Once again, Missouri has been outdone by a neighbor. On the very important issue of early literacy, we should look closely at the move Oklahoma just made. With the signing of Senate Bill 1778, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has essentially ended the era of social promotion for children who can’t read. Oklahoma’s “Strong Readers Act” provides a roadmap that Missouri should follow.

One of the more controversial aspects of the law relates to third-grade retention. Starting in the 2027–28 school year, students who score below the basic level on the Oklahoma state test (the equivalent of Missouri’s MAP test) and who cannot pass a secondary literacy assessment may be required to repeat the grade. While retention is an unpopular strategy, the bill balances this with a multi-tiered system of support. This means schools will use statewide screenings to identify issues as early as kindergarten, triggering immediate interventions such as small-group tutoring and summer academies. Missouri should adopt a similar mandate. By making retention a real possibility, the law forces the system to pivot toward early intervention.

Unfortunately, Missouri’s attempts at literacy reform have stagnated this legislative session. Despite broad recognition that our reading scores are headed in the wrong direction, Missouri lawmakers are stuck in debates about which test to use, the negative effects of retention, and local control. There are still a few weeks left for them to resolve their differences. They owe it to our students to stop passing them through a failing system and start ensuring that every student is equipped with the reading skills they need to succeed.

The post Oklahoma Is Holding Itself Accountable appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In the years since Wright’s appointment, Mississippi has reversed its last-in-the-nation status with an impressive increase in the percentage of its fourth graders who can read at grade level. In 2013, only 21 percent of Mississippi fourth graders achieved a score of proficient or above on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), well below the 2013 national average of 34.8 percent. By 2019, Mississippi had improved that by a whopping 11 percentage points, a magnitude of gain that is rare on NAEP. In just six years, Mississippi fourth grade reading scores were equivalent to that year’s national average of 34.6 percent.

While scores have only just hit the average mark, Mississippi’s literacy growth in 2013 to 2019 exceeded that of every other state by seven points. During the same time period, Missouri continued to tread water. Our fourth-grade proficiency rate actually decreased by one point, from 35 to 34 percent. So, what did Mississippi do differently?

In 2013, along with appointing Wright, Mississippi passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA), requiring third graders not reading at grade level by the end of a school year to remain in third grade for intensive reading intervention. This requirement stems from research showing that students learn to read in kindergarten through third grade, then read to learn from fourth grade onward. Because of this, third graders who can’t read proficiently are four times more likely to fail to graduate from high school than those who can. Mississippi’s retention of students with literacy deficiencies gives them another chance to reach this important milestone and ensures that students are fully prepared to hit the ground running in fourth grade.

Missouri has already made some progress on this issue. Governor Parson signed SB 681 this spring, which requires reading intervention for struggling K-3 students. The new law, however, doesn’t require that third graders who demonstrate reading deficiencies be retained, and early research suggests that Mississippi’s strict enforcement of its retention policy may have played a major role in the NAEP score increase. If that proves true, Missouri lawmakers should consider taking a page out of Mississippi’s book by requiring that students read proficiently before starting fourth grade.

The post A Lesson on Early Literacy from the Magnolia State appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Supporters for the value of pre-K point to a single preschool program, the HighScope Perry program in Ypsilanti, Michigan that ran from 1958 to 1962. The participants had been tracked over 40 years and the resulting data provide much of the basis for what supporters claim is the benefit of pre-K.

The Mid America Regional Council (MARC), which will administer the Kansas City pre-K program if approved by voters, claims in its 2018 “Status of Children and Families” report that (page 45):

Research shows that every dollar invested in early childhood education saves up to $13 in future social costs, leading to lower crime rates, fewer adults on public assistance, fewer teen pregnancies, and a stronger, more prepared workforce.

Mayor Sly James’s pre-K Implementation Plan for pre-K similarly claims (page 44):

. . . the public benefits accrued over time from children who attended HighScope Perry Preschool program in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at a rate of 13 to one.

These returns seem too good to be true. And they are. The 13-to-one return comes from a single study of the HighScope Perry plan published in 2005, which claimed:

For the general public, higher tax revenues, lower criminal justice system expenditures, and lower welfare payments easily outweigh program costs; they repay $12.90 for every $1 invested. However, program gains come mainly from reduced crime by males.

The HighScope Perry study was of 123 “low-income African-American children who were assessed to be at high risk of school failure.” Only 58 were randomly assigned “to a program group that received a high-quality preschool program at ages 3 and 4.” The high-quality program included:

• Two school years of preschool running October through May;
• A center-based program for 2.5 hours per day with “4 teachers for 20 to 25 children”;
• Home visiting for 1.5 hours per week; and
• Group meetings of parents.

Only 39 of the participants in this study were male (see footnote 3 here). In other words, Mayor James and MARC want voters to believe that a small-scale, intensive two-year education program conducted with 39 high-risk boys can be extrapolated to the more than 6,000 children in Kansas City.

Even other proponents of pre-K are more restrained in calculating possible returns. Economist and Nobel laureate James Heckman wrote in a 2017 research summary of that same HighScope Perry program (emphasis added):

Every dollar spent on high quality, birth-to-five programs for disadvantaged children delivers a 13% per annum return on investment. These economically significant returns account for the welfare costs of taxation to finance the program and survive a battery of sensitivity analyses.

As I pointed out in a recent American Public Square panel discussion about pre-K in Kansas City, the program Kansas City voters are being asked to support is nothing like the HighScope Perry program Heckman analyzed. The plan being put before voters does not have anywhere near the 5 or 6 to 1 ratio of child to teacher, will not include home visits, will not be two years, and will not spend as much per child as HighScope Perry did.

A recent blog post discussed the unimpressive findings on pre-K programs such as Head Start that more closely resemble what Kansas Citians are being offered. But using HighScope Perry’s results to pitch pre-K for all in Kansas City is nothing short of a bait and switch.

The post Kansas City’s Pre-K Bait and Switch appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Mike McShane on Pre-K Effectiveness appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Or, better yet, they may consider how little research there is on the matter. According to a recent article by Haley Glatter in the Atlantic, there are very few studies that thoroughly examine state-run and state-funded pre-K programs. Moreover, these studies are inconclusive on whether or not pre-K offers lasting benefits.

In Georgia and Oklahoma—states with universal pre-K programs—there is evidence that pre-K has reduced achievement gaps. The jury is still out in New York, which established universal pre-K only two years ago. Tennessee, on the other hand, implemented targeted pre-K for low-income children. Positive results were evident when these children entered kindergarten, but the benefits began to fade by first grade. By third grade, these students were performing worse than other students on statewide assessments.

Here are a few things we can take away from these states’ experiences:

• The quality of the pre-K programs offered matters immensely—not all pre-K is created equal.
• Good pre-K programs will not make up for the deficits of a failing K-12 system.
• There are only a handful of programs operating at a state-wide scale which makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions on pre-K.                                                                                                 

One of the lingering questions about Amendment 3 is what exactly the pre-K program it creates will look like. In his recent analysis of Amendment 3, the Show-Me Institute’s Michael McShane writes:

To date, it simply isn’t clear what the regulations for participating schools will be. In one sense, this uncertainty means we should probably reserve judgment, but in another it makes it hard to support a program when we don’t know what that program will ultimately look like.

On the one hand, it makes sense for us to gather as much information as we can about the effectiveness of pre-K programs before Missouri designs a program of its own. But then, does it also make sense to wait until we have a well-researched plan in place before amending the constitution and investing such a significant amount in early childhood education?

The post Is Expanding Pre-K a Good Idea? The Jury Is Still Out. appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

At first glance, I can see why folks might want to support such an effort. Smoking is bad, so we should tax it. Preschool is good so we should provide it.

Oh, how I wish it were that simple!

In my new essay, Amendment 3: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, I break down all of the intricate issues involved in this proposed constitutional amendment. What is the impetus for this proposal? Is there really a need to be met here? Is pre-K as big of a deal as supporters say it is? Do tobacco taxes have any downside?

I hope that the essay will increase understanding about the possible consequences of this amendment (intended and unintended) and help Missourians cast more informed votes as a result.

The post Analyzing Amendment 3 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Amendment 3: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Today, more than half of all U.S. states have a private school choice program, but Missouri is not among those states.

It may be the fear of change that prevents opponents of school choice from envisioning what the current K-12 public education system would look like if replaced by a system of choice and competition.

As I found out in my search for the perfect preschool for my three-year-old son, if you want to see Friedman’s vision of a vibrant school marketplace in action, you don’t have to look much further than Missouri’s own preschool market.

In contrast to the increasingly standardized classrooms you might find in the K-12 sector, there are literally hundreds of options in early learning. This includes the Montessori approach, where children learn through their own experiences, as well as the Waldorf approach, where children are provided with a consistent routine in a homelike setting. There are language immersion preschools, religious preschools, and even preschools where children learn through nature, like the preschool program at the St. Louis Zoo.

Picking the right preschool requires consideration of a child’s strengths and weaknesses. My own son, for instance, could use some practice with early numeracy skills like counting, but he dislikes structured educational activities. For him, the play-based preschool approach is best.

Once I found a few preschools offering play-based learning in the St. Louis area, I had to find something in my price range. One of the arguments politicians often make for universal preschool or “preschool for all” is that preschool isn’t affordable for even middle-income households like mine. Therefore, they reason, it should be subsidized for everyone.

In reality, many preschools I found in the area were quite reasonably priced. When you consider that traditional public schools spend over $10,000 per student per year, the $3,500 tuition First Congregational Preschool charges begins to feel manageable.

Why the difference in costs? In the public school system, parents don’t pay for schooling directly and have little choice in where their kids go to school, so it shouldn’t surprise us when we see high costs and low quality. But in the private preschool market, competition (and picking up the tab ourselves) drives costs down.

This isn’t to say that squeezing $3,500 into an already-tight budget will be an easy feat. Obviously, it would be great to save $3,500 per year and send my son to the local school district tuition-free.

But then I remember a simple truth: making something free doesn’t make it quality. And as is the case with many parents, quality is my number one priority. Take Normandy School District: Would providing universal preschool fix the failing district’s problems? Or would it just add another grade onto an already failing school system?

Making preschool free for all could have other unintended consequences, like putting quality preschools out of business and diluting innovation in early learning with standardization and regulation.

Some policy leaders in Missouri and across the nation want to make preschool free for every child. But if we’ve learned anything from the failures of the K12 system, it's that we have to figure out how to leverage the marketplace that already exists, not destroy it. Efforts like Minnesota’s Early Learning Scholarship Program, for example, offer scholarships of up to $7,500 to low-income families to help them afford preschool options. Low-income children gain access to preschool, and the marketplace is preserved—it’s a win-win solution.

I am excited to send my son to a preschool that fits his needs. If Missouri wants to give low-income families that same opportunity, universal pre-K is the not the answer. 

The post Universal Pre-K May Destroy the Preschool Marketplace appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

“The benefits read like a laundry list of personal responsibility: more employment success, higher earnings, better health, greater education attainment, lower chances of incarceration, reduced likelihood of dropping out of high school, fewer teen pregnancies, and on and on.

Early education is good for business as well. Pre-K graduates show up on time, ready for work and with a temperament essential for work place success. They also possess confidence, curiosity and a greater sense of purpose, all of which will help the private sector’s bottom line…”

In short, next time I’m running late, I’ll just tell my boss, “Sorry, I didn’t go to preschool.” That ought to get me off the hook.

Preschool supporters like Schoemehl have good intentions, but often make the mistake of talking about preschool as if it’s some kind of cure-all. That just isn’t the case. While it’s true that preschool can offer some benefits for low-income students, creating a quality program is difficult. When preschool programs are constructed, they usually import some of the worst problems of our public K-12 system.

In a recent study, Vanderbilt University’s Peabody Research Institute performed an independent evaluation of the state’s Voluntary Prekindergarten program (TN-VPK). TN-VPK offers a full-day prekindergarten option for four-year-olds. The program focuses on the neediest children in the state.

Despite previous findings that showed that the Tennessee prekindergarten program was successful in producing improvements in academic skills by kindergarten, Vanderbilt found that there were no statistically significant differences between TN-VPK participants and nonparticipants by the end of first grade. Brookings Institution senior fellow Russ Whitehurst called the results “devastating for advocates of the expansion of state pre-K programs.”

In his letter, Schoemehl wasn’t necessarily advocating for a state-based program, “If we want our children to grow into responsible adults, then our kids need better options and those options need to start at birth,” he said. Schoemehl is right about one thing—options are key.

A targeted, market-driven program could deliver at least some of the results Schoemehl discussed, though no preschool model is a silver bullet. Missouri already has a large private preschool market. A voucher program that allows parents to choose the option that makes sense for their work schedules and children’s needs is a far better method of expanding access to early childhood education than simply adding a grade to an already struggling public K-12 system.

The post Preschool: Silver Bullet? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For universal Pre-K supporters, this was a major loss, but for Missouri taxpayers, our “failure” to get the grant is actually a win. Federal grants have a history of costing states more over time—Race to the Top is a recent education-related example.

Missouri already has doubled its expenditures toward expanding early childhood education. The Department of Economic Development (DED) made $10 million available to promote the expansion of public Pre-K programs just last year.

Preschool education is where Missourians already have the most school choice. Expanding public options will only duplicate existing services, likely shifting some students from the private to the public sector, where there is no guarantee the services will be better.

Nationally, 74 percent of four-year-olds already are enrolled in Pre-K or home-based programs. Using listings from Great Schools, the table below highlights the number of private Pre-K options versus public ones in several of Missouri’s cities.

Research on the benefits of early childhood education has yielded mixed results. Even those studies showing significant benefits of preschool expansion touted by Gov. Jay Nixon as “proven” are subject to criticism. One comprehensive study on the effects of Head Start showed there was no long-term increase in cognitive abilities of children who participated in the early education program. Yet, Nixon gave the organization $7 million just last year.

Missouri taxpayers should not pay for services that already exist, especially if the research backing those services is shaky. There are better solutions to addressing the educational needs of children in poverty, ones that don’t include government mandates.

The post If You Like Your Preschool, You’ll Be Able to Keep-Not Again! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A 2009 study by the Center on Reinventing Public Education estimated that Missouri is spending an extra $146,603,923 to fund the bump received when a teacher earns a master’s degree. The problem is that there is no evidence that earning a master’s degree actually makes a teacher better in the classroom. I can say this as someone who has studied the issue thoroughly and as someone who earned a master’s degree while teaching. Moreover, many teachers are receiving bumps for degrees, like administration, that will simply take them out of the classroom.

The master’s degree bump draws money away from other worthy endeavors that might improve educational outcomes for students. The editorial board of the Des Moines Register gets this. They recently wrote, “If Iowa truly wants to spend education money wisely, such automatic pay increases for teachers should be rethought.”

North Carolina recently moved to eliminate the master’s bump. Maybe Missouri school districts should follow that lead.

The post The Master’s Degree Bump Boondoggle appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Since 1965, we have spent more than $180 billion on Head Start. That is a lot of pennies! I am not so sure this program is worth the cost.

The KSDK piece does a nice job of presenting the traditional arguments on both sides of this issue. Unfortunately, the traditional debate lines are structured as Head vs. Heart. That is, the academic literature says Head Start is not working, but the heart says that we must serve these disadvantaged students. The proposition is set up as if it is an either-or; either we can serve low-income families through Head Start or we do not serve those families.

I firmly support helping disadvantaged families access quality educational programs. That is why I support school choice. In my opinion, the question is not whether we should help poor families. The question is whether Head Start is an effective way to do that or if there might be a more effective method.

Watch the video and tell me what you think the proper role of government is in this regard.

Additionally, here are some previous Show-Me Daily posts on Head Start:

Early Childhood Education Funding

Choice, Not Early Childhood Education, Is a ‘Smart Investment’

The post Is Head Start ‘Worth Every Penny’? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

All of the above have been pushing increased funding for early childhood education on the basis that it will provide a great return on investment, up to a stratospheric level of 8–1 in the widely-criticized study the Post-Dispatch cites. (And they accuse us of being a “belief” tank?)

The folks at the Cato Institute have been doing a great job covering the topic of early childhood education. In a recent post, they state that the large returns on investment often cited do:

. . . not in fact refer to the typical return from federal or state pre-K programs. It refers to the findings from a single intensive 1960s early childhood experiment that served 58 children in Ypsilanti, Michigan- The High/Scope Perry preschool program. Out of the literally hundreds of preschool studies conducted in the past half-century, the Perry results are not representative and have never been reproduced on a national or even a state level. In fact, an earnest experimental effort to reproduce them for just a few hundred children at eight locations failed despite an annual investment of $32,000 per child, adjusted for inflation . . .

I have written about these claims.

Spending money on children is appealing and it is something almost everyone agrees is a worthwhile endeavor. I am not opposed to spending tax money on early childhood education, but I am opposed to universal pre-school programs or systems that put the private market at a competitive disadvantage. I am also opposed to selectively using the research to advance a point, when the data simply do not bear out. The Post-Dispatch would, no doubt, call us out if we did that.

As Cato puts it, “What we have here, in other words, is a monumental act of cherry picking rather than an example of scientifically grounded policymaking.” In other words, it “just ain’t so.”

The post It Just Ain’t So appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There is just one problem with this statement: it is wrong, or at least misleading. For starters, the study referenced in the editorial suggested we could expect an $8 return on every $1 invested in early childhood education. The results they are citing come from a 1960s study that has been wrought with criticism. Moreover, the pre-school program in the study does not even resemble most of today’s early childhood education programs.

A good example of a failed modern early childhood program is Head Start. A recently released U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study of Head Start found that academic gains do not last, fading out by third grade. Add that to a growing list of evaluations of Head Start  that have the same findings. The Wall Street Journal editorial board concluded that Head Start “. . .wastes taxpayer dollars at a time when the country is running trillion-dollar deficits.”

The evidence is simply not as clear as the editorial board has made it out to be.

The post Early Childhood Education Funding appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Regarding early childhood education, both are absolutely wrong. The governor has made early childhood education part of his platform. Nicastro has stated she is “very encouraged” about this because “the research is very clear” that early childhood education improves educational outcomes.

There is just one problem with that, the research is not very clear. In fact, as the Wall Street Journal just pointed out, “since its creation as part of the War on Poverty in 1965, nearly 30 million children have participated in Head Start at a taxpayer cost of more than $180 billion. The problem is that by the government’s own reckoning the program has never achieved what it promises.”

In the most recent, rigorous federally funded evaluation of Head Start, they found that any positive gains had disappeared by third grade.

If the governor and commissioner really want to follow the research and improve educational outcomes for students, I suggest they look at another federally funded evaluation. The Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, a voucher program, found that students who used a voucher were significantly more likely to graduate from high school.

Other studies have found similar results. An evaluation of a New York City voucher program declared that “using a voucher to attend a private school increased the overall college enrollment rate among African Americans by 24%.”

Add these to a growing list of rigorous voucher evaluations that have shown positive results. Moreover, not a single study of vouchers has found significant negative effects.

Gov. Nixon called investing in early childhood education a “smart investment.” The real smart investment would be to provide families with more educational options, including private schools.

The post Choice, Not Early Childhood Education, Is A ‘Smart Investment’ appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Here’s the abstract:

In Project STAR, 11,571 students in Tennessee and their teachers were randomly assigned to different classrooms within their schools from kindergarten to third grade. This paper evaluates the long-term impacts of STAR using administrative records. We obtain five results. First, kindergarten test scores are highly correlated with outcomes such as earnings at age 27, college attendance, home ownership, and retirement savings. Second, students in small classes are significantly more likely to attend college, attend a higher-ranked college, and perform better on a variety of other outcomes. Class size does not have a significant effect on earnings at age 27, but this effect is imprecisely estimated. Third, students who had a more experienced teacher in kindergarten have higher earnings. Fourth, an analysis of variance reveals significant kindergarten class effects on earnings. Higher kindergarten class quality – as measured by classmates’ end-of-class test scores – increases earnings, college attendance rates, and other outcomes. Finally, the effects of kindergarten class quality fade out on test scores in later grades but gains in non-cognitive measures persist. We conclude that early childhood education has substantial long-term impacts, potentially through non-cognitive channels. Our analysis suggests that improving the quality of schools in disadvantaged areas may reduce poverty and raise earnings and tax revenue in the long run.

For those who don’t want to read the whole paper, the research is also available as a PDF of Power Point slides.

The post Importance of Quality in Primary Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This is an example of a Parents as Teachers activity that shouldn’t be publicly funded. Infant massage is not crucial for every child’s development. You don’t need any special massage program to prepare your child for kindergarten. If your baby grows up without experiencing infant massage, that fact alone won’t cause him or her to be a burden on taxpayers.

I understand that infant massage isn’t the whole focus of Parents as Teachers. But I want to point out that not everything Parents as Teachers does is essential, and there is room for cuts when the state budget necessitates them (as it does now).

The post Tax Dollars Shouldn’t Pay for Massage Classes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The district is missing some of the advantages of programs like Parents as Teachers, that send educators into homes. It won’t have the opportunity to observe every child’s daily schedule and family environment. It also won’t be able to watch parent-child interactions very closely or make individualized suggestions.

On the other hand, the district won’t incur the cost of paying people to drive out to every child’s house and spend time with them one-on-one. While I’m skeptical of the assertion that Begindergarten “will not cost the district any money” — even if it’s run by volunteers, there’s at least the expense of photocopying all the materials — it won’t call for anywhere near as much funding as Parents as Teachers.

Some Parents as Teachers programs do minimize home visits as children get older, or place greater emphasis on group programs. It would be wise for more of the Missouri programs to move in this direction, because Missouri doesn’t have the resources to give every child the ideal home visiting program through age five. Parents as Teachers will have to consider whether the most costly aspects of its model are truly necessary for all the children it serves, or whether something like Begindergarten would be good enough for older children.

The post Getting Children Ready for Kindergarten: An Alternative to Home Visits appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I agree that the program provides too many services for free to too many people, but not all suggestions for limiting it struck me as good ideas. One plan in particular that I think would be unsuccessful is restricting the program to children who are lagging behind in their development.

An argument for Parents as Teachers that I find persuasive (although not sufficient justification for free services to the wealthy) is that helping at-risk children when they’re young can prevent problems and save tax dollars later on. Parents as Teachers couldn’t do that if only children with below-average development were let in. That’s because the younger children are, the easier it is for their development to be considered satisfactory; not much is expected from a newborn baby. But when children are a few years old, they need to have passed several milestones to still be on track. The effect of screening by development would be to keep out most babies and bring children into the program years later, after their developmental problems have surfaced. Programs like Parents as Teachers shouldn’t look for children who are already behind, but for children who are fine now and likely to fall behind later.

Furthermore, “normal” means different things to different people, and there is some subjectivity involved in diagnosing developmental delays. In this radio interview, a representative from Parents as Teachers talks about the possibility that doctors and Parents as Teachers educators might disagree about whether a child has a developmental problem. (I can readily believe that such differences might arise, because Parents as Teachers educators don’t need to have any medical background and their training consists of short seminars and distance learning.) Who would have the final say in determining whether a child is eligible? And there’s still the question of which mothers should get home visits before their babies are born.

Although I hope Parents as Teachers will end its free home visits to families that don’t need help, it shouldn’t use developmental screenings to determine which people to serve.

The post How Not to Limit Eligibility to Parents as Teachers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This is a popular program that participants feel they gain a lot from, so I realize my opinions aren’t going to change how it’s run. That being the case, I wish people would stop making statements like this one in a letter published in the Post-Dispatch:

Studies have shown that parents who take part in Parents as Teachers are more involved in their child’s school once the child starts kindergarten.

Well-off parents who care about their kids will be the first to sign them up for programs like Parents as Teachers, and they’ll also be the most likely to be active in their kids’ schools. We can’t infer any causal relationship there as long as Parents as Teachers continues its current eligibility policy.

The post Revisiting Parents as Teachers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.