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 city of Branson has a choice in how it will conduct negotiations with the firefighters union: It can keep the citizens of Branson in the dark and meet with the union in closed-door sessions, or it can open the doors to its collective bargaining sessions and allow citizens and the media access to these meetings.

Open meetings like this are important because taxpayers and people who depend on city services need to be informed about what their government is doing. The transparency of open meetings leads to accountability. However, when the public is kept from meetings between government officials and government unions, government often acts in a way to benefit itself to the detriment of the taxpayer.

If Branson decides to hold collective bargaining sessions in open meetings, it will be in good company. Both the Monarch Fire Protection District and Columbia Public Schools already hold open collective bargaining sessions with their employees.

To put it simply: Branson citizens have a right to know how their city and fire department operate and where their tax money is being spent. When the city of Branson and the firefighters union begin negotiating a labor agreement, the city should keep the doors open. This will help ensure that citizens of Branson are well served by their newly unionized fire department.

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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.

In 2012, the Missouri Supreme Court expanded its jurisdiction by reading a duty of “good faith” collective bargaining into the state constitution. The words “good faith” do not appear in the text of the constitution, but the supreme court has spoken and lower courts will follow the supreme court’s lead. As a result, courts throughout the state may now intervene in government labor relations if they determine this duty is not being honored.

The new “good faith” standard could affect the labor situation at Columbia Public Schools. The union and the school board met several times this year but did not come to a final agreement by the last scheduled bargaining session. Oddly enough, even though there are no more bargaining sessions scheduled this year, CMNEA is showing up to the school’s administrative building and “waiting” for a CPS bargaining team to arrive. In the Columbia Daily Tribune, one union official described the district’s refusal to continue negotiating after the last scheduled bargaining session as a failure to negotiate in good faith.

If the courts get involved here, it would be bad news for Columbia citizens. Columbia voters elected a school board to manage their public schools. Not a union. Not the courts. If a court steps in and forces a binding labor agreement that the duly elected school board didn’t agree to, the court would be setting school district policy against the will of the people.

The post Courts Should Avoid Setting Policy in Columbia Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There is a loophole in Missouri’s open records and meetings law that allows government entities, such as cities, fire districts, and school boards, to negotiate with unions and set public policy in meetings that are closed to the public. State law should open the collective bargaining process because the public pays for, and depends on, the policies set in these meetings.

Some government agencies have already opened collective bargaining meetings. In 2014, the Columbia Public Schools opened its collective bargaining meetings. It has held open meetings ever since. According to Christine King, president of the Columbia Public Schools Board of Education, the board opened the process because they felt open meetings advanced the public’s interest in full transparency and openness. Such openness in public affairs empowers citizens to hold their representatives in government accountable.

Since the Columbia Public Schools began holding its collective bargaining meetings in open sessions, the local paper, the Columbia Daily Tribune, has covered these meetings, parents, teachers, and anyone else is welcome to attend, and members of the public can view meeting minutes online and see that the parties negotiate in good faith with one another.

Open collective bargaining, as practiced by forward thinking local government entities like Columbia Public Schools and Monarch Fire Protection District, should be standard practice for Missouri state and local governments. One bill, SB 549, promises to do just that by closing the loophole in Missouri’s sunshine law that some public entities use to justify closing collective bargaining sessions. Reform that requires these meetings be held in the open would be a win for anyone who wants transparent, accountable government.

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Those people would probably prefer that the district divide up expenditures, improving each building a little bit at a time. But that’s not always practical. It can be more cost-effective to build a new structure than to continually patch up an old one. And seldom (if ever) does any district have the opportunity to build new schools for all students simultaneously.

Some children in Columbia Public Schools enjoy nicer buildings than others, and some districts have more expensive auditoriums and science labs than Columbia Public Schools. However, that’s not the main cause of educational inequity. Much more important than the appearance of buildings is what children learn inside of them. A school that looks drab on the outside may have excellent teachers and a great curriculum. On the other hand, a new building is no proof that classroom materials or teaching practices have been improved.

No matter how good your building is, you’ll always be able to find a school out there that’s physically superior in some way. (For example, although the Ladue School District has many new classrooms, it recently sent out a newsletter stating that various cafeteria and library spaces fall short of Missouri School Improvement Guidelines.) The quest for perfect buildings could be unending, but it would be better to pursue perfect academics instead.

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But the district is learning that buying local is easier said than done:

One hurdle is finding the local produce to feed 10,000 or more children per day. The demand for local produce continues to grow, but local suppliers are too few for large institutions such as schools, Fullum learned.

Too many farmers in “Missouri are growing hay, wheat and soybeans. We don’t use that in our kitchens. We need spinach. Farmers have to change that. Our farmers are just now getting the idea that maybe our schools and our university are potential customers and maybe we should do more specialized farming,” she said.

It looks like the district is allowing the locavore philosophy to distract it from its goal of serving healthy food. Local produce is not the only alternative to canned or processed food. For example, fresh oranges are nutritious, and they don’t have any added salt, sugar, or preservatives. But they’re shipped in from warmer climates, so locavores overlook them.

The district should seek out healthy products to serve at lunch, regardless of where they come from. Restricting itself to food grown in Missouri could limit kids’ diets, besides burdening taxpayers. (Even if it gets a grant from the Department of Agriculture, the money had to come from taxpayers at some point.) And it’s unrealistic to expect demand from schools to change Missouri’s agricultural output, which is at least partially determined by factors like climate and soil quality that are outside of Columbia Public Schools’ control.

If some parents care about where the food comes from as much as how healthy it is, that’s their choice. They can buy food at a farmers’ market themselves — and send it to school with their kids in a lunch bag.

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The timing was off. The shuffle of superintendents, either into retirement or among school districts, already happened this year. Most made the transition July 1.

According to the city’s two newspapers, at least a few school board members had no idea Superintendent Phyllis Chase was considering retirement until the board’s closed meeting with Chase. That’s strange, too, though allowable. Chase’s contract with the district lets her terminate the contract upon retirement at any time — no notice period was specified. Her retirement is effective Aug. 31.

Within minutes of her announcement yesterday, online comments sprang up on newspaper message boards and blogs, blaming the exiting superintendent for budget and curriculum problems, low MAP scores, and a total lack of community trust in the operation of the school district. In the past, Chase has been criticized for receiving a much-too-high salary — $200,340 — as well as a large car allowance of $7,200 per year.

A major part of my research this summer has been to request and collect the contracts of every single Missouri superintendent (as of today, we have 335). After reading many of those, and speaking with a few superintendents about the difficulties they and their districts face, I think one of the main hazards of being superintendent is the risk of public blame and accusations.

I spent a year reporting on this school district for the Columbia Missourian, so I have mixed feelings about Chase leaving. On one hand, she did seem to control public information tightly, and yes, she was slow to admit mistakes and make fixes. Blame for that rests squarely on her shoulders. However, this retirement looks like she is taking a fall for the district and its other administrators. And it’s a graceful one.

According to her contract, Chase’s duties as superintendent are:

“[…] charge of the administration of the schools under the direction of the board. She shall be the chief executive officer of the district; shall direct and assign teachers and other employees of the schools under her supervision; shall organize, reorganize and arrange the administrative and supervisory staff, including instruction and business affairs, as best serves the district; shall select all personnel subject to the approval of the board; shall from time to time suggest regulations, rules and procedures deemed necessary for the welfare of the school district; and in general perform all duties incident to the office of the superintendent and such other duties as may be prescribed by the board from time to time. The board shall promptly refer all criticisms, complaints and suggestions called to its attention to the superintendent for study and recommendation.”

This paragraph looks like many, many other paragraphs in Missouri superintendent contracts. Basically, the superintendent is the chief organizer, mouthpiece, and goal setter for the district. The larger a school district, the more it necessary it is to have a superintendent. Chase managed a district with about 17,000 students. Though always present and vocal (most contracts require it), superintendents never vote at school board meetings.

So, what about those complaints?

Chase’s high salary and benefit package was approved by the school board; any criticisms of her pay should be made to the board members who approved it.

Though Chase has some input, curriculum criticisms should be directed to the district’s chief academic officer.

As for test scores? She’s been with the school district for five years, as superintendent. Those scores depend much more on what parents and teachers are doing, and decisions made years before Chase arrived.

The district’s budget is one area where Chase can be held responsible. It is her job to set priorities for the district’s budgeting process.

The Columbia district spent more money than it took in this year, thanks to the school board adding about 70 employees to its payroll, upon administrator recommendations. When the community realized months later that the school board’s decision to do that was causing the district’s reserves to decline, outcry was loud and the district’s proposed tax levy increase failed this past April, with 62 percent of voters saying no.

Yes, the negative atmosphere of the district’s campaign for the tax increase is mostly Chase’s doing. But the deficit spending was, again, ultimately the school board’s decision. And board members noted at the public meeting, before voting to add the new positions, that they would need to increase the district’s tax levy in the near future. The failure of the community to realize this can be attributed, in part, to under-reporting.

The way I see it, a tacit part of the superintendent job description is to be a scapegoat when things go bad. One Missouri superintendent I spoke with, as part of my research for SMI, said he was cast out mostly because of problems after a tornado destroyed nearly all of his school district’s properties. In Columbia, Chase is more to blame than that — but certainly not the only one. Instead of staying, she left quietly, stating yesterday (according to Missourian reporters):

“Recently, I was notified by the Public Schools Retirement System that my years of service, coupled with my age, meet the requirements for full-time retirement. After weighing several options, I have decided to retire from the Columbia Public Schools effective Aug. 31, 2008.”

It wasn’t just one person. Other administrators played a large role in the problems the district faces. So did board members and those who seemed to enjoy stoking negative sentiment against the school district.

But, now, community members should move on from finger-pointing to a braver next step and think about how to fix what isn’t working.

If you have any comments about the situation in Columbia, please leave them below, or email me.

The post Responsibility appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It’s important to keep in mind that many of the successful schools mentioned in the New York Times piece are charter schools. So, in addition to maintaining a single-sex environment, they have more flexibility when they hire teachers and choose curricula. It’s hard to tell whether their good academic results are caused by the single-sex environment or by one of those other factors. But determining whether the average boy or girl learns best in a single-sex environment is less important than choosing the best schools for individual kids. Even if most girls prefer girls-only classes, for example, some individual girls might do better in a coed school.

No matter what the research shows about general patterns of achievement, parents should be able to choose the best educational environments for their kids — whether that means choosing between single-sex and coed classrooms in a traditional public school, or choosing a single-sex charter school.

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Integrated math allows students to learn the same content that is taught in algebraic math, but in a different context, with an emphasis on contextual and situational situations rather than formulas and algorithms.

Integrated math (or "new math," or whatever you want to call it) provokes heated discussions in Missouri and around the country. Edspresso has published an essay titled, "Traditional Math Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry." There’s even an entire website, Weapons of Math Destruction, which has published 85 cartoons on the topic of integrated math.

Anyway, the latest development in Missouri is that some parents are complaining about the Columbia Public Schools’ integrated math curriculum. The district uses integrated math at the elementary level and gives high school students a choice between integrated math and a traditional math track. I haven’t been able to find out whether the middle schools use only one program, or both. Some Columbia parents supplement their kids’ schoolwork with Singapore Math, one of my favorite math curricula. (Yes, I actually have favorite math curricula.)

I’m sympathetic to parents’ objections about new math, but that doesn’t mean the district should necessarily get rid of it. Kids don’t all learn the same way; for many, an integrated approach could be more intuitive or interesting. Columbia Public Schools already give parents a choice about math at the high school level. If they allowed parents to choose traditional math at the elementary level too, more people would be satisfied with the curriculum. Some elementary schools allow parents to choose between single-sex and coed classes; a choice between traditional and integrated math should be even easier for schools to offer, because it affects just one subject rather than the entire school day.

The post Math Wars appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

To date, Columbia Public Schools has spent roughly $82,000 on the “adequacy” lawsuit, despite the fact it is a no-win venture for the community. Several other plaintiff schools have come to a similar conclusion and have declined to join the appeal. CPS should do the same.

The plaintiff school districts are spending tax dollars to hire private law firms to sue the Legislature — i.e., us — and the attorney general’s office has used tax dollars to hire a private law firm to defend the Legislature. The cost so far, just for private law firms, is more than $4.6 million, and that does not count the time of the attorney general’s staff lawyers or the court. I find it remarkable that some members of our school board think this is an appropriate way to spend education revenues. During the 10 years I spent as chairman of the University of Missouri–Columbia Economics Department, it never occurred to me it would be acceptable to use some of my department budget to sue the Legislature for more money, even though MU is also mentioned in the Missouri Constitution.

Issues of propriety aside, let us turn to some specific reasons I believe CPS is ill-advised to continue its participation in this lawsuit.

First, it would be difficult for the plaintiffs to have lost this case more completely. Judge Richard Callahan’s decision is clear, concise, and logical. The “adequacy” aspect of the lawsuit was based on the Missouri Constitution’s requirement for free public schools and the stipulation that the Legislature must devote at least 25 percent of revenues to that end. Judge Callahan ruled both requirements are being met easily. The plaintiffs asked the judge to read something into the state Constitution that is not there, and this he refused to do. Of course, the notion that a given level of spending can be reliably associated with a given level of MAP achievement — “adequacy” — was never established by the plaintiffs because it is statistically impossible to do so, a point made repeatedly by the three economists, including myself, who testified for the defense.

Second, as the magnitude of this defeat becomes more widely recognized, the “tax base” of paying plaintiff districts is shrinking. Some major districts have publicly dropped out of the case, including St. Joseph, Liberty, and Francis Howell. More are expected to follow. As the number of participating districts falls, Columbia Public Schools and Columbia taxpayers will be left to bear a larger share of the litigation bill. That might make narrow sense if there were reason to believe that, ultimately, there is something in this for Columbia, but that is the biggest folly of all.

Let’s begin with the “equity” issue. Under the current system, CPS fares well. We are a relatively wealthy district that enrolls 1.5 percent of Missouri public school students, yet receives 1.7 percent of state K-12 funding. Our per-pupil spending is higher than the state average. What can CPS hope to gain in an “equity” lawsuit? Is a Cole County judge likely to find Columbia schools relatively impoverished?

Now, let us consider “adequacy” — the argument that almost all districts are underfunded. The plaintiffs are asking for roughly $1 billion in additional state funds for K-12 education. If they are successful and the Supreme Court tells the Legislature it must spend $1 billion more on public education, that money must be found somewhere in the state budget. Given the Hancock limits on raising taxes, we must ask lawsuit proponents where they propose to obtain these additional funds for K-12 education.

With tax increases off the table, K-12 gains must come at the expense of the rest of the state budget. One billion dollars more for K-12 implies a 21-percent cut in spending for the non-K-12 budget. Assuming those cuts are across the board, the MU budget would be cut by 21 percent as well, in which case MU would lose more than the entire state funding of CPS. Whatever the size of the boost in K-12 spending, every dollar CPS would gain through this litigation implies at least a $2.25 cut in the MU budget. This assumes Medicaid is subjected to the 21-percent cut. If Medicaid escapes the across-the-board cut, the MU loss is even larger.

Along with making higher education even less affordable, a plaintiff victory must lead to cuts in a wide range of state-provided social services. The primary recipients of those programs, poor families and children, would end up worse off. We elect legislators to make these difficult spending decisions and to balance the complicated tradeoffs. That is not the job of our courts.

The most likely outcome of the appeal is that CPS simply will have wasted tax dollars on frivolous litigation. Our school board, however, is playing with fire. In the remote chance the plaintiffs win on appeal, the broader Columbia community might well be seriously harmed because of large cuts to the MU budget. It is time to stop participating in this nonsense and spend our education tax dollars on education — and not on $250-an-hour legal fees.

Michael Podgursky is a professor of economics at the University of Missouri–Columbia and a member of the Show-Me Institute board of directors.

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