Trust is foundational to any healthy school learning community. This is because schooling is an inherently personal affair. It is the shaping of minds, the forming of character, and a form of job preparation. And at its heart, it is relational. This is why the results of the recent public comment session for Missouri’s proposed social-emotional learning (SEL) standards are so troubling. They make it clear that many Missourians have lost trust in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).

The proposed SEL standards, which are divided into “Me,” “We,” and “Others” categories, attempt to get to the heart of student character and conduct. They include things like setting and achieving attainable goals, effective teamwork, and empathy for others. Generally, these are values that almost every parent wants for their children. Yet when DESE polled Missourians about the standards, the responses were deeply troubling.

When looking at the responses from parents and community members, little more than half (50.4%) were supportive of the “Me” standards. The other two standards areas failed to receive support from even half of those responding. In the “Others” category, which included “respect, kindness, and civility while treating others with dignity and respect,” just 46.2% of parents and community members expressed support for the standards.

Why would roughly half of Missourians not support standards that attempt to promote positive character traits? The only plausible answer is that many parents and community members simply don’t trust DESE.

Some may point to sensational social media posts or outlandish rhetoric as the culprit for the lack of trust. While it is true that issues may get blown out of proportion on these platforms, DESE and the State Board of Education bear much of the blame in this case. For too long, they have operated without any meaningful accountability. They have made promises and failed to deliver, have pushed policy proposals without the support of the people, and they have acted, at times, without statutory authority. Three examples, including the proposed SEL standards, make this clear.

Do you remember the “Top 10 by 2020” initiative? No? Well, that’s because DESE memory-holed that initiative. It was a lofty goal to move Missouri to the top of the national rankings. It was a colossal failure. Not only did we not move to the top, we moved down in most rankings. As we did, DESE acted as if the initiative had never existed.

Consider also the state’s adoption of Common Core State Standards. Without public support, DESE and the State Board jettisoned our standards and with them the state’s standardized exams. That shift launched Missouri schools into a tumultuous decade that has seen bitter fights over state academic standards and continuous changes to state testing regimes. In 2011, Missouri’s proficiency standards were rated the eighth most rigorous in the country by Education Next. By 2017, the same publication rated Missouri 48th in the country. In one of the few areas in which we actually were in the top 10, the rigor of our academic standards, DESE and the State Board of Education led us to the bottom of the barrel.

Recently DESE promoted social-emotional learning standards. As if their track record wasn’t bad enough, they did so without proper authority. When DESE began this process, they listed Section 161.1050 of the revised statutes of Missouri as justification for implementing the SEL standards. Then, after I noted this statute had nothing to do with SEL standards, DESE began listing new statutory authority on documents, specifically Section 161.092. This statute is about the “power and duties of the state board.” Once again, the statute has nothing to do with standards or social-emotional learning. In other words, they were grasping at straws to justify a proposal that they have no statutory authority to make or implement.

If many Missourians do not trust DESE to teach their children about good character or social-emotional learning, maybe it’s because DESE has failed to lead responsibly for far too long.

The State Board of Education rejected the SEL standards at their last board meeting, citing the negative feedback. This was the right move, and it could be seen as a first step toward regaining the trust of Missouri parents and community members. At that same board meeting, Commissioner of Education Margie Van Deven stated that she will be stepping down at the end of the school year. This provides the State Board with a terrific opportunity to take the next step: finding a commissioner of education who is able to restore the public’s confidence in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The post It Is Time to Restore Trust in Missouri’s Public Education System appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Listen on SoundCloud

Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, executive editor of Education Next, editor in chief of the Education Gadfly Weekly, and host of the Education Gadfly Show podcast. An award-winning writer, he is the author of The Diverse Schools Dilemma, editor of Education for Upward Mobility, and co-editor of How to Educate an American and Follow the Science to School. An expert on charter schools, school accountability, evidence-based practices, and trends in test scores and other student outcomes, Petrilli has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Slate, and appears frequently on television and radio. Petrilli helped to create the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement and the Policy Innovators in Education Network. He lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland.

Produced By Show- Me Opportunity

The post How We’re Writing Off an Entire Generation with Michael Petrilli appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Listen on Stitcher 

Listen on SoundCloud

The post The Great School Rethink with Rick Hess appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Turning the School Choice Knob Up to 11 with Matthew Ladner appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One of the most common concerns with private school choice programs is the impact that they might have on traditional public schools. It’s all well and good for the students who get to use a voucher/scholarship/ESA, but what about those children left behind in public schools?

Well, a team of economists from Northwestern, UC-Davis, and Emory University set out to answer that very question. Using detailed records from 1.2 million students from the 2002–03 school year to the 2016–17 school year, the researchers were able to link school attendance to standardized test scores, student behavior, and absenteeism. They used a variety of measures of competition to determine how much “pressure” the Florida school choice program put on public schools as it grew and matured. They have written up the findings in a very user-friendly way in the magazine Education Next.

What did they find? I’ll let the authors say it themselves.

We find broad and growing benefits for students at local public schools as the school-choice program scales up. In particular, students who attend neighborhood schools with higher levels of market competition have lower rates of suspensions and absences and higher test scores in reading and math. And while our analysis reveals gains for virtually all students, we find that those most positively affected are students with the greatest barriers to school success, including those with low family incomes and less-educated mothers.

You just love to see it.

The post School Choice Shines in Florida appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We have been debating the issue of school choice in Missouri for more than 20 years now and it doesn’t look like our lawmakers are any closer to reaching a consensus. Meanwhile, a revolution has taken place in Florida. Ron Matus has documented this change in his terrific piece, “Miami’s Choice Tsunami,” appearing in the winter edition of Education Next.

Matus explains:

Today, 45 percent of Florida students in K-12 attend something other than their assigned schools. Charter schools are part of the mix. So are private schools that can be accessed with choice scholarships. So is an ever-growing array of district options.

This wave didn’t just happen.

In 1996, the Florida Legislature passed a law allowing creation of charter schools. The first opened that fall in Miami’s Liberty City community. Two decades later, Florida had 295,814 students in 655 charter schools—and one of the largest charter sectors in America.

In 1997, the Legislature created the Florida Virtual School to ramp up online learning. It started with 77 students and five courses. Today, it serves more than 200,000 students a year.

In 1999, the Legislature created the McKay Scholarship, a state-funded private school voucher for students with disabilities. In 2018-19, it served 30,695 students in 1,525 private schools.

In 2001, the Legislature created the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students. As of June 2019, it was serving 104,091 students in 1,825 private schools. In students and funding, it is the largest private school choice program in the U.S.

The results in Florida speak for themselves. The state is seeing incredible gains in student achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “The Nation’s Report Card.” As the Orlando Sentinel reported, “Something very good is happening in Florida.” Indeed, it is.

In Miami, the focus of Education Next article, the beloved superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, embraced school choice. Matus writes, “Instead of resisting the inevitable forces of choice and customization that are re-shaping public education, Carvalho and Miami-Dade chose to harness them . . . They realized it was too powerful to avoid—and too brimming with opportunity not to embrace.”

It is time for Missourians to stop debating the merits of school choice. Choice is good. Options are good. Competition is good. While we fail to act, innovation is happening elsewhere. Now is the time to act. Now is the time to expand educational opportunities in Missouri.

The post Stop Debating School Choice. Give Us Options Now! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We are in danger as a society of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. We tell everyone that teaching is a thankless, underpaid job and then we wonder why we see declining rates of people going into teaching. 

It is time for us to engage in a little positivity. Teaching is a great profession.

Take for evidence the results of a recent working paper by Alberto Jacinto and Seth Gershenson. Using survey data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY) and the attached Child and Young Adults Supplement (CYA), they examine whether children pursue a career in the same field as their mothers. Their data include jobs of 4,572 children and 2,488 mothers.

Interestingly, they find that children of teachers are significantly more likely to go into teaching than children of nonteachers. They write, “19% of the children of teachers go on to become teachers, compared to only 8% of the children of nonteachers.” While they see some similar trends in other comparable jobs, such as nursing, the relationship between mothers and their children’s jobs is not as strong anywhere as it is in teaching. As Jacinto and Gershenson note, “there is something unique about teaching, as there is relatively strong inter-generational transmission of the profession, even when compared to “similar” professions.”

Jacinto and Gershenson don’t have an explanation for why this is so. They wonder, “Does the transmission of teaching occur because of parental pressure, network membership, information and choice set, or a combination of factors?”

I have a hypothesis: teaching is a great job and the kids of teachers know it!

Sure, there are challenges; it’s work and all work has its thorns and thistles. Nevertheless, teaching as a profession has many redeeming qualities.

Teaching is a job with purpose. As Justin Tarte, the executive director of human resources in the Union R-XI School District wrote on Twitter: “What most adults will never experience in their jobs: A student visiting them years later to say thanks for being there when nobody else was. A parent writing an email saying you changed their child’s life & they can’t thank you enough. That’s why being a teacher is awesome.”  

Teaching provides a stable middle class income. People think teachers make much less than they actually do, typically underestimating the average amount by nearly $19,000. Plus, benefits for teachers are nearly twice as generous as they are for workers in the private sector.

Teaching provides a family-friendly schedule. There are few other jobs where you get winter break, spring break, summers off, plus an additional allotment of “sick” or “personal” days throughout the year.

I could go on, but I think you are getting the point—teaching is a great profession. It’s time we said so.

The post Despite What You’ve Heard, Teaching Is a Great Profession appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In a separate analysis in Vox, Alvin Chang suggests that this unrest may have something to do with the fact that teacher salaries are failing to keep pace with inflation. Using average teacher salaries in each state from 2004 to 2016, Chang finds that teachers have had their pay essentially cut by three percent over this period when we account for inflation. In Missouri, that cut was 2.3 percent.

There is, however, a glaring problem with this calculation. From 2003 to 2016, there have been demographic and staffing changes in the teacher workforce. Schools have decreased class sizes, hiring more, younger teachers. With an influx of less experienced teachers, the average pay will be lower. But this doesn’t mean the salary schedules (the pay systems used for teachers) are losing ground to inflation.

To assess whether teacher salary schedules in Missouri are keeping up with inflation, I reviewed the annual salary report of the Missouri State Teacher’s Association (MTSA). MSTA collects salary schedules from each school district. The report lists the average pay for four key categories: bachelor’s degree minimum and maximum, and master’s degree minimum and maximum. The data cover a five-year period.

Below, I show the average salary, as reported on the salary schedules, in each of these categories.  As you can see, pay has been increasing over this period of time. The question is whether these increases keep pace with inflation, which helps us assess whether teacher salaries are going up or down in real terms without the impact of demographic changes to the workforce.

Figure 1: Average Salaries in Missouri Based on Salary Schedules

In the next graph, I adjust the salaries for inflation. As a result, all values are in constant 2017 dollars.

Figure 2: Average Salaries in Missouri Based on Salary Schedules (Inflation Adjusted)

As you can see, almost all of the lines are fairly flat. From 2013 to 2017, salaries dropped by a small margin for the bachelor’s minimum salary, the master’s minimum, and the bachelor’s maximum, while the master’s maximum saw a small increase.

• Bachelor’s Minimum Change: -0.001%
• Master’s Minimum Change: -0.002%
• Bachelor’s Maximum Change: -0.005%
• Master’s Maximum Change: +0.007

There is nothing wrong with wanting to ensure that teachers are well paid, but we need to be careful about how we analyze the data. By simply comparing average teacher salaries over time, we forget that the population of teachers is changing.

When we look at the actual salary schedules, which determine how much teachers are paid, we see little change in inflation adjusted pay scale over the past five years. Salary schedules were keeping pace with inflation, but the population of teachers changed, giving some the misleading impression that teacher salaries were falling behind.

The post Are Missouri Teacher Salaries Going Down? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In September, the reconstituted board announced that it was conducting a search to find a new commissioner. Like many, we hoped that the state would hire someone with a fresh vision and a vigorous approach to reform who would be determined to improve the performance of schools in Missouri.

The need for new leadership is undeniable.

When Dr. Vandeven was named commissioner of education back in 2014, the state’s education system had an ambitious goal: to have Missouri’s students performing among the best in the nation— “Top 10 by 2020.” Needless to say, that goal was never achieved. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” Missouri ranked 31st in 8th grade math in 2007 among the 50 states. Fast forward to 2017, and our ranking in the same subject and grade was 32nd.

During this same time, Missouri has had a revolving door of state standardized tests for students. According to a study published in Education Next¸ Missouri was the only state in the nation to actually lower proficiency standards between 2009 and 2017. Every other state is demanding more from their schools, while we’re asking for less. Why are we okay with that?

Not surprisingly, the Top 10 by 2020 goal has been quietly dropped. We have lost (at least) a decade in improving student outcomes, and we have no North Star.

During Dr. Vandeven’s tenure, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) began the process of revising the Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP), the system used to accredit school districts. Today, out of 527 public school districts, not a single one is unaccredited and just six are provisionally accredited. DESE technically only accredits districts, not individual schools. Yet when the St. Louis Public School District became fully accredited, every school was given an enormous banner to hang outside with the school name and “Fully Accredited!” on it. What’s a parent to think?

There are far too many schools in Missouri with rates of proficiency in the single digits. DESE touts a high school graduation rate of nearly 90 percent, and then reports that fewer than 43 percent of graduates are college- or career-ready. Doesn’t every student deserve to have at least one high-quality option for their education?

It would be churlish to place the entire blame for this state of affairs on Dr. Vandeven, or any single official. Education is a complex process, educational bureaucracies are notoriously hard to change, and education in Missouri has been troubled for a long time.

But for precisely those reasons, we need to face the truth: Doing the same thing but expecting different results won’t work. During Dr. Vandeven’s tenure as commissioner, DESE made no real effort to provide parents useful information about how well our schools and districts were serving students. And DESE has stood firmly against any form of school choice for parents outside of Kansas City or St. Louis, regardless of how well (or poorly) students are being served by their assigned public school.

It is clearly time for a fresh look and a new approach at DESE. And yet last Wednesday, the board announced that the search for a commissioner was over, and that the new commissioner of education would be . . . the former commissioner of education, Dr. Vandeven.

We’ll have more to say about education in Missouri—a lot more—as state government prepares for the Legislature to reconvene in January. But for now, this much is clear:

If the members of the board, and the Governor who appointed them, had been trying to send the signal that they were satisfied with the status quo in Missouri; that they were throwing in the towel on real reform in the public schools and real options for Missouri families; that they were more interested in not making waves with the educational establishment than in making the lives of our children brighter—they made exactly the right choice.

The post One Step Forward, Two Steps Back appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When a school district in Missouri loses accreditation, students are allowed to transfer to a higher-performing school district. In recent years, thousands of students from the Normandy and Riverview Gardens School Districts used this provision in state statute to transfer to some of the highest-performing school districts in the state. But students lost the right to transfer when the state board of education voted to give the school districts provisional accreditation, based in part on improvements in student achievement-test scores. Based on the Education Next study, we have to wonder whether those learning gains were just an illusion caused by the state making the test easier.

It is important to understand this analysis is not comparing the rigor of the learning standards in each state. Standards say what students should learn in each grade. The relevant measure here is what students must score to be considered proficient by the state assessment. While the tests are developed based on the standards, setting the cut-score is a subjective process.  The lower the cut-score, the higher the percentage of students who will score proficient.

In 2009, Missouri had among the most rigorous assessments in the nation. The two images below come from a report from the U.S. Department of Education, “Mapping State Proficiency Standards Onto the NAEP Scales.” Look far to the right and you will notice that Missouri led the nation in rigor on the 8^th grade reading assessment and had the third most rigorous state assessment in 8^th grade mathematics.

What followed 2009 was chaos. Missouri adopted the Common Core standards and ditched our rigorous state assessment. The state then went through turmoil as citizens pushed back against the Common Core, the legislature called for new standards to be written, and the state shuffled through four different state assessment systems. In the end, we wound up with an assessment that was easier than the one we had before.

Forget for a moment the overall message that lowering standards sends and the potential it has to impact all students. In the cases of Normandy and Riverview Gardens, lowering standards may have had a direct and detrimental impact on students. The year Normandy lost its accreditation, just 22 percent of the district’s students scored proficient or advanced in communication arts and 23 percent did so in math, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 2017, the district regained provisional accreditation even though the performance of students in the district was not substantially better. That year, 34 percent of students scored proficient or advanced in communication arts and only 19 percent did so in math. Keep in mind these scores were with the easier tests.

Missouri’s state board of education voted to give provisional accreditation to the Riverview Gardens School District in 2016 and the Normandy Schools Collaborative in 2017. It seems those decisions may have been based on the faulty assumption that the student achievement in the districts was improving, when it seems the state was just giving easier tests. At the very least, we owe it to the students of these districts to investigate this further.

The post Like a Sore Thumb: Missouri’s Testing Standards Buck National Trend appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A recent study in Education Next by Daniel Hamlin and Paul Peterson of Harvard University shows that Missouri’s state assessments have gotten easier. In fact, Missouri was the only state in the nation to decrease the difficulty of state assessments from 2009 to 2017. As recently as 2009, Missouri’s state tests were given a grade of “A” by the publication and were ranked second in the nation, behind only Massachusetts. This meant we set a high bar for achieving proficiency. Since then, we’ve dramatically lowered our standards. Missouri’s assessments now receive a letter grade of “C” and rank us 48^th in the nation.

 Keep in mind that test scores are a significant component of the score a school district receives on the state’s Annual Performance Report (APR). Normandy has made substantial improvement on the APR. The district scored just 7.1% in 2014. When the state board voted to reaccredit the district, the APR score was 62.5%. That score was just barely above the 60% threshold for provisional accreditation and was the district’s first year scoring in that range. At the time, 8.7 percent of the district’s 8th-graders scored proficient or advanced on the state’s easier assessment.

We shouldn’t dismiss the progress the Normandy Schools Collaborative has made. Under the steady leadership of Superintendent Charles Pearson and the oversight of the state, the district is clearly heading in the right direction. The question is whether the state’s easier assessments may have given the school district the extra 2.5 percentage points on the APR that put the district into the provisional accreditation range. More importantly, would the state board of education still have voted to reaccredit the school district if the members had known some portion of the district’s academic gains were illusory?

We won’t know the answer to that question for some time. Right now, the state board does not have a quorum as the five members who voted to fire the commissioner have been withdrawn. This means the board can take no action on this or any other issue. It also means that students in Normandy and other provisionally accredited school districts will be required to return to their home school districts next year. Students who transferred to Clayton, Kirkwood, and other high-performing school districts will be forced to go back to the schools they sought to escape. 

When the vacant state board seats are finally filled and the board reconvenes, they will have a lot of work to catch up on—including hiring a new education commissioner—so it will be easy for the members to overlook the situation in Normandy. That would be an injustice to the students there. At the very least, the board should thoroughly investigate the extent to which easier tests cost them the opportunity for a better education.

The post Did Easier Tests Cost Normandy Students the Right to Transfer? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As we watch teacher strikes throughout the country, that’s the same question we should be asking public school administrators.

For decades, our nation has seen substantial increases in education funding. In Missouri, per-student spending in inflation-adjusted dollars increased 33 percent from 1992 to 2014. Yet during that time, average teacher salaries decreased by 4 percent. How is that possible?

What did you spend your money on?

When we look at the numbers, the answer is obvious—people and pensions.

As economist Benjamin Scafidi has shown, the growth in the number of teachers and staff has far surpassed the growth in students. From 1992 to 2015, Missouri saw a 9% increase in students. Meanwhile, schools bulked up by increasing the teaching workforce by 28% and all other staff, including school principals and central office workers, by 24%. When given the money, schools chose to spend it on decreasing the pupil teacher ratio from 16.0 to 13.6. They chose to spend it on aides, principals, secretaries, you name it. They chose not to spend it on pay raises.

But that’s not the only thing keeping teacher salaries down. School administrators also chose (or were forced to choose) to shift compensation into retirement and benefits. This was a shift of about 6 percent of current operating expenditures that went from salary to benefits (see the figure below for a breakdown of Missouri expenditure numbers from 1998 to 2014). Make no mistake: This wasn’t done in order to make teacher benefits better. It was done to help pay for the promises they’d already made.

We all want great teachers, and many of us believe we should increase teacher pay. In fact, 61percent of respondents in the 2017 Education Next poll said we should increase or greatly increase teacher pay. Yet when we increase funding for public schools, the money just doesn’t make it into teachers’ paychecks. Something has to give.

Given the budgetary pressures faced in most states, marching to the statehouse is not an effective strategy. Even if they succeed in getting more funding for public education, there is a good chance that it will not result in substantial pay raises for teachers. At least that’s what history has shown us.

Instead, teachers should be marching to their central office; because to get higher teacher salaries, the system has to change. Schools need staffing policies that provide teachers with raises. And pensions must be reformed so teachers can have more pay today, not in 30 years when they retire. In other words, teachers need to start asking the question: “What did you spend our money on?”

The post School Administrators, What Did You Spend Your Money On? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But as usual, a closer look calls such clear distinctions into question. In her EducationNext article on accreditation and its possible role under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Jennifer Oldham contacted the Show-Me Institute’s Emily Stahly for a better understanding of what the reinstatement of accredited status means for Saint Louis. Unfortunately, as Emily wrote back in January, in this case the news is hardly cause for celebration. The district was accredited even though most students scored below the “proficient” level in both math and English on standardized tests, because “higher scores in the attendance and graduation-rate categories made up for poor results in academic achievement.”

Oldham’s article examines accreditation from several angles, including the effect that loss of accreditation can have on districts and communities and also the incentives that accrediting agencies face. The entire article is worth reading, and offers some ideas to consider as Missouri adapts to the ESSA standards for accountability.

The post A Closer Look at Accreditation appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Unfortunately, there is a terrible myth going around about teachers. This myth is pervasive and has been around for decades. It is the belief that teachers are badly underpaid.

Jay Greene, Distinguished Professor of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas, wrote about it in his influential 2005 book, “Education Myths: What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe about Our Schools and Why It Isn’t So.” Greene argued that when we compare a teacher’s hourly rate to those of other professionals, the pay is quite comparable. He also noted that we must consider other employment benefits, such as health care and retirement, which are typically more generous in education than the private sector.

Despite these arguments, the myth of grossly underpaid teachers has persisted. Recently, an Education Next poll asked respondents if they thought teacher pay should increase, decrease, or stay the same. Overwhelmingly, respondents said we should “increase” (47%) or “greatly increase” (14%) teacher pay. That in and of itself isn’t telling; if it were feasible, most of us would happily pay teachers more. The telling part is what happens when survey participants are given actual teacher salaries. When people are told how much teachers are paid, support for pay raises drops.

Most people greatly underestimate how much teaches actually paid. In the survey, the average guess for the national average teacher salary was $40,587. That is $17,672 less than the actual average of $58,258. It is also less than the average here in Missouri, where the average total teacher salary in 2016 was $49,060. In Saint Louis City and County, the average climbs to $58,701 (author calculations).

 About two years ago I had to battle this teacher pay myth in my own home. My son came home from school saying teachers didn’t make very much money, at least that’s what his teacher said. I said, “I bet she makes more than me.” So, we looked it up (both of our salaries are public information). As it turns out, his teacher made several thousand more than I do.

The problem with the teacher pay myth is that it undermines a very noble and valuable profession. As Harvard education professor, Marty West suggests, “To the extent that the public has a falsely low impression of [how] much teachers earn, that only makes it harder for us to attract talented individuals into the teaching profession.”

 If we keep perpetuating the notion that teaching is a thankless job and teachers are underpaid, we shouldn’t be surprised when we have teacher shortages. Instead, let’s be honest—teaching is a great profession and the pay isn’t bad!

The post Teachers Are Great, and the Pay Isn’t Bad! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As of right now, her confirmation hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, so if you’d like to know some background before she is questioned by the Senate, check out the article here!

The post Who is Betsy DeVos? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Early Returns: School Poll Results appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A few highlights:

1. 55% of Americans give their local public school an A or B grade, but only 25% of Americans give U.S. public schools as a whole an A or a B.
2. Without prompting, 61% of Americans think that we should spend more on public schooling. When given the actual amount that their local school spends, that drops to 45%.
3. Opinions on Common Core are evenly split, with 42% of Americans supporting it and 42% opposing.
4. 28% of Americans support teacher tenure, and 54% oppose it.
5. 69% of Americans support annual standardized testing of students

The first four findings didn’t really surprise me. The twin phenomena of liking your local school but disliking schools as a whole and thinking that your local school needs money until you’re told how much it spends have been documented by EdNext and others for years now.  The Common Core has been in freefall, so that wasn’t unexpected either.  Teacher tenure remains predictably unpopular.

I was surprised, though, at the durability of opinion on the value of standardized testing. Sixty-nine percent is strong support, and I would have thought with the unpopularity of the standards that many of the tests are based on that would have been a drag on opinion on the tests themselves. It looks like that isn’t the case!

What interested me most as a school choice advocate was public opinion about school choice issues.  The poll asked questions about charter schools, vouchers, and tuition tax credits, and the findings might surprise you.

On charters, overall public opinion is 51% pro and 28% against. When observed by party affiliation, we see Republicans more likely to support charters (60% Pro and 21% Against) than Democrats (45% Pro and 33% Against).

Vouchers are, on average, less popular than charter schools, but interestingly, enjoy more support from Democrats than Republicans. Overall opinion (for a universal voucher program that all students would be eligible for) is 45% pro and 44% against with Democrats splitting 49% pro and 39% against and Republicans splitting 41% pro and 49% against.  When the question is asked about a voucher program targeted to low-income students, the program becomes even less popular, with overall opinion 37% pro and 48% against (with Democrats 42% pro and 43% against, and Republicans 31% pro and 54% against).

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly for those of us in a state with a Blaine Amendment, tax credit scholarships were more popular than either vouchers or charter schools. Fifty-three percent of Americans support tax credits while only 29% oppose them. The partisan split remains though, with Democrats supporting more than Republicans. Democrats split 57% pro and 26% against while Republicans split 49% pro and 33% against.

It is always good to take the nation’s temperature on issues of schooling. School choice supporters in particular should take a moment to reflect on these findings. Perhaps supporters (and opponents) aren’t who we think they are. 

The post Democrats Like Vouchers More Than Republicans Do, and Other Findings from the 2016 Education Next Poll appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Based on Steinhoff and Yoakum’s comments, I’d like to make three points:

Point #1: Pensions Take From Some to Reward Others

The generous teacher retirement benefits for those who stay in the system for their full career are made possible by the contributions of those who leave the system early. According to Yoakum, “The retirement system is designed to provide a career employee in Missouri schools with roughly the same standard of living they had.” The key phrase there is “career employee.” Workers who leave early face a severe financial penalty.

As McShane pointed out in the article (and as I’ve noted before on the Show-Me Institute blog), benefits from the teacher pension system do not exceed a teacher’s contributions until they have worked for 28 years. 28 years! As a report from the Urban Institute noted, 62% of Missouri teachers do not stay for that long. The majority of teachers are not benefiting from the pension system, but are instead subsidizing the benefits of others.

Point #2: Retirement Benefits are an Ineffective Way to Recruit Teachers

Yoakum contends that the pension system is helping recruit teachers to Missouri. This is a poplar refrain among pension supporters. At first glance, the argument makes sense—better benefits attract more people. The problem is that people, especially young people, typically don’t pay much attention to their retirement benefits. This is illustrated by the quote from Steinhoff, “It is the best kept secret even within the profession because, for most teachers, it doesn’t come on their radar until they’re teaching for about 25 years.” I fail to see how a well-kept secret helps recruit teachers.

As a National Bureau of Economic Research report notes, employees value current pay much more than they value deferred compensation into a pension system.  Thus, a better way to recruit and retain teachers might be to pay them more now, rather than promise them more later.

Point #3: Pensions Pull Some to Stay, Push Others Out

OK, maybe pensions aren’t the best way to recruit new workers, but they do help keep teachers in the system, right? As Yoakum said, “From the employer standpoint, it does provide golden handcuffs to a certain extent. When a teacher has accumulated a certain years of service, it’s very hard for them to leave. This helps our school districts retain those very good teachers.”

This “Golden Handcuffs” phenomenon is discussed by economists Robert Costrell and Michael Podgursky in an Education Next article with the same name (see their excellent illustration above). The yellow line is the value of Missouri’s teacher pension system, while the black line represents a smooth-accruing cash balance plan. This shows how teachers who leave early are worse off under the current system. As a result, Costrell and Podgursky agree with Yoakum that the back-loaded nature of PSRS pulls teachers to stay until full retirement—but at a cost. First, there is no indication that the “pull” is felt only by the “very good teachers” to whom Yoakum alluded. Indeed, there may be some teachers who are burnt out and want to retire, but feel compelled to stick it out until they reach full retirement. How is that good for kids? And after a teacher reaches their peak pension value, the system punishes them and pushes them out. Thus, beyond a point, the system acts as a disincentive for veteran teachers to stay.

We cannot accept the merits of defined-benefit pension systems simply because they provide a terrific benefit to a fraction of our teachers. Rather, we should consider whether the system is designed to provide fair retirement support for every teacher in Missouri. Clearly it is not. 

The post Missouri Pensions Reward Some, Punish Others appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There are currently no figures available for how many Missouri students opted out, but the Wall Street Journal reported that 20 percent of students opted out of New York state tests this year.

A recently released survey showed that despite lobbying from an eclectic group of advocacy organizations (including Tea Party Republicans, Black Lives Matter activists, and teachers’ unions), 59 percent of Americans are opposed to parents deciding whether or not their child takes a standardized test. At the same time, the 2015 Education Next poll indicated that a large number of Americans do not believe state governments do a very good job of measuring what students learn in math and reading.

So while Americans may want to know how students are doing at the state and national level, state governments may want to rethink how they hold schools accountable.

NPR Education highlighted four alternatives to standardized testing that were featured in Anya Kamenetz’s book, Why Our Schools Are Obsessed with Standardized Testing, but You Don’t Have to Be, as follows:

(1)   Sample. Instead of every student taking a test, only a small, representative group does. This alternative wouldn’t require changing anything about the testing process or the actual test itself, but it would give many kids a break from testing year after year.

(2)   Stealth assessment. Students are tested throughout the year using low-stakes evaluations such as quizzes. The data shows which skills students have mastered at a particular moment as opposed to measuring all students in all skills at the same point in the year.

(3)   Multiple measures. This is just what it sounds like. School districts are evaluated using graduation rates, discipline, demographic information, teacher created assessments, and post-graduation outcomes. 

(4)   Social and emotional skills surveys. Studies show that students can be evaluated using nonacademic measures. Some districts are using measures like hope, for example, as a way to evaluate their students’ high school and college potential. In 2014, 64 percent of Rockwood students reported feeling hopeful.

(5)   Inspections. This type of policy places an emphasis on student assessments, as well as presentations, performances, and reports. In the United Kingdom, for example, inspectors observe lessons, evaluate work, and interview students and staff members.

What should Missouri’s public school accountability system look like? Is it really necessary to test all students every year? Are there better measures than just reading and math proficiency? These are tough questions, but taking a long look at alternatives to standardized testing might provide answers.

The post Opt Out? Or Opt In to Other Accountability Measures appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

During Green’s tenure, Kansas City’s school district improved on some indicators.  Unfortunately, even with this growth, in absolute terms, the district is far from where it needs to be.  The graduation rate is only 67 percent.  As I wrote recently, that’s better than the 50 percent it was two years ago, but it’s still well behind our regional peers.  (Little Rock has a 75 percent graduation rate, and Chicago’s is 70 percent.)

Dr. Green’s departure gives the Kansas City community a chance to take a step back and think about the fundamental organization of the city’s schools.  Does a centralized bureaucracy, even led by someone with great talent, have the capacity to meet the needs of every child in the city? 

Look at New Orleans. Once considered home to some of the worst schools in the country, the Crescent City decentralized the operation of its schools and changed the role of city and state government to that of a funder and regulator. Since that time, the city has seen a marked improvement.

According to an article in the summer issue of the journal Education Next, in 2005, 64 percent of students in New Orleans attended a school designated as failing by the state of Louisiana. By 2015, it was only 9 percent.  High school graduation rates have grown from below 50 percent to over 70 percent.  What’s more, the gap between the performance of New Orleans’s schools and those in the rest of the state is closing—a more than 20 point gap among students scoring “basic” or above on state tests has shrunk to only four points. The expulsion rate is even below the state average.

The lesson from New Orleans and other cities around the country is that we should not build school systems that require a superstar at the helm in order to work.  In such a system, one great superintendent can move mountains, but one bad superintendent can jeopardize everything.

If the city were to move the operation of schools to independent and autonomous organizations and limit its role on funding and regulation, it would maximize the likelihood that the system could create the number and type of schools the children of Kansas City need. 

The city has already started down this path with a broad swath of charter school options, which clearly haven’t harmed the district.  It’s a great time to think about expanding those options to more Kansas City families.

The post New Superintendent Gives Kansas City Opportunity to Rethink School Organization appeared first on Show-Me Institute.