House Bill 2274: Increasing Mobility for Teachers

On January 15, Show-Me Institute Senior Policy Analyst Avery Frank submits testimony to the Missouri House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee regarding an interstate teacher mobility compact.

To the Honorable Members of This Committee

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Avery Frank. I am a senior policy analyst at the ShowMe Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, Missouri-based think tank that advances sensible, well-researched, free-market solutions to state and local policy issues. The ideas presented here are my own and are offered in consideration of fostering flexibility in Missouri’s public education system.

Reducing Uncertainty for Out-of-State Teachers

In 2020, Missouri adopted a form of universal licensing reciprocity allowing most licensed professionals (with some exceptions) who have held a valid license issued by another state for at least one year to practice in Missouri at the same occupation or level, meaning that they would have Missouri examination, educational, or experience licensing requirements waived.¹

Teachers are among the many licensed professions in Missouri, and this reciprocity regime is beneficial as it currently stands. However, uncertainty remains for many out-of-state teachers who may seek to relocate to Missouri. For example, which Missouri teaching license is equivalent to their current out-of-state license?² Additionally, existing statute allows relevant licensing authorities up to six months to issue a licensing waiver.³ Together, these uncertainties can reduce Missouri’s attractiveness as a place to move and teach.

House Bill 2274 would establish the Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact in order to address these challenges. If enacted, the compact would require each participating state to create and maintain a list of licenses it is willing to consider for equivalency. This would help teachers more clearly understand their potential teaching options and reduce uncertainty when considering relocation.

The interstate commission created by the compact would primarily function as a clearinghouse, or central information-sharing hub, for licensure and disciplinary information. Each state would retain full authority over who is licensed within its borders and under what conditions. While Missouri already provides a broad pathway for recognizing many out-of-state licenses, the compact would provide additional transparency and consistency that could make the state more attractive to prospective teachers.

Helping Address Teacher Shortages in High-Need Subject Areas and Schools

Missouri’s teacher shortage has received significant attention in recent years⁴. A closer examination of the state’s pipeline and hiring trends suggests that Missouri does not face a broad, statewide shortage of teachers. Instead, shortages are concentrated in specific subject areas and in particular high-need, challenged districts.⁵ 

For example, between the 2017–18 and 2021–22 school years, the Hickman Mills C-1 school district reported a substantially higher percentage of vacant teaching positions than other Kansas City–area noncharter public school districts—more than five times higher than the second-highest district, Kansas City 33.⁶

While the compact alone will not provide a targeted solution to these types of deficiencies, it should improve Missouri’s overall teacher pipeline by making it easier for qualified out-of-state teachers to fill vacancies in hard-to-staff schools and subject areas, such as special education or physics. Kansas is already a member of this compact, and facilitating mobility for teachers living near the Kansas–Missouri border could benefit western Missouri districts in particular.⁷

Conclusion

House Bill 2274 offers an opportunity for Missouri to continue leading on occupational licensing reform while modestly improving access to qualified teachers in areas of greatest need. For these reasons, this bill could help make Missouri a better place to teach and live.

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Over the past few years, Missourians have gotten a better understanding of the term “shortage.” Whether it was soup or toilet paper, we can all remember those empty shelves at the grocery store at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Maybe that’s why the term “teacher shortage” has many policymakers on edge these days. There’s just one problem: in education, the term “shortage” doesn’t mean what you think it means.

Take the “shortage” of elementary school teachers in Missouri for example. In 2021, the Springfield School District wanted to hire 55 elementary school teachers. They received 2,155 applications from individuals with the appropriate certification. Yet, for one reason or another, they left six positions vacant. This is a teacher shortage.

The problem is the misleading way in which the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education presents the data. In the “Teacher Shortage Report for Missouri,” released in December 2022, DESE defines shortage areas as “those content areas within the state for which positions were filled with inappropriately certified teachers(s) or left vacant due to the absence of certified candidates.”

This is possibly the broadest definition of what it means to have a shortage. If a school district hires a private school teacher with 10 years of experience and a bachelor’s degree in elementary education? Shortage. They hire an individual with an MBA to teach high school business, but he does not have certification? Shortage. Let’s say they hire someone with a high school mathematics certification to teach elementary or middle school mathematics. Shortage. Keep in mind, the state has dozens of teacher certification areas, and being certified in one does not qualify you to teach another. With this broad definition, DESE suggests Missouri was short 532 elementary school teachers (Grades 1–6) in 2022, making this the highest shortage area.

Let’s put that into perspective using raw, unweighted data provided by request from DESE. In 2022, there were 2,015 job openings for elementary school teaching positions. Districts received over 21,000 applications, more than 18,000 of which had the appropriate certification. Of course, teachers may apply for more than one job.  In all, 32 elementary positions were left vacant. Thirteen of those vacancies were in the Riverview Gardens School District alone.

There is a teacher shortage—it’s just not as widespread as most believe. In total, across all certification areas, Missouri had 258 positions left vacant in 2022. These vacancies were spread across 74 of the state’s 550+ school districts, but nearly half of all vacancies were in just five school districts: Hickman Mills (17), Kansas City (17), St. Louis Special School District (19), Hazelwood (27), and Riverview Gardens (47).

Aside from the Special School District, which is a unique district that serves special-needs students in St. Louis County, the other four districts have a lot in common. They tend to serve students who come from low-income families who are black. For example, more than 97 percent of Riverview Gardens students are black.

The shortage narrative has been used to push for an increase to the starting teacher salary in Missouri. According to data obtained from the Missouri State Teachers Association, the average starting salary in these four districts is $40,075. That is well above the current state minimum of $25,000 and even above the proposed minimum of $38,000 that is currently before the Missouri legislature. Estimates suggest this increase would cost the state $21 million.

Such an increase could actually exacerbate the problems facing high-poverty, majority-minority school districts. If all the districts that currently pay less are forced to offer higher wages, Riverview Gardens, Hickman Mills, and other districts that struggle with teacher recruitment will lose the competitive advantage of higher salaries. Imagine: the state could spend $21 million and fail to even address the real shortage problem in Missouri’s most disadvantaged school districts.

Missouri’s teacher shortage is not equally felt throughout the state; it is most pronounced in high-poverty, majority-minority school districts. Accordingly, strategies to address the shortage should provide targeted support for the affected districts. This could include salary supplements for teachers in hard-to-staff schools, or it could mean intense marketing, recruitment, and human-resource support for these schools. An across-the-board increase in minimum teacher salary is not what Missouri needs, and it could very well do more harm than good.

The post What Does Missouri’s Teacher Shortage Really Look Like appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

At the Show-Me Institute, we focus on policy issues, not partisan races. Next week’s ballot is relatively light on policy votes, but there are some interesting proposals before voters nevertheless.

In St. Louis County, there are three charter changes to consider. These changes would establish a salary commission for the county council, give greater protection to whistleblowers within county government, and clarify that county appointments to boards and commissions must be approved by the county council. The last one should not be necessary, as that is the current law, but apparently the current law isn’t enough, hence the proposal to tighten up the wording. I think the whistleblower protections are necessary, and the appointment proposal is much needed as well, albeit unfortunately.

Ferguson and Blue Springs are both considering use taxes. My position on use taxes is that they are fine if they are offset with reductions in other, more harmful taxes. In the case of Blue Springs, the city should use the new money (if the tax passes) to reduce its dependence on special-taxing districts and consider privatizing municipal utilities and golf courses. For Ferguson, a use tax increase could be offset by a lower property or utility tax rate. Either way, if these cities (and others that may have a use tax vote next week) are simply using the use tax as new money, voters should think twice about just granting local governments more money.

In the Holly Hills neighborhood of south St. Louis City, voters are considering a new special business district tax to do things that government ought to already be doing in the first place, such as public security and park maintenance. The existence of this proposal is first and foremost an admission that city government is failing, but creating a new, small, tax-funded agency with limited oversight is unlikely to be the savior supporters think it will be.

Finally, there are numerous school and fire district bond issues and tax increases on the ballot. One that stands out is the proposed tax increase in Hickman Mills School District in the Kansas City area. You can check out the performance of the schools in that district at MoSchoolRankings.org. The school district board is proposing a $1.35 per $100 of assessed value tax increase. That is one of the largest increases I have ever seen. For a $200,000 house in the school district, that is a $513 tax increase. Is that worth it to the parents, voters, and taxpayers of that district? We shall see . . .

Remember, the world is run by the people who show up, so show up.

The post August Ballot Issue Rundown appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The good: The editorial board acknowledges that parents want the best education for their children and this program may allow them to offset private school tuition, tutoring, or other educational therapies. They also acknowledge that the Kansas City Public Schools and the Hickman Mills district have struggled with low performance for years.

The bad: The editorial is incorrect in so many places. It quotes a claim that this program will drain $75 million from the education budget. In fact, the program is capped at $25 million and it is paid for through tax credits from general revenue, not education funding. It claims that every student who leaves KCPS or Hickman Mills for the program will take approximately $10,000 in state education funding with them. First, the state education funding formula provides $6,400 per student. But here is the real kicker: as a result of legislative negotiations, students who leave their public school to take a scholarship in this program will continue to be counted in the enrollment of their public school district for five years. That’s right, the district will receive state funding for those students for five years after they leave. And then strangely, editorial claims that this program will at once dismantle public education while raising concerns over a lack of available private school seats and the inability of parents to cover costs beyond the scholarships. How can both of these dire predictions be accurate?

The ugly: Here’s the crux of the editorial board’s argument and what really makes my blood boil. The board claims that we can’t let students leave low-performing districts because they take money with them. A quote from the Hickman Mills superintendent: “It is a direct attack on our student enrollment and the funding we receive from the state.” The scholarships that will be “doled out” are really just diverting “dollars away from the system.”

Imagine you’re a single parent, struggling to make ends meet. You have a child with a disability who is making little to no progress catching up to their peers and you worry every day about your child’s future. A scholarship-granting organization now exists that will allow you to apply for a scholarship for your child. You can look for a private school that specializes in your child’s disability. But your own superintendent wants to close the gate and lock it because your child represents thousands of dollars in state funding. You’re supposed to prioritize the finances of the public school district over your child’s well being.

Make no mistake, the drumbeat against allowing low-income parents or parents of children with disabilities to use public money anywhere other than their assigned public school is about to get louder. The threat just got real. The unfairness and hypocrisy of holding them hostage for their state funding astounds me.

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

Let’s look at some facts. The Missouri Legislature is currently considering a budget that will fully fund the education foundation formula next year even though many predicted doom and gloom for school finances. For the purposes of funding, Missouri public school districts get to use this year’s attendance (difficult to keep track of), last year’s, or the year before. In other words, they get to pretend that no parents got fed up with their district’s educational offering this year and left— something we know is not true.

In addition, Missouri has received approximately $2 billion in federal stimulus money in the past year, 90 percent of which is required to be distributed to school districts. That’s nearly $2,500 per student in additional funding beyond the $11,000 average expenditure per student in Missouri. The supposed war on public education seems to involve giving public schools a lot of money.

But here’s the real deal—the public education establishment doesn’t want to give parents a way out. Here’s a direct quote from the op-ed: “There is only so much money to fund public education, and increasing the parents’ choice in where their child goes to school will bleed established districts dry.” Wow. Katie bar the door!

We all know that parents with the means to do so already choose where their child goes to school. They choose by moving. So, what this columnist is railing against is evening the playing field for everyone else. The op-ed points to Hickman Mills, a district that serves mostly disadvantaged students, as one of the districts that will be hurt by this bill just when they’re “already so close to getting things together.” Do you want to send your child to a district that is so close to getting things together? Neither do I. Parents in Hickman Mills deserve to choose whether they’re willing to wait for that to happen or to enroll their children somewhere else, like a charter school.

It is the rare parent who sees their role as the protector of their school district and its finances. Most parents I speak with just want to do the best they can for their children. Using inflammatory rhetoric and fearmongering to restrict them is a tactic that could easily backfire.

The post If This Is a War, Who Needs Peace? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

DESE’s newest version of APR, the state’s school and district evaluation method, shows no improvement in presenting information to parents. It’s something I’ve written about before, and I’m not the only one to notice how confusing these report cards can be. When the new report cards came out last week, there were quite a few articles pointing out how opaque and cryptic the information is.

KCUR’s article title is pretty self-explanatory: “Missouri Parents Just Got More School Data But They Might Need A Textbook To Figure It Out.”

The Kansas City Star editorial board wrote about the new report cards, saying: “Sadly, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education gets a D for its report this year — not because the results are good or bad, necessarily, but because the results are nearly indecipherable.”

When explaining how to read the report, the editorial board asks “Confused? Almost certainly. The system seems designed to befuddle even the most committed parents.”

Another Kansas City Star article shows that even districts are confused: “In fact, Kansas City Public Schools and Hickman Mills still don’t know if they scored well enough on the Annual Performance Report to regain full state accreditation.” The article also pointed out that “the new format comes with a guide, but it’s 77 pages long.”

KSHB wrote: “The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) released its Annual Performance Report Thursday morning, though it may have left school districts with more questions than answers.”

St. Louis public radio had an article appropriately titled “Missouri Redesigned School Report Cards – And It’s A Lot To Digest.” One of the authors even posted a nine-step tutorial on her Twitter account explaining how to access the report page.

The new report cards shouldn’t leave this many people confused. The onslaught of disdain should cause DESE to rethink its design and build school report cards that are actually useful.  

The post Don’t Worry, We’re All Confused appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In statewide testing, less than half of the students in the district scored proficient or advanced in English and only about a third scored proficient or advanced in math. The latest average ACT score was 16.5, nearly five points below the national average of 21. Has the Hayti School District sufficiently prepared the class of 2019 to succeed after graduation?

Hayti has been provisionally accredited for over a decade, but that does not necessarily mean the state has taken adequate steps to make sure the district improves. The state monitors provisionally accredited districts, but there are few real consequences if their performance stagnates—and the SBE has been quick to upgrade districts even before sustained progress has been made. Unfortunately, the Missouri School Improvement Program is a series of graduated but mostly meaningless interventions.

My recent essay for the Show-Me Institute, “Accountability in Missouri’s Public School System,” goes into greater detail about our state’s struggling districts and argues that if accountability is defined as tangible consequences for district and school personnel, the state has been at best inconsistent in holding districts responsible for poor performance.

Some examples: Jennings and Caruthersville, both formerly provisionally accredited, were reclassified as fully accredited by the SBE even though they failed to meet the academic goals the districts set themselves. Not far behind Hayti, Calhoun R-VIII, and Hickman Mills have been provisionally accredited for 5 or more years.

Unaccredited districts also have been let off the hook despite a lack of significant progress. The SBE voted unanimously to classify Kansas City as provisionally accredited even though the former Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) Commissioner said the district had not established a “consistent trend of improvement.”

Two other once-unaccredited districts—Riverview Gardens and Normandy—failed to meet most performance targets set by the state before the SBE granted them provisional accreditation. In the case of the St. Louis City School District, its scores in all performance areas had not improved significantly . . . but it was unanimously approved for full accreditation.

These examples call into question the commonly held assumption that the state holds traditional public schools accountable. One could argue that the 1993 transfer law—although separate from DESE’s Missouri School Improvement Program—is the best form of accountability for districts. When students have the right to leave for a better school, unaccredited districts must improve to avoid having to pay other districts to educate their students.

Now that there are no unaccredited districts in Missouri, however, students in districts like Riverview Gardens and Normandy no longer have the right to transfer. Before thinking of this as a cause for celebration, we should recognize that this creates a trap for students whose districts are performing just well enough to prevent triggering the transfer law, but not well enough to provide a genuinely good education.

Families should not be waiting years or even decades for schools to make small gains or else become unaccredited so that students can transfer out. Under the current accountability system, the kids are the ones who face the consequences—whether they have to take remedial classes in college or cannot get a well-paying job—not the district or school leaders. Our accountability system is failing, and students deserve better than being forced to stay put in poorly performing schools.

The post Without Consequences for Failing Schools, Students Lose appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

if the legislative body allows charter schools to expand into the Central School District, taxpayers within the community would have no say in whether a charter school is needed and, furthermore, money would be consequently removed from classrooms due to increased overhead and operating costs.

So how likely is it that charter schools will start appearing in communities whose residents see no need for them? Not very. Charter operators seek to open schools in areas where there is a clear demand, to ensure that the schools have enough students to enroll.

In my recent paper on charter school expansion, I referenced a survey of high-performing, national charter management organizations which examined their approaches to expanding into a new area. The report containing the survey explains:

These CMOs [charter management organizations] learned that networks must deeply and meaningfully engage a new community to understand its needs and concerns, build partnerships from the ground up, and be prepared to repeatedly explain the work of the organization. This often requires a long window of time to build relationships and establish credibility. Otherwise, many communities view national operators as outsiders and a threat to the local education ecosystems.

Even if HB 634 passes, charter schools are unlikely to appear in districts like Central, Columbia, and Hickman Mills before charter operators gauge the interest in those communities.

Those who are satisfied with their public school and district should not worry about a charter school “invading” their community. But neither should they assume that because they are satisfied with their public school, charter schools are unwanted or not needed elsewhere in the state. Far too many kids in Missouri are stuck in failing schools and deserve the opportunities new charter schools can offer.  

For more information:

“Student Selection, Attrition, and Replacement in KIPP Middle Schools.” Available here.

“Is there Empirical Evidence Consistent with the Claim that Charter Schools ‘Push Out’ Low-Performing Students?” Available here.

“Charter School Funding: Missouri.” Available here.

“A Closer Look at the Charter School Movement: Charter Schools, Students, and Management Organizations, 2015-2016.” Available here.

The post No, Charter Schools Won’t Take Over Your School District appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Now it’s time to get to work. At the top of the to-do list should be education reform. Education reform has a proud tradition among conservatives, and reflects the core conservative values of free enterprise, entrepreneurship, and accountability for public dollars.

The need is great. Among the class of 2015, only 22 percent of Missouri students who took the ACT scored “college ready” in all four tested subjects. On the 2015 National Assessment for Educational Progress, only 31 percent of Missouri 8th-graders were deemed “proficient” in math and only 36% were found proficient in reading. The most recent AP Report to the Nation found that only 9.5% of Missouri’s students graduated high school having scored 3 or higher on an AP test, putting us in the bottom five states in the nation for AP performance.

There is no time to waste. Luckily, there are at least three steps policymakers can take to improve Missouri’s education system:

Expand charter schools statewide. Right now, charter schools are functionally limited to operating within the boundaries of the Kansas City and Saint Louis school districts. Within those constraints, they have created some incredible opportunities for students. Independent evaluators found that Kansas City’s Ewing Marion Kaufmann School produced a whopping 1.35 additional years of learning in Math and 1.29 years of learning in reading for students who attended the school for at least three years—all while serving a student population that is 86% free and reduced lunch eligible. Many students in Hickman Mills (whose performance data looks nearly indistinguishable from that of the Kansas City Public Schools) and other struggling districts across the state would jump at the chance to attend such a school.

Create a course access program. In the 2014–15 school year, 285 school districts in Missouri had zero students take an AP class. 255 districts didn’t have a single student take Calculus. 213 districts didn’t have a single student take Physics. In most cases, these are smaller rural districts that simply don’t have enough demand to justify hiring a full-time AP or advanced Math or Science teacher. Course access programs were created to address this very problem; they allow students to direct a portion of their annual per-pupil funding to approved course providers outside of their traditional public schools and to receive credit for classes they successfully pass. If, for example, a student’s school doesn’t offer calculus, or only offers Spanish and she wants to take Mandarin, she could head to the library and log into an online class. The cost for the class would be paid with the fraction of her state funding that would normally cover that class period.

Establish an education savings account program. Rather than sending a child’s yearly education funding to their local public or charter school, the state could put that money into a flexible-use spending account that parents could control. Parents could use the money in this account for private school tuition, tutoring, special education services, or any number of other approved expenses. This maximally flexible funding system would do the most to move our education system into the 21st century, allowing families to fully customize their child’s education.

Our children deserve a world-class education system. Gridlock, vetoes, or divided government can’t be an excuse. Let’s work together to give it to them.

The post Education Reform Should Be Top Priority for Missouri’s Leaders appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The results were a mixed bag, with six issues passing and five failing. Here are the results:

Chillicothe R-II 37¢ per $100 in assessed value tax levy increase: PASSED

Columbia 65¢ per $100 in assessed value tax levy increase: PASSED

Laclede 49¢ per $100 in assessed value tax levy increase: PASSED

Niangua 93¢ per $100 in assessed value tax levy increase: FAILED

Maplewood-Richmond Heights 50¢ per $100 in assessed value tax levy increase: PASSED

Marshfield R-I 50¢ per $100 in assessed value tax levy increase: FAILED

Mexico 40¢ per $100 in assessed value tax levy increase: FAILED

Newburg R-II 96¢ per $100 in assessed value tax levy increase: FAILED

Ft. Zumwalt R-II 48¢ per $100 in assessed value tax levy increase: PASSED

Saint Louis City 75¢ per $100 in assessed value tax levy increase: PASSED

West Plains R-VII 95¢ per $100 in assessed value tax levy increase: FAILED

We also followed two other ballot issues. Here are the results from those:

Hickman Mills “No Tax Increase” Bond: PASSED

Ladue 38¢ per $100 in assessed value debt levy increase: PASSED

(I’ll check back on the results in the coming days to see if there are any changes.)

So what do we make of all of this?  A few thoughts:

1. It appears that the largest of the tax levies (93¢ in Niangua, 95¢ in West Plains, and 96¢ in Newburg) failed. Those levies meant hundreds of additional dollars in taxation for property owners. Folks were clearly skeptical that so much money was necessary. 
2. Urban and suburban districts’ measures fared better than those in rural areas. St. Louis, Columbia, and Maplewood-Richmond Heights’ levies all passed, as did the measures in Hickman Mills and Ladue.
3. Saint Louis was able to simultaneously pass the earnings tax and a school tax levy. I think there is every reason to be concerned that this may continue to push people out of the city as they are asked to pay more and more to a city that hollows out its tax base via TIF and a school system that routinely fails to make the grade.

We’re going to stay on top of these tax levy issues. Be on the lookout for another round of analysis before the next slate of elections in November.

The post Tax Levy Election Results appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As SMI researchers explained in a blog post and video back in 2014, a no tax increase bond is similar to refinancing a home—it simply stretches debt out over a longer period of time. It looks like there isn’t a tax increase, because the levy itself isn’t being increased; only the length of the bond is. But what proponents often leave out (and anyone who has paid off their mortgage will tell you) is that if the district pays off the bond, it doesn’t have to keep charging the same levy. That is why SMI Fellow James Shuls called it a “No tax levy increase bond” and not a “no tax increase bond”

According to the district, the bond in Washington would help free up money needed to fund area schools that have faced over $2 million in budget cuts due to decreases in enrollment and assessed valuation. In Hickman Mills, the bond would help pay for facility upgrades and renovations. Superintendent Dennis Carpenter has scheduled a town-hall meeting open to the public on March 29 to elaborate on the District’s plans for the facility upgrades and other projects.  The proposal is on the April 5 ballot.

Whether or not these school districts need more money is an open question worth debating, but it is hard to have a productive discussion when the means of collecting that money are so opaque.  Leaders should be honest and transparent with citizens, and taxpayers have to remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

The post If “No Tax Increase Bonds” Sound Too Good To Be True, They Probably Are appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kansas City is home to several great public charter schools. As Robertson reports, Crossroads Academy has a waitlist 150 students long.  Academie Lafayette has a 130-student waiting list. Scuola Vita Nuova has a waiting list of over 60 students, the Kauffman School has a waiting list ranging from 10 to 50 depending on the grade, and University Academy has a waiting list of 9 for kindergarten.

The problem in Kansas City is that there simply aren’t enough great schools to go around.  Families with money can hedge their bets by entering the lottery to get into one of the schools I’ve mentioned, and if they lose they can move to a different district or pay for a private school. Parents without those resources cannot.  Those less-fortunate families live within the Kansas City Missouri School District, but they also live in Raytown, Hickman Mills, Center, and in several of the other districts that overlap with the borders of Kansas City. Charter schools are functionally limited to the KCSD boundaries, so students zoned to attend low-performing schools anywhere else are simply out of luck.

Crossroads Academy has a promising expansion plan, and I’m particularly interested in watching the parent-led Citizens of the World charter school that is slated to open next year, but even with that growth, supply is nowhere close to meeting demand.

Here at the Show-Me Institute, we’ve documented the declining enrollment of the KCSD, and these families’ stories continue to make the case for the correct course of action moving forward. Rather than figuring out the best way to apportion a small number of good seats in schools across the city, why don’t we focus our efforts on creating new seats? Expand good charter schools. Help new schools get buildings.  Allow charter schools to open outside of the narrow bounds of KCSD.

Until we take these steps, we can expect to see a constant stream of stories of families struggling to find places for their children. 

The post Evergreen Headline: Kansas City Needs More Good Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It is always risky when you make predictions; but aside from the time I bet against the Harlem Globetrotters, I’m doing pretty well. I previously predicted that 2013 would be a banner year for charter schools, and it was. In a December 2013 post titled, “How Choice Changes The Transfer Dynamic in Kansas City,” I predicted that the inter-district transfer law would have less of an effect in Kansas City than it has in the Normandy and Riverview Gardens School Districts in Saint Louis. I wrote:

The existing prevalence of school choice in Kansas City will most likely make the impact of student transfers minimal in comparison to the experiences at Normandy and Riverview Gardens. If school leaders in Kansas City and the surrounding areas handle the situation well, this expansion of school choice could actually benefit the districts and the students.

To date, only 23 children have applied to transfer from the unaccredited Kansas City Public School District to an accredited district. Does this mean that the students don’t want school choice? Not really.

In many ways, charter schools in Kansas City have acted as a release valve. They have provided families with another option and made the prospect of riding a bus or driving to neighboring districts less appealing.

If we think about it another way, the low transfer number demonstrates the positive impact of charter schools. The nearly 10,000 students in Kansas City charter schools would rather stay in those schools than transfer to the Independence, Raytown, Hickman Mills, or other surrounding school districts. It is amazing what can happen when individuals are free to choose, rather than being compelled to send their children to a school that isn’t meeting their needs.

The post Few Students Transfer From Kansas City Public Schools – Thanks To Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Peter and Paul are friends. They went to the same college, majored in education, and graduated the same year. Peter began teaching in the Jefferson City School District and Paul joined the faculty in the Hickman Mills School District. After working for 30 years, both retired. Little did they know that over the course of their careers, the defined benefit pension system had been robbing Peter to pay for Paul’s retirement.

Teachers in Jefferson City (Peter) start at a slightly higher salary than teachers in Hickman Mills (Paul) and they continue to earn a higher salary for 23 years. However, toward the end of their careers, Hickman Mills teachers receive larger pay raises and surpass their Jefferson City counterparts.

Over the course of a 30-year career, a teacher in Jefferson City will earn $29,213 more than a Hickman Mills teacher. Each of these districts is part of the Public School Retirement System of Missouri (PSRS). This system requires 29 percent of a teacher’s salary be contributed to the pension system, 14.5 percent each from the employee and the employer. Assuming a constant 29 percent contribution rate, a Jefferson City teacher will have $8,472 more deposited into the pension system than a Hickman Mills teacher.

Because they deposit more into the retirement system, it would make sense for the Jefferson City teachers to earn more in retirement, but that is not the case. Pensions in the PSRS system are based on a teacher’s three highest consecutive salaries, usually his or her last three years. The spike at the end of their career gives Hickman Mills teachers a higher final average salary, meaning they will earn more in retirement than the Jefferson City teachers.

Despite paying $8,472 more into the pension system, the Jefferson City teacher will receive $55,080 less than the Hickman Mills retiree over the course of a 30-year retirement.

This is a clear problem. Indeed, Missouri’s teacher retirement system is rife with problems. The end result is escalating payments by the state or declining benefits for pensioners. Since 2004, Missouri teachers have seen their contribution rate increase eight times, rising steadily from 21 percent to the current 29 percent. These increases are necessary to combat growing pension liabilities.

The problem with PSRS and many other public employee pension systems in Missouri is that they do not tie an individual’s contributions to his or her pension wealth accrual. That is, what you put into the retirement system is not related to how much you get out of the retirement system. That is why Peter can contribute more, but receive less.

The current pension system is flawed and unfair for teachers in Jefferson City and other districts that are robbed to fund the pensions of teachers in other districts. It is time to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul’s pension. It is time to fix our pension problems.

James V. Shuls, Ph.D., is the education policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

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Though this story is fictional, the situation is a reality for many teachers in Missouri. Take, for example, the actual salary schedules of two public school districts, Jefferson City and Hickman Mills. Teachers in Jefferson City (Peter) start at a slightly higher salary than teachers in Hickman Mills (Paul), and they continue to earn a higher salary for 23 years. However, toward the end of their careers, Hickman Mills teachers receive larger pay raises and surpass their Jefferson City counterparts.

Over the course of a 30-year career, a teacher in Jefferson City will earn $29,213 more than a Hickman Mills teacher. Each of these districts is part of the Public School Retirement System of Missouri (PSRS). This system requires 29 percent of a teacher’s salary to be contributed to the pension system, 14.5 percent each from the employee and the employer. Assuming a constant 29 percent contribution rate, a Jefferson City teacher will have $8,472 more deposited into the pension system than a Hickman Mills teacher.

Because he or she deposits more into the retirement system, it would make sense for the Jefferson City teacher to earn more in retirement; however, that is not the case. Pensions in the PSRS system are based on a teacher’s three highest consecutive salaries, usually his or her final three years. The spike at the end of their careers gives Hickman Mills teachers higher final average salaries, meaning they earn more in retirement than the Jefferson City teachers.

Despite paying $8,472 more into the pension system, the Jefferson City teacher will receive more than $55,080 less than the Hickman Mills retiree over the course of a 30-year retirement.

This may sound unfair, but this is just the tip of the iceberg regarding problems with defined benefit pension systems. In an effort to boost their final average salaries, teachers and administrators regularly game these systems, switching positions near retirement. The result of the various forms of gaming is escalating payments by states or declining benefits for pensioners.

Missouri teachers and schools have seen an increase in their contribution rate eight times since 2004, rising steadily from 21 percent to the current 29 percent. Contribution rate increases are necessary to combat growing pension liabilities. In a recent report for the Show-Me Institute, the American Enterprise Institute’s Andrew Biggs noted that Missouri’s five largest public pension systems have unfunded liabilities of nearly $54 billion. PSRS accounts for more than $31 billion of those unfunded liabilities.

Each of the problems mentioned here stems from the fact that Missouri’s defined benefit pension systems do not tie an individual’s contributions directly to his or her pension benefits. That is why a teacher who has paid considerably less into the system can earn more in retirement.

Missouri and other states should act quickly to reform public employee pension systems. In a recent report from the Manhattan Institute, Josh McGee and Marcus Winters laid out a plan that would allow states to reign in unwieldy pension liabilities and make the system fairer for pensioners. This can be accomplished by abandoning our current defined benefit plans and replacing them with a system that allows pension wealth to accrue smoothly based on an individual’s contributions. McGee and Winters note that in many cases, this would allow states to raise teachers’ salaries considerably.

This type of reform would ensure that individuals who pay less into the system do not get larger benefits than those who pay more. It would also make pensions portable. This would be attractive to individuals who would like to teach, but are unsure of making it a career.

Our current defined benefit pension system for Missouri teachers is unfair and unsustainable. It’s time to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul’s pension. It’s time to fix our pension problems.

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