Of course, public education has a lot of moving parts and they all cost money. But it’s public money—our money. That’s why the Show-Me Institute decided to build a website that would allow anyone to see how every dollar was spent in 2021 in each of the 551 public school districts and charter school local education agencies in the state. MOSchoolRankings.org, which already has two years of school and district report cards with letter grades, now also shows where every dollar came from and how it was spent. These data were already available on the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website as Annual Secretary to the Board (ASBR) reports. We simply put them into a single data file and built a portal to make it easy for users to dig into the numbers.

Did we include spending on land, buildings, or other capital? Those are in the ASBR, so, yes. Did we include principal and interest payments on debt? Yes, we did. Did we include district revenue from athletic event admissions and bookstore sales? We did. Did we include revenue that one school district pays to another school district? We did. Did we include revenue that parents pay as tuition to send their children to a school outside their district? We did. Did we include revenue from bond sales that are issued to build things? We did. If the district reported it to the state as a source of revenue or as an expense, we included it.

I believe that the public sector should make it easy for citizens to see how their money is being spent. I don’t believe that the powers that be should tailor spending numbers to include some things and exclude others. So we’re providing everything, and users can decide what they consider to be relevant. Heck, we even made the entire data set of nearly 500 variables for each district available for download. And the DESE accounting manual can be accessed on the site.

Of course, when you look at the numbers for a district, you may have some questions. Those are questions that ought to be answered by superintendents, school boards and DESE.

The post Follow the Money appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The data are fine and I have a bunch of enormous new spreadsheets to start analyzing. The presentation of the data, on the other hand, was the big letdown.

For example, if you were to look at the new report card for a school or district, you would see the following types of graphs:

The Commissioner of Education said that she hopes people use these graphs to ask questions. Well I certainly have a few. I would like to know—are students getting a year’s worth of growth in a year? This particular district is “On Track,” others are “Floor,” and the rest are “Exceeding.” I’m guessing that “Floor” is below average growth of all schools in the state, “On Track” is average growth, and “Exceeding” is above average growth. Why not just say that? Why use words like “Floor” when what you mean is below average?

Here’s another question that most folks are interested in—what percentage of students can read (called English language arts, or ELA, here) or do math on grade level? The set of colored bars that would seemingly reveal this information say 331.9 for ELA and 324.4 for math. What does that mean? The words that go with these bars are “Floor,” “Approaching,” “On Track,” and “Target.” Is “Target” the same as “Exceeding”? Why don’t these reports just show the percentage of students who scored Proficient or above?

Finally, is the district’s performance getting better or worse? This district scored -1.9 in ELA and -1.1 in math. I’m guessing that not’s good, since they’re on the orange side, but what do those numbers actually mean?

Collecting and reporting data is one of DESE’s main jobs. They’re supposed to have gotten parent input in designing school and district report cards that are parent friendly. These are not even research friendly. Why do states like Delaware, Illinois, and Michigan have terrific school and district report cards while we have these? When will DESE step up? 

The post Meet the New Report Card, Same as the Old Report Card appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Users can scroll through the vendors with whom the state did much of its spending, zoom in on a map of vendors to see who does a lot of business with the state in your neighborhood, and look at spending and transaction patterns between the state and vendors over the course of the year.

Have a thought or suggestion about future visualizations? Leave a comment below. And be sure to give the app a minute to load; after all, it’s processing over a million transactions.

The post Map: Missouri State Government Spending in FY2017 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For starters, the report refers to “greater downtown” Kansas City, which extends as far south as 33rd Street and includes the campus of Penn Valley Community College, two miles away from the Sprint Center. That may be a defensible standard, but I’m guessing it doesn’t fit with most Kansas Citians’ understanding. The photo above is of the KC skyline from a point within the area considered “greater downtown.”

The Downtown Council also released a chart of downtown population growth with projections for future growth, and the outlook is decidedly positive. But if you examine the x axis, you’ll see that 1990 is as far from 2000 as 2019 is from 2020. This scale makes for a misleading presentation of the data.

We took the exact same data points and spaced them more evenly on a time series chart. What you see is largely flat growth from 1990 through 2016. Then the population projection lines rocket upward. The report concedes that this is “unprecedented growth,” but does little to explain exactly why the next few years will be so radically different than the past few decades.

Is it credible that between 2010 and 2020, “greater downtown” Kansas City will see a 46% population growth? For some context, researchers at the University of Virginia project that Kansas and Missouri are only supposed to see a population growth of 4 percent and 3 percent, respectively, in the same time period.

The Downtown Council offers questionable analysis when it discusses which generations choose to live downtown. The text of the report states:

At 41%, Greater Downtown Kansas City has the highest percent of millennials in our community. As you move farther away from downtown, the percentage drops to 26% for Kansas City, MO and 22% for the regional MSA.

The report goes on to tell us:

The data demonstrates that the living, location, and employment patterns of millennials is generally consistent across the country. They are choosing downtown for all their needs.

The report seems to say that because 41 percent of greater downtown residents are millennials that 41percent of millennials live in the greater downtown area. In fact, millennials are not “choosing downtown for all their needs.” Looking at the same 2016 ACS Census data and breaking it down by age group instead of by region, we learn that there are 548,588 millennials (aged 15 to 34) in the Kansas City MO-KS regional MSA. Just over 140,000 live in the city of Kansas City, MO, and according to the Downtown Council, 9,388 live in the “greater downtown.” This means that 74 percent of millennials reside in the region outside Kansas City, MO; 24 percent live inside Kansas City, MO but outside the greater downtown area; and 2 percent live downtown. In other words, downtown may have a large percentage of millennials, but among millennials themselves, only a tiny fraction live downtown.

Everyone wants Kansas City to do well, and promoting a city requires sound policy that rests on solid research. The “State of Downtown” report seems to provide neither. In fact, by presenting population projections wildly at odds with both recent history and state trends, and by overlooking where millennials chose to live, this report appears to deliver little more than mere boosterism.

The post The Downtown Council’s Fuzzy Math appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This week the Kauffman Foundation released Edwise, an “online tool to help parents, educators, school districts, policymakers, and the public make informed education decisions.” It has comparable data for every school and district in Missouri (and some in Kansas) on everything from ACT scores to enrollment to student-teacher ratios.

As school choice expands in the Show-Me State, access to information regarding schools must as well. While the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) already provides data for every school district and charter school, their website is notoriously hard to navigate.

Increasingly, websites such as stlschools.org and greatschools.org are helping parents find a school that fits their child’s unique needs.

Edwise makes a great contribution with its easy-to-navigate map tool that makes data that could be daunting to comb through incredibly user-friendly.

I encourage you to check it out!

The post Kauffman Foundation Releases New Education Data Tool appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For those of you who are not yet familiar with the site, this video can help you get up to speed. Those of you who have had a chance to explore the site and how it works might be wondering how to share what you have found on Show-Me Data with others. Show-Me Data has several tools to help you do just that.

The post Sharing Charts On Show-Me Data appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If you are having difficulty creating charts, please watch this video. If you have been able to create charts, that is fantastic. However, there is more to Show-Me Data than just creating charts from scratch.

Now, take a look at Show-Me Data’s filters and see what they can do to enhance your experience.

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Have you ever wondered whether gasoline is cheaper on this side of the border or right across the state line? Show-Me Data can help you find out.

Not only can you compare various state tax rates, you can also see whether a state is gaining or losing population. You can also see how a state’s economy is performing relative to other states in the country.

We have included an introductory video on the site to show how you to get started. Please take a look and find the information that interests you the most.

The post Welcome To Show-Me Data appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This week, the Show-Me Institute unveiled Show-Me Data. Show-Me Data is an interactive web tool that allows users to create custom charts that track a state or region’s economic or demographic information over time. It also allows users to compare this information to other states.

Not only can you create your own charts on Show-Me Data, the site also features a “Popular Charts” section that has already constructed charts containing information that we have deemed to have popular appeal. You can share these charts, along with any charts you create, with your friends on Facebook and on Twitter.

We will have more posts soon about how to use Show-Me Data. For now, feel free to look around and start using the site. Also, please let us know your reactions to the site and any tips on how to make things better. You can contact us here. Thanks for taking a look. We hope you enjoy it.

The post Introducing Show-Me Data appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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Using the web tool, users can create their own charts and tables, and have access to a large comprehensive dataset. The data, formatted in a user-friendly way, includes:

• Individual state tax burden profiles
• A tool that allows the comparison of specific tax rates on items ranging from property to income to the glass of wine you may buy after hours.
• A 50-state ranking tool that allows you to customize your comparison, based on the category being taxed or year (starting from 1977). In other words, compare taxes based on location, type, or time.

I encourage our readers to play with the site, and I hope that they find this information as valuable as I do.

The post Show-Me Institute’s New Web Tool Brings Economic Data to Your Fingertips appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The map is colorful and easy to use. Still, I can’t help wondering why the Census Bureau displays this information so prominently. The Census isn’t a contest in which we try to beat other states. It doesn’t really matter which cities or counties are “ahead” in mailing back their forms.

The post What Is the Point of This Interactive Map? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.