The U.S. Department of Justice has joined a lawsuit alleging race and sex discrimination against the Missouri State High School Activities Association (“MSHSAA”), and rightfully so, because if reports are correct, the MSHSAA’s rules are indeed discriminatory.

According to reporting from the Missouri Independent, MSHSAA’s rules require two of its 10 board members to be “candidates representing the underrepresented gender of the current board or an under-represented ethnicity.”

Supporters view the rule as a tool to promote fairness and inclusion.

It isn’t. The problem comes when a position becomes vacant. If eight of the remaining nine board members are all men or all white, for example, the rule would indicate that the candidate must be a woman or an underrepresented minority. This effectively bars candidates based on sex or ethnicity.

The Constitution protects individuals, not categories. However well intended, policies that distribute opportunity based on identity rather than merit raise immediate equal protection concerns. It demeans people to reduce them to nothing more than an identity marker, and it undermines government efficiency to exclude large numbers of candidates for a position because of their race or sex.

We’ve seen this dynamic play out in other contexts. In Arkansas, for example, a prospective member of a state licensing board was effectively barred from consideration because state law required the board to meet racial composition targets. He sued, and the Arkansas Legislature repealed the law. Lawmakers made clear what should have been obvious from the start: public appointments ought to be based on “experience and expertise, not the color of their skin.”

What remains to be determined is whether the MSHSAA is a public institution. It is organized as a private non-profit, but its employees are eligible for the Missouri state employees’ retirement system.

At its core, the matter can be reduced to whether institutions should discriminate based on sex or ethnicity. Given the MSHSAA’s broad mandate, it should not.

The post When Diversity Becomes Discrimination appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In his January 30 op-ed for the Post-Dispatch, Kansas political scientist Michael Smith called Governor Mike Kehoe’s proposal to cut income taxes in Missouri a “near carbon copy” of Governor Sam Brownback’s 2012 income tax cuts in Kansas.

But Kehoe’s proposal for Missouri has large and important differences from Brownback’s. It isn’t a “carbon copy” at all.

The single largest flaw in Brownback’s tax cut was a peculiar change that eliminated all income taxes on “pass-through” business entities such as limited liability corporations (LLCs) without changing the tax code for other types of businesses. Even the right-leaning Tax Foundation criticized the provision at the time. Put simply, it didn’t encourage investment; it ended income taxes for one type of business while keeping them for others.

Not surprisingly, many businesses changed their corporate structure to suddenly become pass-through entities. The Tax Foundation found that over 390,000 entities claimed the exemption by 2015, more than double what was projected. These businesses didn’t invest in the state, hire more workers, or do anything other than change their legal status. Tax revenues declined significantly, and little growth followed.

Kansas also made critical mistakes in how it implemented income-tax cuts. The state slashed its top income-tax rate by nearly 30 percent immediately in 2012, with plans to cut even further. At the same time, Kansas’s elected officials failed to rein in spending. The combination of the pass-through exemption, immediate and deep rate cuts, and lack of spending discipline during this period fostered a fiscal crisis that could have been avoided. Even worse, the timing of these actions gave the state little room to adjust when projections weren’t borne out.

Kehoe’s proposal is fundamentally different. It asks Missouri voters whether they want to eliminate the income tax. If they do, the state can then expand and adjust its sales tax to replace the lost revenue. While many details remain to be finalized (and Missourians have every right to be skeptical while awaiting those details), the plan ensures that income tax rates can only be lowered after meeting revenue benchmarks, meaning Missouri would only cut taxes when it has the fiscal capacity to do so.

Setting aside the phasing out of the income tax, addressing Missouri’s outdated sales tax system is long overdue. While states nationwide are broadening what they tax, Missouri’s system remains narrow, with much of what is sold today escaping taxation entirely. Larger exemptions like home sales and healthcare services might make sense, but other current exemptions clearly don’t.

When you buy a book in person at Barnes & Noble or have the same book delivered to your house by Amazon, you pay the sales tax. However, when you buy the same text as a download to your Kindle, you pay no sales tax. Correcting such inconsistencies in Missouri’s tax code can level the playing field while expanding the sales tax base at the same time.

Opponents can point to Missouri’s western border all they want, but Missouri has other neighbors besides Kansas. Look at Iowa, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, which have all cut income tax rates significantly in recent years without any of the issues Kansas had. Look to our southeast border to see Tennessee, a state that has been growing rapidly for years thanks, in part, to having no state income tax. This isn’t surprising, as decades of economic research have shown consistently that states without income taxes grow faster economically than those with them.

As the Tax Foundation, which was highly critical of Kansas’ tax cut, wrote in 2024 about the larger picture of state tax cuts between 2012 and 2022:

In fact, far from tax cuts precipitating a Kansas-like crisis, tax collections have risen more on average in the past decade in the 25 states that cut income taxes (31.9 percent in inflation-adjusted terms) than in the four states and D.C. that raised them (27.8 percent).

The lesson from Kansas isn’t that eliminating the income tax is a bad idea, it’s that implementation matters. There’s no doubt that states without income taxes are growing faster than Missouri, and our state needs a new approach to keep pace in the national competition for families and businesses. Voters deserve the full picture, not an overly simplistic “Kansas” bogeyman, when debating our state’s tax future.

The post Missouri Doesn’t Have To Be Kansas appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Property taxes are a vital and efficient source of revenue for local government, but various factors, including harmful abatements, inconsistent assessment practices, and consistently poor management in Jackson County, have eroded trust in the overall system.

The Solution

Property taxes work best when they are predictable, broadly based, and targeted to the local services that people benefit from. Right now, property assessments in Missouri are unpredictable and seem random to too many people. While tax-rate rollbacks help reduce these negative aspects of property taxes, the high inflation of recent years has limited the effectiveness of rate rollbacks. Missouri assessors should more uniformly assess residential property by using an average-based system instead of individually assessing every property, which leads to increased variance in values among neighboring properties and undermines trust.

Key Facts

• The 2025 Jackson County reassessment was once again a procedural disaster, leading to distrust in the system. Making Jackson County Assessor an elected position should improve the process by giving the voters and taxpayers someone to hold accountable.

• Surprisingly, cities in Missouri rely less on general property taxes than cities in any other state.

• Missouri local governments, such as school districts and fire districts, rank third among the 50 states for reliance on personal property taxes.

Which Taxes Damage Growth the Most?

Source: https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil.

Going in the Wrong Direction with Recent Reforms

In an effort to address the impact of higher property taxes in Missouri, the legislature first passed a senior property tax freeze option in 2023 and made major changes to the property tax system in 2025 during the special session. There are many problems with these bills, not the least of which are serious constitutional concerns that will likely be fought over in court. These plans are harmful simply because they reduce the property tax base. Unless local governments cut services in response to the enactment of these plans, they will almost certainly lead to higher tax rates on properties that are not subject to the property tax freezes or limitations, such as commercial property and multi-family housing. There will also be significant pressure to increase alternative taxes, like special sales taxes. Most concerningly, there will be an increased reliance on income taxes to fund local school districts through the foundation formula. Increasing our dependence on income taxes will harm economic growth in Missouri.

It would be better for the state to substantially change the biennial property assessment process. Missouri should eliminate the practice of sending thousands of assessors out into our neighborhoods every other year to individually assess every property. The Missouri State Tax Commission could work with county assessors, local realtors, and online real estate resources to determine average county increases (or decreases) in valuation for each reassessment cycle. Each residential, commercial, or agricultural property in a county could be adjusted based on the county’s average for that particular class of property. Tax rates could then be adjusted based on that average, and the vast majority of homeowners would be subject to the same resulting increase (or decrease) in their overall property taxes. This method would eliminate wide discrepancies from house to house that undermine faith in the current tax and assessment system.

Rolling Back Tax Rates in Kansas City

Families and property owners within the Kansas City 33 School District have been hit particularly hard by the continuously mismanaged assessment process in Jackson County and the unique rate-rollback exemption for that large school district. In 2023, when assessments in the school district went up 24%, the school board kept the tax rate exactly the same. That placed a real burden on homeowners, who saw their property taxes skyrocket. In 2025, after another round of substantial and contentious assessment increases, the school board approved a very slight 10-cent rate rollback. The Kansas City 33 School District should be required to roll back its property tax rates as assessments increase, just as every other taxing entity in Missouri does.

Change the Underlying Property Tax Base

Property taxes work best when the item being taxed is immobile. Taxing cars, boats, livestock, grain, and business equipment is not sound tax policy. While there is no way of knowing how many Missouri cars are improperly registered in Illinois, Kansas, or Arkansas in order to avoid Missouri’s property tax, the number is likely high. Missouri should phase out personal property taxes in a revenue-neutral manner by replacing them with slightly higher real property taxes.

Free the Livestock

Missouri farmers, ranchers, and tax assessors spend significant time counting and calculating the taxes owed on livestock, but the total tax revenue raised for all governments on all livestock throughout the state only amounts to about $10 million. Those paltry revenues do not justify the effort that goes into collecting the tax in the first place. Missouri should eliminate the personal property tax on livestock and replace it with a slightly higher tax rate on farmland.

Policy Recommendations

• Remove the Kansas City 33 School District’s exemption from property tax rate rollbacks (Missouri Constitution, Article 10, Section 11(G)).

• Eliminate personal property taxes, or, at a minimum, require that those tax rates roll back like real property taxes and expand RSMo §92.040 (which allows lower personal property taxes on business equipment) to more cities than just St. Louis and Kansas City.

• Eliminate personal property taxes on livestock as a wasteful expenditure of time and effort.

• Repeal or substantially amend the laws allowing for senior citizen property tax freezes.

• Change to a reassessment system for homes that is based on community sale averages, not individual property assessments.

The post Property Tax Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Robert C. Enlow, president and CEO of EdChoice, about the expansion of school choice and the organization’s work advancing parental freedom in education. They discuss Milton Friedman’s original vision, how states like Florida, Arizona, and Indiana have moved toward universal choice, Missouri’s legal fight over its scholarship program, and how parental demand is reshaping education markets, and more.

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Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Ed Choice and Leadership
01:00 Milton Friedman’s Legacy in Education
02:26 The State of School Choice in America
04:57 Challenges in Missouri’s Education System
07:38 The Importance of Universal School Choice
09:39 The Role of Leadership in Education Reform
11:49 Parental Advocacy and the Future of School Choice
14:15 Market Demand and Private School Growth
16:59 The Evolution of Educational Options
19:49 Redefining Quality in Education
22:18 Civic Values and Shared Experiences in Education
26:05 The Debate on Public vs. Private Education
29:47 Legal Challenges and Advocacy for School Choice

Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:00)
So I am actually very excited that you have joined our podcast, Robert Enlow. You are CEO or executive director of EdChoice—which one? President and CEO. How long have you been president and CEO of that organization?

Robert Enlow (00:08)
I’m president and CEO of EdChoice.

Well, that’s a great question, Susan. And thanks for having me, and thanks to Show-Me for all they do. I believe I’ve been president and CEO since 2009, but I joined the organization in 1996. We opened our doors on September 23, 1996, and I was the first guy walking in the door.

Susan Pendergrass (00:31)
And it was originally called the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation.

Robert Enlow (00:34)
Correct, the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, obviously established after Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose. During the last decade of their lives, I got to know them—particularly in the last five years of his life. As a young kid coming from England who had these wild-eyed liberal ideas in some ways, it took me a little while for him and Rose to get to understand me and warm up to me, but they did, and it was an amazing experience getting to watch them work.

Susan Pendergrass (00:40)
And you knew them both. What do you think he would think of what’s going on right now in K–12 education?

Robert Enlow (01:04)
You know, I will tell you what he would say to me every single time we passed a bill in another state. He would say, “Robert, we’re on the right track, but you’ve got a lot more to do.” I think he would be happy that we got to universality of people. I think he would be really pleased with the fact that we’re now at a universe of eligibility. I think he’d be less pleased that we’re still controlling the marketplace and controlling the spigot of funds. So I think he would be saying we’re not getting to a true universal marketplace unless you think about supply and information and funding just as much as you think of everyone choosing. Like in a state like Texas, everyone’s excited—oh my God, everyone gets to choose. Well, not really. It’s a billion-dollar appropriation. That means only maybe 90,000 kids get to choose out of 6 million. So when you think about who can really choose, we’ve got to think about the money. And the same thing is true in Missouri with its $50 million—$75 million tax rate and $50 million appropriation still limits the number of fan futures. Yeah.

Susan Pendergrass (02:02)
Like nobody. Tiny, tiny. But we do have an Arizona and a Florida now. I think, you know, I remember a very long time ago working with you on an Arizona voucher that got vetoed by the governor, but now Arizona is essentially universal school choice, and Florida. What I’m seeing most recently that I really love is with their universal school choice and more than half of parents choosing something, the public schools are getting in the game. The public schools are like, okay, spend your scholarship dollars with us, because we’ve been at this a long time. And they’re not seeing it as this us versus them. It’s like, we are all working together to educate our kids. And maybe, you know, we all have a place in this.

Robert Enlow (02:30)
That’s right. So people ask me all the time, Susan, they’re like, well, when will you work with the opponents of school choice, or when will you work with public schools? I’m like, we’ll work with public schools when there truly is a level playing field for all families to be able to choose. Now we actually see there are three aspects to that that we care about, right? All families can choose, right? They can choose all the options, and they can choose with all available dollars. We see five states that have that criteria now: Florida, Arizona, West Virginia, and now New Hampshire. Arkansas—Arkansas. So Arkansas, yeah, Arkansas, Arizona, the A’s; W’s—West Virginia; Florida; and New Hampshire. And what’s really interesting about that, if you look over time—we do this thing called the EdChoice Share, which is what we really care about: how many people are choosing all the options that they want. Florida and Arizona are the top two. And it’s really amazing to see what’s happened in Florida.

Susan Pendergrass (03:16)
Arkansas.

Robert Enlow (03:39)
—people, of families going to traditional assigned public schools. Now, even in that, they are choosing by buying a house, right? So that’s gone from 86.2% in 2001–2002 to now, today, just 51.8%. About half. Isn’t that crazy?

Susan Pendergrass (03:46)
Sure, sure, sure. About half. And I will tell you from my experience in Missouri, that sort of reality—where almost every kid just goes to their assigned public school, whatever’s on the utility bill, that’s where you go to school and you have no other options—is still assumed to be almost universal. In fact, it is in Missouri, because we only have charter schools as punishment. We have that tiny little scholarship program. You can go to a full-time virtual, which isn’t for everyone. So essentially, you see the address on the utility bill is where you go to school. And I just think that it’s been really hard to sort of break through that mindset and let folks know, like in Florida, only half of parents are doing that. And probably, like you said, a sizable percentage of that half decided where to live based on what school their kids would go to. So they are, in a sense, exercising some choice. And I just wonder, when you have two states in the same nation that are so completely divergent, where does that lead us to? So Missouri’s kind of surrounded.

Robert Enlow (04:57)
Well, it’s—yeah, so Missouri is surrounded, and where it leads you to is a couple of things. It leads you to a metric of in-migration. In Indiana, one of the things I get asked a lot is, you know, what’s the success metric for your state? And I say the number of people migrating to our state because they have educational options. Right. So we are a state of educational options on your border, almost, and everyone can choose. Right. And it’s a big deal, and it’s why we’ve had more and more families. You’re ranked in our study 28th out of 51. And you really have not seen a change. Well, I mean, you still have 80.3% in traditional schools, but what you’ve done is you’ve allowed magnet schools to grow and you’ve had some charter school—your charter school growth has been—let’s take a look. You’ve actually had a decent—

Susan Pendergrass (05:32)
That seems high, to be honest. Yeah, but I can tell you our charter schools are punishments. They’re only in Kansas City and St. Louis, only in non-accredited districts. So right now there might be a charter school in the works in a fully accredited district—in Columbia 93—and people in Columbia 93 are freaking out about a charter school opening. This is how sort of, like, behind the curve we are. They’re freaking out that a charter school might open, and they’re arguing we don’t need it. And I will say—I want to get to the lawsuit against our scholarship program. We have a very strong, what I sort of call the—

Robert Enlow (05:52)
Yeah, that’s great.

Susan Pendergrass (06:16)
—educational establishment in Jefferson City. That is the teacher union leadership, the Association of School Boards, and the Association of Superintendents. Because we have 520 districts, there’s a lot of superintendents and a lot of school boards, and they will show up to a hearing to make sure that parents don’t get to choose where their kids go to school.

Robert Enlow (06:35)
Yeah, so this is one of the reasons why, in 2016, when the Milton Friedman Foundation changed its name to EdChoice, we focused on universality. Because I think we realized that the fights for school choice—where they’re fighting to make sure that children can escape from bad schools—is the wrong message. The message is that all families need to have some freedom to choose what works best for them. And that should be across all income levels. Why are we okay with giving billionaires access to gated, segregated public schools, but freak out when we give them the options to choose private schools? Moreover, you can’t continue to ask Republican legislators to vote for something that they’re going to get killed for in their district. Right. And so one of the key points of universality has been being able to say, we need you to support choice so that constituents of yours can get an opportunity. So in your state, one of the challenges has been: how do we get eligibility to where it’s supposed to be universal? And you’ve done your—yeah.

Susan Pendergrass (07:38)
Funding, funding. I mean, we had tiny funding up until this $50 million. The only scholarship dollars we had were fundraised from individual and corporate donors. So getting that money together has been a real challenge, and I think we got to $15 to $20 million finally. And ironically—I don’t know, you may not know this because it’s very in the weeds—but when that ESA program, when that scholarship program passed, we agreed—the legislature agreed—that any district that lost a student to the scholarship program could continue to count them for five years. So this year they’re asking for $30 million to cover the kids who took the scholarship. Thirty million dollars is going to go to public schools for the kids who took the scholarships, but they don’t want the scholarship program to get $50 million. And I just think the irony kills me.

Robert Enlow (08:25)
Well, hold on—just, I think—so this hold-harmless thing, let me just ask a question. I think Show-Me then should put in a bill like this: if they want to be held harmless when a student leaves, then anytime a child moves from one public school to another public school, they should hold that other public school to account. Public schools are getting—they’re the ones where families are moving the most, right? So aren’t other public schools in Missouri taking more money from other public schools than any kind of choice or charter program?

Susan Pendergrass (08:42)
That’s right. Yeah, and God forbid that we’re sending kids to Indiana for your in-migration, right? Like, when kids leave, somehow we should—and we do have these crazy hold-harmless policies that you guys have analyzed—but I feel like it’s starting to feel like we have sort of two different worlds. If you raise your kids in Florida or Arizona or Arkansas, when they get to be four or five years old, then good news: you get to sit down and look at your options and look at your kid and look at where you work, what might fit your schedule, and you can pick from a number of things. If you live in Missouri, you cannot. And I just think that’s gonna start to diverge.

Robert Enlow (09:25)
So here’s what I’m going to say about that. I agree with you. And there is a divergence happening, particularly in the states in America that have broad choices—and I don’t just mean private school; I mean charter and all of that. But once you get a taste of choice—we have really believed this over time—once you start to get a taste of choice, and if you make it broad enough and open enough, parents begin to start utilizing that option; they learn over time. And so it didn’t happen overnight that Florida went from 90% to 51%. It happened over 20 years as choice grew and became more eligible. So, you know, key point is you in Missouri now have a program. It now has some public funds attached to it. And the goal is to get that utilized as much and as broadly as possible in every district. I say this all the time: one of the reasons why Indiana’s Choice Program is so defensible is—we love our charter schools—but charter schools, I think, are in 30 districts and 30 legislative districts. Private schools are in every single legislative district in the state, and all of them take choice dollars. And so you have a built-in constituency of support. We now have 110,000 families using choice out of our million kids. And so it’s amazing, the growth. It didn’t start off that way. It started off with 3,500. Right. And so you see the growth of choice over time. And as long as your legislatures are willing to move forward, then you’re going to continue to see that change. And no amount of union hacking and no amount of school board association—because they’re ultimately disconnected with what the parents want. And that’s particularly true after COVID, because there’s a ton of micro schools and a ton of—Milton Friedman used to say, you know you’re ready for a free market when there’s the presence of an underground market. And there’s a huge underground market for education happening all over Missouri right now in the form of micro schools and pods. Parents are wanting to move. And as the legislature starts giving them access to public funds, you’ll see growth over time.

Susan Pendergrass (11:22)
And we’ve got some parent advocacy groups that have appeared on the scene, like Activate Missouri. And I know, like in Florida, there were some very loud parent groups that influenced elections because they wanted school choice. And I do believe that parents are going to be the ones that sort of drive the change in Missouri. But you guys in Indiana also had very strong leadership. You had Governor Mitch Daniels—like, you had very strong leadership. We’ve had a bit of a vacuum in that regard in Missouri. Our new governor supports the idea of school choice. I’m not sure that he’s willing to put his political capital on the line for it in the way that you guys—

Robert Enlow (11:57)
Yeah, so there’s a lot of feeling out there now—oh my God, if I get a governor, it’ll be a savior, right? And look, governors are super important and they are critical for getting it over the line. Mitch Daniels was critical to take this movement in the country to the next step. Prior to Mitch Daniels, we’d sort of seen the failure of a voucher program in Florida—Jeb Bush’s voucher program—and so we’d gone to this tax-credit scholarship model, right? And Mitch said, no, we’re going to do something big, statewide and large. And when he did that, he sort of opened the floodgates for a bunch of states. So that was really important. Governor Pence was supportive. But the governors after that haven’t been, like, massively out in front driving stuff. They’ve not not signed it when it comes to their table, but they haven’t been out there leading the way. Having a Speaker of the House like Representative Todd Huston—by the way, it’s amazing. So having leadership roles is critically important. I can’t say enough for someone like Speaker Huston. So, you know, it’s important to have a governor, but it’s super important to have leadership in the House and Senate.

Susan Pendergrass (13:05)
Yeah, you must, because I know you have the third-grade non-retention for kids who are behind in reading. I know that you guys are out in front on the—really the first really meaty—federal waiver request that the Secretary of Education has been asking for states to send in their waiver requests. And Indiana’s is certainly the most robust. You’re going back to letter grades for your schools. I mean, you’re not just doing choice. You guys are seemingly moving on a lot of fronts in education in a way that will make it very attractive to families. And I try to make this point all the time in Missouri: families are gonna leave and businesses are gonna leave because we have all of these second-generation choosers, right? So kids who chose their school are having kids, and they expect to choose their school.

Robert Enlow (13:47)
Look, the idea of customer choice is embedded into anyone who’s under 30, right? And so when they begin to realize that’s going to be true in education, they’re going to be like, why am I getting this one-size-fits-all system that doesn’t actually fit either my values or my safety or what I think of academic quality—or what if I want something more hybrid? I mean, the reality is that families under 30 now—they’re not having kids; we have a baby bust here—but those under 30 are definitely saying, “I want more choice and customization.”

Susan Pendergrass (14:15)
Yeah, and as you know, you have multiple kids, I have multiple kids—they’re not even all the same. So what works for one might not work for all of them within a family. Now, another argument that we get in Missouri, in terms of the need for private school choice, is we don’t have enough—you know, we don’t have very many private schools, and most rural districts don’t have any. And we are seeing some research emerge that the private school market responds in these scholarship programs, right?

Robert Enlow (14:38)
I love hearing this, Susan, and I’m sorry if I am frustrated by that question. I don’t think you ever, ever ask—no one in the world ever asked—and I know this is not comparing education with this product—but no one in the world ever asked Lay’s Potato Chips how many bags of Fritos they need. They figure that out based on customer and market demand. This idea that somehow private schools don’t exist—of course they exist to market demand.

Susan Pendergrass (14:45)
Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah.

Robert Enlow (15:06)
When it comes and when it’s free and when it’s open. Let me give you an example. In Indiana, when we first started our program in 2010, it was like, “There’s not enough private school spaces. There’s not enough private school spaces.” Okay, so we did a survey of all the private schools. We got all the private schools to get together on how many spaces they had. They had 22,000 available spaces. We went through district and grade. Great. And then when we expanded it in 2013, the governor says, “We need to know how many spaces there are going to be.” All right, we’ll do another survey—since no one believes that markets respond, right? Well, we did a whole other survey. How many spaces do you think there were? Twenty-two thousand. Exactly. My point is—like 20 or 22,000, right? This concept of “Oh, we don’t know if there’s enough supply.” Look, markets will respond so long as markets are free to respond. So one of the biggest challenges right now going forward is—look, try to—

Susan Pendergrass (15:41)
I don’t—

Robert Enlow (16:01)
School choice—or private school choice, or educational choice—can do one of three things: fill seats in existing schools, build new seats in existing schools, or build new schools, right? Now, the way we’ve run private schooling in America is we’re only doing one and two. We’re filling seats in existing. And just remember, private schools in the last 25 years lost 10% market share total, right? So there’s a ton of spaces. There’s a ton of spaces in private schools all over America, right? So if you think you lost 10% of—

Susan Pendergrass (16:20)
That’s right. Closed. A lot of schools closed. Ahem.

Robert Enlow (16:30)
—five million, right? Or whatever the number is. You have plenty of spaces out there in private currently. Now we need to grow those spaces and grow the different types of models. That’s going to require legislators to be a bit more willing to take some risk around the types of schools that they allow to be, quote-unquote, “accredited,” right? So you need to allow micro schools. You need to allow new entrants into the marketplace. And the more you do that, the faster it will grow. But there are slots out there. And what we’re really finding from the emerging research is that private schools are growing faster in rural areas—like in Florida—and they’re actually growing. I mean, Susan, you did this research for us about Florida and Arizona, so why don’t you tell us how fast they’re growing?

Susan Pendergrass (17:07)
Right. Well, they’re growing in Arizona. What I will say that comes out of that research is parents don’t really care what the label is on the bill. They are calling a lot of things “schools” now, right, that you might not have called schools before. And you guys survey parents—you do your monthly surveys. Schooling in America—what’s it called? What’s your monthly survey? Yeah. You’ve been doing it since COVID.

Robert Enlow (17:27)
It’s called Morning Consult—sorry, Schooling in America polling.

Susan Pendergrass (17:32)
And what I think is one of the most interesting findings is that consistently, now that COVID’s way in the rearview, parents want their kids to go to school two or three days a week. More parents want their kids home a couple days and in school a couple days than want five days in school or five days at home. People sort of want this—they like this sort of flexibility thing. And what I think we’re seeing is a growth in, like you said, micro schools, hybrid schools, homeschool co-ops where I am homeschooling a couple days, then a couple days my child is going somewhere to be part of group activities. And parents are doing online coding schools, and that’s a school to them, right? It’s an online situation where their kids are learning to code, and they’re calling it a school. So, yeah, the definition of what is a private school—the fact that it’s not a nonprofit provider, that it’s a private provider and they’re providing all sorts of different things—is really getting blurry. I think that that is a definite finding. And where that’s allowed to thrive, like Arizona, where you have this massive ESA program, and Florida—that’s where you’re seeing parents are only limited by what they can think up, right?

Robert Enlow (18:39)
So how much growth was there in Arizona and Florida? You saw it. Tell me how much there was.

Susan Pendergrass (18:44)
In the number of private schools? Well, I will say this: private school data is messy. And in most states, it looks like they’re declining. Florida and Arizona are two of the states where you can say for sure—outside the error ranges—they have more private schools now than they did 10 years ago. And that is the exception to the rest of the country. You can say for sure California and New York have fewer private schools than they did 10 years ago.

Robert Enlow (18:45)
Yeah. I love you, Reese Richard.

Susan Pendergrass (19:08)
And the nation as a whole has fewer private schools. But in Florida and Arizona, you’re seeing the opposite direction—and Ohio. So the market is responding, but it might not be, you know, a full-on brick-and-mortar cafeteria-gym-library private school. It might be something that doesn’t look exactly like that. And to a parent, it’s a school. And that’s what I think we’re seeing. And I know that in Florida, parents are combining scholarship programs to have their child see a paraprofessional and get some specialized equipment if they have a disability, and be part of a group activity. And I think that is one of the most exciting things that’s happening—these really interesting, expansive, curated experiences that parents are putting together.

Robert Enlow (19:49)
Yeah, you saw in one year a growth of 150—think—private schools or private options in Arizona in just one year. So it’s not like the market won’t respond.

Susan Pendergrass (19:56)
Yeah. And more of them are accessing online schools than they used to. Right—Stanford has a school, BYU has a school. If you can access these online schools, they don’t have to be in-state. That’s because the parents are deciding where the money goes. But in Missouri, Missouri has accredited Missouri virtual schools, and that’s where you have to enroll your child. But when you let the parents and word of mouth—say, you know, “Hey, I’ve got a great foreign language school”—word of mouth works. Then I think you definitely see a massive expansion of what parents are accessing through these programs. And I can only imagine, based on Milton Friedman’s—what, 1955? 57? 55—premise on this, that achievement should go up. I mean, I know that this isn’t the thing that we are focused on, but it should.

Robert Enlow (20:36)
Yep, 1955.

Susan Pendergrass (20:46)
I’ve always said, like, if 25% of Missouri eighth graders are proficient in math, I don’t think 75% of Missouri parents, if they were given control over it, would just accept the fact that their kid didn’t learn math.

Robert Enlow (20:56)
So one of the challenges I think we have with that is: what do we determine to be quality, and how do we measure that, right? I’m one of the few that think that the standards movements of the 1980s did more harm to K–12 education than good.

Susan Pendergrass (21:02)
Yeah, that’s a big question. Tell me why.

Robert Enlow (21:14)
Because I think the standardization to such a point—which then meant you had to have state tests aligned to that standardization, which then meant you had to create very rigid scope and sequencing for teachers—it really did, in a way, de-professionalize the teaching industry and make it a widget industry. And so, as a result, I think we’ve lost this ability to educate, and we’ve created this desire to—

Susan Pendergrass (21:17)
—teach to it.

Robert Enlow (21:43)
—to inculcate in terms of how to get them to do a test. I’m not a big fan of state tests. I think they get gamed all the time and changed all the time. I’m not a huge fan of state standards. I think you can have standards, but align them to something else. We had the Iowa Test of Basic Skills growing up, and that was a fine test, and we could do the same. So we, for example, are believers in testing choice and think we should allow families to do that. So when you look at quality—

Susan Pendergrass (22:10)
You mean pick a test—allow them to pick a test? And how would you hold any schools accountable, or would you? Would you do the Ashley Berner or the British approach? What would you do?

Robert Enlow (22:13)
Yeah, they should all be taking tests if they want. I think—no, look, first of all, I think parents hold schools accountable. We’re learning that from Arizona, right? By the time they close a charter school in Arizona, there’s like 12 parents in it, right? So, I mean, parents know quality. But you’ve got to remember, parents are choosing for different reasons. I think about this all the time. I had a son who had special needs, and I didn’t want to send him to the local public school because it was going to be bad for him, in my opinion. He wasn’t going to be served. So I went and did a whole bunch of searching around, and I picked a school that was 15th on the I-STEP for third-grade results—that was Indiana—versus the other school that was seventh, right? Why did I do that? Well, I did it because I thought he’d have a safer environment, he’d have a more moral environment—an environment with my values—and it was cheap enough for me, and it was good enough. So, parents make decisions based on a whole host of factors, and I think it’s silly for us to think that they don’t. The other thing is: what do we mean by quality is a big deal. I am not a fan of saying quality is only a test score. I think quality is much more than that. I don’t know about your kids, Susan.

Susan Pendergrass (23:18)
That’s a great question. But do test scores matter?

Robert Enlow (23:43)
I’m not sure I’d say—they matter insofar as you inform parents how kids are doing relative to others. I think it’s important that families know that. I’m a big fan of the one thing I do like about the British system—just ranking all the schools. That’s what they do: they take a test and everyone gets put on a league table. I love that concept. Everyone gets on a league table, and you can say, “Oh, you’re going to a school that’s 100 out of 200. Well, you’re mid-table. Why aren’t you going to a school that’s 85 or 60,” or something like that? So I think it’s really important to just put it on a table, because I think keeping up with the Joneses is actually a valuable part of society. But think about—

Susan Pendergrass (24:01)
We do that at the Show-Me Institute. For Missouri schools, we do rank all the schools. But one more question—just to push back on that a little bit, but not exactly that. One thing that we’re seeing, or that I’ve seen in these scholarship programs, is that kids are potentially—we’re growing the number of kids who are not having shared experiences with their peers. And by that, I mean probably going to have a lot fewer kids playing the trumpet or playing the cello.

Robert Enlow (24:10)
No.

Susan Pendergrass (24:28)
Because when you go to middle school and you say, “I’m going to take band,” and then they’re like, “Let’s pick an instrument,” right? That is kind of hokey, but that was what a lot of us did. And now you have parents who are simply having their child go to guitar lessons or piano lessons because that’s what their kid wants to play. And you’re not going to have kids hauling their flute home on the bus. And that’s kind of a shared experience. Also, things like the weird PE classes I had to take, like square dancing or, I don’t know, bowling. You know, we’re going to lose some of that from a civic point of view. We’re going to lose lots of the shared experience, and kids are going to have these algorithm-driven or curated experiences. What do you think?

Robert Enlow (25:06)
Okay, comrade. Let me just say, okay, comrade. I can’t believe I just heard an apologist for school buses, right? I mean, everyone get on a bus with a snotty—listen, common cultural experiences happen by common cultural things, not by being in the same place at the same time. This idea that schools are the locus of all of our common cultural experiences is part of the problem we have in education. So in Arizona—

Susan Pendergrass (25:08)
Come on, come on, what do you think? You have to ride the school bus?

Robert Enlow (25:35)
Yeah. Yes, yes. There are tons and tons of common cultural experiences right now. The fastest-growing type of tutor is music and physical instruction, right? Are they not taking classes together? Are they not working together with other kids? They’re just not working with other kids in a common—in a socialist—environment of a school bus or in a school, right? This idea that acculturation and socialization happen only inside of a K–12 school building strikes me as very socialistic.

Susan Pendergrass (26:05)
I hear it. I hear it a lot from the—air quotes—other side. I hear that they are the great equalizing institution: traditional K–12 public schools.

Robert Enlow (26:13)
Okay, if that were the case—if that were the case—why is the data extremely clear in voucher programs and choice programs that the civic values of kids in choice programs who attend private schools are far greater than the civic values and virtues of those who attend traditional public schools? I say this all the time: if you go to the GLSEN survey—the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network survey of kids and their issues in dealing with being gay—Which school system is the worst on gay kids? They get dead. Based on the data that they bring out, public schools have significantly higher rates of abuse of gay kids. Right? How tolerant is that? Now, what ends up happening is they hear about it more in religious schools—they hear about being gay—but they’re not bullied. So you actually ask yourself this question: Do you want your gay kid bullied, or do you want them to hear about it more?

Susan Pendergrass (26:42)
I’m guessing you’re going to say traditional public schools.

Robert Enlow (27:06)
These are legitimate questions to ask. And by the way, we’re not doing well with this at all in any school system. But this idea of civic virtue coming from a homogenized institution strikes me as naive at best—particularly since, if you think those schools don’t teach values, you’re wrong. They absolutely teach values. And then they teach values based on their school assignment, which is based on where they live. And if you don’t think neighborhoods produce value and values, then you’re wrong. Anyone who knows me knows that I rail against suburbia all the time—it’s just part of who I am. Gated, segregated communities really bother me. It bothers me. These ideas of living in enclaves piss me off, because I don’t think that’s what America is supposed to be about. But that ends up what’s happening in schooling, right? And what private schooling and choice does is it breaks that apart. How are you getting more civic tolerance—how are you getting more integration—in private schooling than you are in public schools? Whenever I hear, “Public schools are the center and locus of our community shared experience,” I actually cringe and start worrying about what they’re teaching.

Susan Pendergrass (28:13)
Yeah, I also saw a comment the other day on a Signal chat I’m on that charter schools are part of the right-wing conservative agenda to kill public education, which just makes me crazy, because charter schools by and large serve poor kids of color, and there’s nothing to do with the—there’s no right-wing conservative agenda there. And I know a lot of parents who would very much disagree with that. But that is the perception that’s out there—that you guys, with your school choice and your vouchers—and I know that you guys did a whole market test on the word “voucher,” which I think is brilliant, because no matter what the program is, folks on the left call it a voucher scheme. There’s a “scheme,” and that it’s killing public education, and then we won’t have a civic-minded, you know, equal electorate, basically.

Robert Enlow (28:39)
Yep. Can we start to redefine—and I have to redefine—look, I am a huge believer in public education. I want an educated public. I want kids to be educated. I want those—because I think society is benefited. That is a very different thing from running a system of common schools that was built off the backs of a potentially bigoted idea in the 1840s, right? I think there’s a different conversation. I think government-run, district-run schools, while a reality, are different than public education. Kids are educated to the public interest if they go to a school or learning environment where they get educated. And so that’s why Milton Friedman’s original idea—separate the public financing of education from the government running a school.

Susan Pendergrass (29:47)
Well, it’s a brilliant idea, and I appreciate you coming to argue with me about it. That’s great. I could go on, but I’m going to let it go at that. I appreciate that you guys—I didn’t really get into it—but that you’re an intervenor in the Missouri case. Clearly you believe that more Missouri families should have access to this. The parents who are the defendants basically have a sibling that they would like to join the program that one of their kids is in. And I suspect that—

Robert Enlow (29:51)
I love arguing with you. You’re one of my dearest, oldest friends. There’s very few people like you, right?

Susan Pendergrass (30:17)
I think we’re going to be successful. We had one successful ruling so far where the program gets to continue.

Robert Enlow (30:22)
Yeah, we’re the intervenors. Choice Legal Advocates is the intervenor in Missouri National Education Association et al. versus State of Missouri. So we are intervening on behalf of parents. Currently, the district court denied a temporary injunction, so they allowed the program to continue. We’re excited by that. We’re strongly positive that we think it’s a good sign for us and that we should end up on the right side of this. You know, I’m just shocked that the unions continue to be on the wrong side of parents all the time.

Susan Pendergrass (30:49)
They sure do. All right. Well, I appreciate it, and I appreciate you taking the time to join us on the podcast.

Robert Enlow (30:54)
Thanks for having me, Susan.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post From Milton Friedman to Modern School Choice with Robert Enlow appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This reminder came because most states are effectively ignoring the requirement. In 2024 only 25 schools nationwide were identified as persistently dangerous—15 of them in Arkansas alone. Missouri, despite ranking 50th in a recent analysis of School Safety, has never identified a single such school.

Missouri does have a definition on the books. Part of the definition is that a school must have an “act of school violence,” “violent behavior,” or a gun-free-schools violation in three consecutive years.  Unfortunately, there is plenty of violence and violent behavior in Missouri schools. For instance, there were 128 weapons violations and 335 violent incidents reported in Missouri schools just last year. A school safety hotline reported that they received nearly 1,600 tips of safety threats, including physical assault, threats to kill, guns, and drugs.

Yet there’s a catch. For a school to be labeled persistently dangerous in Missouri, it must also have more than five expulsions in two of three consecutive years (or more than 10 if the school enrolls over 250 students). However, schools can control expulsions and DESE data indicate that there were no expulsions of any student in the entire state in 2021, 2023, and 2024. Just 10 occurred in 2022. Meanwhile, nearly 13,500 students received out-of-school suspensions lasting 10 or more days last year.

Does it seem reasonable that no student in the entire state was expelled last year?

It is a policy failure that no schools in Missouri are classified as persistently dangerous, despite clear indications to the contrary. By allowing schools to manipulate their data—and in particular, to avoid expulsions at all costs—we are allowing them to circumvent the law. And the law exists for a good reason: to give students trapped in unsafe environments a real chance at success.

Parents have the right to expect their children will come home safely from school each day.  For children assigned to local schools that are persistently dangerous, ESSA is supposed to provide the opportunity to change schools. Missouri’s failure to take the law seriously has permitted persistently dangerous schools to operate without taking on the formal designation, and is a disservice to the children and families who are trapped in these schools.

The post Children Have a Right to a Safe Place to Learn appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to the report, “Parson has been a tax reformer, but he has dropped the ball on spending control.” To Parson’s credit, he’s signed multiple bills into law that have cut Missouri’s individual income tax rate. When Parson entered office, the rate was 5.9%, and next year the governor has already announced that it will be dropping again to 4.7%. This will mark the 5th time the rate has been lowered since 2018.

Working against Gov. Parson is his support of the state’s gas tax hike in 2021. During the debate about the gas tax hike, I wrote frequently about my concerns with the bill. I am generally supportive of user fees and gas taxes, but the 2021 bill had a lot of problems. After multiple attempts to convince Missouri voters to raise the gas tax, our elected officials decided they could do it without public support.

At the time, I questioned whether the move violated the state’s constitution. The Hancock Amendment purportedly prevents Missouri’s general assembly from raising taxes without a public vote. But the bill sidestepped the amendment with a convoluted rebate scheme and implementation over several years.

Nevertheless, the biggest mark against Gov. Parson by Cato was the state’s out of control spending, which is another topic I’ve been writing about for several years. Missouri’s budget has grown tremendously under the current governor’s watch, in both size and scope. For several years, it was easy to attribute much of the increase to the federal influx of COVID-19 relief money, but that money is drying up, and Missouri’s expected general revenue (where our state income and sales taxes go) spending is still up nearly 50% from just three years ago.

Though it shouldn’t need to be said, this cycle of perpetual spending increases is unsustainable. Not only is our government spending outpacing inflation, but it’s also outpacing our neighboring states. Gov. Parson’s grade was tied for the worst among Missouri and its bordering states (Kentucky also got a “D”), with the governors of Iowa, Nebraska, and Arkansas receiving exemplary “A” grades.

It should be unacceptable that the Show-Me State lags our neighbors, let alone much of the country, in the stewardship of state tax dollars. Going into 2025, Missouri will have a new governor, and a new chance to improve its fiscal policy grade. Let’s hope our elected officials  take advantage of the opportunity.

The post Missouri Nearly Fails Cato’s Test appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Governor Reynolds of Iowa publicly declared her dedication to elevating education for every student and actively built a coalition to make it happen.  Governor Sanders of Arkansas, in her first year in office, unveiled an education bill that she called “the most substantial overhaul of our state’s education system” in the history of the state. Governor Ivey of Alabama said last February that “passing an education savings account bill that works for families and for Alabama is my number one legislative priority.” Massive education reform happened in these states because governors led the way, much like Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and Governor Lamar Alexander of Tennessee did decades earlier.

That’s why I found it odd that the president of the state board of education in Missouri said that the outgoing commissioner of education deserves credit for surviving a governor’s attempt to shape education in the state, claiming she never “cracked under the pressure.” The former governor (Greitens) attempted to reconfigure the board of education into a more reform-minded board that could then bring in a commissioner willing to innovate. Ultimately, the strategy failed because that governor was forced out of office. But could, and should, a governor be able to challenge the education status quo in their state? Of course.

The current powers that be in Missouri public education disagree: “The idea that you had a governor that tried to influence the State Board of Education, tried to influence the selection of a commissioner, that wanted change for no other reason than political expediency.” He didn’t finish the sentence, but I assume he found the idea to be scandalous.

We will be electing a new governor this November. Let’s hope that whoever that person is, they will resist the entitlement of the existing power structure of public education in the state and lead the charge for students and families instead.

The post Who’s in Charge Here? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Elsewhere, Tennessee has been lauded for completely overhauling its funding formula so that it is responsive, accountable, and student centered. Public funding is sent to where students attend school and not to where they attended school three years ago, as in Missouri. In the process of this redesign, Tennessee also raised teacher salaries and encouraged flexibility in teacher pay over the old step-and-ladder systems. Again, there’s nothing wrong with raising teacher salaries in the process of crafting good policy.

Currently, the Missouri Legislature is considering a bill that addresses a range of education issue, perhaps with the idea that if some groups like one part and others like another part, it may pass. That makes sense. The legislative sausage machine requires negotiation. But let’s look at this bill closely to see how much Missouri families might actually benefit.

The bill greatly expands eligibility for the existing MO Scholars education savings account (ESA) program. That could be a win for families. Almost every student in the state would qualify to receive a scholarship, because the income limit would be raised to four times the federal poverty line, or $120,000 for a family of four. The bill also eliminates the current geographic restriction on which students are eligible to receive scholarships—a much-needed change.

There’s just one problem with the ESA expansion proposed in this bill. Unlike Arkansas (or Iowa, Arizona, Utah, West Virginia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Florida), Missouri isn’t willing to provide the scholarships. Sure, Missouri is willing raise the cap on the amount of money that the existing six approved scholarship organizations can fundraise in order to pass out scholarships. But that’s as far as the bill goes—no public funding at all.

There is a distinct possibility that, to get this passed, Senate Bill (SB) 727 (or actually its committee substitute) will be amended to provide state funds to raise minimum teacher pay in the state from $25,000 to $38,000 with a provision that school districts can request reimbursement for any mandatory salary increases from a new Teacher Salary Baseline Grant Fund.

A gap seems to exist between those who believe in school choice and those who support public education. I’m for both, but I’m just one voice. I think it’s fine to try to bridge that gap by offering concessions to both sides. But let’s make sure they carry equal weight. If one comes with public funding and the other comes with “good luck getting the money together,” then they’re not really equal. Maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

The post This Is a Compromise? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A society grows great when old men and women plant trees . . . the shade of which they will never know or sit in.

I think this can be applied to our education system. We need great men and women to plant trees, yes. However, we also need great men and women to tend to them and help them grow. There are a few examples nationwide of this exact scenario happening—particularly in states such as Iowa, Florida, Arkansas, and Tennessee. To help our students flourish through school choice and educational reform, there needs to be a governor with a plan and a commitment to planting trees and cultivating our next generation.

Governor Huckabee Sanders proposed an ambitious education reform plan to the state legislature. Arkansas’ LEARNS ACT pairs teacher salary increases with curriculum protection and the establishment of a universal school voucher program. Passing this bill took a lot of hard work and a lot of horse-trading, but a determined governor was able to get it done.

Governor Reynolds proposed a plan to make “no child limited by their income or zip code” in Iowa. It was a priority of her administration. She sought to educate the public on her proposal and garner support. The end result was a victory for Reynolds—Iowa’s education savings accounts will be expanded to all students statewide. The governor proposed the bill, and she also continued to make it a priority for the state all the way to her final signature.

Governor Lee has gone to bat for his proposed expansion of Tennessee’s statewide school choice program, which would create opportunities for students to attend the school that best suits their needs. He was recently berated at an address advocating for major change to Tennessee’s educational status quo. Nevertheless, the governor has made it his priority to move this legislation across the finish line. Governor Lee has decided that the battle is worth it.

While no guarantee of success, it seems that the trend for getting major education reform passed is a determined governor who is willing to put his or her weight behind school choice. The question is whether we have such a governor.

The post State of the State: Leading with Intentionality for School Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Universal school choice—which is what we call it when all families can choose a school, not just those who can afford private schools or afford to move to a “good” school district—is having an interesting political movement. Bipartisan efforts have led to many of the recent universal choice programs. The concept that a child might find themselves in a school that is not working well for them seems to cut across party lines. Divisive issues such as vaccines, curricula, and bullying (particularly of LGBTQ students) also make it easier to understand why children and families might feel trapped by school assignment policies.

Those invested in the traditional public school system have fought hard against opening up the system to choice. Many still cling to the idea that one school or one district can serve every need equally well. Most children probably fall into some range of being able to adapt (though not necessarily thrive) to whatever is offered at their neighborhood school. But should we continue to kid ourselves that the system will adapt to support those students who can’t seem to learn in their neighborhood school or who dread going there in the morning?

North Carolina families have just become entrusted with a big responsibility—taking ownership of their children’s education instead of accepting the default. They join families in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Indiana, West Virginia, Utah, Arizona, Florida, and New Hampshire. Don’t Missouri families deserve that trust?

The post And Then There Were Ten appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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?

The post And Then There Was One appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how Indiana and Ohio joined the school choice wave this year by dramatically expanding their existing programs. In Indiana, families earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line (97 percent of families) are now eligible for the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program. The Ohio Legislature basically wiped out any income eligibility requirements for its EdChoice Scholarship, although the voucher amount tapers for families earning more than 450 percent of the federal poverty line. They also raised the voucher amount to over $6,100 for elementary and middle school students and over $8,400 for high school students.

Universal school choice—an idea proposed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Dr. Milton Friedman in 1955—is here. While Friedman clearly laid out the reasons why tax money should be used to pay for a system of schools, he questioned whether it is necessary for the government to run the schools. Rather, he suggested, couldn’t we funnel the money to parents and allow them to select a school from an education marketplace? We’ll soon be able to test his premise that a true marketplace will lead to higher outcomes at the system level. What we already know is that choice is what parents want. Generally, 65–85 percent of parents support school choice, depending on the type of program.

We’re not talking about Arizona or Florida here. We’re talking about our equally rural neighbors. Missouri is turning into an assigned-school-only island in a trust-parents-to-choose sea. The longer we hold out, the less attractive we will be to families with children.

The post Add the Buckeyes and the Hoosiers to the List appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

How would your family feel if your entire neighborhood had 5G internet access and you were still using dial-up? I’m guessing the kids might complain. After all, 5G is simply better, and sticking with an obsolete system seems like a stubborn refusal to change. That’s the situation Missouri families with school-aged children face. Just about all our neighbors wrapped up their legislative sessions by finally giving up address-based school assignments and letting parents choose where to send their children to school. We’re the last one in the neighborhood sticking with the outdated system.

• Early in their session, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed the Students First Act, which will allow families to receive up to $7,600 per year to use toward private-school tuition. The law is phased in, but by 2025, every family in the state will be able to use the program.
• Heading west, Nebraska’s Governor Jim Pillen signed the Opportunity Scholarships Act. Although similar to Missouri’s Empowerment Scholarships program, this bill commits twice as much money and the scholarships are available to children statewide, not just in the largest cities as in Missouri.
• Over in Kansas, a robust public school choice bill passed last year will go into effect in fall 2024. No longer will Kansas school districts be able to opt out of accepting transfer students from other districts. Previously, each district set their own policies regarding whether or not to accept students. As of this fall, Kansas families can apply to transfer to a school of their choice.
• Oklahoma took an innovative approach to school choice in its session. All families in the state can now take a dollar-for-dollar credit against their state tax bill for up to $7,500 in private-school tuition. Homeschoolers can receive up to $1,000 off their state tax bill. And the tax credit is refundable, meaning that the state will pay families back if the tax credit is more than they owed in state taxes.
• Arkansas passed one of the most significant education reform acts this year. The Arkansas LEARNS Act, signed by Governor Sanders, gives families the option of having 90 percent of their state education funding deposited into an Education Freedom Account for private-school tuition and other education expenses. By 2025–26, all Arkansas families will be able to participate.

So, there you have it. School choice is not just happening in the far-flung states of Florida, West Virginia, and Arizona.  It is literally all around us. Our neighbors have figured out what Missouri hasn’t. School assignment by address is antiquated, it isn’t what families want, and it doesn’t work.

Imagine a school district as an ice cream shop that can only stock one flavor. They’re required to do their best to satisfy every student, so if most families want vanilla, vanilla it is. If some kids show up wanting pistachio, those can be tossed in. A couple of kids want chocolate? Add a chocolate ribbon. But now some kids want bubble gum in their ice cream. Does it really make sense to insist on offering a single flavor that turns out to be vanilla-pistachio-chocolate-bubble gum? No one wants that. There is no single, secret flavor that’s everyone’s favorite.

What our neighbors seem to understand is that it is better for the kids who need pistachio ice cream to get the very best pistachio out there. Parents are in the best position to know. And they may have a pistachio kid and a bubble gum kid in the same family. Try to please everyone at once, and you end up satisfying no one.

Over half of the 50 states now have mandatory open enrollment programs that allow families to choose any public school in the state. The number of states that include private schools among the options offered is growing fast. Missouri has neither. We allow charters only as interventions in our worst performing districts, rather than opportunities for districts to expand their portfolios. We have a scholarship program that addresses the needs of children in larger communities, but not rural children. Our legislature did not have the courage or determination to overcome their differences this year to bring even voluntary open enrollment to Missouri families.

Change can’t have been easy for policymakers in neighboring states, either. But they did it. Maybe it was out of a sense of fairness to children stuck in poor-performing schools, or maybe it was because they wanted their states to be attractive to growing companies and young families. It sure would be nice if such considerations would motivate lawmakers here.

The post Missouri Becomes an Education Island appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Once again, Missouri parents came up shorthanded. An admittedly weak open enrollment bill died when Missouri Senators couldn’t stop filibustering each other’s bills. A bill that would have made it easier for Missouri students to enroll in the state’s full-time virtual program met a similar fate, as did expansion of the extremely limited education savings account (ESA) program.

Nearly every family in the state of Missouri is given exactly one choice for their children’s education, and if it isn’t a fit—too bad. Or you can simply move to a neighboring state. Kansas, Iowa, Arkansas, and Oklahoma trust their parents to choose a school that works for them. Enrollment is already shrinking and our resistance to change is going to shrink it even more. And guess what happens when you have fewer K-12 students? You have fewer high school graduates, fewer college students, and fewer workers. It doesn’t make Missouri look like a very attractive state.

School choice is spreading like wildfire across the country because parents have stood up and demanded it. The longer Missouri sits on the bench, either because we’re not sure it’s a good thing or because we just can’t get our priorities straight, the less families will choose to raise their children here.

The post This Is Not a Spectator Sport appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri passed universal licensing reciprocity in 2020, meaning licenses from all other states can be used in Missouri. For example, 37 states across the country require licensure to be a makeup artist. Licensing reciprocity means that anyone who has a license in one of the 37 states can have Missouri licensing requirements waived when they move to Missouri to be a makeup artist. This policy lowers barriers to entry for professionals and in turn, increases the supply of workers and services. With increased supply and competition, quality increases while prices decrease.

However, Missouri legislators have taken the DeLorean and gone back in time by sending two bills (Senate Bill (SB) 157 and SB 70) to the governor’s desk. The bills would create a new licensing compact and also have Missouri join two other existing compacts. Licensing compacts allow workers with licenses in one state to practice without additional licensing requirements in other states in the compact. These compacts are essentially a less inclusive version of licensing reciprocity. Former Show-Me Institute Analyst Corianna Baier explained the harm licensing compacts can cause:

[T]he current licensing reciprocity statute states that licensing reciprocity “shall not apply to an oversight body that has entered into a licensing compact with another state for the regulation of practice under the oversight body’s jurisdiction.” On its face, this language indicates that the license compact would overrule licensing reciprocity to the injury of Missouri consumers.

Essentially, a compact would partially cancel out licensing reciprocity. Missouri, like Mrs. McFly, is obsessing over the wrong thing. To use the makeup artist example: with reciprocity, anyone from any state (which has a license) can work in Missouri without having to get a new license; under a compact, only makeup artists from states included in the compact reap the benefits.

As Institute analysts have noted repeatedly, this glitch needs to be ironed out with a language change. If we remove the “compact exception” then Missouri can “restore the timeline” and Missouri will once again have full licensing reciprocity.

At this point you may be wondering: what is the benefit of compacts? The benefit of keeping compacts is that many other states don’t have reciprocity. For example, to practice telehealth in another state, one needs to be eligible in that state. While Missouri lets any license apply to our own state, suppose Arkansas does not have the same rules. Therefore, with the passage of the compact, a doctor in Cape Girardeau could now practice telehealth in Little Rock if Arkansas became a member of the same compact.

State regulatory boards are certainly satisfied with the expansion of compacts in our state, but our policymakers need to look out for the interests of Missouri consumers. Fixing the language that puts compacts and reciprocity in conflict would be a win for everyone in Missouri. Hopefully we will not need two more sequels to solve our issues.

The post Back to the Future on Licensing in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Education reform was never a top priority—it was barely mentioned in the governor’s State of the State address. The lack of commitment to educational progress foreshadowed how the rest of the session would unfold. Other states managed to accomplish what Missouri could not. Let’s take a look at three states (there were many more) that made major strides this year in education policy.

Florida, already one of the leading states in educational performance and choice, continued to build on past success. Governor DeSantis, in his State of the State, emphasized:

We must continue our momentum with K-12 education by increasing teacher salaries, enacting a teacher’s bill of rights, providing paycheck protection for teachers, expanding school choice and fortifying parents’ rights.

Every single one of these objectives became law in Florida this year, with the highlight being a law that made the Florida education savings account (ESA) program universal throughout the state.

Two of our neighbors, Indiana and Arkansas, also made education a priority.

Arkansas’s Governor Huckabee Sanders was committed to expanding education choice and personally pushed for reform. The LEARNS Act (Arkansas’ new education bill) creates an ESA program (starting with only “at-risk” families and expanding to all families by 2025), removes the limit on charter schools in the state, eliminates the 3% transfer cap on the existing open enrollment program, raises teacher starting salaries, and creates a required literacy screening for K-3 students.

Indiana waived textbook fees for K-12 families and expanded the state school voucher program to be near universal (77% eligible to 96% eligible).

Missouri’s failure to advance education reform was bad enough on its own, but it is even worse when compared to the progress of other states. Missouri remains stuck with an extremely limited ESA program (only 1% of students are eligible), no open enrollment program, and charter schools being inaccessible for a vast majority of students in the state. After this year’s inexplicable failure, it will be difficult to trust politicians when they say they want to improve education in our state. Action is what counts at this point—our families and students are counting on it.

The post Should We Be Surprised about Missouri’s Lack of Education Legislation in 2023? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One such very bad policy idea is right of first refusal, which grants major Missouri utilities the automatic right to win all bids on new electric construction lines if they so choose. You may want to read that again. It doesn’t just give major utilities the right to bid on all projects—that goes without saying. It gives them the right to win any project they want, no matter what any other utility or construction company may bid. The idea here is to funnel projects to Missouri companies and “protect” Missouri jobs at the expense of out-of-state competitors. If you think this raises prices on consumers, as any grade school economics textbook would predict, it does. Significantly.

My former Show-Me Institute colleague Jakob Puckett wrote about this issue last year.  The same bills have been introduced again this session, so we shall return to Jakob’s arguments from last year:

Wouldn’t it be better for the legislature to propose subjecting transmission lines to competitive bidding, rather than shielding them from it? Since transmission costs are ultimately passed on to customers, it’s customers who bear the brunt, or receive the benefit, of cost-inflating or cost-saving policies.

Missouri will need more electric transmission lines built in the coming years. To build those lines at the lowest possible cost, Missouri needs more free-market activity in transmission projects, not less.

The state-based protectionism here is really something. While you frequently see such types of anti-market, anti-consumer protectionism at the national level (such as the administration’s ill-conceived plan to require only American-made products in our infrastructure efforts), you rarely see it at the state level. But here we have it. It is bad at the national level (with some exceptions, of course), but at least one can understand where it is coming from. As for this one, I’m at a complete loss. Are we really willing to cast everything aside because a company based in Arkansas that hires workers from Oklahoma might offer the best bid (and thereby save Missourians’ money) for a project near Joplin? (That’s a hypothetical project, for the record.)

As Jakob said, we need more markets in electricity, not less, and these bills power us in completely the wrong direction.

The post ROFR Makes Me ROFL appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What a difference a year makes. A year ago, parents across the state of Missouri were likely not even aware that the last week of January is National School Choice Week. In Missouri, school choice—at least from what I can tell from following the state legislature—is exclusively a policy for poor kids in failing urban districts. Suburban and rural Missourians don’t need school choice because their schools are “good.” Rural districts in particular are often described as “loving” their local schools regardless of how they perform. They’re the center, the heartbeat, of the community. What they provide was good enough for my parents and my grandparents, and it is fine for my kids, so the story goes.

Unfortunately, that story fell apart in 2020. Thousands of Missouri students essentially sat out the last couple of months of the last school year, especially in rural districts with technological challenges. This year, as positive COVID tests and the need to quarantine wreaked havoc on school schedules, the number of Missouri students who only had the option of fully remote learning went from around 90,000 in September to 248,000 in December. Blended learning, in which students attend school for a few days a week, and which, as a working parent, sounds like a worst-case scenario to me, peaked at around 300,000 students last December. For reference, Missouri has about 900,000 public school students.

The point is that we are halfway through a school year in which students and families from all backgrounds and all types of communities across Missouri have learned the hard way what it feels like to have only one type of education available, whether it works for them or not and regardless of how often that one type changes. And good will is beginning to slide.

A survey of Missouri parents taken in early December found that over one-quarter of parents would give their child’s remote learning experience this year a grade of “D” or “F.” Parents are worried. Last school year, about half of Missouri parents felt their children were ahead academically and less than 7 percent felt they were behind. Just ten months later, only 18 percent of Missouri parents believe their children are ahead and a troubling 37 percent believe them to be behind.

This concern reflects an erosion of trust in the public school system. Just 47 percent of Missouri parents trust the public school system to make decisions that are in the best interest of their children’s education all the time or almost all the time. Last year, that number was almost 70 percent. Sadly, the percentage of parents who never or only rarely trust the public education system has gone up by 26 points in just one year.

The antiquated system of assigning every student to one, and only one, type of education based on their address has to go. If Missouri wants to rejoin the ranks of states that attract families and businesses, it needs to create a system of education that reflects current and future conditions, not the past. Parents should be able to use public funds to enroll their children in a charter school, a private school, a micro-school, or a virtual school. Parents should be able to access public funds to get the tutoring or educational therapies their children need. Regaining the trust of parents must be earned. It should start with trusting parents first.

Our neighbors get it. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has committed to expanding K-12 education options for all Iowa students, including, but not limited to, open enrollment, education savings accounts, and expansion of charter schools. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has expanded scholarship programs for students with disabilities to include religious schools and used flexible stimulus funds to help parents in need to continue to pay for private school tuition. In addition to having more than 40 rural and suburban charter schools, Arkansas allows students the option to transfer out of failing schools. And Arkansas, it should be noted, is brave enough to call them “F” schools.

For far too long, the Missouri legislature has listened to superintendents and school boards that want to ban any form of school choice happening in their backyard. but parents were put in charge of their children’s education this year. They’ve had some time to consider it. They have concerns. And maybe now the legislature should listen to them.

The post A Crisis of Trust appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On August 4, Missouri voters will decide whether the state should become the 38th to expand Medicaid. Proponents of the measure suggest expanding the program would “save” the state money, but a closer analysis suggests the opposite is true: Not only will the program cost the state money, but it will come at the expense of other important budget priorities.

How do proponents create the illusion of savings? Let’s take a look at the numbers.

Today, Missouri’s Medicaid program covers nearly 940,000 people and costs around $11 billion per year. The federal government pays about two dollars for every dollar the state spends, yet the program still consumes nearly 40% of the state’s budget.

If Medicaid were expanded, Missouri’s Department of Social Services projects that more than 285,000 able-bodied adults would enter the program within the first year at a cost of around $2.7 billion. For these new recipients, the federal government’s match would be more generous, at $9 for every dollar Missouri spends instead of the usual $2. But even at that higher match rate, Missouri’s share of the expansion cost would be significant.

To find “savings,” then, expansion advocates rely on several dubious assumptions.

First, federal funding for Medicaid is treated as “free money.” Although Missouri taxpayers are also federal taxpayers, the cost to the federal government is discounted in the “savings” analysis. And with the federal government in a period of historic deficit spending, new Medicaid spending will be debt for our kids and grandkids to pay off.

Second, proponents’ models assume an increase in expansion enrollment that is much lower than what Missouri’s own Medicaid agency expects. We don’t have to look far to see states that have been burned by their pre-expansion estimates of enrollment and associated costs. Illinois, Arkansas, and Louisiana saw initial expansion enrollment dramatically exceed their estimates. If Missouri sees enrollment slightly above the current estimates from the state’s Medicaid agency, the savings vanish even in the pro-expansion models.

Third, advocates forecast the cost for each new enrollee to be less than similar individuals who are already enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program. By underestimating the cost per beneficiary, expansion supporters shave even more costs from their estimates—even though the state knows they’ll cost more.

And fourth, the most dubious of all, expansion advocates assume the number of disabled Missourians on the program will drop by more than 20 percent over the next four years. By enrolling more individuals under the expansion guidelines (where the federal government pays a higher share), supporters assume they can shift some of the state’s existing Medicaid costs to the federal government. The problem is, this type of maneuver is not allowed. Missouri cannot enroll people who are already eligible for Medicaid into the expansion population, so the idea that the number of disabled Missourians in the program could drop by more than 20 percent is simply unrealistic.

We should also keep in mind that when supporters of the proposal say Medicaid Expansion will save Missourians money, they don’t literally mean the program will cost less. The cost of the program grows year after year, even now. What supporters are saying is that they think it will be less expensive to the state than if the state didn’t expand at all.

There are other important unknowns that must be taken into account, including the risk that taking more federal dollars today may put our state in an even worse budgetary bind tomorrow. For instance, if the federal government finally decides to rein in the deficit by reducing its match on the Medicaid expansion population, state taxpayers may be left holding the bag.

Balancing Missouri’s budget around Medicaid is already an incredibly difficult task, especially amidst an economic downturn. Balancing the budget after expansion would be even more painful, because state legislators will have to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars annually to address both traditional Medicaid and the expansion’s costs. These tough decisions are sure to put priorities like education, roads, and public safety funding at serious risk. Suggesting that the state could save money by spending more on Medicaid was always a dubious proposition, but at some point forecasting gimmicks have to give way to common sense.

The post Debunking the Myth of a Costless Medicaid Expansion appeared first on Show-Me Institute.