Susan Pendergrass speaks with J.S. Onésimo “Ness” Sandoval, demographer and professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Saint Louis University, about what the data says about the future of the St. Louis region. They discuss record low birth rates and what they mean for school enrollment, why St. Louis is among the top regions in the country for deaths outnumbering births, how the region compares to Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and why suburbs like Chesterfield and St. Charles are aging faster than most people realize. They also discuss the role of housing supply, school choice, crime, and domestic migration in whether St. Louis can attract and retain young families, and more.

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Episode Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:00): Well, certainly not the first time we’ve spoken, Dr. Sandoval. At St. Louis University, you are such a fascinating demographer of the region, and I’ve been following your work as new census data has been released. You’ve been writing about it and creating what I think are really cool mapping tools that folks can look at to see how the St. Louis region is impacted. Thanks for coming on to talk about that. But first I want to sort of expand our view, because pretty sure that I read within the last week that the number of babies born in the United States was at an all-time low. Is that right?

Ness Sandoval (00:35): Yeah, so every year the United States will probably be breaking records. The data coming out for 2025 is a record low, and the data coming out for 2026 is even lower. The first few months of 2026, the provisional data that’s out shows even fewer. And this is what we expected. We call this a demographic shock, because in 2026, whenever you create an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear, rational people do not have children until they understand that their job is safe, there’s not a recession coming, and we’re not at war. When you create this sense of fear, young people do the rational thing and don’t have children. We saw this in 2020 with COVID. We saw this in 2008 with the Great Recession. Anytime there is uncertainty, young people will postpone births. And that’s what we’re seeing. This started in November. We started to see the decline in births, and it’s continued from November, December, January, February. And so this is what we’re going to see.

Susan Pendergrass (01:51): So next year is going to be lower. And when you look at the state of Missouri, I’ve been saying this ad nauseum for years that our K-12 school enrollment is declining and will decline because of that sort of peak in 2008, just before the Great Recession. So our biggest kindergarten class was around 2012, and our kindergarten classes have by and large declined ever since. And so those kids are moving through the system. You can project that we will just have fewer and fewer kids enrolled in our K-12 system in the state of Missouri.

Ness Sandoval (02:06): No, we peaked in 2008.

Susan Pendergrass (02:11): By and large declined ever since 2012. And so those kids are moving through the system. So you can project that we will just have fewer and fewer kids enrolled in our K-12 system in the state of Missouri.

Ness Sandoval (02:24): Yeah, this is true, and we have a pretty good chart. We make these for every city. We’re replacing very large cohorts of children who were born. I have a son who was born in 2007, just before the recession. That cohort that graduated in St. Louis was 40,000 students. The baby birth cohort is now 27,000 students. So that’s just in that one year a 13,000 decline. And it’s going to decline every year for the next 15 to 18 years, because we don’t know what the bottom is yet. It has not reached the bottom.

Susan Pendergrass (03:01): Right. People say where are the kids going? I’m like, they’re not going anywhere. They weren’t born. The St. Louis region, like Clayton is declining, Ladue was, I mean, all of these school districts, I think almost everyone in the county has fewer kids today than they had 10 years ago.

Ness Sandoval (03:07): They weren’t born. Yes, and it’s not just St. Louis County. St. Charles County is experiencing this. There are some parts that are growing, in the Wentzville area, O’Fallon, but if you look at the old St. Charles areas, they’re experiencing decline. Families with children are declining in those areas. We had made an interactive map that I think shocked a lot of people, of seniors outnumbering youth. People could not comprehend this. Like, my gosh, this is not 2000 where youth were dominating these neighborhoods. I live out here in Chesterfield. The entire Route 64 corridor is senior citizens dominating the youth in Chesterfield. People are shocked. More seniors lived in Chesterfield than youth in 2010, and that’s only grown since. This is happening throughout West County.

Susan Pendergrass (04:14): Wow. And your maps actually go down to the zip code, right? You have very granular data.

Ness Sandoval (04:27): Across into Illinois, yes. The only way you can turn this around is young people from across the United States deciding that they want to make St. Louis their home, have a family there, create a business there. This is what I promote. We have to get younger. We really should have a preferential option for families with children. And that’s a hard message for a lot of people because they’re like, wait a minute, we grew from 1970 to 2020. And I’m like, but all of that growth was driven by babies born. Over 1.8 million babies were born. And I tell people, just do the math. 27,000 babies per year times 50. That’s the back of the envelope for what’s coming over the next 50 years. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s going to come. It’s going to be a lot lower than that. People are starting to get it. We’re not going to have 1.8 million babies born over the next 50 years.

Susan Pendergrass (05:33): Yeah, and I think about things like individual school systems building new elementary schools when there have got to be a lot of buildings that are empty. And also, won’t there be more competition for public resources between children and older people?

Ness Sandoval (05:49): Yeah. At my previous job at Northwestern, we did a project on this in one of the suburbs because we were studying seniors. There was a debate about how to spend public money. Was it for transit for seniors or transit for children? This was 2006, and this was the debate happening in Chicago. How do you provide paratransit for senior citizens when that number is increasing? We’re just having this discussion because St. Louis is leading. We’re in the top three of regions. Pittsburgh leads the country, Cleveland is second, and St. Louis is third, tied with Tampa. More people dying than babies born. We simply don’t have the number of babies born for the size of our population. And it’s because we’re a very old region. We’re the ninth oldest region in the country.

Susan Pendergrass (06:58): Yeah, I mean, we used to have 800,000 people in the city of St. Louis, right? And now we’re 280,000 or something.

Ness Sandoval (07:05): Yeah, and I was just looking at the numbers. It is very possible within two years that Kansas City will have more babies born in absolute numbers than the St. Louis metro region. That’s how few babies. I’m talking about the region. Indianapolis is about 700 babies behind St. Louis. Nashville is about 800 babies behind. All of these smaller regions are having lots of babies, and young people are moving there. Your future depends on the number of children born. And when you look at population projections, I kind of know what this looks like. When you fall below Kansas City in number of births, at some point Kansas City will be larger than St. Louis. We can project this out. We’re talking absolute births, not birth rates. We had lots of babies born 10 years ago. We were fine 10 years ago.

Susan Pendergrass (08:09): Yeah, wow.

Ness Sandoval (08:29): We can go back and talk about what happened since 2010.

Susan Pendergrass (08:35): Yeah, please. I’m curious what did happen. I know you call it the death spiral when there’s more deaths than births, but how did we get into this?

Ness Sandoval (08:41): So I moved here for the Great Recession. I moved in 2008 to start my job at SLU. And there was hope when I got here. There was some positive momentum happening. I think the region took it for granted that it didn’t have to do anything. We just have to be St. Louis. We don’t have to do anything. Unfortunately, Nashville came on the scene. Then you started to see regions change. Regions thinking we need to get young. And St. Louis absolutely did nothing. Since I’ve lived here, there’s been a lot of resistance to economic development in the region. Nashville, I think it was the popularity of being young, being pro-development. I went to Nashville to actually look at it, like why are young people there? And I went to Vanderbilt. And I saw this really interesting integration between the city and Vanderbilt University. That does not exist here in St. Louis. Making it a vibrant, cohesive, urban experience.

Susan Pendergrass (09:47): Yeah. Right. Now you step off campus at SLU and you’re in an area you don’t want to walk at night.

Ness Sandoval (10:00): Yeah, and even if it was WashU, right. And then you can talk about the Loop. It never recovered from COVID, traffic is down. I think the region has really struggled to attract young people to stay here and live here.

Susan Pendergrass (10:13): Well, we’ve been looking into the issue of crime in St. Louis quite a bit, and I know it’s down and everyone’s celebrating that fact, but I’m not sure when you survey people and ask how they feel walking alone at night, that it’s changed all that much. Even if the number of murders are down, I don’t know that people feel safer walking alone at night, and that’s got to have an impact on whether you want to stay in St. Louis after you have kids.

Ness Sandoval (10:47): Yeah. I think in the city you move out to the suburbs. The challenge is they work and you live for affordability. So many suburbs are against new development, even though they can develop. We see these debates in Chesterfield, that debate in Creve Coeur, several debates out in St. Charles. They don’t even talk about Jefferson County, because they’re celebrating voting down housing. My point is if you don’t want to build housing, Indianapolis is going to build it. Columbus is going to build it. Nashville is building it. We are no longer in the top 50 in new housing permits in the country. We’re 58th.

Susan Pendergrass (11:34): Why though? Is it because there’s not demand, or is supply being constrained?

Ness Sandoval (11:42): Supply is being constrained. Part of it is, when I speak to people, they say it’s going to hurt my home values. People want supply down. But you understand there’s a consequence to this. And home values are always good in St. Louis. But again, we always say there’s a city that we can look to that’s our future, and that’s Pittsburgh. If you really study Pittsburgh and look at it, you’re like, wow, there’s a lot of things we can learn as a city, and say this is not what we want to be. Pittsburgh leads the country in discounted rates on home sales. When people offer their price, most people do not get the price that they want. It’s a significant discount because the demand’s not there. We are about 20 years behind Pittsburgh.

Susan Pendergrass (12:25): Wow. I think a lot, in what I do, about the educational offerings in the region. Before we were recording we were talking about Texas. Texas, number one, doesn’t have an income tax, and also you can pick your child’s school from the get-go. They have hundreds, if not thousands of charter schools. And now they have a private school choice program that I think 250,000 families apply to. And Missouri has an extremely limited private school choice program, maybe 6,000 or 7,000 kids in the state, and not even the ability within St. Louis County to go outside of these tiny little districts. You can’t even go from Clayton to Brentwood. People really feel strongly about this and fight the idea of opening up the county and letting kids go within the county to any school district, and then the legislature fights it every year. And I’m like, we are just becoming less and less competitive.

Ness Sandoval (13:36): I don’t think people understand. I do a lot of work with schools now. We’re going to lose at a minimum 100,000 children under 15 by 2045. This loss is built into the system based on 27,000 births right now. The numbers are starting to show up in kindergarten. We have a smaller kindergarten class, a smaller first grade class coming in. And so a lot of schools are like, wait a minute, what’s going on? This is just starting. You have another 20 years, because we have these large cohorts that were still born after the Great Recession that are going to be replaced by smaller cohorts coming in. And there is no significant migration of children coming into the region.

Susan Pendergrass (14:28): So there are going to be difficult staffing decisions, and people don’t want to hear it. Like, we cannot continue to hire more teachers.

Ness Sandoval (14:32): You have to close schools. You have to close schools, have to merge schools. I’m doing some work in Parkway. People should not be surprised. Parkway is having meetings this month about what Parkway looks like going forward, and people are discussing consolidation. Rockwood is talking about a 15% decline in 10 years. Go out another 10 years, Rockwood will be talking about school consolidation. St. Charles will be talking about school consolidation in the old St. Charles area, the city of St. Charles. This is coming. Everybody focuses on the city and says the city needs to close schools. But you will see a discussion, I think, between Clayton and Brentwood.

Susan Pendergrass (15:06): For sure. Clayton had 2,500 kids. Now they’ve got closer to 2,000. I mean, that’s teachers, that’s buildings. And I know in Indianapolis, I’ve talked to a superintendent in that area. All parents can pick a public school. And he was like, I had some under-enrolled elementary schools and it was great for me because I put a language immersion program in one to bring parents in. I think the resistance to this idea is all about not wanting kids who aren’t paying property taxes, but I think it’s going to flip. Then you’ll be like, we’ve got to fill these seats. We’re paying the same teacher for 18 seats that we could pay for 22 kids. At some point they’re going to have to start laying off teachers. So I think there are some very difficult decisions ahead that you can see now, and there are things that could be done now, like at least not filling open positions.

Ness Sandoval (16:16): I think universities are seeing this, because many of them are relying on tuition and those dollars are not coming in. A smart university has to make cuts because it doesn’t get any better next year or the following year. There will be fewer students coming in. So universities that want to survive are making necessary cuts to survive.

Ness Sandoval (16:45): Again, we don’t know what the bottom of the birth decline looks like. We just happen to live in a state and a region that has seen a significant decline in children. I keep saying we’re modeling the future for people, either as a good or bad thing. They’re like, we want to be like St. Louis, or we don’t want to do what they did.

Ness Sandoval (17:13): I think a lot of people are starting to understand this. It’s like, we’re letting our children go, and we’re not doing a very good job of trying to keep them here. When you had 1.8 million births, you had enough to let children leave your region, leave the state. You don’t have that luxury anymore. Our models show the region should have anywhere between 1.3 million to a million births coming in over the next 50 years. We hope it’s not a million births, because that means you have an 800,000 decline in your population under 50. Or it’s 1.3 million births, which is only a 500,000 decline. But that’s coming.

Susan Pendergrass (17:43): How does immigration factor into it? Because I remember the last time we talked, you said that St. Louis is not very immigration friendly. And of course, the current national environment is not very immigration friendly.

Ness Sandoval (18:03): Missouri and St. Louis cannot rely on immigration to save it. It’s not a state that immigrants are going to come to in large numbers. They’re going to go to Florida. Miami leads the country. Even though domestic migration has people leaving, international migrants are going there as their top destination. They’re going to Philadelphia, they’re going to New York. We get immigrants who come here, but it’s a very small number, like 6,000 a year. We’re not even in the top tier as a top 25 metropolitan region. And Missouri is not either. So Missouri has to rely on domestic migration.

The data will show that probably for the decade, there will be more people dying than babies born in Missouri. Missouri will start to have from a natural perspective more people dying than babies born. And 91 counties across the whole state will have more people dying than babies born. So Missouri will become dependent for growth on domestic migration.

Susan Pendergrass (19:29): Or do we just accept that we’re not going to grow anymore? What’s the impact of that?

Ness Sandoval (19:33): Again, it’s going to be specific. I do think the Springfield area is going to grow, the Branson area, there’s growth. Part of this is retirement, I think. Kansas City is growing.

Susan Pendergrass (19:42): Why Kansas City more than St. Louis? What’s attracting younger people to Kansas City that is not happening here?

Ness Sandoval (19:49): Kansas City is a younger region. St. Louis is a fairly old region. Kansas City is a lot younger and it has a large Latino population, and that’s the largest growing population in the country, birth-rate wise. Latinos are now the second largest population in Kansas City. They surpassed the Black population, which I think even shocked me, because we thought we knew this was coming, but we thought this was going to be post-2030. The fact that it already happened shows just how many Latinos are moving there. And then you have an exodus of Black residents leaving Kansas City as well as St. Louis. I always tell people, when you have young Black families leave or young Black adults leave, those children ultimately leave too. And so that’s part of the story.

Ness Sandoval (20:48): When young people leave, the children that traditionally were born to those young people are now being born in Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston. The number one challenge for St. Louis and the state is the decline in births. If that doesn’t change, then you’re going to see that decline start to show up in five to ten years in our schools.

Ness Sandoval (21:17): And the private schools will simply go out of business because that’s dictated by the private market. Or they’ll do what many of the Catholic schools are doing. They think, we’re going to have middle school now, or we’re going to be K through 12. But then what about the parochial schools? There’s no growth. They’re just taking children out of other schools and putting them in their school system.

Ness Sandoval (21:45): And so again, I go back to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is about how do we manage population decline? The city is growing a little bit, but 100% of the growth in terms of the losses is in the suburbs. And that’s going to happen in St. Louis. When this loss starts to show up in the demographic accounting, most of the loss is going to be outside of the city of St. Louis. It’s going to be in the Chesterfield areas. It’s going to be in St. Charles.

Susan Pendergrass (22:18): So what could be done from a policy perspective? Chesterfield is trying to have this arts and entertainment district. They put in Topgolf and the concert venues. They’re trying to attract younger people there. Is it working?

Ness Sandoval (22:34): It’s not working. I mean, they have the same slight increase. I just posted this yesterday. People are shocked. The growth is in non-family households in Chesterfield. If you look at the new development, I call it downtown West Chesterfield. These are million-dollar homes, very expensive. Very few families with kids are there. These are empty nesters or dual-income, no-kids households. It’s very expensive for young families to get into Chesterfield today, when your entry-level home that was $170,000 in 1980 is $600,000 today. These are the challenges.

Susan Pendergrass (23:23): So build more starter homes?

Ness Sandoval (23:32): You need more entry-level homes. I’m not even going to use the word affordable. You need attainable homes for two incomes. And they can be built. But what I’ve heard is that a lot of cities do not want these homes. They want the $600,000 to $700,000 homes because of taxes. And so there is this tension there.

Ness Sandoval (23:56): Parkway and Rockwood are going to look very different in 30 years. They were very attractive amenities for young families with children. But I look at the data, and my kids are in Parkway. These schools are under-enrolled. You go and objectively look at the classrooms, you’re like, there should be 30 kids in these rooms and there’s 15. It’s great for me as a parent. I’m glad there’s only 15 kids for my fourth grader. One of the classes in Parkway Central, in the middle school, in his math class, there are eight students. I love it as a parent, but as someone who looks at the data, this is not sustainable.

Susan Pendergrass (24:45): Yeah, lots of one-on-one. Yeah. I’m just trying to figure out what would cause a renaissance in St. Louis. It doesn’t feel super safe. It has some great amenities and a great food scene and now MLS soccer. What would it take? Well, number one, you do have the school system problem where the St. Louis public school system is kind of a dumpster fire. So people want to move out if they have small children.

Ness Sandoval (25:32): Yeah, the decision to move out is made within the first three years once the baby’s born. We can see that in the data. When we moved from Chicago, because we lived in the city of Chicago, we wanted to live in the city of St. Louis. I think most people who move from Philadelphia or Boston are living in the city. We thought the city of St. Louis would be offering the same amenities. Because of the Great Recession, I came a year before my family, and we soon realized the city of St. Louis was not the city of Chicago in terms of amenities. And so we ended up in St. Charles. And I think most people make that same decision.

Susan Pendergrass (26:25): Yeah, my husband and I moved right into the city.

Ness Sandoval (26:27): We see it in the data. People are moving into the city from Philadelphia, from Boston, from Houston. But then, like me, if you have children and you’re not going to pay for private school, because that’s a tax in many ways, they’re going to exit out. And then with the Catholic schools closing in the city, there are going to be fewer options.

Susan Pendergrass (26:50): Yeah. But the public transportation is no good. I mean, there are things.

Ness Sandoval (26:57): And it’s interesting. We did see a kind of experiment during COVID. When COVID happened, the Catholic schools in the county opened up. A lot of families wanted their children in face-to-face instruction. So they left the city. They did not stay. So we had kind of a quasi-experimental design there. Education was very important.

Ness Sandoval (27:26): A lot of people left the city because of that and never came back. And that started before COVID. But I think this idea of school choice is something where parents want it. We have enough anecdotal evidence. When Normandy closed, the school system closed, families moved to Normandy to get their kids into Francis Howell. There’s enough evidence to show that families want to make these decisions. The question would be, would Parkway accept all of the students that would want to be in Parkway?

Susan Pendergrass (27:56): Yeah, the law would have to say that they would have to. You couldn’t let them pick and choose.

Ness Sandoval (28:15): Yeah. And so the question is, you have a lot of people who would love to be in Parkway. I gave a talk at Marquette and I was shocked because a good percentage of the students there were saying those public school students, but the parents had left to get out to West County for their children. So the question is, do you just let the private market dictate this? Those who can leave the city will ultimately leave the city and get out to West County.

Susan Pendergrass (28:50): There’s movement out. And I think in terms of domestic migration, to get parents to move in, you can go to our northern border, Iowa. The state pays for private school tuition. Oklahoma to the south, the state pays for private school tuition. Kansas, you can go to any public school in the state. It’s 100% open enrollment. Arkansas is one of the strongest for school choice, both public and private. I think we’re going to be surrounded by it and just have our arms folded across our chest. Because Parkway doesn’t want all those kids coming, or Rockwood doesn’t want all those kids coming. Parents are simply going to move across the border to a state where they can pick any public or private school. I’ve talked to some parents who have reached out to say, I’m thinking about moving to the region, is it true I can’t pick a school? And I’m like, it is true. You cannot pick a school. And I think they’re like, forget it. I’m not going to make this big decision on where to buy a house. I think if we don’t do things that are family friendly, and if we don’t get crime under control in some way, or have a 911 system where when you call somebody responds, I think it’s interesting that St. Louis will become this example for the nation of what a dying city looks like.

Ness Sandoval (30:08): We have three examples today: Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and St. Louis. Tampa is kind of unique because it is a destination for retirees. The Wall Street Journal has an article today on Cleveland, the renaissance of downtown Cleveland. And Detroit too, it’s a renaissance.

Susan Pendergrass (30:29): Wow. What about Detroit now? So St. Louis hasn’t figured out our renaissance yet.

Ness Sandoval (30:49): And to be honest with you, I think it will be hard. I’m not pro anything, but I find this whole debate about the city and county interesting. I’m not from here, so I don’t have this history of growing up here. But I think objectively, when I look at the budget of the city of St. Louis and compare it to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is a little bit bigger. It’s got 25,000 more people. But their budget is significantly smaller than St. Louis City’s budget. Part of me wonders, because the city is both a city and a county, it doesn’t have enough people or revenue to operate as both. And this is what’s helping Pittsburgh out. This is what’s helping Cleveland out, because that county revenue is spread among more taxpayers. In St. Louis City, the county functions are spread among a dwindling number of taxpayers. The city probably cannot be a county anymore. There’s just too few taxpayers to provide both city services and county services.

Ness Sandoval (32:08): I looked at these budgets and I’m like, my gosh, why is St. Louis’s budget so much more? I’m talking not a little bit more, a lot more than Pittsburgh’s budget. Pittsburgh is having trouble. And I don’t see the long-term fiscal situation turning around for the city because it’s got to provide all of these services. The tax base is going to decline. The next three years are probably going to see population loss in the city. The numbers just came out in March, but we’ll get the numbers in May. It’ll probably lead the country again in population decline for large cities.

Susan Pendergrass (32:58): Are we still a top 20 city? We’re number one in population decline, but what about in population size?

Ness Sandoval (33:01): We’re number one in decline. Last year, St. Louis City was number one. We’re declining. We’re not in the top 20 yet, but we’re very close. If we go back to 2020, we’re smaller than we were in 2020. The only reason we’re not number one in decline is because we had so many immigrants that offset our domestic migration loss. But this will be an interesting 2030 census, because it’ll be the first time the region will go into a census with more people dying than babies born. In the last census, we had about 75,000 natural growth. We’re looking at about 25,000 to 30,000 natural decline going into this census without any domestic migration. I tell people that this story is just starting. We have 74 years of the century left.

Ness Sandoval (34:18): I’m just trying to get people to move from the mindset that this is 2010 St. Louis. You don’t have 36,000 births anymore. You have 27,000 and it’s declining, one of the fastest declines in the country. Because of it, we’re aging very fast, and so we have to shift. The region has to make a choice that we start to organize our economy around senior citizens. There’s lots of money to be made from senior citizens, but we will never be viewed as Nashville or Austin as a place for young people.

Susan Pendergrass (34:52): Absolutely. That Route 64 corridor is just going to be all retirement homes.

Ness Sandoval (35:04): We won’t be talking about single family homes anymore. We’ll be talking about senior housing. We’ll be talking about a workforce that’s going to work with seniors instead of a workforce for children. And there is money to be made in that economy. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. But again, we can look at other parts of the country where this transition has happened. Local government spending is being consumed by senior citizens, the healthcare of senior citizens, the paratransit of seniors. Seniors will lose their ability to drive. That cost typically gets covered by local governments. And so you will not be providing buses for children. You’ll be providing paratransit to get seniors to their doctors. Churches will have to think about being accessible to seniors. I go to Church of the Ascension and they are not prepared. At Easter, one of the Masses, one-third of this section was senior citizens in wheelchairs. The churches are simply not prepared for a parish that’s going to be 50% of the population at 70 years old and older. Restaurants have to think about this.

Susan Pendergrass (36:30): Wow, that’s crazy. Well, interesting stuff. I hope you’ll come back and talk about this more. And certainly I’m very interested in reading everything that you write about what St. Louis can do. We need to figure out a renaissance.

Ness Sandoval (36:51): We’ve got to get younger. The kids are giving us a try. They’re coming to school, they’re coming here because they have hopes. We just have not responded the way we need to. A lot of companies are starting to recognize this. I talked to the mayor and said, you need to be a more proactive voice on this. But the region, this is not a city of St. Louis issue. This is a St. Charles issue, a Jefferson County issue, a Chesterfield issue. Most of the people live outside of St. Louis city. The loss we’re projecting is going to come from the suburbs. And that’s what’s happening in Pittsburgh, that’s what’s happening in Cleveland. 100% of the demographic loss is in the suburbs.

Susan Pendergrass (37:21): Yeah. Wow, that’s crazy. Well, fascinating. Thank you so much for explaining it. I don’t want to be depressed about it, but it’s not super optimistic. We’ll find a silver lining. Thanks, Dr. Sandoval.

Ness Sandoval (37:59): All right, thank you very much.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post St. Louis Demographics and the Future of the Region with Ness Sandoval appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This is a much-needed improvement to school accountability in Missouri. Parents and community members will finally have access to clear information about how their local schools are performing.

Following the governor’s address, I wanted to re-up my post about school report cards from last May, which helps to explain why the letter-grade requirement is sorely needed and how it improves upon our current school report card system.

It is printed in full below.

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Information Overload and Missouri School Report Cards

Have you ever started reading the warning label on an over-the-counter drug like aspirin or ibuprofen? Ever finished one? Probably not.

Drug warning labels are classic examples of information overload—so packed with details that they become practically useless. Unfortunately, the school report cards produced by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) suffer from the same problem.

In theory, these report cards should help parents and community members quickly understand how their local schools are performing. When well-designed, they can promote transparency and inform decision-making. But if a school report card is not organized and does not emphasize the most important information, it functions like a drug warning label. It can include a lot of detail but be of little practical value.

If you’re curious to see this for yourself, here is a link to the school report cards made available by DESE. Choose a district, then a school, and you can scroll through a vast amount of information. However, after you’ve taken the time to look through it all, you may realize you haven’t learned very much. DESE’s report cards may be comprehensive, but they fail to deliver what busy families need most: clear, accessible information about school quality.

Now, contrast the Missouri report cards with this report card for Briarmeadow Charter School in Houston, produced by the Texas Education Agency. At the very top, letter grades in four categories are displayed prominently:

• Overall Rating: A

• Student Achievement: A

• School Progress: A
• Closing the Gap: A

With just a glance, you know where this school stands.

Texas is not alone in this approach. States such as Florida, Illinois, and Louisiana also use summary performance indicators on their school report cards to give the public a clear picture of school quality. Unlike Missouri, these states are courageous enough to rate schools based on performance, and most importantly, publicly identify schools that are failing to educate their students.

It’s no coincidence that students in states with strong transparency and accountability policies, including clear and informative school report cards, consistently outperform Missouri students academically. These policies are key drivers of school improvement, and without them Missouri is only likely to fall further behind. School report cards that are informative about actual school performance are a simple way to get our state moving in the right direction.

The post Meaningful School Report Cards are on the Way appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

His response to a laundry list of budget items that were earmarked for a particular school district was:

Given the State’s historic investments in education this year, it is incumbent upon local school districts to prioritize the use of their resources for this type of programming as they deem appropriate and necessary.

In other words, the Foundation Formula is intended to make sure that all districts have and are able to spend an amount that is “adequate” for the successful education of their students. The Foundation Formula funds should cover repairing an outdoor track in the Houston R-1 school district, not earmarks.

Some programs, such as the St. Louis reading literacy program or Kansas City for K-12 career literacy resources, were vetoed entirely because the budget contains “multiple other areas of funding for similar programs.”

Increases for programs such as the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Scholarships or the Workforce Diploma Program were removed. Perhaps the governor wants to see evaluations of the impact of these programs first.

All in all, the governor, along with his staff, appears to have finally taken a close look at the education items in the budget before signing it. Perhaps the next fiscal year, when the governor is involved from the beginning, will usher in a new era of responsibility and accountability for the spending of our hard-earned dollars.

The post Credit Where Credit Is Due appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Drug warning labels are classic examples of information overload—so packed with details that they become practically useless. Unfortunately, the school report cards produced by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) suffer from the same problem.

In theory, these report cards should help parents and community members quickly understand how their local schools are performing. When well-designed, they can promote transparency and inform decision-making. But if a school report card is not organized and does not emphasize the most important information, it functions like a drug warning label. It can include a lot of detail but be of little practical value.

If you’re curious to see this for yourself, here is a link to the school report cards made available by DESE. Choose a district, then a school, and you can scroll through a vast amount of information. However, after you’ve taken the time to look through it all, you may realize you haven’t learned very much. DESE’s report cards may be comprehensive, but they fail to deliver what busy families need most: clear, accessible information about school quality.

Now, contrast the Missouri report cards with this report card for Briarmeadow Charter School in Houston, produced by the Texas Education Agency. At the very top, letter grades in four categories are displayed prominently:

• Overall Rating: A
• Student Achievement: A
• School Progress: A
• Closing the Gap: A

With just a glance, you know where this school stands.

Texas is not alone in this approach. States like Florida, Illinois, and Louisiana also use summary performance indicators on their school report cards to give the public a clear picture of school quality. Unlike Missouri, these states are courageous enough to rate schools based on performance, and most importantly, publicly identify schools that are failing to educate their students.

It’s no coincidence that students in states with strong transparency and accountability policies, including clear and informative school report cards, consistently outperform Missouri students academically. These policies are key drivers of school improvement, and without them Missouri is only likely to fall further behind. School report cards that are informative about actual school performance are a simple way to get our state moving in the right direction.

The post Information Overload and Missouri School Report Cards appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Every English city uses this basic framework, ensuring all elements of city life are working together to benefit everyone’s well-being. [emphasis added]

If New York City and Houston do not have a comprehensive plan, then our Missouri municipalities don’t need one either. As Jane Jacobs said about urban planning, “The pseudoscience of planning seems almost neurotic in its determination to imitate empiric failure and ignore empiric success . . .”

There is general agreement that some type of infrastructure planning is required by municipalities. As cities grow or change, there need to be plans in place for the installation of sewers, gas and water pipes, electrical lines, sidewalks, and roads. But urban planners rarely maintain focus on those needs. Planners frequently and disappointingly mandate the mundane. The growing sameness of so many American communities is a direct result of municipal plans requiring a consistent look in a community. When you realize that most zoning codes were copied (the literal cut-and-paste prior to computers and copy machines) from other cities, that most cities use the same (or very similar) building codes, and that zoning codes limit the options available for many lots, nobody should be surprised by the loss of distinct urban aesthetics across the nation. As Cody Lefkowitz wrote about the depressing sameness of urban areas now:

Before the rise of zoning and consolidation of development, the country was full of special places with wonderful vernacular architecture. These were cities and towns built by many hands. Cities and towns that aged gracefully through generations of stewards iteratively building from the foundations of their predecessors. New Orleans, that much-loved city, is one of the most exceptionally beautiful places one can imagine, with an identity as unique as it is mystifying. When you’re there, you could never mistake yourself for being anywhere else.

Municipal planning commissions are empowered to establish comprehensive plans for their cities and to approve changes, amendments, and variances to the current plans or zoning codes. They are largely advisory. The city council can easily approve a change the planning commission rejects, like in Kansas City when the council unfortunately approved building height limitations for the Country Club Plaza. In Creve Coeur in 2013, the city council approved changes to allow a new grocery store that the planning commission had rejected. City councils can also reject changes the planning commission approves.

The point is not that elected officials should be subservient to the planning commission members; far from it. The point is to overcome the idea that planning is some kind of urban science with a large public benefit. The planning process is wholly subject to the same political aims, interest group pressures, and regulatory capture that all of government is. Furthermore, the process institutionalizes and legislates the bias toward uniformity and present-day assumptions. Counties and municipalities should limit their use of planning to necessary infrastructure issues and refuse to engage in it otherwise.

The post The Last Thing Missouri Needs Is More Urban Planning appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Far from it. Of the 77 U.S. cities that KPMG ranked (which was not exhaustive of all major metros), Saint Louis ranked 45th and Kansas City ranked 46th. Among the cities cheaper than Saint Louis (and Kansas City) are regional competitors like Nashville, Omaha, Cincinnati, Memphis, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Oklahoma City, to name a few. Worse yet, Saint Louis was more expensive than all 18 Southeastern cities KPMG looked at, from Atlanta to New Orleans.

So where did the Post-Dispatch get a top ten ranking for Saint Louis? If we only consider regions with populations greater than two million (of which KPMG ranked 31), Saint Louis is the 9th cheapest. I will leave it to the readers of this blog to decide if Saint Louis should pat itself on back for being cheaper than New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, when it has higher costs for businesses than Nashville, Memphis, and just about every other regional competitor. But if we do decide to use population as criteria, it seems more justified to look at metros with populations similar to those of Saint Louis and Kansas City (between two and three million residents). When we do that, Saint Louis is 7th and Kansas City is 8th out of 14 such cities. That seems awfully middling.

That’s probably why, if one reads the study that the Post-Dispatch reports on, they’ll find that it does not claim that Saint Louis is among the most competitive cities in the country. KPMG didn’t even break down cities by population in the study, choosing instead to do so by region.  The Post-Dispatch story (while citing the study) is actually based on an ancillary KPMG press release, which lauds Cincinnati, and is careful to note context.

Titling an article “St. Louis among most cost-competitive cities for business, report says” when the report in question says no such thing is a questionable decision for a newspaper of record. But this is not just a problem with the headline. The article itself is equally misleading, and it was not a headline writer who placed this story front and center on the Post-Dispatch’s website less than a week before a vote on multiple tax issues (where the city’s business climate is an issue). 

The post Report: Saint Louis, Kansas City *Not* Among Most Cost-Friendly Cities for Business appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Much like with the NFL, civic daydreamers pine for MLS teams. City officials hope pro soccer can revitalize neighborhoods, bring in tax revenue, and draw hip residents. That’s what Bridgeview hoped when the city covered the entire cost of Toyota Park, at the cost nearly $100 million. Unfortunately, promises went unfulfilled. Bridgeview is now in dire financial straits, $225 million in debt with a population of just over 16,000.

None of this should come as any surprise. While the phenomenon of cities spending money on MLS teams is new, cities have long subsidized stadiums for other professional sports. The evidence is clear that building these stadiums does not increase economic growth, spur urban revitalization, or increase tax revenue sufficiently to cover large subsidies. Unfortunately for taxpayers, the cost of soccer-only stadiums has risen over time, along with the subsidies:

So what of the MLS in Saint Louis? With the Rams leaving for Los Angeles, the push to land an MLS team is on. A bill in the Missouri legislature proposes sales tax increases in Saint Louis City and County for a new stadium, likely near Union Station.

But much like the Rams’ riverfront stadium plan, there is little reason to believe that an MLS stadium will do any more for the city than it has done for Bridgeview. Furthermore, private owners have funded their own MLS stadiums, as was the case with Crew Stadium, in Columbus, Ohio. Saint Louis, if MLS officials are to be believed, is a strong soccer town. If the “beautiful game” is so appreciated here, an entrepreneurial owner should be able build a stadium, bring the city an expansion team, and make money. If Columbus doesn’t need to buy a soccer stadium, Saint Louis shouldn’t need to. And if no such owner is to be found, soccer supporters could use crowdfunding like Kickstarter to fund a stadium, if such a proposition is so popular. Given the city’s issues with its existing stadiums, perhaps we should make sure we can afford what we have before we bring in a new pro team.

The post MLS to Saint Louis: On Whose Dime? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In a new paper, Juliet Squire, Kelly Robson, and Andy Smarick look all the way back to the 1890s to track private schooling’s long rise to its peak in the mid-1960s and its decline to today. The trend line is shown in the graph above.

In recent years, numerous states have passed private school choice programs that have helped turn these trends around, at least locally. But even the growth in school choice programs has not been enough to stanch the decline. 

Into that context jump Squire et al, documenting a new phenomenon called “Private School Management Organizations” (PSMOs). Much like Charter management organizations like KIPP or Green Dot work to help organize and supervise networks of charter schools, PSMOs like Wisconsin’s HOPE Christian Schools  or Memphis’s Jubilee Schools  work to help organize and supervise networks of private schools. These groups are organized around one of two major goals. Some are designed to shore up the finances and management of existing private schools and help put them on a sustainable long-term trajectory. Others are designed to help open and expand new private schools.

Charter management organizations have been extremely successful in spreading charter schooling nationwide. KIPP schools, for example, started in Houston in 1994 with only 47 students in one school.  They now educate over 70,000 students in 183 schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia.  It would be wonderful if private schools could learn from them.

Kansas City has the Strong City Schools and St. Louis has the ACCESS Academies, which are kind of proto-PSMOs, but private school leaders across the state could look to the examples Squire et al highlight and the lessons from nascent efforts to see how such organizations might help students looking for a private education in Missouri.

I worry that when the happy day comes that Missouri passes a school choice program, so many private schools will have closed that the options available to students will be limited.  Clearly, help is needed to keep private schools alive until more sustainable support, in the form of vouchers, tax credit scholarships, or education savings accounts, arrive.  PSMOs are one path to achieving that.

The post Private School Pioneers in Kansas City and St. Louis? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

                The recent downgrade saw Saint Louis’s general obligation debt rating fall one notch, from Aa3 to A1. That still leaves the city with a rating denoting an upper-medium investment grade, even if the rating is well below prime. And as some news sources have pointed out, that means Saint Louis’s rating is higher than Chicago’s or Detroit’s. Unfortunately, if we don’t compare Saint Louis to cities exiting or very likely entering bankruptcy, its rating is relatively low, as the chart below demonstrates:

                A lower bond rating can lead to higher borrowing costs. In the same way that an individual with a low credit score might have to pay higher interest rates on a car loan or a mortgage than someone with a great credit score, a lower rating for a city can mean it has to pay more to borrow. As cities regularly borrow money to make civic improvements, the higher cost of borrowing means residents pay more for large projects like, say, a football stadium. Speaking of stadiums, the rating for nonessential debt (read: convention center and stadium) issued by the Saint Louis Municipal Finance Corporation was also downgraded, to A3. That corporation would responsible for issuing bonds for a new stadium.

                The primary reason for Saint Louis’s weak credit rating is the city’s “weak socioeconomic profile,” which is admittedly difficult for city leaders to fix. However, there are ways city hall could work to increase the city’s bond rating. According to Moody’s, the city is too reliant on the earnings tax. In addition, the city could boost its rating by making an effort to reduce total debt. Unfortunately, with the city prepared to go even further into the red to build a billionaire a new football stadium, it may be a while before Saint Louis can brag about its credit rating to people who don’t live Chicago. 

The post Bad for Borrowing: Saint Louis Bond Ratings Slip appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This week, the city received a status report on the negotiations. Nothing is final, but refurbishment plans have been shelved as “too expensive,” and the city and the airlines are now looking for a cost-effective new terminal plan. While most news outlets appear to take that as meaning a new terminal is definitely going to happen, that assumption is premature. If Southwest and the other airlines do not like the terminal plan that comes out of negotiation, refurbishment plans can be unshelved.

However, at this point it looks as though the city and airlines are looking at new terminal options, but it generates more questions than it answers. Will it be the same as the terminal plan from last year? Will it be a more modest proposal? Is Southwest planning to make the kind of investments it has made in Houston, Fort Lauderdale, or Dallas? Will Kansas City voters, many of whom enjoy the convenience of the current layout, support such a new terminal plan?

One new terminal proposal under consideration

Old New Terminal Plan (2013)

We don’t know, and likely won’t know, until earlier next year. However, the flying public in Kansas City and the airport itself will be best served by a terminal system that is cost-effective and user-friendly.

The post New Airport Terminal Coming to Kansas City, Maybe? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Not being from Saint Louis, the advisor did not know that almost unrealistically cheap rent (from the rest of the country’s perspective) is readily available in the region. In fact, Saint Louis was just named the most affordable major city in the country for recent grads by Trulia Trends (“investigators of unconventional house hunting trends”).

Their analysis showed that a recent grad in Saint Louis would on average make just under $26,000, allowing them to afford almost 20 percent of units in Saint Louis. How expensive can it get in other cities? In Portland, Oregon, the median wage of recent grads is under $19,000, which would allow them to afford about 0.1 percent of rental units available. Following close behind Portland, in terms of unaffordability, are Riverside, Orange County, and Miami.

One might assume that the relationship here is one of growth and desirability. Saint Louis, with relatively low growth, is not as attractive as the fast-growing Portland or Miami. But economic growth is not the whole story, because following Saint Louis on the list of affordable metros are some of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the nation, including Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Phoenix. Most likely, multiple factors, including desirable weather and urban containment policies (of which Portland has been a very prominent example), are important in making a city unaffordable for young people. Put simply, it takes capped supply along with high demand for rent to become unattainable for the average grad.

As things stand, Saint Louis is in the opposite situation from cities like Portland or Boston, in that there is plenty of supply but not a whole lot of demand. That puts Saint Louis in a good position to attract startup businesses and startup graduates from more expensive metropolitan areas. However, if Saint Louis is to gather momentum in attracting businesses, it should keep a positive regulatory attitude toward new building and avoid restricting supply through urban containment.

The post Cheap Rent: A Saint Louis Advantage appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

First, it is noteworthy that the stated purpose of the advisory committee is seemingly small ball. Their email soliciting participation asks only,

What’s it going to take for Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) to regain full accreditation? What’s it going to take for your school to regain/sustain full accreditation? How can we retain and attract students?

In other words, “What do we have to do to provide the minimal state-required level of service?” We’re also suspect that they are looking toward parents and the community for ideas when there is an entire industry of specialists who have researched, written, and talked about what to do to improve schools. We at the Show-Me Institute have our own suggestions, and they aim at rebuilding world-class education in Kansas City. All our ideas have a common theme: Move power away from centralized school districts and toward students and parents.

For his 2003 book Making Schools Work, UCLA Professor and Author William G. Ouchi studied more than 200 schools in six cities and found that a school’s educational success may be most directly affected by how it is managed. The way to increase successful management, he argues, is to give schools more control over their own budget.

While schools may boast large budgets, Ouchi’s research uncovered that very little of it is controlled by the principal or the school itself. In one anecdote, he relates that a Los Angeles principal said her school had a budget of $21 million but added, “It doesn’t really matter because I only control $32,000.” Ouchi’s further research indicated that in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago the local schools only controlled 6.1 percent, 6.7 percent, and 19.1 percent of the budget, respectively.

In school districts that have seen tremendous improvements in their urban school performances, such as Seattle, Houston, and Edmonton, Canada, the percentage of the budget controlled by the local schools was 91.7, 79.3, and 58.6, respectively. This should be no surprise. Administrators, teachers, and parents at the school are best able to identify and address the specific needs of their students.

Here in Kansas City, better school management means moving the power of the purse away from the top-down centralized control at 12th and McGee streets and out to the principals at Paseo, Lincoln Prep, and elsewhere. Ouchi offers this warning to parents:

Control goes with the money. If your superintendent smiles, invites your group into his office, and tells you that he agrees with you and that he’s going to roll out a new school-based decision-making program that includes parent involvement—smile sweetly and ask him who will control the school’s budget. Don’t let him off the hook. Don’t let him think that you can be so easily fooled.

Remember, the author was chief of staff to Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. He has academic credentials, but he has weathered political fights as well. And the Kansas City district appears to be doing exactly what he describes: They smile, invite people to discuss the district, but surrender none of the control that is necessary for success.

The post An Idea for Kansas City Schools: Give Principals Power appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Does the Super Bowl have any positive net economic impact on a host city?

The answer is it can, but it probably won’t. In a 2009 study, Michael C. Davis and Christian M. End found that hosting a Super Bowl has no economic impact on a city’s real per capita income, and in some cases it can have a negative effect. Robert A. Baade, Robert Baumann, and Victor Matheson examined the economic impact of mega-events (including the Super Bowl) in Southern Florida from 1980 to 2005. During that period, three cities (Tampa Bay, Miami, and Jacksonville) hosted the Super Bowl a total of seven times. The Super Bowl had a statistically significant positive impact on the city’s economy in only one instance (Tampa in 2001). Dennis Coates found that Houston saw increased sales tax revenue because of the Super Bowl in 2004. But the next year in Jacksonville, the Super Bowl was found not to have had an economic impact.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJiVdo5GV_U?rel=0&w=600]

This takes us back to the Kansas City Super Bowl task force. Why is the state in the business of trying to lure the Super Bowl to Kansas City? Couldn’t a private group of interested residents and businesses sell the city as a Super Bowl destination just as well? Possibly, but the state can offer the NFL subsidies. However, just because the state can do something, doesn’t mean it should. Economists in general oppose sports subsidies because, “The large and growing peer-reviewed economics literature on the economic impacts of stadiums, arenas, sports franchises, and sport mega-events has consistently found no substantial evidence of increased jobs, incomes, or tax revenues for a community associated with any of these things.”

It’s true that there could be intangible benefits to hosting a Super Bowl, like increased exposure to the outside world. Yet, is there any concrete measure on what kind of return the city would see from such exposure? Will businesses or residents move to Kansas City because it hosted the Super Bowl? I don’t know, and the burden of proof should be on those arguing for government subsidies.

Kansas City is a great football town, and I agree with Joe Clifford when he says, “The Super Bowl’s tremendous.” However, I don’t think the residents of Kansas City nor the rest of Missouri should pay for the privilege.

The post Is the Super Bowl a Super Boost for Local Economies? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Contrary to the rhetoric, millennials are relatively immobile and have lower incomes than generations that preceded them. This most likely is an effect of the credit crunch and economic downturn, which has left many millennials without steady incomes to spend or credit to buy new housing.

Also contrary to rhetoric, millennials are not upending the dominance of the car in American travel. In 2000, 5.4 percent of workers ages 16-34 used public transportation for their commutes. In 2010, that number increased to 6.1 percent. That is an increase for sure, but a rather small one considering the expansion of transit systems in the 2000s and the wealth-reducing effects of the recession. The vast majority still drive. Most trends point to a “car light” preference among young people rather than a dramatic move to transit reliance.

When millennials do move, it appears to be for economic reasons, not whether a city is considered cool or has a streetcar. The list of top 20 millennial destinations (of which Kansas City is No. 14), contains some cities with lots of public transportation (Portland, Washington, D.C.), but also many cities that are derided for urban sprawl (Houston, Atlanta, etc.). While the transit correlation may be spurious, all of the cities popular with millennials are among the top performing metro areas in economic growth. The obvious conclusion is that millennials, like the generations that preceded them, chase economic opportunity, not transit. As a millennial who has moved to cities for jobs multiple times, my experience is that the number of sports teams or streetcar lines matters very little in the decision-making process.

If Kansas City planners really want to attract millennials, they will stop trying to make Kansas City cool and focus on creating more opportunity. The millennials will bring the cool with them. Instead, Kansas City officials use a millennial straw man as support for a fabulously wasteful streetcar and other large government projects. And if we believe an author at the Kansas City Star, the only problem is the city hasn’t approved streetcar expansion fast enough. When it comes to looking cool, Kansas City spares no expense. That is, of course, until those millennials buck the plan and want to rideshare with Lyft. Then it’s more important for the city to protect taxi companies than to look cool.

The post The Illusive Millennials: Kansas City’s Hunt For The Perfect City Dwellers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Yet, it is worth noting that the business leaders who responded to Chief Executive did not hold Missouri in especially high regard. The Show-Me State ranked 31st in business friendliness compared to the rest of the United States. Lucky for us, our neighbor Illinois came in at an abysmal 48th place; unlucky for us, Kansas came in at a comfortable 19th. (Incidentally, the Chief Executive survey results resemble the Kauffman Foundation’s findings last month on business friendliness.)

Houston, we have a problem.

Speaking of Texas, there is one other thing worth noting about Chief Executive‘s survey — what the states in the top five have in common. Three of the top five states — Texas (first place), Florida (second place), and Tennessee (fourth place) — do not have an individual income tax. Indiana (fifth place) just enacted legislation to cut its income tax; North Carolina (third place) is pushing hard to reduce its income taxes as well.

I have talked before about the Growth Corridor developing in the Midwest. Missouri should cut income taxes of all sorts, not only because they harm growth in a vacuum, but also because we are surrounded by neighbors who are enacting pro-growth policies in an effort to grow their states’ businesses . . . and to attract ours. Kansas may be the most visible example these days of a state’s tax policy posing a threat to Missouri’s economic future, but it is not just about Kansas. It is about the whole region.

We cannot wait any longer to start cutting these taxes. Missourians need tax relief, and they need it now.

The post Missouri Is 31st For Business Friendliness In CEO Survey appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But over the past decade, the ?cool? cities have not seen any faster job or population growth than cities dominated by non-creative industries. The fastest employment growth has been in areas such as Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma City, and Omaha. The main employment in those cities is not in the cool, creative sector, but in industries such as oil and manufacturing. And, even the rapidly growing ?cool? cities, such as Raleigh and Austin, are not transit-centered places.

It is the same in Kansas City. Rail proponents are so frustrated about nearly a dozen defeats at the ballot box that they contrived a special taxing district, permitted only the residents of that district to vote, and used the result of that vote to commit the city to at least a $100 million rail line project.

A lawsuit against the city’s scheme was dismissed because of its timing, and the city has started collecting the tax. Now the blog Tony’s Kansas City is claiming that some are preparing for a ballot petition to stop the project. If the Kansas City City Council is unable or unwilling to defer to the clearly and repeatedly stated will of the people, then voters are completely within their rights to act on their own with a petition.

The post Get Off The Train: Kansas City Cannot Ride To Economic Growth appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But over the past decade, the “cool” cities have not seen any faster job or population growth than cities dominated by non-creative industries. The fastest employment growth has been in areas such as Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma City, and Omaha. The main employment in those cities is not in the cool, creative sector, but in industries such as oil and manufacturing. And, even the rapidly growing “cool” cities, such as Raleigh and Austin, are not transit-centered places.

So why do we keep hearing that transit is what causes economic development and revitalizes downtowns? Transit may attract a certain demographic, but trends over the past several years in our country hint that this demographic is not the economic driver it appeared to be.

Now, it is not to say that transit precludes development. But why keep focusing our efforts (and subsidies) on something that is not an absolute necessity to promote growth in Saint Louis? We have written about our support for toll roads to limit subsidies for roads, but at least those subsidies benefit a majority of the population. With transit, we are taking money from a majority of the population to pay for something that benefits the few. Even Citizens for Modern Transit unintentionally admits this with their statement “You may not ride transit, you may not know anyone who uses the bus or MetroLink; however, Missouri needs transit.”

The post Get Off The Train: Saint Louis Cannot Ride To Economic Growth appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But today we are talking about a different Branson. You may have heard that Saturday marked the beginning of Southwest Airlines service to Branson, Mo. There will now be daily flights to Chicago, Dallas, and Houston, and one flight a week to Orlando. This news comes on the heels of a decrease in flights to Columbia, Mo.

There is obviously a lot that contributes to the decision for an airline to begin or increase service. But it is worth noting two things. One, Branson is the only privately owned and operated commercial airport in the country. Many were skeptical that it would succeed. Industry expert Mike Boyd predicted when the airport opened that “the local population is too small, and the region’s attractions aren’t sufficient to consistently generate sufficient traffic for profitable air service.” Branson may be small, but the area has generated enough demand to keep air service over the past few years.

And, they have done it without major subsidization. This airport does not rely on taxpayers to operate (but it does receive $8 from the city for each arriving visitor). Nor does it rely on taxpayer money to attract business. Columbia ran into trouble when it offered subsidies to one airline but not the others; the others are now gone. Subsidies may help attract an airline in the short term. But Delta official Trebor Banstetter reinforced that subsidies such as revenue guarantees will not keep an airline around if the flight does not prove to be successful without that guarantee.

The post You Are Now Free To Move About The Country Without Subsidies appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Like most concerned parents, Randy and his wife, Monique, have high hopes for their children and believe education is the path to success. Unfortunately, their house is zoned for one of the lower performing schools in the Springfield School District. They tried to use the district’s intra-district choice program, to no avail. Lacking other options, the family was forced to send their son to Bingham Elementary, where only one-third of all students are reading on grade level.

They could apply for the transfer program again next year, but success is not guaranteed; so the Georges family is analyzing all other options, including moving again. This situation is not unique; families across the state grapple with this very issue every year. They can either accept a sub-standard education for their children, struggle to pay tuition, or move. This is a shame, especially when it does not have to be this way.

In conversations with individuals from 10 private schools in Springfield, I discovered that there are more than 500 available spaces. The Georges family lives just a block from one of these schools.

When former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige was superintendent of the Houston, Texas, school district, he offered some of the students the ability to attend a private school at the district’s expense.

At the time, Secretary Paige’s actions were a novel idea, but today, many states are following suit. According to the Center for Education Reform, there are now 25 programs in 14 states that enable students to attend private schools with a voucher or a tax-credit scholarship. Additionally, Arizona has instituted a first-of-its-kind program, education savings accounts, which can be used to pay for private school tuition or a host of other educational services or products.

These programs provide families with options, typically at a cost savings for the state. Take Springfield, for example: tuition at the private schools I spoke with was $3,300 less than the amount the Springfield School District spent per-pupil last year. Mind you, that figure does not even include the district’s expenses for facilities. A program that enables students to fill those 500 open spaces in the private schools could save the district more than $1.6 million. Moreover, it could ease some of the overcrowding problems in the district.

The idea of public dollars going to private schools is not popular to some, but the idea that the only way to get a good education is to live in the correct ZIP code or be able to afford private school tuition should be even more reprehensible. Providing families with options is not a private versus public issue; it is an issue of doing what is right.

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

The post Moving For A Quality Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Public education is an idea. It is the idea that all kids, whether wealthy or poor, deserve to have access to an educational system that will equip them for life; a system that will enable them to achieve to the highest levels. Yet for some reason, we have come to equate the idea of public education with the standard system of delivering public education, traditional school districts.

Yesterday morning, I had the pleasure of attending a breakfast event at KIPP Inspire Academy. The featured speaker was Mike Feinberg, one of the founders of the original KIPP school in Houston (see him here on Oprah). Feinberg pointed out that the traditional method, where we draw attendance zones around schools and assign students to those schools, is not “god’s gift to public education.” We have not miraculously found the very best way of delivering public education. Traditional school districts are only one method of delivering education to students and that method leaves families with very few options.

All schools, whether public, charter, homeschools, or private can be part of the idea of public education. Because all schools that educate students are contributing to the public good.

Some people want to pit school choice against “public education.” The truth of the matter is that school choice is liberating public education. School choice is about giving the public more say in where their kids go to school. It is about making schools accountable to families, not the government. After all, the idea of a high-quality public education should not be limited to attendance zones.

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