One path, outlined in the governor’s budget, simply funds a course access program. Missouri already has the architecture with its Missouri Virtual Instruction Program (MOVIP), but there simply aren’t funds for students to take advantage of it. Governor Greitens proposed $2 million in funding so that students could access those courses.

Legislation now making its way through the legislature is taking a second path. House Bill 138 and Senate Bills 327, 238, and 360 create a course access program funded by redirecting existing funds that the state sends to school districts. If students want to take a course access program course, the fraction of funding that would have funded the class in their school of residence is used to pay for it. What’s great about these plans is that, as their fiscal notes attest, they cost the state zero additional dollars. They simply redirect existing spending.

A third is outlined in this great piece by AEI’s Rick Hess and the Manhattan Institute’s Max Eden. The broader article is about how states can best use the flexibility inherent in the Every Student Succeeds Act (the 2015 update to No Child Left Behind), but this paragraph stands out:

State education leaders would do well to employ ESSA’s direct student-services provision, which allows states to set aside a portion of federal Title I funds in order to support districts that are expanding instructional choice (in addition to school choice) for students. This means expanding choices for students without requiring that they opt to change schools, as with “course access” programs. Such initiatives, pioneered in Louisiana and Utah, use state funds to provide students the opportunity to access a range of online courses that their school might not offer — and to pursue them at their own pace. Under ESSA, states can use up to 3 percent of federal Title I funds to deliver online-course options that give rural students access to subjects that their schools don’t offer, to give all students access to Advanced Placement, and to give high schools the ability to deliver robust career and technical training.

According to this table, Missouri school districts get a little bit north of $240 million per year in Title I dollars. Three percent of that would be $7.2 million. This could fund thousands of course enrollments.

Taken together, Missouri could draw from several wells of funding to create a robust course access program that ensures that every student in the state has access to the coursework that best fits their needs.

For an overview of course access and information on how it has been implemented in other states, see this essay that Brittany Wagner and I co-wrote last year.

The post Different Paths to Course Access appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As part of that paper, we looked at the current state of course access in Missouri, and used Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) enrollment data to try and determine which districts did not have any students enroll in advanced classes like Calculus, Physics, or AP courses. We looked at this question because there is evidence that many rural districts struggle to offer these classes.

To investigate, we reached out to DESE and asked for enrollment data in Chemistry, Physics, Calculus, and AP courses from the 2014–15 school year. We counted up the number of districts that had zero students enrolled and then subtracted it from the total number of districts. Here is the figure from the report.

We wanted to update these data for the 2015–16 school year, so we again contacted DESE for the enrollment numbers.  This is what course access looks like in 2015–16:

The numbers for the 2015–16 school year are still striking.  In percentage terms, 9 percent of districts that offer high school did not have a single student enrolled in Chemistry, 42 percent did not have a single student enrolled in Physics, 40 percent did not have a single student enrolled in Calculus, and 63 percent did not have a single student enrolled in an AP class.

In the process of updating these numbers, I realized that I made a coding error in the data set upon which the figure in the original paper was based. Careful readers of the paper will see that we subtracted our enrollment numbers from 507, even though there are 518 school districts in Missouri. We did this to try and exclude from our analysis school districts that didn’t offer high school because there is no way they could offer these advanced classes. According to DESE’s 2017 “Fast Facts” page, DESE lists 448 districts that offer high school, not 507.  After chatting with the good data folks at DESE, we confirmed that in the 2014–15 school year, Missouri also had 448 districts that offered high school.  Accordingly, Figure 1 from our Course Access essay (which is also Figure 5 in this essay), should look like this:

My apologies for our original miscalculation, but our argument still stands (the figure with 2015–16 numbers uses the correct total number of districts—448). In too many school districts across the state, too few students are enrolling in higher-level coursework, and course access programs can help fill that gap.

Two notes regarding the graphs above: When counting Physics courses, in both years, we excluded a class called “Physics First,” as this is a course for 9th-graders, not what we would consider an “advanced” course for high school upperclassmen. In calculating the 2015–16 figures, we counted any AP courses both for the AP column and for the respective subject matter column.

The post Course Access in Missouri, Updated appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Foundation for Excellence in Education has a great new video out about Texas’s course access program. Click on the link above to check it out.

Why should Texas have all of the fun?  Let’s get stories like this out of the Show-Me State!

The post Course Access Is Working in Texas appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, otherwise known as Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), have the ability to change this. They allow parents to direct the funds toward the services that they believe will meet the needs of their children.

ESA bills have been introduced in both the Missouri House and Senate, but have yet to receive a hearing. In previous posts, Brittany Wagner explained how ESAs work and how parents could spend the funds. In numerous other posts, I and others have highlighted how school choice programs could improve educational options for students. Here I want to demonstrate how this type of program is a financial boon for Missouri.

In the proposed Senate Bill, which would cover special-needs students only, a tax credit of 75 percent would be granted to individuals who donate to a scholarship organization. That means a donation of $100 would count as a $75 payment towards your taxes. In other words, the scholarship organization is getting $100 from the donation and the state is still collecting $25 in taxes. As I explained in further detail in my paper, “Available Seats?,” this tax credit feature increases the amount of available funds for education.

That is not the only way savings accrue. Special-needs students who are eligible for the program could receive an ESA worth the “State Adequacy Target.” For the 2016-2017 school year, this will be $6,808. This is roughly $2,500 less than the amount of local and state dollars spent per pupil in 2015, and I can assure you that this is less than most schools spend on special-needs students. 

Every special-needs student who uses an ESA in this program will essentially be giving Missouri taxpayers and public schools a cost-savings.

In total, more than 6,800 scholarships of the full amount could be awarded under the proposed bill.  If we assume that each of these students would have attended a public school (this is not a stretch, since it is stipulated in the bill), then the cost-savings could be in excess of $14 million.

 Special needs students may be difficult to educate, but it is not difficult to see that ESAs would be a boon for Missourians.  

The post Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Would Be a Boon to Missourians. appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We can’t do a lot about our state’s geography, but neither can we accept limitations on the educational options available to students in smaller school districts. We need a way to bring advanced-level coursework to every Missouri student who wants it. An innovative program called course access offers a possible solution to this problem, and it’s the topic of an essay by the Show-Me Institute’s Brittany Wagner and Michael McShane. To find out more, click on the link below and read the essay.

The post Course Access for Missouri Students appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Charter schools could open in these districts, but the low district enrollments ( 3,481 in Normandy and 5,143 in Riverview Gardens) make it unlikely. That could change if charter schools were allowed to enroll students across district boundaries.  It would also enable these disadvantaged students to access the existing charter schools in St. Louis—schools like North Side Community School. 

Show-Me’s Brittany Wagner has written about the school before, noting that it is only a five-minute drive from the struggling Normandy Schools Collaborative. Recently, the St. Louis American had some nice things to say about the school:

About 10 percent of the families are homeless, and many of the heads of households are struggling young parents or grandparents, said Muriel Smith, the school’s director of development. Despite all these factors that could be seen as setbacks, she said students are performing higher than many other schools in the city – especially those with similar demographics.

Sixty-five percent of children at North Side scored proficient or better in both English and math on state standardized tests in 2015, according to results released in August.

“A lot schools think that kids in these neighborhoods can’t really learn because they have so much going on at home,” Smith said. “But our scores and kids prove that that’s possible. We set expectations for our students and our parents to make sure that they are going to be successful.”

Those scores obviously don’t come easy. The second through fifth graders arrive at school at 8:15 a.m. and leave at 4:45 p.m. – an eight-hour day, and the school schedule is year round. Pre-K through first-grade students have a seven-hour day.

The newspaper chalked a lot of the school’s success up to the “tough love” system implemented by the charter school’s principal.  Allowing students to cross district boundaries to attend charter schools would enable more students to share in the success of North Side, and it would provide options for students who currently have none. With the Normandy Schools Collaborative continuing to struggle, now certainly seems like a good time for some tough love. 

The post Open Boundaries Would Allow More Students to Receive “Tough Love” at North Side appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The important point that these discussions often miss is that it isn’t the folks with six-figure loan debt who are defaulting. By and large, it is low-amount borrowers.  In fact, the average amount of debt from federal loans in default is only $14,014.

How can that be?

Well, think about who takes out large loans to pay for college. We’re talking lawyers, doctors, and folks getting MBAs.  Sure, they rack up a lot of debt, but they also make a lot of money, so they’re able to pay it off.  The people who can’t pay off their debts are the usually the ones who took out loans to pay for a year or two of college but then didn’t complete it.  They incurred the debt and years of lost wages, but will not see the wage premium from that college degree.

The Washington Center for Equitable Growth just released a helpful interactive map that illustrates this phenomenon perfectly. It allows you to search, by zip code, the average loan balance and the delinquency rate of student borrowers anywhere in the country.  As a reference, it gives the median household income of the zip code as well.

Look, for example, at Kansas City’s 64113 zip code. Median income? $113,536. Average loan balance? Extremely high. Delinquency rate? Extremely Low.  St. Louis’s 63105 is the same story, with a median income of $86,031 and extremely high levels of student debt but extremely low rates of delinquency.

At the other end of the spectrum is St. Louis County’s 63140.  There we see a median income of only $21,750 and a low average loan balance, but a high rate of delinquency. The same is true in Kansas City’s 64126, which has a median income of $25,009, extremely high delinquency rate, but moderately low levels of student debt.

When we realize that it is low-amount borrowers who are struggling, our focus should shift from trying to make college free to trying to make college better. Those policy prescriptions don’t fit easily on a bumper sticker, but they’d do a lot more good than the slogans that do.

The post The Student Debt Paradox appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post The Great Race: Taxi v. Uber v. Metro Link appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Course Access Brings the Classroom to the Student appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Perfection!

The report shows that 31 Missouri students scored a perfect 36 on the entire test. Within individual tests, 197 students scored perfect on the English section, 108 scored perfect in math, 368 scored perfect in reading, and 289 scored perfect in science.

College Readiness

ACT sets a “college readiness” benchmark on its exams that (they claim) correlates to a 50 percent chance of a B or higher or a 75 percent chance of a C or higher in the first-year college course in that subject. For English, it’s an 18 (out of 36), for math and reading it’s a 22, and for science it’s a 23.

Across the class of 2015, 71 percent of Missouri students scored college-ready in English, 44 percent scored college-ready in math, 51 did so in reading, and 42 percent cleared the bar in science.

Unfortunately, those groups weren’t always overlapping, because in total, only 30 percent of the class of 2015 scored college-ready in all four tested subjects.

If that wasn’t bad enough, breaking down the scores by racial groups shows even worse performance. While 34 percent of white students and 43 percent of Asian American students scored college-ready in all four subjects, only 20 percent of Hispanic students and 6 percent of African American students did.

Everywhere in Missouri, we have room to grow.

Course Access

The ACT also collects information from test takers on the courses that they have taken.

Probably the most eye-catching figure to me was the finding that 6 percent of the students who took the ACT in the class of 2015 took fewer than 3 years of math in high school. Not surprisingly, only 9 percent of those students were ready for college math. (For those students who took 3 or more years of math, 54 percent were college-ready.) The report also shows that 17 percent of the class of 2015 took fewer than 3 years of natural science courses. Preparing students for the 21st Century means preparation in math and science, and in too many places the courses simply aren’t there.

The findings from this report are a challenge to Missouri to step up its game. We won’t be an engine of economic growth, a vibrant cultural center, or a flourishing democracy if so few of our students are prepared for higher-level schooling. We have to do better.

The post Are Missouri Students Ready for College? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Show-Me Now! A Way to Stop Summer Learning Loss appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Listen now!

The post Podcast 1: Interdistrict Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Alex Stuckey, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, tweeted:

Officials with St. Louis Public Schools said they need to hold buildings back in case enrollment increases #motransfers #moleg

— Alex Stuckey (@alexdstuckey) March 11, 2015

This was in regards to a portion of the bill that requires districts to sell their vacant school buildings at fair-market value to charter schools. Here is what Brittany and I said in our testimony about the abandoned building provision:

While charter schools continue to grow in Missouri’s urban cities, HB 42 addresses the acquisition of real estate by charter schools from public schools. Overall, these schools are outperforming their traditional public school counterparts. Charter schools are doing well despite receiving less funds than traditional public schools. For example, they do not receive public funds for building expenses. Lack of access to affordable real estate often prohibits charter school expansion and the replication of quality charters. St. Louis and Kansas City Public Schools, however, both have their share of abandoned buildings. As a result, taxpayers are basically funding vacant buildings. Neglected facilities increase the risk of drug and crime incidents in urban communities. Allowing public charter schools to purchase taxpayer-owned real estate at fair-market value could increase educational opportunities while revitalizing blighted neighborhoods.

Now, here is what I find particularly interesting about the notion that St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) needs to hold on to buildings in case enrollment increases. First, enrollment has been steadily declining since the late 1990s. Since 1999, the district has lost half of its students. The district has had to close many school buildings in that time. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the district had 130 operating schools in 1991, 113 in 1999, and 77 in 2013.

Using the enrollment figures and the number of school buildings, I can compute the number of students per building. Of course, this is an average, and the actual enrollments vary. In 1991, the average enrollment per building was 333, in 1999 it was 396, and in 2013 it was 327. The enrollment today, per building, is less than it was at each of these times. In other words, SLPS buildings are no more crowded today than they ever have been.

The largest enrollment increase in the past 20-plus years was 2,684 in 2013. This was the year after the Imagine Charter Schools closed their doors. Using the average building enrollment figures, this increase is roughly the enrollment of six to eight schools.

Yet, according to information gathered by Abby Fallon, a former Show-Me Institute intern, SLPS has 35 empty schools. The district currently has 25 buildings listed for sale.

It is always nice to save for a rainy day, but saving 30-plus buildings seems a bit much. SLPS must be expecting it to pour new students! In the unlikely event that SLPS had a large influx of students, it might make sense to have a couple of buildings on reserve. Still, this hardly justifies blocking the sale of two dozen other buildings that could be put to good use as a charter school.

Charter schools paying fair-market value seems like a pretty good deal to me. There is even a strong case that charters should have access to these buildings for free. As Doug Thaman of the Missouri Charter Public School Association said, “Why should a charter school use public dollars to buy a public building that’s already been paid for by the public? It’s almost like buying your home twice.”

The post St. Louis Public Schools Saving School Buildings for a Rainy Day appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One topic of discussion was pay for teachers. Flinders asserted that Kansas City teachers are paid lower than the state average. She is most likely correct, and there is something we can do to fix it. In previous posts we suggested reforming teacher pay schedules to increase the incentive for teachers to stay on.

But the district actually can pay teachers more if it cuts back on hiring non-teacher personnel. According to my colleague Brittany Wagner,

Over the past 60 years, schools have increased non-teaching personnel positions by 702 percent. [A report] also found the U.S. spends more than double what Korea, Mexico, Finland, Portugal, Ireland, Luxembourg, Austria, and Spain spend on non-teaching staff salaries and benefits.

Recall that upon arriving Superintendent John Covington asserted that the district was too big, and in 2010 KCPS closed 30 buildings and eliminated 1,247 full-time equivalent positions. Doing so freed up a great deal of money. According to Wagner,

One study showed that if non-teaching personnel grew at the same rate as the student population, American public schools would have an additional $24.3 billion annually.

This impacts pensions as well, which is far greater than the immediate cost of this educational bloat on salaries. Show-Me Researcher Michael Rathbone writes,

Non-teaching personnel also accrue pension benefits through the Public Education Employee Retirement System of Missouri (PEERS). According to the PEERS annual report, “PEERS is a mandatory cost-sharing multiple employer retirement system for all public school district employees (except the school districts of St. Louis and Kansas City), employees of the Missouri Association of School Administrators, and community college employees (except St. Louis Community College).” Members of the plan and their employers both contribute to the pension.

Over the last five years, the unfunded liabilities (liabilities minus assets) of this plan have increased by more than $64 million. Pension benefits like PEERS benefits are guaranteed and must be paid out. If PEERS can’t make those payments, taxpayers (i.e., you) will have to.

By spending too much on non-teacher personnel, KCPS is draining resources from both funds to pay teachers in the short term and teacher pension funds in the long term. Cutting back on non-teacher staff—or perhaps just restricting growth—would allow school districts to better meet their financial responsibilities to teachers and to demonstrate a real commitment to the children in the classroom.

The post Ideas for Kansas City Schools: Focus on Teachers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Show-Me Now! One Lawyer’s Fight For School Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Schindler has represented several of these students in court. Earlier this month, Judge Michael Burton ordered several school districts to accept transfer students from the unaccredited Normandy school district. Because of the number of students involved and the favorable court decision, Schindler is now pursuing a class action suit on behalf of these transfer students.

The post Transferring from Normandy: An interview with lawyer Joshua Schindler appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Besides their salaries, non-teaching personnel also accrue pension benefits through the Public Education Employee Retirement System of Missouri (PEERS). According to the PEERS annual report, “PEERS is a mandatory cost-sharing multiple employer retirement system for all public school district employees (except the school districts of St. Louis and Kansas City), employees of the Missouri Association of School Administrators, and community college employees (except St. Louis Community College).” Members of the plan and their employers both contribute to the pension.

Over the last five years, the unfunded liabilities (liabilities minus assets) of this plan have increased by more than $64 million. Pension benefits like PEERS benefits are guaranteed and must be paid out. If PEERS can’t make those payments, taxpayers (i.e., you) will have to.

One way to prevent a situation like the one described above is to shift these pension plans away from a defined benefit plan (PEERS) to more effectively structured plans like defined contribution plans, hybrid plans (a plan that is a mix of defined benefit and defined contribution), or cash balance plans.

Maybe the addition of new non-teaching hires over the past 60 years is justified, but maybe it isn’t. School districts are making the public pension bomb bigger, and if they aren’t going to defuse it, shouldn’t school districts at least give the taxpayers, who are ultimately on the hook if these pensions can’t make their payments, some evidence to support their increase in hiring?

The post The Pension Problem Non-Teaching Personnel Pose appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Show-Me Now! Introducing Our New Education Policy Research Assistant appeared first on Show-Me Institute.