportunity to design and implement an accountability plan that gives parents meaningful information about how their child’s school is performing. They can also give parents options when their child’s school doesn’t measure up or isn’t a good fit.

A high school diploma should be more than a piece of paper. Missouri’s education system is responsible for doing more than just issuing diplomas – they should be making sure that there is something behind the diplomas they issue.

The post What’s Going On with High School Graduation Rates in Missouri? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In statewide testing, less than half of the students in the district scored proficient or advanced in English and only about a third scored proficient or advanced in math. The latest average ACT score was 16.5, nearly five points below the national average of 21. Has the Hayti School District sufficiently prepared the class of 2019 to succeed after graduation?

Hayti has been provisionally accredited for over a decade, but that does not necessarily mean the state has taken adequate steps to make sure the district improves. The state monitors provisionally accredited districts, but there are few real consequences if their performance stagnates—and the SBE has been quick to upgrade districts even before sustained progress has been made. Unfortunately, the Missouri School Improvement Program is a series of graduated but mostly meaningless interventions.

My recent essay for the Show-Me Institute, “Accountability in Missouri’s Public School System,” goes into greater detail about our state’s struggling districts and argues that if accountability is defined as tangible consequences for district and school personnel, the state has been at best inconsistent in holding districts responsible for poor performance.

Some examples: Jennings and Caruthersville, both formerly provisionally accredited, were reclassified as fully accredited by the SBE even though they failed to meet the academic goals the districts set themselves. Not far behind Hayti, Calhoun R-VIII, and Hickman Mills have been provisionally accredited for 5 or more years.

Unaccredited districts also have been let off the hook despite a lack of significant progress. The SBE voted unanimously to classify Kansas City as provisionally accredited even though the former Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) Commissioner said the district had not established a “consistent trend of improvement.”

Two other once-unaccredited districts—Riverview Gardens and Normandy—failed to meet most performance targets set by the state before the SBE granted them provisional accreditation. In the case of the St. Louis City School District, its scores in all performance areas had not improved significantly . . . but it was unanimously approved for full accreditation.

These examples call into question the commonly held assumption that the state holds traditional public schools accountable. One could argue that the 1993 transfer law—although separate from DESE’s Missouri School Improvement Program—is the best form of accountability for districts. When students have the right to leave for a better school, unaccredited districts must improve to avoid having to pay other districts to educate their students.

Now that there are no unaccredited districts in Missouri, however, students in districts like Riverview Gardens and Normandy no longer have the right to transfer. Before thinking of this as a cause for celebration, we should recognize that this creates a trap for students whose districts are performing just well enough to prevent triggering the transfer law, but not well enough to provide a genuinely good education.

Families should not be waiting years or even decades for schools to make small gains or else become unaccredited so that students can transfer out. Under the current accountability system, the kids are the ones who face the consequences—whether they have to take remedial classes in college or cannot get a well-paying job—not the district or school leaders. Our accountability system is failing, and students deserve better than being forced to stay put in poorly performing schools.

The post Without Consequences for Failing Schools, Students Lose appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Education Savings Accounts: A Path To Student Success appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

THE SOLUTION: Tax credit–funded education savings accounts.

Education savings accounts (ESAs) are flexible-use savings accounts used solely for education purposes. Individuals or corporations would donate to organizations that manage these accounts, and families could use the funds to purchase school supplies, tutoring services, or even private school tuition.

WHO ELSE DOES IT: Six states have ESA programs, and 17 states have tax credit–funded scholarships.

THE OPPORTUNITY: Missouri is one of the last states without some kind of private school choice program. It does, however, have a large stock of private schools, and through the Missouri Virtual Instruction Program we have a vetted set of online courses that are ready for Missouri students to use. The supply is waiting; we just need to connect it to the demand.

KEY POINTS

• Many Missouri students are not being prepared for success.
• As educational options for students expand, parents should have the flexibility to customize their children’s education.
• ESAs are popular. According to polling by the education organization EdChoice, 49% of Americans support ESAs, and only 27% oppose them.
• ESAs have the potential to save both the state and school districts money.

SHOW-ME INSTITUTE RESOURCES

Essay: Estimating the Fiscal Impact of a Tax-Credit Scholarship Program

Blog Post: ESAs Can Help Missouri Students with Dyslexia

Blog Post: Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Would Be a Boon to Missourians

Video: ESAs Empower Families in Arizona

For a printable version of this article, click on the link below. You can also view the entire 2018 Missouri Blueprint online.

The post 2018 Blueprint: Education Savings Accounts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The proponents of upgrading SLPS pointed to the district’s sustained score of over 70% on the Annual Performance Review (APR), along with more stable leadership, as evidence supporting accreditation.

Indeed, SLPS has improved in recent years; but does its progress warrant the state’s seal of approval? If we look at APR scores alone, we might think it does:

Here’s the problem: with the transition from provisionally accredited to fully accredited status, we would expect substantial improvements in the academic performance of the district’s students. But a look at the next table suggests that in 2016, scoring 100% in the attendance and graduation rate categories made up for poor scores in academic and subgroup achievement.  Here is the full table:

Moreover, peculiarities in the formula that takes the raw data and puts it into a point system allows for districts to achieve scores that are disproportionally high compared to their actual improvements. In the following set of tables, you can see how SLPS has made, at best, modest progress in the five areas that are scored.

In the academic achievement category, the district falls far below the state’s goals. When you examine the data behind the achievement scores, the picture looks even worse. Below are the results of the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) tests for SLPS for the past 3 years:

Despite the big increase between 2014 and 2015 in APR scores, there was little improvement in students’ test performance—let alone in other important areas. The following table includes SLPS’s graduation rates, attendance rates, and ACT scores over the last four years.

SLPS’s recent performance is a mixed bag: attendance is close to the goal of 90% of students attending 90% of the time. The graduation rate and the percentage of students taking the ACT are also up, but these students still score very low on the ACT and are unlikely to be prepared for college.

SLPS has made headway in the last 10 years, and it deserves credit for doing so. But we’re still talking about a school district in which just over one-third of students score proficient or advanced in English, and just over one-quarter do so in math. Is that what we accept as sufficient? If we want to improve the quality of education in our state, shouldn’t Missourians set the bar higher?

The post Is This What Full Accreditation Looks Like? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Now it’s time to get to work. At the top of the to-do list should be education reform. Education reform has a proud tradition among conservatives, and reflects the core conservative values of free enterprise, entrepreneurship, and accountability for public dollars.

The need is great. Among the class of 2015, only 22 percent of Missouri students who took the ACT scored “college ready” in all four tested subjects. On the 2015 National Assessment for Educational Progress, only 31 percent of Missouri 8th-graders were deemed “proficient” in math and only 36% were found proficient in reading. The most recent AP Report to the Nation found that only 9.5% of Missouri’s students graduated high school having scored 3 or higher on an AP test, putting us in the bottom five states in the nation for AP performance.

There is no time to waste. Luckily, there are at least three steps policymakers can take to improve Missouri’s education system:

Expand charter schools statewide. Right now, charter schools are functionally limited to operating within the boundaries of the Kansas City and Saint Louis school districts. Within those constraints, they have created some incredible opportunities for students. Independent evaluators found that Kansas City’s Ewing Marion Kaufmann School produced a whopping 1.35 additional years of learning in Math and 1.29 years of learning in reading for students who attended the school for at least three years—all while serving a student population that is 86% free and reduced lunch eligible. Many students in Hickman Mills (whose performance data looks nearly indistinguishable from that of the Kansas City Public Schools) and other struggling districts across the state would jump at the chance to attend such a school.

Create a course access program. In the 2014–15 school year, 285 school districts in Missouri had zero students take an AP class. 255 districts didn’t have a single student take Calculus. 213 districts didn’t have a single student take Physics. In most cases, these are smaller rural districts that simply don’t have enough demand to justify hiring a full-time AP or advanced Math or Science teacher. Course access programs were created to address this very problem; they allow students to direct a portion of their annual per-pupil funding to approved course providers outside of their traditional public schools and to receive credit for classes they successfully pass. If, for example, a student’s school doesn’t offer calculus, or only offers Spanish and she wants to take Mandarin, she could head to the library and log into an online class. The cost for the class would be paid with the fraction of her state funding that would normally cover that class period.

Establish an education savings account program. Rather than sending a child’s yearly education funding to their local public or charter school, the state could put that money into a flexible-use spending account that parents could control. Parents could use the money in this account for private school tuition, tutoring, special education services, or any number of other approved expenses. This maximally flexible funding system would do the most to move our education system into the 21st century, allowing families to fully customize their child’s education.

Our children deserve a world-class education system. Gridlock, vetoes, or divided government can’t be an excuse. Let’s work together to give it to them.

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At the same time, every other public university in Missouri is reporting enrollment growth.

Just a few weeks ago, I highlighted research on the effects of scandals on universities. We’re seeing it play out right in front of us.

So what is to be done?

On one level, this is a case of reaping what has been sown. You can’t un-ring a bell (and you can’t un-mix a metaphor, either). The leadership of the university patently failed at dealing with unrest on campus, and they have tarnished the school’s brand. That is something they simply have to live with now.

But on another level, this shows the necessity of improving Mizzou. If changes aren’t made, there is serious risk that Mizzou will continue to decline in stature both within the state and across the region and nation. Seeing that the best and brightest are choosing other schools (quite possibly outside of Missouri) to attend raises serious concerns about brain drain and the long-term economic and social health of the state.

Finally, while I don’t think we’re there yet, a conversation about Mizzou’s role as the state’s flagship might not be as far over the horizon as we might think. If students decide to vote with their feet and attend other universities, moving to a Kansas- or Iowa-like model of twin flagships might be in our future.

We’ll be watching these enrollment trends closely and offering some ideas for reform. Stay tuned!

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In reality, 44.9 percent of all Missouri students—some 387,704 students in total—attend rural schools.

Rural schools often get overlooked in discussions of education reform, with city and suburban schools typically taking center stage. But it would be difficult to have a serious conversation about improving Missouri’s education system without recognizing the role of rural schools. Which leads us to the question: How well are rural students in Missouri performing? Mike McShane broke down their performance in a series of figures that tell the story.

Figure 2 from the paper outlines Missouri MAP test results for 4th- and 8th-graders by geographic location. The MAP is a state standardized test administered to students in 3rd through 8th grade and then again in 10th grade. In the areas of math and English language arts, 4th-graders in the suburbs scored the highest followed by children in towns. However, 8th-graders in rural areas scored second-highest only to students in the suburbs. Unfortunately, city schools scored the lowest in every category.

Figure 3 outlines the combined MAP proficiency rates for 4th and 8th graders in towns and rural communities. Only 45% of 4th-graders were proficient in English, and only 43% were proficient in math. 8th-graders scored slightly better at 51% proficiency in English and 45% proficiency in math. These numbers are bleak. Clearly there is room for improvement.

Finally, Figure 4 outlines the results of ACT scores, comparing rural students to urban students. On average, urban students scored 0.6 points higher, a statistically significant difference.

Based on these results, we can see that rural schools have room to improve. Implementing things like course access programs or education savings accounts would help each family design the education program that best meets their child’s needs. Putting families in control is the first step toward giving rural schools the help they need to rise to the top. 

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Before we can decide if there is too much or too little testing, we should lay out some facts:

·         Missouri spends roughly $30 million a year on standardized tests

·         On average, students spend 20–25 hours per school year taking standardized tests. Over the course of grades 3–12, that totals out to be 180–225 hours of testing.

·         Grades 3–8 are required to take the yearly MAP (Missouri Assessment Program) test which assesses students understanding of concepts in language arts and math. Grades 5 and 8 are also tested in science.

·         Grades 4, 8, and 12 are administered the NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress) which tests all students in the areas of math, science, reading, and writing.

·         High school juniors are required by the State Board of Education to take the ACT (at no charge)

·         High school students must pass a personal finance assessment in order to graduate. This assessment can be taken by students who are enrolled in a personal finance course or students who wish to test out of the course and still receive the half credit.

·         End of Course (EOC) evaluations are administered to students enrolled in Algebra I and II, Biology, English I and II, Geometry, Biology, American History, Physical Science, and Government courses.

Rep. Kurt Bahr of St. Charles is sponsoring a bill that would allow students to opt out of Missouri standardized testing if they or their parents request it. What would this accomplish, though? Students will simply have to wait for school to resume while other students take the tests they opted out of. And if the tests are administered only to the students who want to take them, they wouldn’t be a representative sample of the student body.

Is there a better way we can retrieve this information and not overwhelm students and teachers? Knowing how well our students and schools are doing, and what should be improved on, is important. However, we need to remember that the only “right” amount of testing is that which gives us the information we need in the most efficient way possible, so that teachers can spend more time teaching and students can spend more time learning. Determining the purpose and use of each test might be the key. 

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Bright Flight works with—not against—need-based aid. It is good that Missouri universities promote diversity in their student body, whether that’s diversity of race and gender or diversity of income. Think of Bright Flight as promoting diversity of academic achievement. Having high-flying students, regardless of their background, makes universities more well-rounded and interesting places. That’s why Missouri has a basket of scholarship programs (of which Bright Flight is a small part) to try and recruit diverse students into our universities.

Not just “wealthy” kids get Bright Flight Scholarships. In the advocates’ literature, they use not qualifying for free and reduced-price lunch or attendance at a private school as a proxy for wealth. That is not necessarily the case. In Missouri, you qualify for reduced-price lunch if your annual household income (for a family of 4) is $44,863. You could fail to qualify and still be far from wealthy. There are also lots of middle- and low-income kids who attend private schools in Missouri through large financial aid awards from those schools. (I was one of those kids, who also received a Bright Flight Scholarship, for what it’s worth). Their families will struggle to afford college, and might not get as much need-based aid as those who are less well off, so a Bright Flight scholarship could mean a lot to them. Why take that away?

Merit is something we should encourage. One would think that in America this would go without saying, but I guess not. We should be pushing our students—poor, middle-income, or wealthy—to try and do as well in school as possible. Those high-achieving students are our future innovators and leaders, who can help make the state better for all of us. I don’t care if the person who can make the next great breakthrough in medicine or forge a new era of good government was born rich or poor. I just want them doing it here!

Bright Flight isn’t the reason that low income and minority students are not succeeding in Missouri Universities. Let’s look at the Missouri statistics on college readiness for African-American students (from this report): Only 6 percent scored college-ready in all four tested subjects on the ACT, only 2.7 percent graduated high school having passed at least one AP exam, and a whopping 68% enrolled in remedial coursework when they got to college The real scandal, and where we should focus our reform efforts, should not be scholarships for Missouri universities, the K-12 education system in our state that fails to prepare our low-income and minority students for success in college.

Ultimately, I think the campaign against Bright Flight is misguided. We do need to do a lot more to help our low-income and minority students succeed in college, but getting rid of Bright Flight isn’t going to accomplish that. I’d rather focus my energies on the levers that can actually help more students do better rather than punishing kids for doing well on the ACT exam. 

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