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As the sub-headline of Catherine Gewertz 2019 Education Week article states, “Through ‘action civics’ lessons, students become activists in their communities.” As Gewertz notes, “The name of this instructional model—’action civics’—signals its mission: not only to teach students how their government works but to harness that knowledge to launch them into collective action on issues they care about.”

This post is the first of three related to the topic of action civics. It is prompted, in part, by a recently released report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation. In their report, Thomas Lindsay and Lucy Meckler lay out important reasons for concern regarding action civics. They note:

In the course of this examination, we will come to see that, in the final count, the debate over Action Civics presents two contrasting views of democracy. Action Civics stems from a communitarian, participatory view of democracy, which finds its roots in Rousseau’s concept of the “general will.” At its philosophic roots, this agenda tends to distrust the checks on popular will offered by the representative democracy crafted by our founders and enshrined in the Constitution.

As this blog series will make clear, the proponents of action civics are clear in their intent—they hope to produce students who are more inclined toward activism. Importantly, the goal is not just to address social ills, but to address them through government action.

Many teachers throughout the country and within Missouri may have adopted an action civics pedagogy for teaching students because of the rich platitudes offered by its supporters. They may agree that students learn better by doing rather than by “sitting and getting” as is often common in social studies classrooms. The problem here, as I have alluded to in my intro, is that proponents of action civics and the teachers that implement this strategy in their classrooms were so concerned with whether they could teach students in this way that they did not stop to think whether they should.

Asking students to “become activists in their communities” or to advocate for collective government action before laying a foundation of understanding regarding political philosophy (including that of federalism and limited government) is a recipe for disaster. It leads to the types of outcomes we currently see in our political landscape where the very people advocating for the rights of one group are quick to trample on the rights of others. It drives students to see their actions as right and noble and those who oppose them as cruel and mean spirited.

Despite what proponents of action civics might say, it is not the duty of public schools to launch activists. Rather, it is the duty of public school teachers to help students understand this great American experiment in self-government. It is their duty to teach students about our institutions and their roles, as presented in our founding documents and the writings of the founding fathers. Furthermore, it is the duty of teachers to help students understand that people today have different views on the role of government and on the best policy solutions to the problems we face. If your goal is solely to create activists (and activists of a particular kind), you might skip some of these essential lessons.

The post Action Civics: Teaching Students to Become Activists (Part 1 of 3) appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Read the latest from Susan Pendergrass

Parents are angry and confused right now. Many are receiving mixed messages from school districts. Critical information arrives late in the process and changes frequently. It’s up to school districts and the Missouri Department of Secondary and Elementary Education to fix this. But that doesn’t seem likely to happen before school starts this fall—and parents need help right now. So we’ve created a resource page designed to help parents figure out what their options are and what sort of questions they ought to be asking. Of course, this is only a small subset of what is out there, but we hope you find the below information useful. Please feel free to share this with anyone you think might benefit.

Questions parents should be asking superintendents, school board members and legislators:

1. Can I have a portion of my child’s state funding to purchase in-person learning if my district isn’t offering it?
2. Will the district make teachers available for micro-schools for those who want and need them?
3. Could the district open some school buildings for students to do their virtual learning with an on-site teacher assisting?
4. What if I don’t have high-speed internet access? Hot spots were insufficient last spring.
5. I don’t like my school’s virtual education programming. Can I switch to MOCAP after the school year starts?
6. Why hasn’t the state waived the requirement for receiving district permission to enroll in MOCAP this year?
7. My child can’t attend school in person. Can I have state funds to enroll them in a high-quality virtual provider of my choice?
8. If I decide to have my child stay virtual, do I need to register as a homeschooler?

Options that may or may not be available for this school year:

Missouri Course Access Program (MOCAP) – MOCAP has 11 providers of full-time virtual education that have been vetted and approved by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). A law passed in 2018 gives all Missouri students the right to request enrollment in any of the providers. Currently, districts are required to assess the request and determine if virtual education is a good fit for the student or not. Parents can appeal a denial of permission. Districts have an unlimited amount of time to respond to MOCAP enrollment requests.

UPDATE September 22, 2020 – 10 Day Deadline for MOCAP Review

Missouri Virtual Ed

Letter: Missouri online program virtual lifesaver for students

Missouri committee may propose changes to virtual education program

Missouri panel to request temporary removal of districts serving as MOCAP gatekeeper

Free virtual resources:

Khan Academy

NoRedInk

Virtual resources that cost money:

Virtual Stream tutors

Florida Virtual School

Micro-schools – A group of 10-15 multi-age students with one teacher. There are several national networks, but parents would have to work fast to create a micro-school at this point. Any that aren’t charter schools charge tuition.

What Is a Micro School? And Where Can You Find One? (edweek)

Acton Academies:

Acton Academy

Lighthouse International 

Prenda network:

Prenda

More on the Micro-school Movement (Forbes)

What are “micro-schools” and “pandemic pods”? (Today)

Why and How to Open a Microschool (gettingsmarter)

PODs – Groups of families that agree to have their children learn in-person together while limiting their access to anyone outside the group. These are being formed in Missouri, but with no public assistance.

Parents turn to “pods” as a schooling solution

YMCA of Metropolitan Columbus offering learning pods

College Station Taekwondo business offering learning pods

Kansas City YMCA

At least one parent has started a POD business

Watch: How to Start an Education Pod

“Little Pod Platoons” Are Education’s Answer to Lockdowns This Fall

“Pandemic Pods” Are Fundamentally Reshaping K-12 Education

Microschools on the rise in Arizona, with COVID providing added boost (AZ Mirror)

Parents Turn to “Pods” for School During Pandemic (WebMD)

Scholarships – Giving state money directly to parents to pay for tuition or tutoring. These are not available in Missouri, but could be. Each governor received flexible stimulus money under the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEERs) program. Governor Parson has received $54 million. So far, Governor Parson has allocated $24 million to higher education. The allocation of the remaining $30 million is unknown. Other governors have used portions of their GEERs funds to create scholarships for low-income students.

Oklahoma used GEER funding to create a scholarship that will help low-income families purchase curriculum content, tutoring services, and technology 

South Carolina used GEER funding to create SAFE Scholarships

Governors Direct Federal COVID-19 Aid to Private School Scholarships (EDweek)

The post Fall 2020 Educational Resources for Missouri Parents appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Education Week has a detailed cheat sheet on the ins and outs of the bill, but the Associated Press’s summary cuts to the core of the issue, “The bill would return to the states the authority to decide how to use students' test performance in assessing teachers and schools, and it would end federal efforts to encourage academic standards such as Common Core.”

I want to underscore just how important this is. In education, as in most policy areas, federal involvement is a one-way ratchet. Federal influence in education has been on the rise since the days of Sputnik, accelerated by President Johnson as part of the War on Poverty, and brought to its apex by No Child Left Behind. This looks to be the first time that trend has been reversed.

The tide is turning because people across the country and across the political spectrum have realized that the federal government is in a terrible place to try and dictate education policy. We have 100,000 schools in 14,000 school districts spread all across our vast and diverse nation. Trying to centrally determine how to hold schools accountable is simply too great a challenge. Those decisions are much better made by individuals closer to children and the communities where they live.

The bill still has to pass the Senate and be signed by the President, but all indicators point to that happening relatively soon. If and when it does, Missouri will have much more control over its educational future, and the hard work of creating a world-class education system without Uncle Sam breathing down our neck can begin.

The post No Child Left Behind Has One Foot in the Grave appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Why is Missouri perpetually in the middle when it comes to academic rankings? After all, we are several years into an initiative launched by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to get Missouri into the top 10 by 2020. This initiative has spawned changes at nearly every stage of education, from pre-kindergarten to teacher preparation. One could argue that these changes just haven’t had time to take root, and once they do, Missouri students will be making academic gains like gangbusters. I doubt it.

Missouri is not likely to make significant improvements, because Missouri’s education policies are predicated on getting things right—if we get certification right, teachers will get better; if we get standards right, instruction will improve; if we get accountability tests right, achievement will rise. The list could go on and on. The problem is that we don’t know the “right” way to do these things for every child and every teacher in every school, and we never will. Until our education policies shift from a “getting things right” mentality to one that fosters continuous improvement, we should not expect marketable differences in outcomes.

How do we do this? Andy Smarick outlines a nice plan in his book, The Urban School System of the Future. He starts with a somewhat controversial but true premise, “The traditional urban public school system is broken, and it cannot be fixed. It must be replaced.” Smarick goes on to substantiate this claim and offer a solution, creating an educational market where new schools regularly open and bad schools regularly close. This is how improvement happens in every other sector.

Smarick’s proposal would require substantial legislative changes, but here are two easy places for Missouri to start moving in the right direction.

1. Allow charter schools to enroll students across district boundaries.
2. Expand options for students by establishing an Equal Opportunity Scholarship program.

These changes themselves will not get us anywhere near what The Urban School System of the Future outlined. They will, however, begin moving Missouri toward that system of continuous improvement.

The post Missouri Ranks 33rd on New Quality Counts Report appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Both of these posts stem from my paper, “The Salary Straitjacket.” So who is right, Mead or McShane? Well, both are correct.

McShane writes, “Once we realize that different teachers have different labor market values, we can have a conversation about linking teacher pay to teacher performance.”

Mead concludes, “There are almost certainly circumstances where it makes sense to pay a really great gym, or art, or music teacher more than some math teachers get paid. The real problem is that our current system doesn’t take issues of value-added or demand/supply into account at all.”

Though they may disagree with who has better options in the marketplace, both scholars agree that schools should not pay all teachers the same. Instead they should reward teachers based on their marketability, which includes their performance.

I did not write “The Salary Straitjacket” simply to say that math and science teachers make less when they should make more. I wrote the paper because we need to rethink how we compensate teachers; the low pay of math and science was a clear illustration of why. In the end, it is not about one type of teacher being better or more valuable than another; it is about rewarding teachers for their unique contribution to their school.

I conclude the paper with this: “The bottom line is that Missouri school districts must depart from the single salary schedule if they want to attract and retain high-quality math and science teachers . . .” Replace math and science in that sentence with any other subject and I think the statement will still hold true. We must stop treating all teachers as if they are the same.

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I strongly recommend everyone watch the video. Speaking as someone who would normally rather take a dart to my eardrum than watch an online video of a political speech, you can trust me that this one is worth it. After you watch it, read the Post-Dispatch’s take on it and try and decide where you stand. Needless to say, I support the governor here. I think that cuts to the size and scope of government in our state, along with consolidations for greater efficiency, are long overdue, and I give great credit to any elected official of either party who is willing to make the tough choices and hard decisions, as the governor is doing here.

I have not fisked a Post editorial or column in a while — probably not since Eric Mink left. But I think that both this topic and article deserve a point-by-point analysis:

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, in an address to a group of business leaders in Springfield last week, called for plugging the $500 million gap in the state budget with a program to “right-size state government by cutting programs, trimming the workforce and consolidating departments while maintaining excellence in our services.”

Some of his ideas: Whacking 1,000 more employees from a state payroll that already has been trimmed by 1,800 workers; closing some county offices of the Family Support Division, making it harder for people to get to one; selling 2,000 state vehicles; outsourcing child support collection to private firms; combining the Highway Patrol and the Water Patrol; eliminating the May 8 Truman’s Birthday state holiday; streamlining the environmental permit process and “modernizing” (i.e., reducing) pension and health care insurance for state employees.

So far, all of this sounds perfectly reasonable and positive to me.

“My blueprint for change will recalibrate the size and scope of state government, giving us a government that is leaner, nimbler and less costly,” Mr. Nixon said.

Also, he said this: “One thing is off the table here in the Show-Me State. We will hold the line on taxes.”

Excellent.

In all, this is the kind of plan you’d expect from a Republican governor.

But Mr. Nixon is not a Republican. He calls himself a “fiscally conservative Democrat.” This is nothing if not politically expedient, a quality that has marked Mr. Nixon’s entire career.

I will avoid the political aspects of the article, because commenting on that is not part of my role here at the Show-Me Institute.

Given the Republican majorities in the Legislature and the reflexive anti-tax sentiment in Missouri’s suburbs and rural areas, and given where most campaign cash comes from, it would take a far bolder leader than Jeremiah W. Nixon to tell Missourians the reality.

Although I’m avoiding the politics, I should point out that some of the personal attacks detract from the seriousness of this article.

The simple truth is you can’t cut $1.2 billion from the state budget in two years, as Mr. Nixon has had to do during the economic downturn, and still emerge with a budget that meets the state’s crushing needs.

Whose “Truth”? Who defines “crushing?”

Here’s another truth: Those “excellent services” that Mr. Nixon talks about don’t exist. In rankings among the 50 states for various state services, Missouri generally ranks in the mid-30s to the mid-40s. In public health spending, Missouri is 50th. In Education Week’s recent survey of overall performance on school achievement, the state ranked 40th.

Unbelievable. The Post claims that services are of a low quality, and uses public health spending levels as evidence. It is possible, however, to have low spending levels and still have quality services. At least the other examples cited performance measures (biased as they may be), rather than spending levels.

In his speech, Mr. Nixon touted a report by Moody’s Investment Services that ranked Missouri, largely because of its Triple A bond rating, as one of the states poised to lead the nation in economic recovery. But Mr. Nixon won’t take the lead on a proposed capital bond program that would put Missourians to work.

I am not adamantly opposed to the bond program proposal, but the Post blindly assumes that the short-term economic benefits will outweigh the added debt payoff in Missouri’s long run. It may, but the governor hardly deserves criticism here.

A similar survey done by online newspaper The Daily Beast — and not in thrall to bond ratings — showed Missouri ahead of only Michigan in its economic prospects in the next eight years.

“Take him to Detroit!”

Missouri is a low-tax, low-service state, ranked 16th among the 50 states in The Tax Foundation’s business climate index. Yet that hasn’t brought businesses and jobs knocking on the door. Even before the recession, the state’s growth was flat.

Perhaps this is because all taxes are not equally distortionary, and businesses are more concerned with high state income and earnings taxes than our comparatively low property and sales taxes. We’ve released several studies dealing with these points.

Perhaps its low investment in public health and education quality has something to do with it. Perhaps its low investment in highway, bridge and other infrastructure has something do with it. Perhaps its penuriousness on safety-net services for its people has something to do with it.

I dispute the term “low.” The amount of this type of investment in Missouri may be lower than in some other states, perhaps, for some of the above examples. However, I outright dispute the infrastructure factoid above. Reason ranks Missouri 23rd in its highway system quality. And I want to live somewhere with a lower-level safety net. Expanding the welfare state is not the way to grow the economy. Does the Post really think that economic growth is aided by the expansiveness of a state’s welfare system? That is just ludicrous.

Now comes Mr. Nixon with a bugle sounding retreat.

And then there’s the so-called “Fair Tax” proposal. It was pushed in the Legislature earlier this session and now is being pushed in a petition drive. The man behind both is retired investment executive Rex Sinquefield. The “Fair Tax” would eliminate the state income tax and replace it with a “consumption tax” — a sales tax on nearly everything.

We have written about this issue enough around here.

The state sales tax, now 4.225 cents on the dollar, easily could climb to 7 or 8 percent. Depending on how successful lobbyists are at carving out exemptions, it could go as high as 12.9 percent, according to an analysis done for the Missouri Budget Project, a liberal-leaning think tank.

The Post is correct here. The latest plan has a rate of 7 percent, because a few major exemptions have been added, and that rate would indeed suffer more if lobbyists are successful in getting still more exemptions approved.

When you add local sales taxes (anything from 2.1 cents in parts of St. Louis County to almost a nickel in parts of the city of St. Louis) that would mean you’d be paying an additional 15 to 19 cents on everything you buy.

This is factually wrong. The plan includes decreasing local sales tax rates if the “Fair Tax” were adopted, in order to prevent a windfall for local governments.

Yes, that would attract jobs and businesses — to Illinois and Kansas.

It might encourage some retail businesses to move, particularly those near the Kansas border, but the exact same set of incentives would encourage other types of businesses — like, oh, say, corporate offices — to move into Missouri.

Missouri must live within its means. But the means don’t have to be quite so mean. The Missouri Budget Project suggests three simple, fair steps that Mr. Nixon and the Legislature could take to offset the need for many of the new cuts.

These ought to be good.

• Collect sales taxes from all online vendors, not just those with employees in the state. This could return $180 million a year to state and local governments.

On top of just being wrong, this would be extremely difficult to enforce, and probably impossible at this time. Please tell me: What services does an online vendor in California receive from Missouri that would justify forcing it to collect a sales tax?

• Eliminate the so-called “Geoffrey Loophole” — named after Geoffrey the Giraffe, the mascot of Toys“R”Us, one firm that exploits the loophole. It allows companies to reduce the profits shown on Missouri tax returns by transferring income from subidiaries to out-of-state corporate umbrella companies. Taxing all the profits they earn in Missouri could return $90 million a year.

Taxing all the profits might also encourage some businesses to leave Missouri entirely. Then where would we be? However, this point is not entirely off-base. Eliminating loopholes can be great, but only if the overall rates are correspondingly lowered.

• Eliminate the “Timely Finally” discount given to corporations that pay their taxes on time. Individuals who pay on time don’t get a discount. Why should corporations? Estimated new income: $39 million a year.

This refers to the credits businesses get when they submit employee income tax withholdings and sales taxes on time. If the state forces private businesses to serve as its tax collectors, it should compensate them in some manner. This is no different from paying jurors a small salary.

Long term, real leaders will have to lead a discussion about the true relationship among taxes, services, growth and prosperity. Missouri taxes individual incomes over $9,000 at the same 6 percent rate. If you make $9,000 you pay the same 6 percent as the guy who makes $9 million. Or $99 million.

Finally, something on which we can all agree. If the “Fair Tax” does not receive the support of a majority of Missourians, than we should increase the threshold at which you’re required to pay the highest tax rate of 6 percent. That would entail a tax cut for almost every Missourian, but would really benefit people with lower incomes.

In 2007, each Missourian enjoyed the benefits of $66 paid by corporations in income tax. Per-capita corporate income taxes were higher in all eight bordering states, ranging from $233 in Kentucky to $109 in Iowa. Rich people and corporations are getting a deeply discounted ride on the backs of the poor and working class.

This is absurd class warfare rhetoric. By this logic, states should all be in a race to levy the highest amount of taxes possible.

If this had yielded jobs and prosperity, that would be one thing. But it hasn’t. And it won’t. And eliminating the income tax entirely would make a bad situation catastrophic.

Missouri is doing better than most other states in this recession, not worse. The state’s relatively low tax rates help that. And, as a point of fact, none of the suggestions in Gov. Nixon’s speech involve getting rid of the state income tax.

Mr. Nixon’s solution: Cut more services for the poor and middle class. Lay off more state workers. Wrap it all up in clichés and euphemisms and call it “right-sizing.”

There is perhaps nothing more important, cruel as it may sound, than keeping a lid on the overall number of state workers. Almost every government employee (and I used to be one), becomes an enthusiastic advocate for higher taxes and more spending, in part as a direct result of the perverse incentive that it would directly benefit them and their families.

Blight-sizing is more like it.

And the win goes to the governor.

The post “Rightsizing State Government” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The State registered C’s and D’s on important matters, such as children’s chances of success, transitions and alignment from early childhood to post-secondary education, and teaching. In addition, according to the study, Missouri is not offering incentives to highly qualified teachers, and has among the lowest teacher salaries. This should be a wake up call for improvement. So many solutions could be proposed to improve the quality of education we are giving to our children — our future. Many of these solutions can be found in the Show-Me Institute’s studies and articles about education policy.

The post It Is Time for Education Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The number of certified Title III ELL teachers to serve these students is dismal – 372 students per teacher in Missouri and 19 students per teacher nationwide. The report says there are no teacher standards for ELL instruction in Missouri while 33 other states do have such standards.

Is there cause for concern here? Yes and no. The lack of official standards and certification doesn’t worry me. After all, many recent college graduates are successfully teaching English all over the world through programs like Fulbright. They do get some training beforehand, but nothing like what’s required for an education degree or ELL certification in the U.S. Teaching English in this country should be less challenging, because students here are simultaneously exposed to new English-speaking peers and hear English during the entire school day. Teachers shouldn’t need special credentials to teach English in this setting.

However, Missouri should strive to do better in this area, because only about 55 percent of Missouri English language learners are  showing improvement on the MAP tests. (That’s not bad when compared to other states, but clearly far from ideal.)

I’m looking forward to seeing how well language-immersion charter schools are able to teach English language learners. For example, a native Spanish speaker starting kindergarten at the St. Louis Language Immersion Schools would have an advantage in the early grades, and then would be formally introduced to English in late elementary school. Perhaps the strong foundation in the student’s native language would ease the gradual transition into English.

The post Learning English appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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• Education Week has a story on how the increased enrollment in charter schools across the country has hurt enrollment at Catholic schools. We have certainly seen this in St. Louis, with the controversial decision to close several city parishes and schools in recent years. I think this is one of the things that just happens. As parents get a less expensive (free), quality option for their children’s educations, many low-income people are going to take that. Change is often good, but nobody said it was always easy.
• The Arch City Chronicle is reporting about a bill that would take away the driver’s licenses of teenagers not in school. While I certainly understand the use of incentives to keep kids in school, and none is more powerful than a driver’s license, I would recommend to you Eric Dixon’s post the other day on unintended consequences. A fairly obvious unintended consequence of this bill would be to limit the employment opportunities for teenagers who have left school. It would be limited to jobs along public transit routes, which don’t require a car. Now, that may be a decent number of jobs, but further limiting opportunities for people who are already limiting their own opportunities might not be such a good thing.
• Missourinet has a story on the Missouri House of Representatives moving to restore the deductibility of property taxes for outstate taxpayers who work in Missouri. This is an excellent, and unanimous, move by the House, and if it passes overall it will head off retaliatory moves by other states. This is very important to me, because I commute here to work from Singapore.
• Finally, in a contender for stupidest idea of the year, the Post-Dispatch is reporting that Illinois is considering lowering its voting age to 17. However, an even worse idea is contained within the article:

Alex Koroknay-Palicz, executive director of the D.C.-based National Youth Rights Association, said his group is pushing for the voting age to be 16 across the country.

"(They’re) informed, active and intelligent, and they deserve a voice in our democracy just as much as everyone else," he said.

Koroknay-Palicz said 16- and 17-year-olds are typically more stable than an 18-year-old. Eighteen-year-olds have more on their plate — starting college, getting a job or moving away from home, he said.

"The trouble is, though, that when you give people the right to vote at 18, it’s actually a bad time to start voting because you’re going off to college or getting on with your life," Koroknay-Palicz said.

Seriously, is this a joke? Is there really a National Youth Rights Association? How are they funded? Do they get an allowance from other lobbying groups? As for being informed, active, and intelligent, when I was 16 I was none of the three, and I now work at a think tank!

If you don’t have a voice in how your own house is run, you don’t need a voice in how the country is run. This guy’s statements remind me of the end of Wild In The Streets, after the 20-year-old dictator insults a kid, and the 10-year old looks in the camera and says, "We’re gonna kill everyone over 12." (And yes, I deserve enormous praise for not only being able to reference this camp classic, but to paraphrase it from memory despite only seeing it once about 15 years ago.)

Alex’s statements just get more absurd. His arguments that 18 is a bad time to start voting could just as easily serve as a reason to take voting rights away from senior citizens. Switch "…starting college, getting a job, or moving away from home," to "retiring, collecting social security, and moving into an assisted care facility," and wham!, it now makes the point that there is too much change in your 70s for you to vote. Just unbelievable.

The post Ready, Fire, Aim! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.