On April 10, 2025, Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites, visited Washington University School of Law to discuss the ideological and bureaucratic challenges facing American higher education. In this lecture, Shapiro argues that elite universities have abandoned their core mission of truth-seeking in favor of activism, driven by bloated administrations and timid leadership. Drawing on personal experience and national trends, he explains how law schools, in particular, are failing to uphold classical liberal values such as free speech, academic freedom, and equal justice.

Listen to it as a podcast

The event was hosted by the Show-Me Institute, the Federalist Society, the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation, and Show-Me Opportunity.

The post Lawless: Ilya Shapiro on Free Speech in Higher Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

RSVP for This Complimentary Event Here

Thursday, April 10, 2025

12:00 noon

Washington University in St. Louis Law School

Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 305

One Brookings Drive

St. Louis, MO 63130

About the Book – Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites

Law schools used to teach students how to think critically, advance logical arguments, and respect oppo­nents. Now those students cannot tolerate disagreement and reject the validity of the law itself. Rioting Ivy Leaguers are the same people who will soon:

• Be America’s judges, DAs, and prosecutors
• File and fight constitutional lawsuits
• Advise Fortune 500 companies
• Hire other left-wing diversity candidates to staff law firms and government offices
• Run for higher office with an agenda of only enforcing laws that suit left-wing whims

Ilya Shapiro will discuss how we got here and what we can do about it. The problem is bigger than radical students and biased faculty—it’s institu­tional weakness.

About the Speaker

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute and director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.

Read full bio here.

This event is brought to you by: Show-Me Institute, WashULaw Federalist Society, Sinquefield Charitable Foundation, and Show-Me Opportunity.

The post Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites with Ilya Shapiro on April 10 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In my remarks today, I hope to convince you of three things. First, the idea of the Common Core was noble, but misguided. Second, the Common Core State Standards will not significantly improve student achievement. And finally, the federal government created the controversy we have seen surrounding the Common Core over the past few years.

A Noble but Misguided Goal

The idea behind the Common Core is quite simple. Schools need standards because standards allow teachers to align the curriculum and allow teachers to see what they are to cover in each grade. I have been told many times that prior to schools adopting learning standards, it was not uncommon for students in the same grade in the same school to have radically different experiences depending on the teachers they had. Standards help alleviate that problem.

Following the infamous “A Nation at Risk Report” report of 1983, the standards movement was launched. This Reagan-administration report used alarming language to describe the nation’s education system. The authors of the report wrote:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. . . . We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.

The report fueled a desire to improve the quality of our education system. State officials wanted to keep a watchful eye on how schools were performing. To do that they needed tests, and to have tests, they needed standards on which to base them.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, states began creating their own standards-based accountability systems. By 2000, 39 states had accountability systems in place. After the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001, the remaining states were forced to follow suit. As a result, by the mid-2000s we had 50 different state standards and 50 different accountability systems.

These individual state standards created a problem. Students from families that moved from one state to another could miss entire topics if they were covered in one grade in one state and in a different grade in another. And, very importantly, the different tests did not allow us to compare one state to another because the accountability systems were different. In a state with very low standards a student might score “proficient,” but if he were in a state with very high standards he might score “basic.”

In reality, these were not problems created by having 50 state standards. They were problems that have always existed, and in many regards still exist. To be honest, these problems are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. I mean, would you go through all of the effort that the Common Core designers went through just to improve transparency across states? I wouldn’t, especially when we have the National Assessment of Educational progress, known as the nation’s report card, which already allows us to compare one state to another. The most valid reason to support the Common Core comes from the thought that these standards could improve student achievement for all students. This is where the supporters for Common Core were misguided. This is where the logic for Common Core falters, and this is what brings me to my second point: that Common Core will not improve educational outcomes for students.

Common Core Will Not Improve Educational Outcomes

Let me ask: How might a system of new standards improve educational outcomes for all students? As far as I can tell, there are three options:

• The standards could better align the curriculum.
• The standards could be more rigorous.
• Or, the standards could create a broader platform for collaboration.

Let’s examine each of these.

The standards could better align the curriculum

Remember, states have already developed standards and aligned curricula. We’d have to believe that the Common Core has somehow come up with a better way to do these things—that they have discovered the special sauce or that the designers have figured out the right progression of learning. Something tells me that is not the case. While the quality of education research is improving, there is simply not enough evidence to know if we should teach fractions in third grade or fourth, or whether we should introduce money in kindergarten or first grade. I recently sat on a committee to rewrite Missouri’s state standards. I can tell you, while the process is informed by research, it often comes down to educated guessing. The individuals making these guesses are indeed educated, but in the end, many of these decisions are completely subjective.

So what is the second option?

The standards could be simply be more rigorous

They could raise the level of expectations for students. After all, students rise to the level of expectation, don’t they? If this were true, we would expect students in states that previously had rigorous standards to perform better than students in states with weaker standards. In a study for the Brookings Institution, Tom Loveless examined this very issue. He found no relationship between the rigor of state standards and student performance on the NAEP. None. Another thing to consider is that ratings of the Common Core Standards by the Fordham Foundation, a group that has been very supportive of the effort, do not place Common Core at the top of the standards list. They are among the best according to Fordham, but in Math and Language arts, other standards were rated higher. If we believe that rigor or the quality of standards matter, then it puzzles me why supporters of national standards would be so willing to go to bat for Common Core. Why not simply adopt the superior Massachusetts standards?

The Common Core will not improve student achievement by better aligning curriculum, nor can we improve student learning simply by being more rigorous. What’s left?

A system of national standards could create a broader platform for collaboration

Before Common Core, textbook companies often designed curricula for more populous states like California and Texas. As a result, states found it difficult to get textbooks that aligned with their individual standards. Common Core helps alleviate this problem. Moreover, it allows teachers throughout the country to collaborate on lessons related to the standards. While this sounds great, planning on a substantial benefit from collaboration is misguided. If it were true that more opportunities for collaboration led to success, then we would expect to see more populous states—those that drive textbook production—to have an advantage. Not only would they have textbooks tailored to their curricula, but with a larger number of teachers, they would have greater opportunities for collaboration. Yet, we don’t see a California or Texas advantage.

In the face of the evidence, there is simply no logical model that can explain how a set of standards that simply tells teachers what to teach will improve student learning. At least not today.

To be clear: Standards are important, and evidence does show that the standards-based accountability movement has led to modest learning gains for students. It seems, however, that the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Schools have already aligned curricula, and we have already begun focusing on student outcomes. New standards may have some impact on the margins, but by themselves they cannot substantially improve student achievement.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive indictment of Common Core. I don’t believe Common Core will ruin our education system. I don’t believe it is some grand conspiracy to dumb down America. I simply believe it is bad policy.

But if Common Core is innocuous, then why are we devoting so much time to it? We are having this conversation today because promoters of Common Core oversold, and because the federal government overstepped. As is often the case, the actions of the federal government came with unintended consequences.

The Federal Government Created the Common Core Controversy

Common Core did not begin as a federal initiative. I hesitate to call this a “state-led” initiative, and it certainly wasn’t a grass roots initiative. It was instigated by the National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. These two trade organizations began the process late in George W. Bush’s administration, but the idea of national standards goes back even further, to his father’s administration. Early on in the development of the Common Core standards, some thought that the standards would be adopted by a handful of states; it was hoped that other states would adopt them voluntarily over time. That changed with federal involvement.

In 2009, President Obama launched his Race to the Top initiative, a competitive grant program that was part of the stimulus plan. States could compete for $4.35 billion dollars in prize money by proposing a series of reforms. This came at a time when states were feeling the pressure of the recession and could ill afford to pass up an opportunity for additional federal funding. One of the reforms supported in Race to the Top was the adoption of learning standards that were common to a majority of states—what would become Common Core.

As part of the first round of the Race to the Top process, states had to submit their applications (including a commitment to the Common Core standards) by January 19, 2010. The second round was June 1. But the final draft of the standards was not even released until June of 2010. In other words, the federal government encouraged states to commit to common standards before those standards were even finalized. Still, states jumped at the opportunity. By 2013, 45 states had adopted the standards. President Obama took credit for this in his State of the Union address.

At the same time, the Obama administration doubled down on support of Common Core by offering to waive certain No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements to states that adopted Common Core. Schools and states were finding it increasingly difficult to comply with various aspects of NCLB; that is, they had failed to meet the mandated 100 percent proficiency marks. States could avoid penalties by promoting education reform policies championed by the administration, one of which was common standards.

Whether you support federal involvement or not, it is difficult to deny that the actions of the U.S. Department of Education caused or at least contributed to the controversy surrounding Common Core. What might have been a coalition of states that grew and developed over time was catapulted into the national stage as a new and radical reform that many states adopted, if not against their will, then at least under duress.

Conclusion

While the motivation behind the Common Core standards was good, the outcomes—at least in terms of liberty—are not. Common Core moves control of one of the most important aspects of education—what students learn—further from students and parents, and it concentrates power at the federal level. As Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman once said, “Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.” The Common Core standards reduce individual liberty and academic freedom for states, teachers, and students. They nullify the great advantage of individual states—the ability to act as laboratories that allow us to evaluate different systems to see what works best—in favor of a monolithic approach that stifles innovation. Ultimately, the Common Core movement is an expression of the flawed mindset that we can mandate and orchestrate improved student achievement through centralized control. 

The post A Well Intentioned Disaster: A Presentation on the Merits of Common Core State Standards appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One topic of discussion was pay for teachers. Flinders asserted that Kansas City teachers are paid lower than the state average. She is most likely correct, and there is something we can do to fix it. In previous posts we suggested reforming teacher pay schedules to increase the incentive for teachers to stay on.

But the district actually can pay teachers more if it cuts back on hiring non-teacher personnel. According to my colleague Brittany Wagner,

Over the past 60 years, schools have increased non-teaching personnel positions by 702 percent. [A report] also found the U.S. spends more than double what Korea, Mexico, Finland, Portugal, Ireland, Luxembourg, Austria, and Spain spend on non-teaching staff salaries and benefits.

Recall that upon arriving Superintendent John Covington asserted that the district was too big, and in 2010 KCPS closed 30 buildings and eliminated 1,247 full-time equivalent positions. Doing so freed up a great deal of money. According to Wagner,

One study showed that if non-teaching personnel grew at the same rate as the student population, American public schools would have an additional $24.3 billion annually.

This impacts pensions as well, which is far greater than the immediate cost of this educational bloat on salaries. Show-Me Researcher Michael Rathbone writes,

Non-teaching personnel also accrue pension benefits through the Public Education Employee Retirement System of Missouri (PEERS). According to the PEERS annual report, “PEERS is a mandatory cost-sharing multiple employer retirement system for all public school district employees (except the school districts of St. Louis and Kansas City), employees of the Missouri Association of School Administrators, and community college employees (except St. Louis Community College).” Members of the plan and their employers both contribute to the pension.

Over the last five years, the unfunded liabilities (liabilities minus assets) of this plan have increased by more than $64 million. Pension benefits like PEERS benefits are guaranteed and must be paid out. If PEERS can’t make those payments, taxpayers (i.e., you) will have to.

By spending too much on non-teacher personnel, KCPS is draining resources from both funds to pay teachers in the short term and teacher pension funds in the long term. Cutting back on non-teacher staff—or perhaps just restricting growth—would allow school districts to better meet their financial responsibilities to teachers and to demonstrate a real commitment to the children in the classroom.

The post Ideas for Kansas City Schools: Focus on Teachers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On Monday, I’ll be participating in a panel discussion on the Future of Education in Kansas City. This event is co-sponsored by the Federalist Society and the Show-Me Institute. Check out the details below and then come check out the event on Monday night.

Should your ZIP code determine your educational choices? Do charter schools improve academic outcomes? What do local public schools need to succeed? Should tax credit scholarships be used to help students attend private schools? Should residents in struggling public schools get to transfer to neighboring districts?

These topics and more will be explored as our panelists debate the future of education in and around Kansas City, Mo.

The panel will feature the following influencers in the local education landscape:

• James Shuls, Ph.D., distinguished fellow, Show-Me Institute, and Assistant Professor at University of Missouri–St. Louis
• Dr. Amy Hartsfield, member-at-large, School Board, Kansas City Public Schools
• Andrea Flinders, president, Kansas City Federation of Teachers, Local 691
• Douglas Thaman, Ed.D., executive director, Missouri Charter Public School Association
• John Murphy, public policy committee chair of the Missouri Catholic Conference

Admission is FREE, but please register so we can ensure there is enough seating. The event is scheduled from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 23, 2015, at the Kansas City Club, 918 Baltimore Ave., Kansas City, MO 64105.

The post The Future of Education in Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What do the experts think? Did the law protect Americans? Did it leave the U.S. economy exposed? The St. Louis Federalist Society sponsors a panel event featuring U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Dist. 3-Mo.), Saint Louis University Law professor Ann Scarlett, and attorney Gregory Jacob. The panel will discuss those issues from 5 to 6:30 p.m. on Mon., Oct. 14 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Clayton.

Reservations, which close on Oct. 11, can be made here. Should be a very interesting event.

The post Federalist Society To Explore Dodd-Frank On Oct. 14 In Clayton appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

John Fund, senior editor of the American Spectator, and Denise Lieberman, senior attorney for Advancement Project, represented the opposing sides of the debate, with Missouri Circuit Court Judge Robert H. Dierker moderating.

The post Suppressing the Vote or Stopping Fraud: the Voter ID Debate appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Show-Me tech guru Josh Smith recorded the event.

The post Show-Me Video: “Suppressing the Vote or Stopping Fraud: The Voter ID Debate” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Crowne Plaza Hotel – Crystal Ballroom
7750 Carondelet Avenue
St. Louis, MO 63105

Parking is free. A cash bar will follow. Everyone is welcome to attend.

The post Voter ID Debate Tonight In Clayton Featuring John Fund appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Voter fraud is real. Yes, sometimes campaign workers are truly mistaken about what the law is when it comes to voting in this country. But whether the staffer in Texas was unaware that what the camerawoman was “attempting” is illegal, or the staffer was in fact willing to turn a blind eye to the fraud she knew she might be assisting, the takeaway from the situation is the same — that not only is voter fraud a genuine problem, but that it is far too easy to perpetrate. This is unacceptable.

RELATED: The Show-Me Institute and the Federalist Society have partnered to put on a debate about voter ID and voter fraud later this month. It is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thurs., Oct. 25 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Clayton and features John Fund of The Weekly Standard and Denise Lieberman of Advancement Project. The event is open to the public.

The post No, It Is Not OK To Vote In Two States In One Presidential Election appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The “Missouri Plan” amended the state Constitution such that judicial nominations are selected — at least in part — through an independent nominating counsel (generally comprising state American Bar Association-appointed lawyers) instead of by popular election. Today, 26 states have adopted some form of the “Missouri Plan” for their judicial appointments.

The legal benefits of the “Missouri Plan” are debatable. Many studies have examined the impact of such plans on business-friendly legislation (the argument being that judicial nominations appointed by ABA members will be less friendly to issues that might limit the market for lawyers). In fact, in an upcoming policy report, the Show-Me Institute will examine the Missouri Plan in detail. (Stay tuned for the excitement!)

The Federalist Society’s research highlights at least one negative aspect, however. To date, 45 states have addressed education adequacy litigation. According to data gathered by Columbia University, about two-thirds of adequacy decisions in Missouri Plan states strike down the legislatures’ funding statutes. This means that courts have effectively commandeered the power of the purse — something clearly within the proper domain of the legislatures.

In addition, in a joint study by the Institute for Justice and the American Legislative Exchange Council, analysts found that school voucher systems are constitutional in 77 percent of states with popularly elected judiciaries, versus 50 percent in Missouri Plan states.

So I guess this was a long way of me saying that there is evidence that courts are friendlier to the school choice movement in states where judges are elected by the people themselves.

The post The Missouri Plan appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Keeping judicial selection democratically accountable is the best insurance for choosing the best judges, and ensuring that they are serving the interests of the citizens.

I can’t tell whether that is calling for all judges to be elected, or just for increased transparency and more involvement by elected officials in the selection process. My guess is that they are calling for all judges to be elected, which would be an absolutely terrible idea statewide and in larger counties. If they are merely calling for more openness and input from elected officials, I agree with that, to a large extent.  As a reminder, my own op-ed on this issue is here. There are many good parts of the editorial, too, especially the none-too-kind comments on the current Supreme Court panel Governor Blunt gets to pick from.

The ending of the Wall Street Journal editorial isn’t its only weakness, though. It quotes a poll, as if that is some sort of evidence for anything:

In a Federalist Society poll done in March, 87% of state residents were unaware even of the make-up of the nominating commission.

An any point in time, about 30 percent of Americans can’t name the vice president. Should we get rid of that office? Any idea how many people can, right now, name their state representative? I am guessing 20 percent at most. Should we get rid of them? (Don’t answer that.)  I am actually surprised 13 percent of Missourians could correctly list the commission’s make-up. Just because people watch "Entertainment Tonight" instead of reading The Economist does not mean the Missouri Plan is flawed.

I was going to post today on additional feedback my op-ed has received, but the Journal seemed more topical. I’ll do that tomorrow. Can’t you just feel the excitement? 

P.S. — You wanted more Spike Lee references, you got ’em!

The post Wall Street Journal and Mo’ Better Judges appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Federalist Society has released a study on this very topic — the recent history of the Missouri Supreme Court, which I am pleased to share with you. It was written by lawyers for lawyers, so consider yourself warned, all you civilians (including me) out there. It will certainly add some intellectual depth to the ongoing dicussions of how Missouri appoints judges. I commend the governor and his staff for the thorough work they are putting into this effort. I have written before about how I like the judicial commission plan we have here in Missouri, but I completely agree with Bill McClellan’s assertions that the commission itself may have done more damage to the plan than any opponent could ever have hoped to do.

The post “Nothing Worthwhile Is Easy, Honey, You Know That …” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.