A version of this commentary appeared in The Heartlander

Tradeoffs and give-and-take are at the heart of politics. We’re told that the politicians who are willing to compromise are the ones who “get things done.” But not every tradeoff is worth it. Case in point: In the Missouri legislature, passage of a relatively weak open-enrollment measure has been discussed as a “both/and” that could be tied to passage of another bill that strips the State Board of Education (BOE) of its authority to accredit (or refuse to accredit) Missouri’s public schools. If that’s the offer, it deserves a hard no from legislators.

I don’t often find myself defending the BOE, and for good reason. It is fair to wonder what a school district has to do in this state to lose accreditation. Out of 517 districts, 511 (98.8 percent) are fully accredited, six are provisionally accredited, and none are unaccredited. The Ferguson-Florissant school district is fully accredited despite the fact that only 20 percent of its students are proficient in English language arts, and just 16 percent are proficient in math. Hazelwood, another fully accredited district, shows similarly troubling numbers: 25 percent proficiency in English and 15 percent in math. The Clarkton C-4 district in Missouri’s Bootheel is fully accredited even though 85 percent of students scored below grade level in English/language arts or math last year. Sadly, these are just three examples among many.

The question is: if the BOE isn’t holding schools accountable, what should be done about it? According to the proponents of Senate Bill 360, the solution is to strip the BOE of the power it seems so reluctant to use. The bill would prohibit the BOE from using academic performance to classify schools for accreditation purposes. Districts would instead be allowed to hire outside accreditation agencies to evaluate them. It should be obvious that such agencies would have a strong incentive to tell the districts that hire them what they want to hear.

If the fates of these two bills are linked, what do Missourians get in exchange for essentially throwing in the towel on accountability for school districts? They get House Bill 711, which would allow for open enrollment . . . sort of. It would only let up to 5 percent of students transfer out of any district, and more importantly, it wouldn’t require districts to accept students who wanted to transfer in. Compared to what our neighbors in Kansas and Oklahoma have, this is entry-level open enrollment at best, and it isn’t worth letting the districts themselves decide whether or not they deserve to be accredited.

There is no law of nature stating that the BOE can’t hold districts accountable for student performance. The Missouri Legislature could also make the BOE do its job. In fact, we are about to have four new members of the 8-person BOE, and they are likely to bring fresh energy and commitment to accountability.

The research on high accountability and improved student outcomes is clear, so the rubber-stamping of school accreditation needs to stop. The state, which funds public education to the tune of $6.6 billion each year, has a responsibility to both students and taxpayers to make sure that money is being spent to prepare students for college or the workforce.

If a “compromise” is on offer here it is a troubling example of the misplaced priorities of Missouri’s educational establishment. Who are they protecting here—students trapped in failing schools, or school districts threatened by the prospect of being held responsible for their performance?

The post A Bad Deal for Missouri’s Children appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Last year, 20 districts statewide implemented this new system as part of the Demonstration Project. Public data on this initiative will be released soon on September 30. These districts are primarily seeking exemptions because administrators in those districts do not feel the MAP is an adequate tool to improve student performance. The test is administered to students at the end of the year, which means districts do not receive test results back until the fall of the following year.

The system adopted by these district tests students  three times per year in English/language arts and math. Missouri could also consider pairing this model with a teacher rating system (like Tennessee’s) to gauge how effective a teacher’s class and curriculum are.

The fact that many districts believe that they could develop better testing than DESE speaks volumes. The MAP needs to be timelier, and it needs to be more informative for students, parents, and teachers. My colleague, James Shuls, lamented the lack of detail in a 2018 blog post.

Even with the shortcomings of the MAP test, Missouri ought to have a uniform statewide test that allows researchers, district officials, and policymakers to learn about different education strategies and trends. If a district implements a new strategy for teaching algebra, and it sees great improvement on the MAP, another district could mimic its practices.

There will be more clarity when statistics for the Demonstration Project are released in a month. If the results are encouraging, fully transitioning to this new testing system statewide might be worth considering.

The post More Districts to Try New Standardized Testing System appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

*Statistics are based on a self-compiled compilation of calendars. If snows/sick days have shifted the last day of school, they are not accounted for.

**Kairos Academies, Clarksburg C-2, Clarkton C-4, Crocker R-II, Eldon R-I, La Salle Charter School, Mark Twain R-VIII, New York R-IV, Premier Charter School, The Biome, Thornfield R-I, and Union Star R-II are not accounted for.

Skyline R-II was the first district to start summer break, on May 1. Hazelwood and Ferguson-Florissant will be among the final districts to go on break on May 31.

Based on the projected last day of class, if you are a St. Louis kid, you are probably getting out later than everyone else. Of the 15 traditional school districts (non-charters using a five-day school week) that end classes May 28 or later, 11 of them are in the St. Louis area. These St. Louis–area schools are Ferguson-Florissant, Hazelwood, Clayton, Ft. Zumwalt, Parkway, Wentzville, Ladue, Maplewood-Richmond Heights, University City, Mehlville, and Riverview Gardens.

How long do most summer breaks last in Missouri?

*Based on the projected number of days, we rounded the district to the nearest week. For example, a district with an 81-day summer would be coded as “12 weeks.”

**In this estimation we assume districts have the same first day of school as 2023-2024, and then subtracted that number by two. In 2020, Missouri mandated that Missouri public schools’ first day of school cannot be before a certain date. In 2023-2024, it was August 21st. For 2024-2025, it will be August 19th, two days earlier.

As the above figure displays, the average summer break is a little over three months for Missouri students. The shortest summer break is roughly 10 weeks, while the longest is around four months at 16 weeks. The rural districts (enrollment in parentheses) of Fairview R-XI (493), Glenwood R-VIII (218), Howell Valley R-I (209), Junction Hill C-12 (193), and Richards R-V (343) all have nearly four-month summer vacations—with May 2 as their last day of class, and August 21 as their first day of class in 2023–2024.

Interestingly, the districts that have the shortest summer breaks all tend to be St. Louis–area districts, with Ferguson-Florissant and Hazelwood having the shortest breaks. Along with these two, Clayton, Ft. Zumwalt, Parkway C-2, Wentzville, Ladue, University City, Mehlville, Riverview Gardens, Affton, Bayless, Brentwood, Francis Howell, Orchard Farm, Rockwood, and Valley Park all have estimated summer breaks under 90 days.

How do these statistics differ amongst various types of schools?

The above figures are known as a box and whisker plot. The vertical line (whiskers) represents the full range, while the box represents the middle 50 percent of responses. Any statistical outliers are noted as dots, the horizontal line is the median, and the “x” is the mean.

As shown, rural schools on average have much longer summer breaks than their suburban and city counterparts. Additionally, most of the longest breaks in the state are rural—of the 50 longest summer breaks in the state, 47 of them are rural districts. While this may be reflective of the bygone days when most rural children worked on farms, Institute analysts have conducted research that found rural high school students may have fewer opportunities and lower rate of college readiness than their suburban counterparts.

Another important takeaway from these figures is the difference in break length between charters and traditional schools. Charter schools have an average (mean) summer break of 84 days, versus 92 for four-day school week districts and 94 days for traditional five-day school week districts. In Missouri, charter schools serve high proportions of disadvantaged students and shorter breaks may be a good use of charter school flexibility.

Do longer summers hurt students? Summer learning loss is a well-documented phenomenon. However, there are debates about the actual extent of achievement loss. Regardless, it is interesting to see the variability across the state and to consider if there could be academic implications.

The post When Do Summer Breaks Start for School Districts Across Missouri? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Around a decade ago, both these districts failed to meet state standards and received the status of “unaccredited.” Because these districts lost accreditation, students were allowed to transfer to an adjoining district—and Riverview Gardens and Normandy had to pay tuition to these nearby districts.

Over 2,000 students (a quarter of the two districts’ enrollment) immediately took the opportunity to transfer—with many enrolling in Kirkwood, Mehlville, Hazelwood, Ferguson-Florissant, and Francis Howell. No receiving district gained more than a five percent increase in its student body. This exodus of students was rooted in families’ desire to improve their children’s livelihood—a sentiment that still exists today. One mother described the ability to choose a different district as follows: “She is thriving and has found a place where she fits in. She feels safe in her school environment and as her mother, I don’t worry about her safety while she’s at school.”

Reverting back to the local control is probably not going to dramatically improve the situation in Riverview Gardens or Normandy; these districts have performed terribly both before and after state control.  Parents need to be able to hold these districts accountable. Parents demonstrated they wanted choice back when students transferred out of these failing districts, and they still want it now.

Some people worry what would happen to struggling districts if families had school choice. However, these districts would not simply collapse, as they are allowed to use enrollment from any of the past four years for funding. And school choice could have other benefits for these districts. A smaller student body could lead to more academic success, and the threat of closure could serve as a wake-up call to those who love these school districts.

How much better would it be for a district if students were enrolled because they actually wanted to be there? Perhaps having a student body who actually wants to be at their school would lower the soaring absentee rates we see in these two districts and throughout the state. While I cannot guarantee that parental accountability through choice will save these districts, saving particular school districts isn’t the goal of education policy. It’s giving every student in Missouri the best opportunity to succeed. And that means giving every student in Missouri the chance to pick a school that best fits their needs.

The post Riverview Gardens and Normandy Are Regaining Local Control appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When the Spainhower Commission issued its final report in 1968, St. Louis County had 25 school districts (plus the Special School District). Those schools served 186,428 students. Asked to develop “a plan to provide equal access to educational opportunity for all children,” the commission recommended a consolidation of all St. Louis–area school districts into a single district. That call was taken up again in 2014 following the shooting of Michael Brown. Then, as in 1968, the solution proposed was to tear down those dividing district lines in the sake of unity. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board endorsed this plan in their piece, “One school district. One focus. One future: Unify St. Louis schools.”

Fifty-five years after the Spainhower report, the number of students enrolled in St. Louis County school districts has decreased by more than 53,000, but almost all district lines remain. Just three school districts have closed. At the time of their mergers, all three served mostly African American schoolchildren. In the 1970s, the Kinloch and Berkeley School Districts were forced by the courts to consolidate into the Ferguson-Florissant School District. In 2010, the Missouri State Board of Education consolidated the Wellston School District into the Normandy School District.

From then to now we have known that arbitrary boundaries drawn around school districts create haves and have-nots. We have known that assigning students to attend schools based on where they live has perpetuated inequities among students and limited access to quality educational options. And yet, the problem has been almost intractable. Why? According to James Spainhower, as reported by the Post-Dispatch’s Tony Messenger, “The only place where the report was weak, was in the thought that people could get over their biases.” I think this analysis is correct, but not in the way that Messenger implied.

According to Messenger, parents in predominantly white school districts did not want to merge with predominantly African American school districts. As we saw when students from the predominantly African American Normandy school district attempted to transfer to predominantly white school districts a few years ago, race can still be an issue. But race wasn’t the only obstacle for those Normandy students—remember, their own school district didn’t want them to leave, either—nor am I convinced that race is the primary motivating factor for those who oppose school district consolidation. People take pride in their local schools, and they do not want to see them changed. Moreover, people instinctively react when anyone attempts to force their school district to be consolidated. It is a loss of identity.

This is the problem. If we leave school districts to make this change themselves, nothing will get done. If we attempt to force consolidation on them, they will resist. This is why attempts at consolidation, except in those rare cases mentioned above, have failed in the St. Louis region. People are loathe to voluntarily consolidate their own school district unless they see a significant benefit, and they strongly resist top-down directives from the state to consolidate their schools.

It is time to change the strategy. Rather than rely on district leaders to take action or attempt to obliterate school district lines, we need to make those boundaries porous. We need to allow students to begin moving across those lines to attend schools in other school districts. We need school choice. We need open enrollment. The Post-Dispatch editorial board once championed this idea. In their call for unifying St. Louis schools they wrote, “The fastest way to move toward such unity would be for the school districts in the St. Louis region to adopt an open enrollment policy.”

Now there is an open enrollment proposal before the Missouri legislature. Yet, as Blythe Bernhard and Jack Suntrup have reported, “Missouri educators vow to fight as open enrollment plan gains steam.” This opposition was to be expected. What was not expected was the complete silence from those who previously advocated for unity among St. Louis schools.

If we continue to look for top-down solutions to this problem, in another 55 years we’ll likely be exactly where we are today—where a student’s educational opportunities are dictated by his or her zip code.

The post Open Enrollment in St. Louis Schools: 55 Years in the Making appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Journal analyzed the teacher ratings of schools in Decatur, Illinois, and found that in 2018, 99.7 percent of its teachers were rated as “excellent or proficient.” These ratings are extremely generous considering the fact that only 2 percent of Black third-grade students in Decatur could read at grade level, and only 1 percent performed at grade level in math. Additionally, only 5 percent of Decatur 11^th graders could read at grade level and 4 percent were proficient in math.

While the Journal article focused on Illinois, the mismatch between educational stamps of approval and student performance is not exclusive to schools in that state. A similar jarring mismatch occurs in Missouri when looking at district accreditation and test scores. Accreditation is hard to define (due to its arbitrary nature), but I would define it as whether or not the government approves of the performance of an educational institution. Incredibly, Missouri’s Department of Secondary and Elementary Education (DESE) has granted full accreditation to 99 percent of Missouri school districts, even though rates of proficiency are dismally low in many districts.

For example, Ferguson-Florissant is fully accredited with proficiency rates of 20 percent in English and 7.6 percent in math. How can DESE approve and fully accredit this district’s performance if nine out of ten students are below grade level in math? What is the value in a grading scale if everyone gets an “A”?

As Show-Me Institute analysts have pointed out many times before, DESE’s accreditation granting has little to do with academic performance. Student performance should be the paramount benchmark for district accreditation in Missouri, and yet this has not been the case under both the Missouri School Improvement Plan (5) and the recently passed MSIP (6). MSIP 6 is built on regulatory adherence, financial status, and whether superintendents are certified. The new plan will have its first fully implemented cycle from spring 2023 to fall 2023, and academic indicators will only account for 48 percent of the total score used for granting accreditation.

District accreditation is treated as essentially a “completion assignment” in Missouri, and its perceived unimportance is exemplified by the fact that districts cannot be penalized for poor performance until 2024. Students will certainly be penalized for their performance in these schools, and it is ludicrous that adults cannot be held accountable for their errors.

Missouri may have snuck under the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page radar for now, but if the gap between reality and accountability continues to widen, it may not last forever.

The post WSJ Takes Aim at Illinois, Ignores Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Let me put it another way: If I told you that last spring, upon DESE’s recommendation, the State Board of Education reinstated fully accredited status to Kansas City Public School District, where 12 percent of students scored at a Proficient level or higher in math and 25 percent did so in English/language arts (ELA), what would be your takeaway? Would you think any more highly of the district knowing that it has DESE’s seal of approval? Or would you think instead that accreditation must not have much to do with how successful the district has been at preparing students to succeed?

DESE doesn’t appear to be very picky about which schools qualify for full accreditation. The Ferguson-Florissant School District, for example, is now fully accredited despite the fact that only 8 percent of students scored Proficient or higher in math, and 20 percent did so in ELA.

On the other hand, DESE seems to be tireless in its quest to perfect its system for evaluating school districts. It changed the test it uses four times in five years—making it difficult if not impossible to compare student test scores from consecutive years. And now, amid all the upheaval caused by the pandemic, it is replacing the Missouri School Improvement Plan (MSIP) 5 with MSIP 6. It’s an awful lot of trouble to go to just to tweak a system that has consistently accredited 99% of Missouri school districts. And that work will take time—nearly a decade will pass before school districts receive a new accreditation update from the state.

None of this is to say that the MSIP 5 shouldn’t be replaced; the Show-Me Institute has repeatedly pointed out its shortcomings. Under that system, districts needed to get at least 70 percent of their possible points to be accredited. However, there were multiple opportunities for “extra credit”—including all of the points for academic growth—and plenty of non-academic points at play. That explains why accreditation has been so easy to come by, and so far removed from the academic success of students.

Under MSIP 6, academic growth is now officially counted in the point total, but academic indicators still only comprise 48 out of 100 points. Districts can now earn points for creating a Continuous School Improvement Plan. They get points for “reflecting upon current practices and data.” They get points for having the “required documentation.” All of which is to say that districts with troublingly low academic performance are still quite likely to be able to get full accreditation.

But here’s the real kicker: DESE is going to go through the laborious calculations of MSIP 6 for each district, and then it’s going to make an accreditation recommendation to the State Board of Education. The recommendation will be based on the Accreditation Score, but also on “previous department MSIP findings” (whatever those are), on financial status, on statutory and regulatory compliance (whatever that involves), and on the employment of an “appropriately certified” superintendent. In other words, we will have State Board meetings like the one earlier this year that reinstated Kansas City Public Schools full accreditation, and the decision will be subjective.

So it doesn’t bother me that it will be a couple of more years before we are officially reminded of how stubbornly DESE and the State Board of Education refuse to face reality. What bothers me is that Missouri’s accountability system, if you can call it that, is heading in the wrong direction. It is becoming less academic, more watered down, and more about the adults in the system rather than the children in the schools.

The post The Suspense Isn’t Exactly Killing Me appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Okay, I guess you would start by grading on a curve. Then, you would want to make sure that there is a lot of extra credit available. Finally, you would give credit for things like showing up, finishing, and being ready to take another class the next semester.

So, here’s what you might come up with for a grading scale:

• Two tests worth 16 points each, with two ways to earn up to 12 extra credit points on each of them, and one test worth 8 points with up to 6 extra credit points.
• Three homework assignments worth a total of 10 points, but with two ways to earn up to 7.5 points of extra credit.
• Showing up at least 90 percent of the time gets you 10 points, but there’s up to 7.5 points of extra credit if you show up more than you did the last time.
• Finishing gets you up to 30 points – almost as much as the tests! And, there’s up to 24 points of extra credit. Plus – and this is the kicker – you can finish in one semester, or take an extra month, an extra two months, or even finish in two semesters, whichever works out best for you.
• Finally, proving (through a variety of ways) that you’re ready for the next class, is worth 30 points, with up to 22.5 points of extra credit.

Now, to get an A, a student needs to get at least 84 of the “real” 120 points—but since there are 90 extra credit points to work with, a student really just needs 84 points out of a possible 210 to get that A.

Great news! At the end of the semester, you give out 512 A’s (86 A+’s with perfect scores!), 5 B’s, and just one C. That ought to keep the parents happy. As far as they know, everyone learned an A’s worth of material.

This is effectively the grading scale that the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) uses to hold schools and districts accountable. It’s called the APR, and its loaded with opportunities for extra credit. Let’s just look at academic achievement, the area we’d all probably agree is most important. Districts are evaluated out of a possible 40 points, divided among math, reading, and social studies. However, a district can get up to 30 extra points if students show growth or progress in these scores. That means to get a “perfect” score, a district only has to get 57 percent of the possible points available to it. That’s a heck of a curve.

There are four other areas in which schools earn points, and those areas are rife with the same problems.

So what does this mean, practically speaking? Using this scale, Kansas City got 82.9 percent of the 120 points, even though, on average, almost half of their students scored “Below Basic” across grades and subjects. The district clearly topped up its score with various extra credit opportunities. St. Louis Public Schools got 78.5 percent of its points, again with almost half of students scoring Below Basic. In the Ferguson-Florissant school district, just 3 percent of 8th-grade students scored Proficient or above in mathematics, and yet the district received 92.1 percent of its APR points.

Kids are more than the sum of their test scores, and accountability systems should consider more than rates of proficiency. But getting students proficient in grade-level subject matter should count for something. And a system that gives passing grades to 512 out of 518 school districts with academic achievement all over the map is not an accountability system at all. Its’ a way to make everyone feel good.

The post Failure Is Not an Option for Missouri School Districts-but Is That a Good Thing? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Sixteen districts responded with contracts showing superintendent salaries ranging from $125,000 to $294,000 per year. We also looked at an evaluation of those same school districts from the Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA), which measured the performance of 3rd-grade students in 2009 and then, five years later in 2014, measured the performance of the students in 8th-grade. The object of the CEPA study was to determine if students experienced a full five years of academic growth in five calendar years.

The table below shows superintendent salaries from 2011 to 2014 and student performance growth from 2009 to 2014 for each school district that responded to our sunshine request.

The average academic growth between 3rd grade and 8th grade in these 16 districts is 4.7 years. Only three districts had five or more years of growth over the five-year period studied—Fort Zumwalt, Parkway, and Wentzville.

Because the time covered in the Stanford study (2009–2014) doesn’t align exactly with the superintendent salary information (which only goes back to 2011), we can’t make a perfect comparison of the salaries against performance. But based on the four years for which we have both sets of data, it’s difficult to see a direct connection between the two. Of the three districts with more than five years of growth in the table above, only Parkway paid its superintendent above the average rate from 2011 to 2014.

In fact, evidence of any connection between superintendents and student performance is hard to come by. One Brookings Institute study looked at the effect of superintendent turnover on student performance in North Carolina and Florida schools. It failed to find a significant connection. Nor did the study find a relationship between student performance and superintendent longevity.

Such studies make it appropriate to question why superintendent salaries are so high. There are certainly plenty of reasons why people think they should be high. Superintendents are like the CEOs of the school district. They oversee the management and budget of all the schools in the district. Perhaps most importantly, they hire principals and other administrators in the district, who in turn hire the teachers.

But with little evidence that superintendents are making a significant difference in student performance, it’s reasonable to ask why districts are paying them so much. The people in the school hierarchy who have the most effect on student achievement are teachers—and at an average salary of around $53,000, they earn around one-fourth of what superintendents earn. That’s not even considering the school pension system, which definitely favors the higher paid. All of which takes us back to a question that James Shuls raised in an April blog post: Is this really where we want to spend our money?

The post On Superintendents and Their Districts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Unfortunately, this situation faces 17 school districts in Missouri. According to state accreditation standards, not every school in a district has to perform above 70 percent on the annual performance review to keep accreditation—just the district as a whole. This system has left kids in failing schools while keeping alternatives like charter schools out of the area. Recent proposals in the Missouri legislature could help solve this problem.

A few weeks ago, the Missouri House of Representatives passed HB634. A similar bill is now in the Senate. While HB634 does not allow charter schools to open everywhere in the state, it would increase the number of districts where charter schools could open. One section of the law targets districts with underperforming schools, and would allow charter schools:

In any school district in which at least one school building has received a score of sixty percent or less on its annual performance report for two of the three most recent annual performance reports available as of the date on which a charter school applies to open a charter school in the district under this subdivision.

Based on the 2014, 2015, and 2016 Annual Performance Reports, 97 schools in 29 school districts would fit this criterion, including Kansas City and Saint Louis (where charter schools already operate) and the Normandy Schools Collaborative (which is unaccredited but does not have a charter school yet). Thus, this rule would add 26 new school districts to those where charter schools can operate currently:

Certainly, it is a cause for concern that Missouri has so many districts with chronically underperforming schools. There is another problem, however, with failing schools being the only option in some of these districts.

Out of these 29 districts, 17 have “chokepoints”—schools that every student in the district will have to attend—that have been rated as failing in two of the last three years. Normandy is one such district; the others are the districts in bold in the table above. Most of the chokepoint schools are middle schools and junior high schools.

Children in these communities have no choice but to spend some part of their education career in a school that the state deems failing. Families in these districts and across Missouri deserve better options for their kids. 

The post “Chokepoints” Demonstrate Need for New Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I wanted to take a moment to put this tax increase into perspective. According to data from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the average tax rate ceiling for school districts in Missouri was $3.70 per $100 of assessed valuation in 2015. Regionally, however, property tax rates are considerably higher. The average tax rate for Saint Louis County school districts is $4.528. On top of that, county residents pay an additional $1.2609 per $100 of assessed valuation for the special school district. This brings the county average up to $5.788.

The table that follows shows how Saint Louis’ school property tax rate would stack up to Saint Louis County school districts. For county districts, I combine both district and special school district rates.

As has been written on this blog before, Saint Louis could do other proactive things to address the budget crisis, such as selling vacant school buildings. And as Joseph Miller has pointed out, the city could help the district out a little by ending its flagrant TIF and tax abatement policies.  Nevertheless, it is certainly within the right of the school district to seek a property tax increase. If this one passes, Saint Louis will still have the lowest school taxes in the area. 

The post Should Saint Louis Raise Property Taxes for Public Schools? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Speaking of the restoration of the centuries-old Bourbon monarchy — following the massively convulsive interlude of 22 years between French Revolution and Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1814 — Talleyrand quipped, “They [the Bourbons] have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”

On a smaller scale, the same judgment applies to the lessons learned (or studiously ignored) in a lengthy report released last week into the “underlying issues” behind the riots and looting that erupted in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson (pop. 21,200) following the shooting death of a young black man by a white police officer on Aug. 9, 2014.

Commissioned by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, the report is long on liberal pieties and dogma, including the advocacy of some policies that will only worsen existing problems, but short of practical suggestions for improving economic or social conditions in a close-in, big-city suburb that went from predominantly white to predominantly black in the space of two decades.

For example, the Ferguson Commission calls for expanded job opportunities for black youth. Who can argue with that? As the commissioners point out, for blacks aged 16 to 19, the unemployment rate (nationally) is 30.1 percent, compared with 15.5 percent for whites in the same age group. But then the report endorses calls for almost doubling the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The adverse impact of a dramatic increase in the minimum wage on teenagers looking for their first jobs should be clear to anyone who stops to think about it. If a business is forced to pay $15 an hour to a worker whose true value to the enterprise is, say, $8 an hour, that amounts to a hidden tax of $7 an hour, or 87.5 percent, on the employment of that person — a tax that does not apply to people making, say, $20 or $30 an hour. Naturally, such a tax would encourage employers to invest in automation and concentrate their hiring on more skilled and experienced workers. As Milton Friedman put it, “The minimum wage law is most properly described as a law saying that employers must discriminate against people who have low skills.”

The commissioners call for concerted efforts to “enhance college access and affordability” through expanded scholarships and other means, but they ignore the biggest problem: poor test scores and a lack of readiness for college. In the Normandy school district — Michael Brown’s alma mater — 93 percent of students who took the standard college entrance examination scored below the national average. Normandy students taking the ACT test had an average score of 16 —not high enough to gain admittance to most four-year state institutions. It isn’t funding that is keeping these students from going to college. It is their abysmal K-12 preparation.

Predictably, the Ferguson Commission urges the state to invest in a universal pre-K program and move the compulsory education age down to 5 from 7. This would become a new (and hugely expensive) entitlement, while adding another layer onto K-12 schools that are not meeting the needs of low-income, African-American students (who make up 80 percent of Ferguson-Florissant students and more than 96 percent of students in nearby Normandy). How is expanding a broken system going to help anyone?

In its 198 pages, the Ferguson Commission Report calls for the expansion of a broad mix of other programs at multiple levels of government — ranging from food stamps and public transit to Medicaid and housing assistance — and it recommends a panoply of new programs to raise the awareness of police officers, teachers, and other public officials of the danger of unconscious or unintentional racial bias.

“In the 2011-12 school year,” the report notes, “14.3 percent of black elementary school students in Missouri were suspended, compared to 1.8 percent of white students.” It then adds, “Research suggests that some of the discipline gap may be attributed to teacher bias, which predisposes them to expect less of minority students and to discipline them more frequently and more harshly.”

However, the report makes no attempt to assess, or discuss, what part of “the discipline gap” — if any — may be due to other reasons — including the high incidence of low-income black children growing up in single-parent homes, with no live-in, working fathers.

Among the 189 “calls to action” contained in the report, one of the more startling recommendations is the complete elimination of all school suspensions and expulsions for disruptive behavior from kindergarten through third grade.

At the outset of the report, the commissioners give themselves a broad pass in describing their work as “a study of underlying issues — not an investigation of an incident.” They write:

This report is not in any way an investigation of what happened between Michael Brown Jr. and Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson on August 9, 2014, nor is it an investigation of the response to the uprising that followed. Other bodies have been responsible for those investigations.

For the record, it should be noted that Officer Wilson was twice cleared of charges of any wrong-doing in the death of Brown: First, by the Saint Louis County grand jury’s decision not to bring murder or manslaughter charges against him, and second, in an 86-page report by the U.S. Justice Department in early March which supported that decision.

Over the past 12 months, numerous newspaper and magazine articles have called attention to the widespread misuse of local police and courts in Saint Louis County (including Ferguson) as de facto tax collection agencies — imposing heavy fines and fees for minor traffic violations and other municipal code infractions while often jailing people for failure to pay tickets.

The Ferguson Commission report rightly condemns such practices (as did the U.S. Justice Department in a separate investigation of Ferguson Police Department procedures). In July, Gov. Nixon signed a bill into law that greatly limits the extent to which municipalities can rely on fines and fees to fund themselves.

On balance, however, the Ferguson Commission fails in its stated purpose of “outlining a (new) path to racial equity.” For the most part, it is a compendium of tried-and-failed liberal policy recommendations.

The post The Liberal Solution To Ferguson, Mo? More Liberalism appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Young families hunting for a house often use standardized test rankings as a tool to select a neighborhood. This is highly evident in the Lindbergh School District, where, aside from its relatively low tax rates and housing turnover, the district’s rising enrollment has been attributed to its top-ranking achievement record.

Data released from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) reveals the (receiving district MAP score) concerns were unfounded. In fact, receiving school districts saw little to no decrease in test scores in comparison to the previous year without transfer students. An analysis by St. Louis Public Radio shows that transfer students had no effect on the Annual Performance Report (APR) of many receiving districts.

Some districts did see a change in APR score, and this could be explained by a number of variables. For instance, the state itself saw a decline in scores overall. Also, standardized test scores are strongly correlated to the socio-economic makeup of a district. This may explain why Ferguson-Florissant, a low-income receiving district, saw the most decline—3.6 percentage points.

The transfer of 2,200 students did not cause the sky to fall—or scores for that matter. What it did was give students an educational opportunity. For the receiving district that has chosen not to accept transfer students, this should be a sign that it’s time to take those 350 children back.

Transfer students may not have made a difference on receiving districts’ APR scores, but the receiving districts certainly made a difference on transfer students.

The post The Score Is Falling! The Score Is Falling!-Or Not appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Francis Howell, Pattonville, Ferguson-Florissant, and Ritenour transfer students were devastated. They had to return to a school district in which 16.8 is the average ACT score (the state average is 21.6).  In a recent Washington Post article, Emily Wax-Thibodeaux wrote:

Carmen Clemons has two teenage sons who were in advanced-placement classes. One wants to be an engineer, the other a firefighter. She describes them as “nerdy, nice kids.”

This year, they were told they had to go to Normandy High. The school didn’t have the same advanced classes they had been taking. And on Day 5 of the academic year, they told their mother they had been “jumped,” or beaten up.

“No one broke the fight up,” Clemons said. “I was never notified. I had to go running in today to talk to the principal. We’ve worked so hard to raise respectful kids. My boys are such good students, but my son came home terrified when another student said, ‘If I see those shoes on your feet, I’m gonna take them.’ ”

Now she’s calling private schools, begging for scholarships. And she and her husband, who barely make enough to pay the bills, are thinking about selling their three-bedroom house.

After Judge Michael Burton’s decision to allow the Normandy students named in the lawsuit to return to their receiving districts, Pattonville, Ferguson-Florissant, and Ritenour chose to accept all students that had reapplied for the 2014-15 school year—Francis Howell interpreted the ruling to mean only one student may return.

Since Francis Howell’s decision to reject all but one transfer student, Schindler has begun laying the groundwork for a class-action lawsuit. Watch this video to learn more about the history of the Missouri transfer law, as well as the current legal situation surrounding the law.

The post Normandy Transfers: Taking It to the Courts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

They thought the judge’s decision meant that all children were now able to return to the three school districts they had transferred to last year after the transfer law was upheld by the Missouri Supreme Court.

To their credit, this was how Ritenour and Pattonville interpreted Judge Burton’s decision. The two districts decided to accept all transfer students who had reapplied for the 2014-15 school year.

However, Francis Howell opted to accept only the one child named in the lawsuit, excluding the 350 other students who had reapplied for transfer.

Now, the fate of nine more Normandy students is in the hands of a judge. Attorney Joshua Schindler will appear in court today, fighting again for the rights of Normandy children to attend an accredited school of their choice.

Regardless of the judge’s decision concerning the several children named in this lawsuit, Francis Howell and Ferguson-Florissant should accept all Normandy transfer students.

These children have made their choice. Their choice should be respected, not just because it’s legally sound, but because it’s the right thing to do.

The post Normandy Transfer: An Evolving Story appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Many superintendents in the Saint Louis area make more than $200,000 in salary alone, and receive thousands more in non-salary benefits, such as car payments and annuity payments. For example, Cheatham found that the Clayton superintendent receives $750 per month as a car allowance. This isn’t surprising. In my study of more than 450 Missouri superintendent contracts, I found many odd benefits, including the award of a house.

Most staggering is the finding that the Ferguson-Florrisant Superintendent, Jeffery Spiegel, was awarded health insurance for life for himself and his dependent after he retires at the end of this year. The school board estimates that the benefit will cost more than $200,000, but they have no idea what the cost will be in reality. After all, who knows how long Spiegel will use the benefit?

Cheatham and I both attended the Ferguson-Florrisant School Board meeting on Sept. 8, immediately after the St. Louis Post-Dispatch uncovered Spiegel’s outsized benefit. There was tremendous turnout, to the point that several attendees had to stand. This was unusual; the teachers I sat with said that the board meetings are usually more sparsely attended.

During the public comment session, a number of parents and teachers spoke about the health insurance award. All disagreed with it. In fact, several speakers and attendees noted that the school district had offered retiring teachers continued health insurance for three years after retirement. Some asked why wasn’t that good enough for the superintendent.

I naively thought that in the face of the recession, bad publicity, and disgruntled teachers and parents, perhaps Spiegel would voluntarily relinquish the health insurance for life. Instead, the school board’s president, Les Lenz, spoke at the end of the public comment session to defend the compensation award.

The award is cost effective, Lenz said. Instead of having to find a superintendent quickly, and incur the costs of hiring a consultant to find that new superintendent, the school board could simply award the additional benefit in order to bide more time.

I wonder what the board members were thinking when awarding this potentially incredibly large benefit. After all, the school board will have to conduct a search for a superintendent eventually, regardless of whether the board postpones the search for a year. Does the board think that the search costs will be much lower next year?

As I’ve noted before, this award is especially bad policy because it has an uncertain cost, and because the form of the award obscures its cost from the public. The school board may estimate that the award will cost $200,000, but the cost could be lower, or much greater. Had the board awarded Spiegel a significant raise — say, $40,000 — that could well have been enough to entice him to stay in the district. It certainly would have been a more budgetable cost.

I encourage the Ferguson-Florrisant School Board to be more transparent when awarding superintendent benefits in the future. Furthermore, I am baffled by the board’s stance that this is sound school district budget management.

P.S. — Cheatham’s investigation of school administrator pay continues tonight, on Channel 4, at 10 p.m.

The post Supersize Compensation appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to his contract, the superintendent, Jeffery Spiegel, will begin to receive free health coverage for both himself and his dependents after June 30, 2011, until the end of Spiegel’s life. The superintendent and his dependents will not have to pay any premiums for this coverage after June 30.

This is pricey. According to Bock’s article, district officials estimates the cost of the lifelong health insurance to be more than $200,000.

A more typical health insurance benefit for superintendents at larger school districts is to provide health insurance to a superintendent and his or her family while the superintendent works at the district. (The Pleasant Hill superintendent’s contract is a good example).

If the Ferguson-Florrisant school board members were having a difficult time persuading Spiegel to stay at the district, they could have awarded him an increase in salary for that year, or an increased annuity payment — something that other school districts occasionally do. The health insurance that Spiegel was awarded is an unknown expense. It is impossible to know how long he and his dependents will use the benefit. Estimates, such as the $218,398 figure calculated by district officials, are only estimates.

Really, why would the Ferguson-Florissant school board, which oversees the district’s budget, prefer to award a benefit with an unknown cost to one that can easily be budgeted for? If board members thought Spiegel was worth an additional $218,398, the board members could have increased his salary by that amount. That approach would result in Spiegel’s salary increasing to $430,051. Of course, if the school board had taken that approach, the additional compensation would have been awarded in a much more transparent manner.

School districts report their superintendent’s salary each year to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. But districts do not report the non-salary benefits, such as annuity payments, car allowances, or, in this case, health insurance for life. So, Spiegel’s additional compensation cannot be found by looking at state data. Additionally, if an education reporter or interested district resident were to request Spiegel’s employment contract, which is where you can find information about non-salary benefits, they would only see that he was awarded health insurance for life — not the monetary value of that benefit. It took diligent reporting to suss out the $218,398 figure.

It is impossible to tell whether school board members thought that they could obscure the enormous sum of money awarded Spiegel by providing lifelong health insurance to its superintendent and his dependents. But, regardless of the intention, that is the end result. I’m glad the Post-Dispatch caught it.

Incidentally, the next Ferguson-Florissant school board meets next on Sept. 8.

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