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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do you feel about book-banning? This question was recently posed at a meeting of about 50 educators. When the question went out to the audience, you could hear the groans rising. The questioner, a librarian, was considering putting a “Banned Books” display in the library. As you can imagine, the educators were all for this. Then something curious happened. In a matter of seconds, the very educators who had voiced strong opposition to the banning of books themselves became book-banners.

Hearing the response to her question, the librarian was heartened. She shared her thoughts on the display and mentioned an example—Skippyjon Jones. Released in 2003, Skippyjon Jones was an immediate hit. It featured a loveable Siamese cat who thought he was a Chihuahua. In 2004, the book won the E.B. White Read Aloud Award from The Association of Booksellers for Children. I began teaching first grade shortly after Skippyjon Jones was released. My students loved it. They would often repeat the refrain from the book, “Yip, yippee, yippito! My name is Skippy Skippito!”

Fast-forward to 2018 and the book was listed as the eighth-most-challenged book by the American Library Association. Finding the book’s portrayal of Hispanics and stereotypes of Latinos objectionable, many have sought to remove the book from public school classrooms.

When that librarian mentioned the book to her audience of educators, I don’t think she expected what happened. The mood turned. The groans of disapproval of “bans” turned to voices saying, “Well . . . that book is problematic.”

You have heard that everyone is a critic. What you may not realize is that everyone is also a censor. Every person believes objectionable or problematic materials should not be given to unsuspecting youth in our public school classrooms. We just define what is objectionable or problematic in different ways.

In recent years, conservatives have been labeled as “book banners” for attempting to keep books that display sexual acts or that teach children about gender ideology from the classroom. The use of the phrase “book banning” is effective rhetorically, but it is not really accurate. The individuals organizing at school board meetings or in state houses are hardly seeking to ban books. Rather, they are seeking to keep some books from being purchased by government organizations for consumption in public institutions. They are seeking to censor what is being presented to children.

This notion of censorship is not a right or left issue and it is not new. Americans have long fought over the content that would be taught and the books that would be presented to children. We’ve fought over these issues for many reasons. Chief among them are that some materials are simply not appropriate for children, and that education has the ability to shape a child’s mind.

Censoring is a rational human response to objectionable material. It is something we do for ourselves, and it is something we do for our own children on a daily basis. Censoring becomes an issue in the public sphere because of how we have chosen to organize our public education system. We compel parents to send their children to school and we condition their receipt of government funding upon them sending their children to public schools. We place parents in a winner-take-all system to determine whose values and whose books are presented in the classroom. As long as we continue to organize our school system in this way, “book banning” will continue to be an issue.

Of course, the system does not have to be organized this way. We could create a system of public education in which parents are empowered to send their children to the school of their choice. We could choose to create a system where parents in the same school district could choose to send their children to different schools based on the quality of education and the alignment of the curricula to each family’s values. Strangely, the very people opposed to “banning books” are often the very people who stand in the way of proposals for educational freedom.

Sections of “Banned Books” may make great library displays or they may help drive sales at bookstores, but the fact is censoring books is emblematic of our public education system. It is not a flaw of the system; it is the design. As the educators I witnessed demonstrated, we are all censors. The question is, are we ready to do something about it? Are we ready to change the system?

The post Banning Books? Everyone Is a Censor appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Over the past few years, Missourians have gotten a better understanding of the term “shortage.” Whether it was soup or toilet paper, we can all remember those empty shelves at the grocery store at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Maybe that’s why the term “teacher shortage” has many policymakers on edge these days. There’s just one problem: in education, the term “shortage” doesn’t mean what you think it means.

Take the “shortage” of elementary school teachers in Missouri for example. In 2021, the Springfield School District wanted to hire 55 elementary school teachers. They received 2,155 applications from individuals with the appropriate certification. Yet, for one reason or another, they left six positions vacant. This is a teacher shortage.

The problem is the misleading way in which the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education presents the data. In the “Teacher Shortage Report for Missouri,” released in December 2022, DESE defines shortage areas as “those content areas within the state for which positions were filled with inappropriately certified teachers(s) or left vacant due to the absence of certified candidates.”

This is possibly the broadest definition of what it means to have a shortage. If a school district hires a private school teacher with 10 years of experience and a bachelor’s degree in elementary education? Shortage. They hire an individual with an MBA to teach high school business, but he does not have certification? Shortage. Let’s say they hire someone with a high school mathematics certification to teach elementary or middle school mathematics. Shortage. Keep in mind, the state has dozens of teacher certification areas, and being certified in one does not qualify you to teach another. With this broad definition, DESE suggests Missouri was short 532 elementary school teachers (Grades 1–6) in 2022, making this the highest shortage area.

Let’s put that into perspective using raw, unweighted data provided by request from DESE. In 2022, there were 2,015 job openings for elementary school teaching positions. Districts received over 21,000 applications, more than 18,000 of which had the appropriate certification. Of course, teachers may apply for more than one job.  In all, 32 elementary positions were left vacant. Thirteen of those vacancies were in the Riverview Gardens School District alone.

There is a teacher shortage—it’s just not as widespread as most believe. In total, across all certification areas, Missouri had 258 positions left vacant in 2022. These vacancies were spread across 74 of the state’s 550+ school districts, but nearly half of all vacancies were in just five school districts: Hickman Mills (17), Kansas City (17), St. Louis Special School District (19), Hazelwood (27), and Riverview Gardens (47).

Aside from the Special School District, which is a unique district that serves special-needs students in St. Louis County, the other four districts have a lot in common. They tend to serve students who come from low-income families who are black. For example, more than 97 percent of Riverview Gardens students are black.

The shortage narrative has been used to push for an increase to the starting teacher salary in Missouri. According to data obtained from the Missouri State Teachers Association, the average starting salary in these four districts is $40,075. That is well above the current state minimum of $25,000 and even above the proposed minimum of $38,000 that is currently before the Missouri legislature. Estimates suggest this increase would cost the state $21 million.

Such an increase could actually exacerbate the problems facing high-poverty, majority-minority school districts. If all the districts that currently pay less are forced to offer higher wages, Riverview Gardens, Hickman Mills, and other districts that struggle with teacher recruitment will lose the competitive advantage of higher salaries. Imagine: the state could spend $21 million and fail to even address the real shortage problem in Missouri’s most disadvantaged school districts.

Missouri’s teacher shortage is not equally felt throughout the state; it is most pronounced in high-poverty, majority-minority school districts. Accordingly, strategies to address the shortage should provide targeted support for the affected districts. This could include salary supplements for teachers in hard-to-staff schools, or it could mean intense marketing, recruitment, and human-resource support for these schools. An across-the-board increase in minimum teacher salary is not what Missouri needs, and it could very well do more harm than good.

The post What Does Missouri’s Teacher Shortage Really Look Like appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Jefferson City is awash in taxpayer cash. Missouri’s state government is slated to receive $2.7 billion in federal stimulus funds from the American Rescue Plan Act along with $9 billion from the “bipartisan” infrastructure bill. In addition, the state expects to bring in nearly $2 billion more in net revenues compared to just before the pandemic. What is disconcerting is how quickly some lawmakers—including self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives—have shed sound economic principles in their rush to find ways to spend the money, forgetting the wise words of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman that “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

The simple, alluring, and false logic is as follows: either Jefferson City spends the money or the funds get sent back to the federal government to misspend on other boondoggles. But Missouri does not have to choose whether Jefferson City or the federal government gets the privilege of misspending taxpayer money. There is another way—one in which state lawmakers apply a strict cost–benefit test to all proposed spending and in which Missouri taxpayers are the beneficiaries of direct fiscal relief from any unused funds that fail to pass such a test.

To begin, it is crucial that lawmakers be aware that misspent money today—even if it has the false appearance of being “free”—can saddle Missouri with fiscal obligations, a weaker economy, or both, in the future. Because the funds are a one-time injection rather than a reliable stream of future revenue, Jefferson City must avoid engaging in spending that creates long-term future commitments (for example, in the form of unfunded maintenance). Lawmakers should also be wary of any government investment that crowds out private-sector investment. Infrastructure spending ought to enhance the private sector, not compete with it.

The other obstacle to sound cost–benefit analysis is the mistaken belief that the cost of the stimulus and infrastructure funds is zero because Washington, D.C., will both supply the money and reclaim any unspent funds. After all, the message to lawmakers has been that states cannot use the money to offset tax cuts. But this is an oversimplification of the options available to state officials. For starters, as long as state revenues stay above their inflation-adjusted 2019 level, the American Rescue Plan Act provides a safe harbor that deems states to be in compliance with the restriction against using stimulus funds for state tax cuts. That inflation-adjusted revenue threshold is likely to be around $10.8 billion in 2023, which is $600 million less than the $11.4 billion in revenues the state is projected to take in. Thus, state lawmakers immediately start out with a cushion of $600 million that they can provide in tax relief without risking stimulus funds.

Second, the American Rescue Plan Act only prohibits state governments—not local governments—from using stimulus funds to offset tax cuts. Moreover, it explicitly allows the state to transfer some of its funds to localities. Nothing in principle stops Jefferson City from distributing money to localities on the condition that they use the money to enact temporary local sales or property tax cuts. When using such transferred funds, localities must abide by any restrictions that apply to the state, but the American Rescue Plan Act does not impose any restrictions on local tax cuts. To create an even more secure legal hedge, Jefferson City could come to an agreement with localities that they use much of their own $1.2 billion in earmarked local stimulus funds for tax cuts, and the state could transfer some of its funds to localities to put toward sound public investments. This way the funds allocated originally to Jefferson City would be used on public investments, while localities would focus on tax relief.

Lastly, the American Rescue Plan Act allows state and local governments to apply stimulus funds toward mitigating the negative economic consequences of the pandemic, chief among which is the decades-high inflation that Americans are suffering through. Seven percent inflation in 2021 caused real wages to drop 2.3 percent, which amounts to an almost $900 “inflation tax” on the average worker. Jefferson City could simply opt to send direct fiscal relief to Missouri workers to offset this tax.

With coffers flush with cash, it is true that state lawmakers have a rare opportunity to make pivotal public investments to improve private-sector productivity. However, they would be wrong to view the money as “free” or the cost of spending the funds as zero. Instead, they should apply the same cost–benefit test that they would use for spending financed from state tax dollars with the knowledge that any unspent money need not go back to Washington, DC—it can end up directly in the pockets of struggling Missouri families.

The post Flood of Federal Money Is Not a Free Pass for a Spending Binge appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

develop standards-aligned units that engage their students in The 1619 Project, and other journalism and historical sources, to strengthen connections to existing curricula, practice media literacy skills, and build empathy. At least two educators from each team will then implement units with at least two classes, evaluate student outcomes, and share their projects publicly through Pulitzer Center’s lesson library and virtual professional development programs. [Emphasis mine]

I talked about this on Gary Nolan’s program last Thursday. I wrote about it two weeks ago. There’s no ambiguity about what CPS is being paid to do and has agreed to do. So I don’t know what exactly to make of this story from the Columbia Daily Tribune published this past Sunday, which suggests the district has represented to parents that The 1619 Project won’t be in classrooms.

Because it will be.

Elements of The 1619 Project will be used by teachers in two elective courses for high school seniors in Columbia as part of the Pulitzer Center’s The 1619 Project Education Network, an official with the center said Friday.

The Columbia Board of Education recently approved an agreement with the Pulitzer Center for two teachers to participate in the network, but in statements since the approval, Columbia Public Schools spokeswoman Michelle Baumstark distanced the district from the agreement, asserting it won’t result in aspects of The 1619 Project being taught.

“We do not have CRT (Critical Race Theory) or 1619 curriculum or lessons in Columbia Public Schools,” Baumstark said Tuesday, while acknowledging that a small group of teachers were looking at the primary source materials for The 1619 Project. [Emphasis mine]

Since I don’t live in Columbia, I wasn’t initially aware of the district’s representations. The only reason I became aware of the story is because a supporter called and recommended the article to me. Suffice it to say, I’m perplexed by the district’s assertion, which may be most charitably described as a word and tense game. Columbia taxpayers and parents deserve transparency and good-faith disclosure about existing or future curriculum plans from the public officials whose salaries they fund.

The post Wait, the Columbia Public School District Said What about Teaching the 1619 Project? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The 1619 Project is a central aspect of what is known as Critical Race Theory, which has been a controversial topic.

Under the program, teams of educators will receive grants of $5,000 each “to support exploration of key questions of racial justice and other pressing issues,” the agenda item reads.

District educators must manage the writing and sharing of at least one of the standards-aligned unit plans that connect students to resources from The 1619 Project as part of unit objectives. Unit plans should explore questions including under-reported stories and why they are important; the role of journalism in evaluating history; and examining contemporary under-reported issues with connections to the past.

Those following the Show-Me Curricula Project may have noticed that this was in the hopper, in light of the grant application we received from the district that it had filed with the Pulitzer Center. The memorandum of understanding, however, provides further definition to what is expected for the money. From the memorandum, which is also filed in our public database:

Network teams will develop standards-aligned units that engage their students in The 1619 Project, and other journalism and historical sources, to strengthen connections to existing curricula, practice media literacy skills, and build empathy. At least two educators from each team will then implement units with at least two classes, evaluate student outcomes, and share their projects publicly through Pulitzer Center’s lesson library and virtual professional development programs. Program details and deliverables are further outlined below. (Emphasis mine)

Keep in mind that the grant requires “at least two educators” and “at least two classes” to teach the 1619 Project. This is only the minimum required under the grant. It does not touch on what other teachers might bring into the classroom on their own. In any case, the board’s adoption of the 1619 Project appears to give a green light to bringing those resources and related resources into the classroom.

The post Columbia Public School District Bringing the 1619 Project to Classrooms appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Longtime United States Senator and Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Russell Long of Louisiana used to say, “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that man behind the tree.” Long knew that everyone’s favorite tax was the tax that forced someone else to pay for something. We all want services from the government. The problem there (actually, there are many problems there, but let’s focus on the tax issue) is that we have to pay for those services with taxes. Like many other politicians, Long realized that what we really want is to have other people, the “outsiders,” pay for our public services.

Local governments in Missouri have excelled at this practice for many years. It was here in Missouri that local governments took it to its most extreme form in Mack’s Creek, St. George, and many other places by funding their city governments with reprehensible fine and ticketing practices. Ferguson got much of the attention for these actions after the riots, but, in fact, they were a fairly normal Missouri city when it came to using fines and tickets to fund their city’s operations. After the violence in Ferguson, the state passed beneficial legislation that finally limited this practice, and our entire state is better off for that change.

But local governments still focus on raising revenues by taxing outsiders. Voters in Kansas City and St. Louis just approved keeping the earnings tax, which includes taxing people who don’t live in those cities and can’t vote on the issue. Who wouldn’t want to tax someone else who is only in the city for limited periods, uses fewer public services, and has no say in the matter? Branson did the exact same thing earlier this month when voters passed proposals to pay for important infrastructure improvements entirely with new hotel and restaurant sales taxes.

Welcome, stranger, thanks for visiting.

A more common practice is the use of special taxing districts such as transportation development districts (TDDs) and community improvement districts (CIDs) to fund local services. Such districts have exploded in recent years, going from a combined 86 in 2004 to 732 in 2020. Special taxing districts can use property taxes, sales taxes, or direct user fees like tolls for their projects. While a couple of the most well-regarded of these tax districts do use property taxes or tolls to fund their operations, I’ll let you guess which tax most of them use. That’s right, the sales tax.

In a 2017 audit, Missouri state auditor Nicole Galloway cited numerous TDDs and CIDs for financial and management abuses. In Springfield, she detailed how the College Station TDD failed to notify shoppers of the tax and failed to include area residents on the TDD board. In Waldo (in Kansas City) multiple CIDs are layered on top of each other, creating high taxes for shoppers that benefit business owners, not the general public. In Southeast Missouri, the Black Mountain CID in Van Buren was caught using the CID’s tax money to make private loans, pay private debts, and fund private expenditures. In Mid-Missouri, the Stoneridge TDD in Jefferson City granted a no-bid contract submitted after the supposed deadline to a board member’s company, while the Rock Bridge TDD in Columbia collected sales taxes from businesses outside the district. Missouri needs tighter limitations on the use of TDDs and CIDs, or they will continue to be abused around the state.

There are benefits to funding government with consumption taxes. This is not an anti-sales tax piece, generally speaking. What I want to argue against is the exploitation of the idea that those shoppers, workers, or visitors who briefly appear in your city need to pay their “fair share” of the local tax burden. “Free rider” is a term for people who use public services without paying the costs. Good public policy should work to limit free riding where possible. But is a person who shops in your city really a free rider who must, in the interest of fairness, pay another half-cent sales tax on the goods that they buy? I don’t think they are, even in tourist havens like Branson or Lake of the Ozarks.

Those shoppers are already paying gas taxes, and a portion of the gas tax gets sent straight to cities for their local roads. Beyond the gas taxes, shoppers and other visitors will generally travel major state and county roads to get to their local shopping destinations. Those malls, shopping centers, grocery stores, etc., are rarely located on streets maintained by city governments.

Those businesses that employees work for or shoppers patronize are already paying commercial property taxes (which are assessed at higher rates than homes) to the city. They pay business license fees to the city, so I might ask what the purpose of a business license is if not to allow employees and customers to come to your place of business? Arguments for raising new taxes, including through measures like TDDs and CIDs, frequently leave out any discussion of all of the other taxes and fees that are currently being paid.

Another issue with funding as much of your local government as you can with a sales tax directed at outsiders is that doing so makes things the government wants look like things the government needs. Do you think that Missouri’s nascent and inexplicable enthusiasm for new trolleys and streetcars would be happening if property owners and trolley users (the few there are) were paying the entire cost? Of course not. The Loop Trolley is entirely funded by outsiders via local sales taxes and federal tax dollars. The Kansas City Streetcar is significantly funded by federal tax dollars and a local TDD, although—to give credit where due—some of the operating funds come from local property taxes. The ability to export most or all of the cost of a new government project onto people who don’t vote on it makes it much more likely that government will engage in activities with questionable benefits. Using property taxes instead as the primary basis for local government funding results in better decision-making by voters—who must decide if the benefits of the government activity are worth what the voters themselves will have to pay for them.

The local leaders who push these efforts to tax outsiders or alleged free riders often feel they are being clever by doing so, as if they have discovered some new trick. The recent ads in favor of the earnings tax in Kansas City proudly claim that half of the money comes from people who don’t live in Kansas City. Supporters of almost every new TDD, CID, or other sales tax proposal consistently tout how this will make those outside shoppers finally pay their fair share. What is lost here is the fact that while your city is being clever in getting that revenue from those outsiders, all of the other cities are doing the same thing to your residents. This whole endless endeavor just creates a circular firing squad of higher taxes used to fund government expenses of questionable necessity. At its worst, it led to long lines at night courts throughout Missouri as town after town was funding itself with tickets and fines targeted toward making payroll rather than public safety.

If Russell Long had been from Missouri, he probably would have changed the final line of his doggerel. “Tax that tourist in the CID” and “Tax that driver in the SUV” come quickly to mind as localized final verses. But his main point stands the test of time and geography. Long understood the desire to tax someone else to fund your public services; a desire that is alive and well in Missouri. Who knows, perhaps Senator Long once got a speeding ticket in Mack’s Creek?

The post Here’s A Crazy Idea: Tax Yourself. appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On May 13, David Stokes joined The Gary Nolan Show to discuss a gas tax increase that is headed to the Governor’s desk and a trend in Missouri local government – taxing outsiders.

Read David’s piece in the Springfield News-Leader and the Columbia Daily Tribune

Listen to more of The Gary Nolan Show

The post The latest on a Gas Tax Increase and are Tourists “Free Riders”? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Tax-increment financing (TIF) is Missouri’s bad idea that refuses to die. Now it is Boonville’s turn to face off against the TIF zombie. Developers have proposed a new, 400-home subdivision in Boonville. Great news, right? Well, there is a catch. The developers want a massive TIF subsidy to fund the project. Residents and taxpayers in Boonville should reject this horror show of a proposal.

TIF is a type of tax subsidy that allows developers to keep the taxes they would otherwise pay to fund some of a project’s costs. With TIF, if a property generated $100 in property taxes before it was developed but generates $200 after improvements are made, the developer gets to keep the $100 difference.

Of course, the actual numbers in this proposal for Boonville will dwarf our little example. As best we can tell, the current property pays $1,176 per year in taxes based on its current appraised value (as farmland) of $116,300. The new subdivision, based on stated goals of 400 homes at an average of $200,000 each, would, if not for the TIF, pay $1,026,912 in property taxes, based on an assessment of $15.2 million at the current area tax rate. With TIF, that would result in an annual subsidy—once the project is fully built—of approximately $1,025,736. For the life of the TIF (23 years is standard), that would be an estimated $23,591,930 maximum subsidy. That is outrageous. Even if the city council were to consider a smaller subsidy, any tax incentive would be a needless giveaway to the developer.

While the people of Boonville may want more housing opportunities for the area, using TIF for residential projects would benefit only the developer. If the city’s population grows as the TIF proposal assumes, and people currently living in Columbia or elsewhere move in to fill the 400 new homes, it is certain that at least some of them will have school-aged children. Boonville will have hundreds of new children in the school district without the expanded tax base to pay for them. Of course, a likely scenario is that some of the home purchasers will come from other parts of Boonville. Local families will move from houses where their property taxes fund the schools to new homes where they do not. How do you think the Boonville R-1 school district is going to pay to educate the children in this subdivision with 400 homes not paying taxes to the schools? There is only one answer: they are going to raise taxes on everyone else.

TIF has had numerous negative economic effects in Missouri. It has increased government involvement in the economy, subsidized politically connected developers, sparked abuse of eminent domain, shrunk the tax base, and made corporate welfare a permanent fixture of development. Furthermore, TIF has failed at its main purpose: economic growth. An Iowa study of TIF usage concluded that, “On net (…) there is no evidence of economy-wide benefits, fiscal benefits, or population gains.” Other studies across the country have found similar results.

The dirty little secret that economic development officials in Boonville and around the state don’t want you to know is that subsidies like TIFs and Enterprise Zones do not work. They do not succeed in growing the local economy. St. Louis and Kansas City have tried using generous taxpayer subsidies to revive their local economies for decades. It has not worked. I can already hear readers in Boonville saying, “But we’re not Saint Louis or Kansas City.” That’s absolutely right—you are not. And there is no reason for you to imitate their mistakes. It is one thing for Saint Louis or Kansas City to try these projects and have them fail. It would be even worse for a city like Boonville to follow that example with the knowledge that the entire process has consistently failed. At least the trailblazer who takes the wrong path has an excuse.

The post Will Boonville Repeat the Mistakes of St. Louis and Kansas City? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When troubled or sickly aristocratic English youth needed a place to recuperate in private away from their cruel stepparents, they would go to Secret Gardens, where magic and mystery would solve all of their problems. We don’t need mysterious places to address our transportation needs in Missouri, and most of our “Secret Gardens” are actually illegal meth labs. But, amazing as it may seem, there really is a local transportation funding option that is unknown to most municipal officials in Missouri. Local gas taxes are a little-used yet very efficient method of funding important local transportation priorities for cities like Lake Ozark as it considers ways to improve Bagnell Dam Boulevard and Valley Road.

I know what you’re thinking. If there is tax that most politicians don’t know about, why would you tell them? Our gas taxes are low in Missouri, and Missouri voters clearly like them that way, as attempts to raise our second-lowest-in-the-nation rate have consistently failed at the polls.

That low tax rate has benefits and costs. If you stop at a gas station near the state border, you can’t help but notice the large percentage of license plates from border states gassing up over here in Missouri. Those drivers do much of their driving in other states but choose to give us their tax dollars for Missouri roads.

But the low gas tax has costs, too. Missouri’s roads and bridges could certainly be in better shape. A 2019 report from the Federal Highway Administration ranked our roads as 8th worst in the nation. We don’t want to commit the logical fallacy of drawing causation from correlation, but there might be a connection between those 2nd-lowest taxes and those 8th-worst roads. Even for roads in good condition, increases in population, tourism, and more can burden a system.

The fact is, we need to invest more in our road and bridge system in Missouri, and our local roads are no exception. Local roads are maintained by cities and counties, not the state, and are funded by a mixture of the state gas tax, local property taxes, and sales taxes. Unfortunately, local sales taxes are the mechanism most frequently expanded to fund local roads, and they are the worst option of the three. Funding roads by sales taxes subsidizes the act of driving by charging shoppers in a manner unconnected to driving. Walkers, bikers, or carpoolers will pay just as much as solo drivers for road improvements. People who can drive on roads without directly paying for their upkeep will drive more than they otherwise would, with the resulting extra traffic, pollution, and other road issues.

Ideally, the cost of driving should be connected as closely as possible to the act of driving. Lake Ozark city leaders are currently considering a sales tax-based transportation development district (TDD) to fund improvements to Bagnell Dam Boulevard and Valley Road, both key roads for the region. A better option for funding local roads like these would be a local gas tax. A local gas tax fixes the discrepancies that sales tax funding methods generate and, more importantly, can raise substantial money for road improvements.

Seven cities in Missouri have adopted local gas taxes. By law, the money raised from these taxes can only be spent on roads within those communities. All of the local gas taxes enacted have been very low—none higher than two cents per gallon. Even at that low level, they can raise significant money, but none of these seven cities have the combination of local population and tourism that Lake Ozark has. With those tourists, a local fuel tax of just two cents per gallon could potentially bring over one hundred thousand dollars per year on top of the existing road revenue sources. That money would fund a substantial amount of road improvements for Lake Ozark, all while properly maintaining the connection between the act and cost of driving. Or, if Camden and Miller county leaders have similar concerns, countywide gas taxes could be implemented that would raise even more money.

Lake Ozark is the heart of an area vital to our state. The residents who live there and the tourists who visit need and deserve quality roads. A local gas tax would be an efficient and beneficial way to fund road maintenance and improvement. Community leaders and residents should strongly consider passing one this year. Lake Ozark does not need a hidden code or a secret garden to deal with its transportation issues, just community support to address these key improvement needs.

The post Local Gas Taxes Are the Secret Garden of City Road Funding Options appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri is considered one of the most “conservative” of the 50 states. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on how you define the word.

Over the past several decades, Missouri has been going downhill both economically and educationally—as one of the worst-performing states in GDP growth and educational achievement in K-12 public education. Why?

Too often, Show-Me State conservativism has been characterized by a lack of urgency and a satisfaction with the status quo.

As I would define it, conservatism does not begin and end with the preservation of existing institutions, and it most definitely is not about protecting the privileges of the rich by exploiting the poor or being indifferent to the problems of the needy. Where it begins is with the desire to protect and enlarge freedom for all members of society—enabling people to work and live lives of their own choosing so long as they do no harm to others in the pursuit of their own betterment.

Here, then, are five New Year’s Resolutions for leaders in local and state government:

#1: Improve Missouri’s competitiveness; turn the Show-Me State from an economic sluggard into a great place to live, work, and own or operate a business. That means lowering taxes—leaving more money in people’s pockets to spend or invest as they choose. It also means removing obstacles to commerce and opportunity posed by excessive licensing and regulatory requirements.

#2: End crony capitalism—stop providing subsidies and tax carve-outs for politically favored businesses that are not available to all other businesses. In 2019, Missouri reported 524 tax-increment financing (TIF) projects from 100 political subdivisions across the state. These projects are anticipated to have $10.1 billion in TIF-reimbursable project costs. Such subsidies drain money from public services and have a bad track record of failing to deliver promised job, investment, or economic growth. Reductions in tax incentives and spending can provide some of the budgetary space to lower or eliminate individual income and earnings taxes.

#3: Don’t treat small, owner-operated businesses as the designated fall-guys in government-ordered lockdowns—calling them “non-essential” businesses while allowing their big-box counterparts such as Wal-Mart and Target to continue to operate.

#4: Don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to taking care of essential infrastructure on a timely basis. Interstate 70, an economic and transportation lifeline, is falling apart. Numerous other major roads are badly in need of repair. Travel on Missouri’s roads has increased by 12 percent since 2008, but the state’s transportation budget has fallen by 15 percent. According to Missouri’s Department of Transportation, it now gets only enough revenue to cover a little more than half the state’s needed road and bridge repairs. One thing is certain: Postponing needed maintenance on long-lived assets such as roads and bridges is not a smart idea. It leads to escalating costs and catastrophic failure.

#5: Expand educational choice for students and families at all income levels throughout the Show-Me State. There is no worse example of blind allegiance to the status quo than Missouri’s K-12 public education system.

Supported by nominally conservative lawmakers, the state’s educational establishment—meaning school superintendents, teachers’ unions, and DESE (Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education)—have blocked almost every initiative aimed at expanding school choice from vouchers and education savings accounts to expansion of charter schools. Despite a long record of poor results in the so-called “Nation’s Report Card,” members of the establishment continue to oppose all forms of competition and choice in public education.

And who is hurt the most by this self-serving obstinacy on the part of the providers of public education? It is of course the users: students and their parents and families, and most especially lower-income families trapped in non-performing schools who cannot afford to move to other school districts or to private schools.

As I see it, true conservatism is really about an allegiance to principles—and to enduring values such as freedom, hard work, and equality under the law—rather than an allegiance to the status quo.

The post Five New Year’s Resolutions for Missouri Lawmakers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri’s road maintenance funding is on a road to nowhere.

Interstate 70, Missouri’s economic and transportation lifeline, is falling apart. Many other roads Missourians travel on each day also need to be fixed, and they too will continue to deteriorate because the Missouri Department of Transportation is running out of money.

While travel on Missouri’s roads continues to increase (up 12 percent since 2008), MoDOT’s budget has been headed in the opposite direction (down 15 percent in the same period), and that has resulted in a whopping $745 million in unfunded road transportation needs.

MoDOT remains heavily dependent on the state fuel tax (17.4 cents per gallon) for road maintenance, and that’s part of the problem. Because of the improved fuel economy of today’s gas and diesel-powered cars and trucks, fuel tax receipts have declined even though people drive more and put more wear and tear on the roads. Furthermore, drivers of electric vehicles are paying significantly less for road maintenance because they aren’t paying fuel tax.

It’s time to rethink transportation funding. The damage inflicted upon roads is determined by how much drivers drive on them and how much their vehicles weigh, not by how much fuel they consume. A better way to match the damage drivers do to the road with what they pay for its upkeep is to charge by the mile, instead of by the gallon.

Several states experimenting with road-usage charge programs demonstrate how such programs could be implemented. One method to record mileage is by a simple odometer reading. Drivers could self-report their odometer readings as part of the annual vehicle registration process or by plugging a recording device into the vehicle’s diagnostics port. While this method would pose no threat to driver privacy, it would be impractical for those who frequently drive out of state.

A more controversial method is to record precise in-state miles driven by using GPS technology. Current programs in Oregon and Utah use third-party providers to record in-state mileage either through a GPS-equipped plug-in device or a smartphone app. In both cases, the state receives the total miles driven for billing purposes with no location data.

While this poses more concerns for driver privacy, it should be noted that GPS satellites do not track locations. GPS responders, whether in plug-in devices or cell phones, track their location in relation to satellites, but do not necessarily share their location with those satellites. Protecting driver privacy is a serious concern, and the reporting of personal or location-specific data should only be allowed when explicitly agreed to by drivers.

With these first two methods, as drivers pay for their miles driven, they are reimbursed for the gas taxes they paid to travel those miles.

A third method is to use electronic tolling to raise maintenance funds specifically for heavily traveled highways, as many states already do. Drivers can use transponders that send a signal that is picked up at certain points along the road, and payments can automatically be deducted from that driver’s account. Those with concerns about the privacy implications wouldn’t have to opt for a transponder. Instead, cameras on the highway could record their license-plate number and a bill could be mailed based on their driver registration information.

No system is perfect, but in each of the examples listed above, drivers can choose their method of payment and are presented with several options depending on their privacy concerns.

In any case, our current system of taxing fuel usage is becoming less viable. Missouri policymakers should consider solutions already in use in other states to move Missouri’s transportation funding methods in the right direction.

The post Commentary: Funding Roads by the Mile, Not the Gallon 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.

As Graham Renz and I discussed in our paper, “Overgrown and Noxious: The Abuse of Special Taxing Districts in Missouri,” CIDs allow business owners the ability to levy a sales tax on their customers—and sometimes spend the revenue generated on explicitly private purposes. CIDs are often unknown to shoppers and are notoriously easy to set up. What’s more, if business owners are clever, they can construct a district in a way that evades the need for any public vote.

This brings us back to the Columbia Business Loop CID. The businesses likely meant to draw a district without any residents, allowing only business owners to vote to approve. The Tribune reported on August 25, 2015 that a single resident, 23-year-old Jen Henderson, was living within the proposed district and would be the sole voter. Eventually 14 more voters living within the district were identified. The vote on the CID was 4 to 3 in favor, but Henderson filed a lawsuit claiming that Missouri election law was not followed.

The details of the case are themselves mystifying. The presiding judge decided to dismiss the case in March 2016, but refused to issue and sign an actual ruling—and in doing so denied Henderson the ability to appeal—until ordered by the Missouri Supreme Court in February 2019, over 1,000 days later. The CID has been collecting the sales tax all the while.

Henderson did appeal once the ruling was issued, and that was the case heard by the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District on Wednesday. In short, Henderson alleges that the CID did not follow Missouri voting procedure requiring a secret ballot. The defendants argue that the statute setting up CIDs does not specify any election guidelines, so they can do as they please.

Whatever the outcome of the case, any attention brought to Missouri’s permissive special taxing district laws is welcome. Voters and taxpayers ought to be better respected and those granted the power to tax should be held accountable.

The post That Crazy CID Vote in Columbia Goes Back to Court appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I was reminded of our unhatched eggs after reading a commentary last month by Columbia Daily Tribune editor Henry J. Waters III. While I agree with Mr. Waters from time to time, I can’t help but disagree with his assessment that “what’s next” after the American Health Care Act is “single-payer.” Although it remains a persistent threat to good public policy, single-payer is a counted chicken from an unhatched egg—and an egg that may, in fact, never produce a bird.

I say this for several reasons.

First, the laws of economics are as true in health care policy as anyplace else. Top-down cost controls in single-payer systems have significant tradeoffs that become obvious when looking at the Medicaid program alone. Rather than introduce market mechanisms to control costs, Medicaid programs across the country more often pay doctors less to provide the same services, or simply cut services directly. That means fewer doctors and worse access for patients. Many taxpayers recognize this and believe this sorry dynamic shouldn’t be applied to the public writ large. We need markets; single-payer systems don’t deliver them.

Second, it isn’t obvious to me that the window for Obamacare reform has closed. President Donald Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan have publicly declared their intent to move on to other legislative priorities like tax reform, but in the weeks since the AHCA’s withdrawal, it’s not clear that the AHCA itself is dead, or that reform will not come through another legislative vehicle. Keep in mind that Obamacare passed over a year after negotiations on the bill began in 2009; there is plenty of reason to believe that despite the posturing of legislative leadership, another attempt at reform is forthcoming.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, measures continue to flow into the present health care policy landscape, even as federal efforts remain in limbo. State-based legislative changes that would: do away with hospitals’ certificate of need monopolies; empower patient–doctor relationships through direct primary care arrangements; open new avenues to care through licensing reforms; and introduce market mechanisms into existing state programs remain active issues in the states, and issues that Missouri legislators have often been on the forefront of implementing. And that’s just the short list of currently debated reforms.

Surely federal health care efforts are an important part of the reform puzzle, but it presumes too much to think that federal officials are the only ones calling the shots in health care policy. For many years now, states have had a primary role in these decisions, from demurring on Obamacare exchanges to rejecting the law’s unsustainable Medicaid expansion.

This isn’t to say that the single-payer health care system Mr. Waters envisions is a political impossibility; market reformers need to take such efforts seriously. But the odds of it becoming law anytime soon are sufficiently unknowable that Mr. Waters is better served by not counting that chicken, at least not yet.

The mistakes of heavy government intervention in our health care over the last few decades are now coming home to roost. Rather than continue those mistakes, we should be reducing the government presence in our health care decisions, not increasing it. Hatching an even bigger government intervention in American health care seems more likely to produce a rotten egg than a productive hen.

The post Don’t Count Health Care Chickens Before They’ve Hatched appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Similarly, an investment that initially seems negligible can go a long way given enough time to compound, and this lesson applies when saving for the future. In June, the Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System (MOSERS) decided to reduce its assumed return rate from 8% to 7.65%, meaning that altogether, the amount members will need to contribute next year will increase by almost $50 million. This extra cost today is hardly ideal, but in the long run it helps avoid a much larger bill.

Even though MOSERS made a mere 0.35% change to their expected return rate, the long-term impacts are huge. With a lower rate of return on its assets, a pension plan’s initial contributions must go up in order to keep benefits constant. In other words, a plan compensates for slower investment growth by putting more money in initially.

This change in funding highlights the risks associated with promising high investment returns. If a pension plan’s actual returns are lower than predicted, the result is a gap between available funds and the amount that has been promised to retirees. In the case of a guaranteed public employee retirement fund, taxpayers can be asked to cover this difference, and as the gap grows, so does the burden on taxpayers.

With a current funding ratio (current assets divided by the net present value of liabilities) of 67.8 percent, the plan (according to a Columbia Tribune report) will require $394.5 million this year to cover promised benefits.  But this contribution amount will only be sufficient if investment returns match the 7.65% expectation.  If investment growth is lower (in FY 2016 MOSERS generated a time-weighted return of only 0.3%), then the funding gap will widen over time. It’s easy to project high investment returns today, but making those predictions come true tomorrow is another story.

Slight adjustments in return assumptions can have tremendous impacts over an employee’s lifetime, so properly estimating investment returns is essential to a plan’s sustainability. (This essay by Andrew Biggs provides a comprehensive discussion of public employee pension funding for readers who want to explore this topic in more depth.) If pension benefits are guaranteed to employees, then the cost of these promised future benefits should be priced using returns on very low risk assets like government securities, which are currently far below 7.65 percent. Lowering the assumed return is a step toward greater transparency regarding the true costs of pension liabilities.

The post MOSERS Wisely Reconsiders Past Assumptions appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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

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

So what is to be done?

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

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

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

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

The post Mizzou’s Loss Is Other Schools’ Gain appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But even in an aspiring liberal utopia like Columbia, the consequences of overbearing government are still very real. Enter the IRS, two weeks ago.

Graduate students employed by the University of Missouri will have a harder time paying for health insurance after the university told students Friday it is taking away subsidies that help with premium costs.

Associate Vice Chancellor for Graduate Studies Leona Rubin said the change is the result of a recent IRS interpretation of a section of the Affordable Care Act. The law, which requires adults to have health insurance or face tax penalties, “prohibits businesses from providing employees subsidies specifically for the purpose of purchasing health insurance from individual market plans,” the university said in a letter sent to students Friday.

The IRS, Rubin said, considers the university’s student health insurance plan from Aetna to be an “individual market plan.” Because of the IRS classification, the university cannot give graduate students with assistantships a subsidy to help with health insurance costs, Rubin said.

According to Rubin, the University “could be fined $36,500 per student per year” if it continues its health insurance subsidy program…which makes it even more strange that the University apparently restored the subsidies in question last week.

It remains to be seen whether the threatened fine noted by the associate vice chancellor was a paper tiger meant to provide cover for cost cutting on Mizzou’s part or if that enormous fine is still actually on the horizon. The University of Missouri–St. Louis (UMSL), which took similar action in stopping insurance subsidies of its own, is sticking by its original decision to end its program. And it’s part of a national trend, thanks to Obamacare and the IRS. Keep in mind: while Mizzou has reversed its decision, the IRS certainly hasn’t changed its interpretation.

There’s a sad irony involved here, of course, when a university community generally supportive of big government is itself undermined by big government. And there’s lots to criticize: the credibility gap facing Mizzou’s administration, the timing of the announcement, the threatened walk-out by the graduate students, and so on.

But one of the most disturbing elements of this story is how disruptive Obamacare has been to a health care practice that, by most accounts, was working just fine, and the swift manner in which unaccountable federal bureaucrats were able to upend it nationwide. That a law passed 5 years ago is still changing without legislation is great cause for concern—not only for our health care, but for our democracy, as well. This is a teachable moment, but there’s no telling whether Missouri’s universities will learn from it.

The post IRS Obamacare Ruling Buffets Some Missouri Graduate Students appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In a couple of weeks’ time, incoming college freshmen will get their first taste of independence. But with independence comes responsibility, and right about now parents are giving familiar advice on how to handle life without a safety net: Study for class. Eat healthy. Spend smart (read: don’t spend your rent money on pizza and beer). Most freshmen will find their footing, eventually. Some never really do, especially when it comes to budgeting properly.

But unrepentant spendthrifts should not feel so bad, because many of Missouri’s top policy makers never figured out how to spend smart, either.

A handful of state and Saint Louis officials want to spend close to $400 million of public money on a new football stadium in downtown Saint Louis in an effort to keep the Rams from moving to Los Angeles. Not only is Saint Louis’s existing NFL stadium, the Edward Jones Dome, a mere 20 years old, but virtually every economist who has studied the issue has found that NFL stadiums are a bad place to invest public dollars. They do not generate economic growth, spur urban revitalization, or greatly increase tax revenue.

Unfortunately for Missouri residents, the way Saint Louis funds its football stadiums makes this much more than a local or regional issue. Statewide residents already covered half the cost of Saint Louis’s Edward Jones Dome. In fact, the state is still paying $12 million annually on that stadium’s debt. One could be forgiven for thinking that Missouri taxpayers deserve a break from funding entertainment venues in Saint Louis City, especially when tangible economic benefits are so unlikely. But that’s not the case. Quite to the contrary, state taxpayers will be expected to cover more of the stadium costs than they did last time, with total state support topping $300 million—about three quarters of the total subsidy. That money will come straight from Missouri’s general revenue.

However, even as Missouri and the City of Saint Louis prepare to spend lavishly, yet again, on pro sports, every level of government claims it is broke. We are told how courthouses are crumbling. How highways are deteriorating. How the schools are underfunded. How the state parks have a $400 million maintenance backlog. How Missouri’s Amtrak routes need $32 million in upgrades to continue running. Even Saint Louis City officials claim that core departments like fire protection and police are short of cash.

When it comes to basic government services, there’s never any money in the budget. Residents instead have to vote on tax increases, or else. But when Saint Louis’s NFL status is threatened, hundreds of millions of dollars are suddenly available. As for a vote, that’s restricted to those who will vote “yes.” At the state level, it’s likely that the decision of the governor alone will be sufficient to authorize spending more than $300 million, and he is spearheading the stadium effort.

Right now, Missouri’s leaders sound a lot like college students calling their parents because they can’t afford groceries. And they’re making that call from a noisy bar in Cancun. It’s true—some people never learn to spend responsibly, whether they are freshmen or officials. Then again, most of the time, that’s because no one ever makes them.

The post Missouri Needs to Learn to Prioritize Spending appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

HB 42 also would create a new accreditation process, in which individual schools, not districts, are accredited, as is currently the procedure. This would allow students attending unaccredited schools to first transfer into an accredited school within their home district if there is space available. In short, school-level accreditation is going to affect more than just districts like Normandy and Riverview Gardens.

Stiepleman bases his concerns on the possible fate of a school in his district. Douglass High School is an alternative high school. Most alternative “schools” in Missouri are really programs carried out within a larger school, but Douglass is a stand-alone school. Under HB 42, the school would be accredited individually.

Stiepleman is worried that Douglass will not get a fair shake. As he put it, “Because of the population of fragile students at Douglass, the lack of Advanced Placement courses and other issues, it could become provisionally accredited. That designation is one step removed from being unaccredited, which could trigger student transfers.”

I recently reported on DeLaSalle Education Center, an alternative charter high school in Kansas City with similar fears. Like Douglass, DeLaSalle serves only at-risk students. As my video shows, students like senior K’ Von Williams are thriving at DeLaSalle.

Despite DeLaSalle’s low state standardized test scores, the charter school is delivering a quality service to both the community and students. If regulations are only based on test scores, they can miss the good things the school is doing.

Schools in Missouri should be held accountable for the quality of education that they provide for their students. But the mechanism by which those schools are held accountable has to be sensitive to different educational models (in the charter or traditional public sectors) and different populations of students across the state.

If HB 42 become law, DESE and the legislature will need to reevaluate the metrics Missouri uses to determine if a school is accredited or not. If they’re not careful, they could risk harming schools that are doing right by kids.

The post Will HB 42 Hurt Alternative High Schools? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.